Three skiers from Russia and six from Belarus — including former Olympic and world champions — were approved Wednesday to compete in qualifying events for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games in February.
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation said it cleared the applications of the nine to get neutral athlete status and return to competitions for the first time since the full military invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. FIS did not state if it rejected some applications, or how many.
Athletes and their entourages must not have publicly supported the war and not have ties to military or state security agencies.
Freestyle skier Hanna Huskova took gold in women’s aerials for Belarus at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics and silver four years later in Beijing.
Anastasia Tatalina was a Big Air world champion for Russia in 2021, and was fourth in freeski slopestyle at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Russian cross-country skiers Savelii Korostelev and Dariya Nepryaeva also got neutral status ahead of World Cup races this weekend at Davos, Switzerland.
The Russian ski federation and athletes won a ruling last week at the Court of Arbitration for Sport forcing FIS to start processing applications for neutral status.
Russian athletes and team officials could face challenges getting visas to enter some countries that host qualifying events on the World Cup circuits in Alpine, cross-country and freestyle skiing, and snowboarding. (JapanToday)
U.S. President Donald Trump deepened his rift with Europe in an interview published Tuesday, calling it “decaying” and blasting key allies as “weak” over immigration and Ukraine.
Speaking to Politico, Trump also called on Ukraine to hold elections despite Russia’s invasion and questioned whether the country is truly democratic under President Volodmyr Zelenskyy.
Trump doubled down on his recent extraordinary criticisms of Europe, following the release of the new U.S. national security strategy last week that recycled far-right tropes as it warned of civilizational decline on the continent.
“Most European nations, they’re, they’re decaying. They’re decaying,” Trump told Politico in the interview, conducted Monday.
The 79-year-old billionaire, whose political rise to power was built on inflammatory language about migration, echoed far-right talking points as he said that Europe’s policies on migrants were a “disaster.”
“They don’t want to send them back to where they came from,” Trump said.
The Trump administration’s strategy sparked alarm in Europe — where most countries are part of the U.S.-led NATO alliance — by calling for the cultivation of “resistance” in the EU.
Asked if European countries would not remain U.S. allies if they failed to embrace his migration policies, Trump replied that “it depends.”
“I think they’re weak, but they also want to be so politically correct,” Trump said.
He listed countries including Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Sweden that he said were being “destroyed” by migration, and launched a new attack on the “horrible, vicious, disgusting” Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor.
Trump also brushed off the Kremlin hailing the new U.S. strategy as echoing its own views, saying Putin “would like to see a weak Europe, and to be honest with you, he’s getting that. That has nothing to do with me.”
The U.S. president then criticized Europe’s role in resolving the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying: “They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on.”
Washington and its European allies are increasingly at odds over Trump’s plan to end the war, which many European capitals fear will force Kyiv to hand over territory to Moscow.
Trump also had sharp words for Ukraine and for Zelenskyy, in his latest see-saw in relations with the leader whom he called a “dictator without elections” in January and then berated in the Oval Office in February.
“I think it’s an important time to hold an election. They’re using war not to hold an election.” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”
Elections in Ukraine were due in March 2024 but have been postponed under the imposition of martial law since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Fresh elections were included in the draft U.S. plan to end the war. (JapanToday)
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kyiv’s European allies Tuesday of sabotaging U.S.-led efforts to end the nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine, shortly before he met with a delegation sent by President Donald Trump.
“They don’t have a peace agenda, they’re on the side of the war,” Putin said of the Europeans prior to talks in the Kremlin with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Putin’s accusations appeared to be his latest attempt to sow dissension between Trump and European countries and set the stage for exempting Moscow from blame for any lack of progress.
He accused Europe of amending peace proposals with “demands that are absolutely unacceptable to Russia,” thus “blocking the entire peace process” and blaming Moscow for it.
“That’s their goal,” Putin said.
He reiterated his long-held position that Russia has no plans to attack Europe — a concern regularly voiced by some European countries.
“But if Europe suddenly wants to wage a war with us and starts it, we are ready right away. There can be no doubt about that,” Putin said.
