Russian air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 136 Ukrainian drones overnight, Moscow\u2019s Defence Ministry has said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nUkrainian politics<\/p>\n
\n- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, a close ally who has headed Ukraine\u2019s negotiation team at fraught United States-backed peace talks, has quit, hours after anticorruption agents searched his home<\/a>. Yermak was leading Ukraine\u2019s effort to push back against peace terms proposed by the US, which would satisfy many of Moscow\u2019s territorial and security demands.<\/li>\n
- Zelenskyy said he would consider a replacement for his chief of staff on Saturday. \u201cRussia is eager for Ukraine to make mistakes. We won\u2019t make any,\u201d Zelenskyy said in a video address, calling for unity. \u201cOur work goes on. Our struggle goes on,\u201d he added.<\/li>\n
- Investigations into high-level corruption, coming just weeks after Ukraine\u2019s justice and energy ministers resigned<\/a> amid a wide-reaching probe, have sparked public outrage and thrust government leadership into crisis at a time when the country is fighting for its very survival.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Ceasefire talks<\/p>\n
\n- In a video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said that senior Ukrainian officials representing the military, intelligence and Foreign Ministry would soon participate in talks with Washington officials on how to end the conflict.<\/li>\n
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia expects to have information on the agreed points of a proposed peace plan<\/a> by the time a US delegation arrives in Moscow next week. Peskov said that Moscow is working on the assumption that it is negotiating the plan solely with the US.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Sanctions<\/p>\n
\n- A European Union spokesperson said that \u201cintensive discussions\u201d are ongoing, including with Belgium, on using frozen Russian assets<\/a> to help Ukraine stay afloat. Belgium\u2019s support for the plan is crucial as the assets the EU hopes to use are held by Belgium-based financial institution Euroclear.<\/li>\n
- The talks come as Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever warned in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that using the assets could derail a Ukraine peace deal.<\/li>\n
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he saw the need to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine as \u201cincreasingly urgent\u201d and hoped there would soon be an agreement.<\/li>\n
- Russia will deliver agreed crude and gas supplies to Hungary according to existing contracts, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.<\/li>\n
- Blasts have rocked two vessels from Russia\u2019s shadow fleet of sanctioned oil tankers<\/a> in the Black Sea, near Turkiye\u2019s Bosphorus Strait. The 274-metre-long (898 ft) tanker Kairos suffered an explosion and caught fire in the Black Sea while en route from Egypt to Russia, Turkiye\u2019s Ministry of Transport said. It said emergency response vessels were immediately dispatched to the scene, and the 25 crew members on board were safely rescued.<\/li>\n
- The Kairos was heading to Russia\u2019s Novorossiysk port when it reported \u201can external impact\u201d causing a fire 28 nautical miles (51.8km) off the Turkish shore, Turkiye\u2019s Directorate General for Maritime Affairs said.<\/li>\n
- A second Russian tanker, Virat, was reportedly struck some 35 nautical miles (64.8km) offshore, further east in the Black Sea. The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear, but there have been incidents of ships hitting mines in the Black Sea in recent years.<\/li>\n
- Russia has failed to win enough votes to rejoin the United Nations shipping agency\u2019s governing council despite urging countries to back its nomination for a seat it lost in 2023. The outcome is a blow for Russia, which also failed to secure enough support in September to get elected to the UN aviation agency\u2019s governing council, in another diplomatic rebuke of Moscow over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Regional security<\/p>\n
\n- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to skip a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next week, the Reuters news agency reports, citing two anonymous US officials, in a highly unusual absence of Washington\u2019s top diplomat from a key transatlantic gathering at a crucial time for peace talks in Ukraine.<\/li>\n
- US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau will represent Washington instead, said one of the officials. It was unclear why Rubio planned to skip the December 3 meeting. But his likely no-show comes as US and Ukrainian officials have been scrambling to narrow gaps over US President Donald Trump\u2019s plan<\/a> to end Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/li>\n
- Poland has detained two Ukrainians and three Belarusians on charges of acting on the orders of foreign intelligence services, as Warsaw warns of Russian attempts to destabilise countries backing Kyiv. Poland says it has been targeted with arson and cyberattacks in what it calls a \u201chybrid war\u201d waged by Russia to undermine support for Ukraine.<\/li>\n
- Germany recorded its highest number of drone sightings over military bases in October, a senior intelligence official said, with a growing focus on naval installations. Previously, drones had often been spotted over army and air force bases, including those training Ukrainian troops.<\/li>\n
- Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma, has resigned from parliament amid allegations that she lured 17 men to fight for Russia in Ukraine<\/a>. Zuma-Sambudla was a lawmaker in the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) opposition party led by her father. MK officials said she resigned voluntarily and that her departure from the National Assembly and all other public roles was effective immediately.<\/li>\n
- Putin will visit India on December 4-5 at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian state news agencies reported.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s where things stand on Saturday, November 29. Fighting Russian drones struck six locations in Kyiv\u2019s city centre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[32,299,12,332,7661,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-600337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine","14":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115630446174831057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}