Category: 2. World

The below is attributable to Spokesperson Tammy Bruce: 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke today with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.  The Secretary and the Foreign Minister discussed the situation in Gaza, including efforts to expand the distribution of humanitarian assistance, free the hostages, and eliminate Hamas.  The two also discussed regional issues, including Lebanon and Syria.  

(Reuters) – The United Nations’ Haiti appeal for 2025 has received the lowest funding of any response plan worldwide, the organization’s humanitarian coordinator for the Caribbean nation said on Tuesday, as armed gangs continue to paralyze transport routes and fuel hunger.

This year’s humanitarian response plan aims to raise over $900 million, mainly from U.N. member countries, but is just 9.2% funded, the coordinator, Ulrika Richardson, said in a briefing marked “the lowest level of funding for any response plan in the world.”

Ukraine’s $2.63-billion appeal for this year is by comparison 38% funded, according to U.N. financial tracking data, while a $4-billion flash appeal for the Palestinian territories received $890 million, or 22% of its target.

“We have tools, but the response from the international community is just not at par with the gravity on the ground,” Richardson said.

More than 3,100 people have been killed this year in a conflict with heavily armed gangs that has pushed more than half the population into food insecurity and around 1.3 million from their homes. More than 8,000 people living in makeshift camps face famine-level hunger.

A partially-deployed U.N.-backed force led by Kenya and based on voluntary contributions, deployed a year ago but has had little effect in helping a cash-strapped police force reclaim territories.

Meanwhile, many aid organizations have had to cut back services due to the difficulty of bringing in supplies and ensuring the safety of the people they work with.

Richardson said strangling the trafficking of arms – which the U.N. estimates are largely shipped from Florida – into Haiti was key to stopping the violence, as well as sanctions against those involved in financial support of the gangs. 

Iran could hold direct nuclear talks with the United States if conditions are suitable, First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref said on Tuesday, according to state media. However, he dismissed US demands for Tehran to drop uranium enrichment entirely as “a joke.”

A sixth round of talks between Tehran and Washington was suspended following Israeli and US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June. Both powers accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, an accusation Tehran rejects.

“Iran is ready for negotiations under equal conditions in order to safeguard its interests… The Islamic Republic’s stance is in the direction that people want and, should there be suitable conditions, we are even ready for direct talks,” Aref said.

Also Read: Iran threatens planned Trump corridor envisaged by Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal

Previous rounds of negotiations, which began in April, were indirect and mediated by Oman. Washington maintains that uranium enrichment in Iran is a pathway to developing nuclear weapons and should be abandoned.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian voiced support for resuming negotiations with the US despite the prevailing distrust. “You don’t want to talk? Well then, what do you want to do? Do you want to go to war? … Going to talks does not mean we intend to surrender,” he said, adding that such matters should not be “approached emotionally.”

A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Aziz Ghazanfari, responded on Monday, saying foreign policy requires discretion and that careless statements by authorities can have serious consequences for the country.

Russian forces have made a sudden thrust into eastern Ukraine near the coal mining town of Dobropillia, a move that may be an attempt to increase the pressure on Kyiv to give up land as the United States and Russian presidents prepare to meet.

Ukraine’s authoritative DeepState war map showed on Tuesday that Russian forces had advanced by at least 10 kilometres north in two prongs in recent days, part of their drive to take full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

The advance is one of the most dramatic in the last year, although military analysts said the Russians were using small groups of soldiers to try to establish footholds and that it was uncertain if they could maintain their positions in the face of a Ukrainian pushback.

DeepState said the Russians had surged forward near three villages on a section of the frontline associated with the Ukrainian towns of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk, which Moscow is trying to encircle by exploiting Kyiv’s lack of manpower.

“The situation is quite chaotic, as the enemy, having found gaps in the defence, is infiltrating deeper, trying to quickly consolidate and accumulate forces for further advancement,” DeepState said on its Telegram channel.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to discuss a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine when they meet in Alaska on Friday. Unconfirmed media reports say Putin has told Trump he wants Ukraine to hand over the part of the Donetsk region that Russia does not control.

The Russian Defence Ministry said units of its army grouping “Centre” had improved their positions on the edge of the frontline.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed that groups of Russian soldiers had advanced about 10km in several places.

“They are without equipment, only weapons in their hands. Some have already been found, partly destroyed, partly captured. We will find and destroy the rest in the near future,” he said.

Zelenskiy claimed the Russian push was part of an attempt by Moscow to shape the narrative ahead of the US-Russia summit to show that Russia was “moving forward and Ukraine is losing”.

Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, said the situation had escalated rapidly, with Russian forces infiltrating past Ukrainian lines to a depth of roughly 17km in the past three days.

“Forwardmost Russian units have reportedly reached the Dobropillia — Kramatorsk road T0514, and Russian infiltration groups have also been reported near Dobropillia proper,” he wrote on X.