Russia started the war in 2022 with its full-scale invasion of a sovereign European country, and European governments have since spent billions of dollars to support Ukraine financially and militarily, to wean themselves from energy dependence on Russia, and to strengthen their own militaries to deter Moscow from seizing more territory by force.
They worry that if Russia gets what it wants in Ukraine, it will have free rein to threaten or disrupt other European countries, which already have faced incursions from Russian drones and fighter jets, and an alleged widespread Russian sabotage campaign.
Trump’s peace plan relies on Europe to provide the bulk of the financing and security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine, even though no Europeans appear to have been consulted on the original plan. That’s why European governments have pushed to ensure that peace efforts address their concerns, too.
Speaking with Putin via a translator before the talks, Witkoff said he and Kushner had taken “a beautiful walk” around Moscow and described it as a “magnificent city.”
Coinciding with Witkoff’s trip, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Ireland, continuing his visits to European countries that have helped sustain his country’s fight against Russia’s invasion.
In what could be a high-stakes day of negotiations, Zelenskyy said he was expecting swift reports later Tuesday from the U.S. envoys in Moscow on whether talks could move forward, after Trump’s initial 28-point plan was whittled down to 20 items in Sunday’s talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida.
“They want to report right after that meeting to us, specifically. The future and the next steps depend on these signals. Such steps will change throughout today, even hour by hour, I believe,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
“If the signals show fair play with our partners, we then might meet very soon, meet with the American delegation,” he said.
“There is a lot of dialogue, but we need results. Our people are dying every day,” Zelenskyy said. “I am ready … to meet with President Trump. It all depends on today’s talks.”
After months of frustration in trying to stop the fighting, Trump deployed officials to get traction for his peace proposals. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s talks with Witkoff and Kushner would take “as long as needed.”
The talks have followed parallel lines so far, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sitting down with Ukrainian officials. (JapanToday)
Unidentified drones have flown over Denmark’s military sites, including its biggest base, the latest in a slew of incursions near airports and critical infrastructure this week, which officials have called a “hybrid attack” and hinted at possible Russian involvement.
“The Danish Defence can confirm that drones were observed at several of the Danish Defence’s locations last night. Several capabilities were deployed,” an army spokesperson said on Saturday, without specifying where the drones were observed.
Police said “one to two drones” were observed at about 8:15pm (18:15 GMT) on Friday near and over the Karup military base in western Denmark, the country’s biggest base, which houses all of the armed forces’ helicopters, airspace surveillance, flight school and support functions.
Police spokesman Simon Skelkjaer said they could not comment on where the drones came from, adding: “We didn’t take them down.”
The Karup base shares its runways with the Midtjylland civilian airport, which was briefly closed, though no flights were affected as none were scheduled at that hour, Skelkjaer said.
Mysterious drone observations across the Scandinavian country over the past week have prompted the closure of several airports, including Copenhagen airport, the Nordic region’s busiest, which closed for several hours late on Monday.
Five smaller airports, both civilian and military, were also shut temporarily in the following days.
Drone reports also closed Oslo airport for several hours earlier in the week, following drone incursions in Polish and Romanian territory and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets, which raised tensions in light of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Thursday said “over recent days, Denmark has been the victim of hybrid attacks,” referring to unconventional warfare.
Investigators have so far failed to identify those responsible, but Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said on Thursday the flights appeared to be “the work of a professional actor”.
Frederiksen has pointed the finger at Russia, saying it is the “main country that poses a threat to Europe’s security”.
Moscow said on Thursday it “firmly rejects” any suggestion that it was involved in the Danish incidents. In a social media post, its embassy in Copenhagen called them “a staged provocation”.
The drone flights began just days after Denmark announced it would acquire long-range precision weapons for the first time, as Russia would pose a threat “for years to come”.
Defence ministers from about 10 European Union countries agreed on Friday to make a so-called “drone wall” a priority for the bloc.
EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said Europe needs to learn from Ukraine and swiftly build anti-drone defences.
“We need to move fast,” Kubilius told AFP news agency in an interview. “And we need to move, taking all the lessons from Ukraine and making this drone wall together with Ukraine.”
