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Morning Headlines
The Guardian: Xi Jinping has criticised the “bullying behaviour” of other countries while Putin has blamed the west for his war on Ukraine, on the second day of a major summit in China which seeks to challenge western-led multilateral blocs.
AP News: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Ukrainian officials arrested a suspect in the shooting death of former parliament speaker and prominent pro-Western politician Andriy Parubiy.
Reuters: A man was arrested on Monday after ramming his car into the gates of the Russian consulate in Sydney, Australian police said.
31.08.2025
Reuters: European capitals are working on “pretty precise plans” for potential military deployments to Ukraine as part of post-conflict security guarantees that will have the full backing of US capabilities, Ursula von der Leyen has said. There was a “clear road map” for possible deployments, the European Commission president told the Financial Times.
AP News: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Sunday that the war in Ukraine could still last for a long time and ending it quickly at the country’s expense was not an option.
The Kyiv Independent: Russia's 2025 spring–summer campaign has ended with "almost nothing," Ukraine's General Staff said on Aug. 31, dismissing the Kremlin's recent claims of battlefield success as "wishful thinking" and "outright lies."
The Moscow Times: Putin will meet Slovakian PM Fico in China in the coming days, the Kremlin said Sunday, talks that will likely further strain tensions between Bratislava and Brussels.
The Kyiv Independent: Budapest will not agree to open the first round of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Aug. 30.
Reuters: Russian drone attacks on power facilities in northern and southern Ukraine overnight left nearly 60,000 customers without electricity, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowing to retaliate by ordering more strikes deep inside Russia.
The Kyiv Independent: After months of playing lip service to U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine, the head of Russia's military on Aug. 30 said Moscow will continue both fighting on the front lines, and launching mass missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities.
ISW: The Kremlin appears to have launched a coordinated informational effort posturing military strength on the battlefield in order to shape Western thinking and falsely portray a Russian victory as inevitable.
30.08.2025
The Kyiv Independent: Russian troops continue to deliberately kill Ukrainian civilians, the 1st Azov Corps said on Aug. 30, after releasing footage allegedly showing a Russian soldier shooting dead an elderly man in his own yard in Donetsk Oblast’s Pokrovsk district.
Reuters: The European Union will examine how to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine's defence and reconstruction after the war but confiscating them now is not politically realistic, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Saturday.
The Kyiv Independent: Russian forces have been surrounded by Ukraine's military near Dobropillia in Donetsk Oblast, military spokesperson Viktor Trehubov announced on Aug. 30.
Axios: Two weeks after the summit between Trump and Putin, there has been little clear progress toward ending the war. Frustrated Trump aides contend the blame should fall on European allies, not on Trump or even Putin.
The Kyiv Independent: The Lithuanian military has installed obstacles to strengthen security at unused roads at border checkpoints with Russia and Belarus, LRT broadcaster reported on Aug. 30.
Bloomberg: The EU will discuss options on how to act more swiftly on foreign policy matters, an area in which most decisions need unanimity, which has seen Hungary oppose many actions in favor of Ukraine and against Russia in recent years (archive).
Reuters: Ukrainian former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in the western city of Lviv on Saturday and a search was under way for the killer.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian drones struck oil refineries in Russia's Krasnodar Krai and Samara Oblast overnight on Aug. 30, the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, confirmed.
The Insider: Russian pro-war 'journalist' Alexander Garmaev published a photo that appears to show two Ukrainian prisoners of war tied together. One of them is holding a hand grenade with the safety pin removed — set to explode as soon as he can no longer hold the lever.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian military has liberated the village of Myrne near Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, according to updated DeepState maps published on Aug. 29. The positions previously allowed Russian troops to control the road leading into the city of Kupiansk, approximately 104 kilometers (65 miles) east of Kharkiv, the regional capital.
29.08.2025
FT: Trump suggested deploying Chinese troops as peacekeepers in postwar Ukraine, lending support to a proposal first put forward by Russia’s Putin (archive).
Reuters: Leaders of some 30 countries that have vowed to provide Ukraine with security support once there is a peace agreement with Russia will meet next week to discuss proposals put forward by their militaries, France's president said on Friday.
AFP: The White House lashed out Friday what it called a "foreign influence operation" by German-owned US news outlet Politico after it criticized Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's Ukraine negotiations.
CNN: Ukraine has said it destroyed two bridges inside Russia by using a couple of cheap drones to hit stashes of mines and ammunition hidden there by Russian forces.
Reuters: European Union countries are considering imposing stricter requirements on companies to prove where the gas they import is produced, as part of the bloc's plan to phase out Russian imports, a document seen by Reuters showed.
AFP: A rare Russian attack on a Ukrainian warship killed two servicemen and others are unaccounted for, a spokesperson for Ukraine's navy told AFP on Friday.
Reuters: China is seeking to buy more Russian gas through an existing pipeline as talks between the two countries have failed to make progress on building a second link, thwarting Moscow's quest for new outlets.
The Kyiv Independent: The Belgian government said on Aug. 29 it will provide Ukraine with an additional 100 million euros in military aid this year through NATO's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List mechanism.
Reuters: Once a thriving city of 50,000, Enerhodar, home of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, is a ghost town. The Russian occupation is using intimidation and seemingly arbitrary detentions to scrub the region of its Ukrainian identity.
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