Pro-Ukrainian open-source military analysts were divided on how significant the development was, with some saying that Russia’s tactic of sending small groups to quickly seize but not necessarily hold territory for long had made mapping the war much harder.

Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, said the Russian thrust, although it appeared sudden, was the culmination of more than a week of infiltration and positional gains.

Leverage

Tatarigami_UA, a former Ukrainian army officer whose Frontelligence Insight analysis tracks the conflict, posted: “In both 2014 and 2015, Russia launched major offensives ahead of negotiations to gain leverage. The current situation is serious, but far from the collapse some suggest.”

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said the Russians had been able to advance amid “a partial collapse in the front” due to Ukraine’s shortage of soldiers.

“This breakthrough is like a gift to Putin and Trump during the negotiations,” Markov said, suggesting that, if sustained, it could increase pressure on Kyiv to cede some land to prevent the Russian army from eventually taking the rest of Donetsk by force.

To do that, though, Russian forces would first need to take control of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka — which Russian military analysts call “fortress cities”.

Zelenskiy has publicly pushed back against the idea of ceding territory to Russia, saying any peace deal must be a just one.

Bohdan Krotevych, former chief of staff of Ukraine’s Azov brigade and a National Guard lieutenant colonel, took to X late on Monday to warn Zelenskiy of the threat, saying the frontline in the area was “a complete mess”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Russia wants Ukraine to withdraw from the entire eastern region of Donetsk as part of a ceasefire deal, in advance of a meeting between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and United States President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday, where issues of giving up land to end the war will be focal.

Zelenskyy revealed the demand on Tuesday, before reiterating that Kyiv, which still controls 9,000 square kilometres (3,500 square miles) of Ukraine’s Donetsk, where the fiercest fighting of the war is currently taking place, would not agree to this stipulation, as it was unconstitutional and would incentivise future Russian aggression.

Speaking about the Alaska summit, the Ukrainian president said that he viewed Putin’s invitation to the US as a “personal victory” for the Russian leader.

On the battlefield, the Ukrainian military sent reserves to stem Russian advances near two key cities in Donetsk, as Moscow attempted to gain more Ukrainian territory before the talks on Friday.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian General Staff said its forces were involved in “difficult” fighting close to Pokrovsk and Dobropillia, with extra soldiers needed to block attacks by small groups of Russian troops.

The development suggests intensifying struggles in the Donetsk area, where Moscow-backed separatists have mainly held sway since the conflict there erupted there in 2014, instigated by the Kremlin and deepened by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Some of the advancing clusters of Russian soldiers had been destroyed, while others were still being engaged in combat, the Ukrainian army added.

Russia’s advance is one of the most dramatic in the past year, with its soldiers infiltrating 17km (10 miles) past Ukrainian lines over the last three days, according to Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group.

Moscow, which has further isolated the destroyed town of Kostiantynivka, one of the last remaining urban areas Ukraine still holds in Donetsk, hopes to encircle the nearby city of Pokrovsk.

“A lot will depend on availability, quantity and quality of Ukrainian reserves,” Paroinen wrote on X Monday.

Ukraine’s DeepState blog, which has close connections to the Ukrainian military, described the situation as “quite chaotic”, as Russian troops are “infiltrating deeper, trying to quickly consolidate and accumulate forces for further advancement”.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based research group, said that Moscow’s advances in the Dobropillia area did not yet amount to “an operational-level breakthrough”.

The Russian advance in eastern Ukraine comes as Europe hopes to rally Trump to Ukraine’s cause at an emergency virtual summit on Wednesday.

Organised by the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the meetings are due to be attended by European Union leaders, Trump and Zelenskyy.

In the run-up to the talks, all EU leaders except Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is an ally of Putin, said on Tuesday that they welcomed the US president’s efforts “towards ending Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”, but emphasised that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine” and that “international borders must not be changed by force”.

Trump had earlier disappointed his European allies by saying that Ukraine would have to cede land to Russia if peace is to be achieved.

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s correspondent Charles Stratford said that in Europe, “there are growing concerns the closer we get to Friday”.

Europeans are “anxious” because the Trump-Putin summit potentially has “serious implications for European security”, he noted.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has warned that Russia is “not preparing to end the war”, despite the scheduled Alaska meeting.

“On the contrary, they are making movements that indicate preparations for new offensive operations,” he wrote on X.

In other developments, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said it had successfully targeted a building in Russia’s Tatarstan region, 1,300km (800 miles) from Ukraine, which contained long-range Shahed drones.

Videos shot by local residents confirmed that the facility was hit, the SBU added, noting that it was the second such strike from a great distance in four days.

Meanwhile, Putin and his North Korean counterpart and ally, Kim Jong Un, have had a phone call about the upcoming Alaska summit, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Relations between Russia and North Korea have deepened dramatically during the last two years of the war in Ukraine, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022, with Pyongyang deploying more than 10,000 troops and arms to back Moscow.