Copenhagen will host an EU summit gathering heads of government on Wednesday and Thursday. It said on Friday it had accepted Sweden’s offer of its anti-drone technology to ensure the meeting could go ahead without disruption. (AlJazeera)
U.S. President Donald Trump argued for lower levels of global migration and urged a turn away from climate change policies on Tuesday in a combative, wide-ranging speech to the U.N. General Assembly that leveled scathing criticism of world leaders.
The 56-minute speech was a rebuke to the world body and a return to form for Trump, who routinely bashed the U.N. during his first term as president. Leaders gave him polite applause when he exited the chamber.
He rejected moves by allies to endorse a Palestinian state amid Israel’s latest Gaza offensive and urged European nations to adopt the same set of economic measures he is proposing against Russia to force an end to the war in Ukraine.
Much of his speech was dominated by two of his biggest grievances: immigration and climate change.
Trump offered his U.S. immigration crackdown as a case study for what other world leaders should do to curb mass migration that he says is altering the fabric of nations. Human rights advocates argue the migrants are seeking better lives.
“I’m really good at this stuff,” Trump said. “Your countries are going to hell.”
Trump, who met last week with Britain’s environmentally conscious King Charles at Windsor Castle, called climate change a “con job” and urged a return to a greater reliance on fossil fuels. Scientists say climate change caused by humans is real.
“Immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe,” Trump said.
Trump’s administration plans to call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum at the United Nations later this month, Reuters reported last week, as it seeks to undo the post-World War II framework around humanitarian protection.
Trump sprinkled into his speech a litany of false and misleading statements, such as that London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to impose “sharia law” on London and that “inflation has been defeated” in the United States six days after the Federal Reserve said inflation has gone up.
European powers have spent months trying to stabilize their relationship with the U.S. leader with a focus on winning U.S. support to end the war in Ukraine. At a NATO summit in June, Trump and European leaders lavished each other with praise.
But in Tuesday’s speech, Trump mocked NATO allies for not shutting down purchases of Russian oil and said he would impose strong economic measures against Moscow.
“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one? In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs,” he said.
“But for those tariffs to be effective, European nations, all of you are gathered here right now, would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures.”
He did not detail the measures, but he has been considering a package that includes sanctions against countries that do business with Russia, like India and China. The main buyers of Russian oil in Europe are Hungary, Slovakia and Turkey.
Trump later held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who pressed for more U.S. support to resist Russian advances. Trump, asked by reporters if NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace, said, “Yes, I do.”
On the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Trump rejected efforts by world leaders to embrace a Palestinian state, a move that faces fierce resistance from Israel.
“The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists, for their atrocities,” he said, repeating his call for the return of hostages taken by the Palestinian militant group.
Trump said the United States wants a ceasefire-for-hostages deal that would see the return of all remaining hostages, alive and dead.
“We have to stop the war in Gaza immediately. We have to immediately negotiate peace,” he said.
He was to discuss the future of Gaza during afternoon talks with several Gulf leaders.
Trump, who has cast himself as a peacemaker in a bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize, complained that the United Nations did not support his efforts to end conflicts around the world.
He added to his complaints with personal grievances about the U.N. infrastructure, saying he and first lady Melania Trump were briefly marooned on a malfunctioning U.N. escalator and that his teleprompter was not initially working.
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations – a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump said, noting that Melania Trump nearly fell when the escalator stopped abruptly. (JapanToday)
President Emmanuel Macron has named close ally Sébastien Lecornu as the new French prime minister, 24 hours after a vote of confidence ousted François Bayrou as head of government.
Lecornu, 39, was among the favourites to take over, and he has spent the past three years as armed forces minister focusing on France’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In a statement the Elysée Palace said Lecornu – the seventh PM in the Macron presidency – had been given the task of consulting political parties with the aim of adopting France’s next budget.
Pushing through a budget as head of a minority government was what brought down Bayrou, with left and far-right opponents condemning Lecornu’s appointment.
Bayrou had visited the president hours earlier to hand in his resignation, paving the way for Sébastien Lecornu to become the fifth prime minister of Macron’s second term as president.
Lecornu wrote on social media that he had been entrusted by the president with “building a government with clear direction: defending our independence and our strength, serving the French people, and [ensuring] political and institutional stability for the unity of our country”.
His immediate task is tackling France’s spiralling public debt, which hit €3.3tn (£2.8tn) earlier this year and represents 114% of the country’s economic output or GDP.
Bayrou had proposed €44bn in budget cuts, and his decision to put his plans to a vote of confidence was always going to fail. In the end France’s National Assembly decided to oust his government by 364 votes to 194.
Lecornu’s appointment was welcomed by centrist allies such as Marc Fesneau from Bayrou’s MoDem party. He called on every political force to reach a compromise – “for the stability of the country and its recovery, especially its budget”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical left France Unbowed was unimpressed, complaining that nothing had changed and it was time for Macron’s departure from the presidency.
There had been suggestions that Macron might try to approach the centre left to broaden his minority government, and Olivier Faure of the Socialists had offered his services the night before.
It soon became clear that Faure would not be getting the call: “I slept pretty soundly so I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
On the far right, Marine Le Pen said the president was ”giving Macronism its last shot from his bunker, along with his little circle of loyalists”.
France has had a hung parliament since Macron surprised his country by calling snap national elections last year, after a poor performance in the June 2024 European vote. There are broadly three main political blocs: the left, far right and the centre.
Édouard Philippe, who was Macron’s first prime minister from 2017-20, thought Lecornu was a good choice as he had learned a lot as defence minister.
“I’ve known him for a long time because he was elected like me in Normandy,” the Horizons party leader told TF1 TV. “He knows how to debate and he’ll need this talent for debate and listening to find a deal in circumstances he knows are pretty complicated.”
Philippe believed Lecornu would have to find some way of bringing the Socialists on board. It was certainly possible to find a majority and also necessary, he thought, because without a compromise on a budget deal, a fresh political crisis would erupt and new elections would be inevitable.
More immediately, a grassroots movement called Bloquons Tout – “Let’s Block Everything” – is planning widespread anti-government protests on Wednesday and authorities are planning to deploy 80,000 police.
Then on Friday the credit agency Fitch will reassess France’s debts and could make its borrowing costs higher if it lowers its rating from AA-. (BBC)
Chinese President Xi Jinping began welcoming dignitaries including United Nations chief Antonio Guterres and Egyptian Premier Moustafa Madbouly on Saturday before a summit attended by leaders from more than 20 countries.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gathering will be held in the northern port city of Tianjin on Sunday and Monday, days before a massive military parade in nearby Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will be among some 26 world leaders slated to attend the parade.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. Sixteen more countries are affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are also due to arrive in Tianjin ahead of the summit.
China and Russia have used the organisation — sometimes touted as a counter to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance — to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
Other leaders including Iranian and Turkish presidents Masoud Pezeshkian and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also attend the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
Multiple bilateral meetings are expected to be held on the sidelines of the summit.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin will discuss the Ukraine conflict with Erdogan on Monday.
Turkey has hosted three rounds of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine this year that have failed to break the deadlock over how to end the conflict, triggered when Moscow launched its invasion of its pro-European neighbour in February 2022.
Putin will also talk about Tehran’s nuclear programme on Monday with his Iranian counterpart Pezeshkian, a meeting that comes as Iran faces fresh Western pressure.
Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, triggered a “snapback” mechanism on Thursday to reinstate UN sanctions on Tehran for failing to comply with commitments made in a 2015 deal over its nuclear programme.
Russia’s foreign ministry warned that the reimposition of sanctions against Iran risked “irreparable consequences”.
Tehran and Moscow have been bolstering political, military and economic ties over the past decade as Russia drifted away from the West.
Relations between them grew even closer after Moscow launched its offensive against Ukraine.
Modi’s visit comes after a trip to Japan, and is his first to China since 2018.
The world’s two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began last October when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia. (Punch)
North Korea has announced that its newly opened seaside resort will not be receiving foreign tourists.
The Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, opened on 1 July, has been touted as a key part of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s ambitions to boost tourism.
In the lead-up to its opening, the resort was promoted as an attraction for both locals and foreigners. But as of this week, a notice on North Korea’s tourism website says that foreigners are “temporarily” not allowed to visit.
Last week, the first Russian tourists reportedly arrived at the resort in Wonsan – around the same time that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met Kim in the city.
Lavrov hailed the seaside development as a “good tourist attraction”, and said he hoped it would become popular among Russians, AFP reported. The two countries are set to launch direct flights between Moscow and Pyongyang by the end of the month.
A Russian tour guide previously told NK News that they had planned several more trips to the resort in the coming months.
Wonsan, a city along North Korea’s east coast, is home to some of the country’s missile facilities and a large maritime complex. It’s also where Kim spent much of his youth, among holiday villas belonging to the country’s elites.
The new seaside resort has lined 4km (2.5 miles) of its beachfront with hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and a water park. It has a capacity of some 20,000 people, according to state media.
However, since the resort began construction in 2018, human rights groups have protested the alleged mistreatment of its workers. They point to reports of people being forced to work long hours to finish the massive project, under harsh conditions and inadequate compensation.
Russian ambassadors attended the resort’s completion ceremony on 24 June, along with Kim and his family.
Last year, North Korea allowed Russian tourists to visit North Korea after a years-long suspension of tourism during the pandemic.
In February, North Korea also started to receive tourists from the West, including Australia, France, Germany and the UK. It abruptly halted tourism weeks later, however, without saying why. (BBC)
Kyiv has warned that an interruption of US weapons shipments will encourage Russia to prolong the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.
On Tuesday the White House said it had cut off some weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
The decision was taken “to put America’s interests first” following a defence department review of US “military support and assistance to other countries”, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries were now “clarifying all the details on supplies”, while the foreign ministry warned any delays “would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace”.
The ministry particularly emphasised the need for Kyiv to strengthen its air defences – as Russia continues to pummel the country with missiles and drones on a near-nightly basis.
A Kyiv-based US diplomat was invited to the foreign ministry for talks on Wednesday.
However, Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had not received any official notification from the US about the “suspension or revision” of the weapons deliveries, and urged people not to speculate on the basis of partial information.
But in a statement the defence ministry also said the path to ending the war was “through consistent and joint pressure on the aggressor”.
At the weekend Ukraine endured its biggest aerial attack since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with more than 500 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles launched at its cities.
US officials did not immediately say which shipments were being halted.
According to American broadcaster NBC, the weapons being delayed could include Patriot interceptors, Howitzer munitions, missiles and grenade launchers.
The US has sent tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, leading some in the Trump administration to voice concerns that US stockpiles are too low.
The Kremlin, for its part, welcomed news of the reduction in weapons shipments, saying reducing the flow of weapons to Kyiv will help end the conflict faster.
“The fewer the number of weapons that are delivered to Ukraine, the closer the end of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Fedir Venislavskyi, an MP for Ukraine’s ruling party, said the decision was “painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine… it’s a very unpleasant situation”.
A Ukrainian military source quoted by the AFP news agency said Kyiv was “seriously dependent on American arms supplies, although Europe is doing its best, but it will be difficult for us without American ammunition”.
Ukraine’s European allies have spent billions in military aid over the last three-and-a-half years.
However, military support for Kyiv is not endorsed by everyone on the political spectrum.
Czech President and former top Nato official, Petr Pavel, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine – but he told BBC Russian he could “not guarantee” continued ammunition support for Kyiv, as that was dependent on the result of forthcoming Czech elections.
“I don’t know what will be the priorities of a new government,” he said.
The Pentagon’s move is based on concerns that US military stockpiles are falling too low, a source told CBS News, although Anna Kelly stressed “the strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran”.
Separately, the US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, said in a statement the Pentagon “continues to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine”.
However, he added “the department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defence priorities”.
The pause comes less than a week after President Donald Trump discussed air defences with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.
Trump said US officials “are going to see if we can make some of them available” when asked by the BBC about providing extra Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine.
Referring to his conversation with Zelensky, Trump said: “We had a little rough times sometimes, but he couldn’t have been nicer.”
The two had a heated confrontation in the Oval Office in February. Afterwards, Trump said he was pausing military aid to Ukraine that had been earmarked by the previous Biden administration. Intelligence sharing with Ukraine was also suspended. (BBC)
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