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Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published late on Tuesday. The United States reached separate deals on Tuesday with Ukraine and Russia to cease fighting in the Black Sea and pause attacks against energy targets, with Washington agreeing to push to lift some sanctions against Moscow. «We want the grain and fertilizer market to be predictable, so that no one tries to 'ward us off' from it,» Lavrov told the Russian state Channel One television. «Not only because we want… to make a legitimate profit in fair competition, but also because we are concerned about the food security situation in Africa and other countries of the Global South.» If implemented, the deal could be the first significant step toward U.S. President Donald Trump's goal to achieve a more encompassing ceasefire in the war in Ukraine that Russia started with its full-scale invasion three years ago.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. PARIS—Two weeks after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron descended 20 stories beneath Paris to send a message to Moscow. He entered France’s nuclear bunker deep under his regal presidential palace to lead an exercise dubbed Poker.

Ukraine. The war correspondent for Russia's main pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia was killed in Kharkiv region on Monday, the outlet announced. «Izvestia correspondent Alexander Fedorchak was killed in the zone of the special military operation,» Izvestia said, using Moscow's term for its full-scale offensive in Ukraine, adding that he was killed «in the Kharkiv region». Fedorchak was killed as both Russia and Ukraine held talks with the United States on a potential partial ceasefire. The newspaper said that its correspondent died «in the Kupyansk direction» — a city that has been under intense Russian attack and where Russian forces have been advancing. «His last report was broadcast literally the day before,» Izvestia said on its website.

privileged strategic partnership" with India, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Lavrov said at an event that Russia is actively expanding ties with countries like China, India, Iran, North Korea and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Monday. «We prioritize boosting ties with the majority of global states,» he said at a meeting of the board of trustees of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund. «The relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with the People's Republic of China boast an unprecedented level of mutual trust. Particularly privileged strategic partnership is developing with India,» the top Russian diplomat said. Lavrov added that serious progress has been reached in expanding and deepening of friendly ties with such states as Iran and North Korea. Moscow puts special emphasis on strengthening of all areas of cooperation with allies and partners among CIS member states, including within the framework of the Commonwealth, as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, Lavrov said.

Ukraine with Washington eyeing a separate Black Sea maritime ceasefire deal before securing a wider agreement. The talks, which followed U.S. negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here are some of the issues that Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine are discussing:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. KYIV, Ukraine—It was a scorching summer day in 2014 when Artem Kravchenko and hundreds of other Ukrainian soldiers put their trust in a Russian promise not to open fire and retreated in a column from the surrounded city of Ilovaisk. By the end of the day, Kravchenko found himself lying in a ditch surrounded by dead comrades after Russian forces shot up the column.

political thriller than real life, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly took an extraordinary step following the near-fatal assassination attempt on Donald Trump in 2024. According to Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, Putin didn’t just express concern—he went to church to pray for Trump and even commissioned a special portrait of him from one of Russia’s leading artists. But was this a simple gesture of goodwill, or does it hint at something deeper in their relationship?

In its annual review published today (21 March), the OFSI said the UK and its allies have imposed «the most severe sanctions Russia has ever faced», depriving Moscow of over $400bn since 2022, «equivalent to four years of Russia's military spending». The agency added that 2,001 Russian individuals and entities fell under the UK sanctions regime as of March this year. How the Russia-Ukraine war has reshaped the defence and energy sectors in Europe The latest figures came as US President Donald Trump rushes to negotiate a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine without consulting...

Kim Jong Un. Traditional allies Russia and North Korea have drawn closer since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Seoul accusing Kim of sending thousands of troops and container loads of weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has officially confirmed the troop deployment, but the two countries signed a sweeping military deal last year, including a mutual defence clause, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North. Moscow's top security official Sergei Shoigu was visiting North Korea on Friday, Russian news agency TASS reported, the latest in a recent series of high-level exchanges between North Korea and Russia. Shoigu passed on «greetings and best wishes» from Putin to Kim in a meeting with the North Korean leader.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The much-anticipated telephone call between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine, as well as chart out a path for a lasting peace formula, turned out to be sub-optimal and weighed down by variables antagonistic to a meaningful deal. The tentative deal reached after a marathon 150-minute call has placed energy infrastructure out of bounds, but allowed broader hostilities to continue.

Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that they had a constructive call about moving toward a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow, with the White House suggesting the U.S. could take control of Ukrainian power plants to ensure their security. Trump told Zelenskyy that the U.S could be «very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise,» according to a White House statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz that described the call as «fantastic.» Trump added that «American ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure.» Zelenskyy and Trump discussed in general terms the possibility of a ceasefire, according to a senior Ukrainian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment publicly. During the call, there was an emphasis how any ceasefire process would need to be monitored and that the teams still needed to resolve technical issues, said the official, who characterized the call as «a very good conversation, positive, with the jokes.» During the call, Zelenskyy requested additional Patriot defense missile systems. Rubio and Waltz said Trump «agreed to work with him to find what was available, particularly in Europe.»

Vladimir Putin scored a coup by discussing with Donald Trump in highly anticipated phone talks everything from improving bilateral ties to Iran and even hockey matches, but stopping well short of agreeing any peace path to end the war in Ukraine, analysts say. During the call on Tuesday, Putin refused a full ceasefire agreement proposed by Washington but focused instead on reviving Russian-American cooperation that has been frozen since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The very fact such talks took place was an achievement for the Kremlin, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist based in Berlin. «The two superpowers are discussing the fate of the world and the future of humanity,» she told AFP, summing up Moscow's thinking. «It is a great achievement for Russia which reproduces a Soviet-era narrative without being the Soviet Union.»

Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks, easing pressure on Moscow as the Trump Administration pushes Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Former President Joe Biden last year ordered his national security team to establish working groups to monitor the issue amid warnings from U.S. intelligence that Russia was escalating a shadow war against Western nations. The plan was led by the president's National Security Council (NSC) and involved at least seven national security agencies working with European allies to disrupt plots targeting Europe and the United States, seven former officials who participated in the working groups told Reuters. Before President Donald Trump was inaugurated, his incoming administration was briefed by Biden officials about the efforts and urged to continue monitoring Russia's hybrid warfare campaign, the former U.S. officials said. However, since Trump took office on Jan. 20 much of the work has come to a standstill, according to eleven current and former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss classified matters. Reuters is the first to report on the full extent of the Biden administration effort and how multiple different U.S. agencies have since paused their work on the issue.

Washington has been pushing for a full, 30-day ceasefire as a first step towards a wider settlement of the grinding three-year-old war. But in a 90-minute call with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin refused, insisting that any such deal would be contingent on the West halting all military aid for Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, Putin has already ordered his military to pause strikes against Ukrainian energy targets for 30 days. The highly anticipated Putin-Trump call also resulted in the announcement that Russia and Ukraine will exchange 175 prisoners each on Wednesday.

Oil prices slid on Wednesday after Russia agreed to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal that Moscow and Kyiv stop attacking each other's energy infrastructure temporarily, which could lead to more Russian oil entering global markets. Brent crude futures were down 12 cents, or 0.2%, at $70.44 a barrel by 0106 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) lost 15 cents, or 0.2%, to $66.75.

Ukraine has signalled support for a U.S.-proposed pause in attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. The agreement, backed by Washington and Moscow, follows a call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, made it clear that Kyiv needed more details before making a final decision. «After we get the details from the U.S. president, from the U.S. side, we will give our answer,» Zelensky said in an online briefing. He added that Ukraine would honour the agreement as long as Moscow also adhered to it. «Our side will maintain it,» he stated, but stressed that the U.S. should act as «guarantors of control over the implementation.»

Russian comedian has been arrested while trying to leave the country after he was publicly denounced for allegedly mocking war invalids, as per a report. In a clip from a stand-up performance that was posted online, Artemy Ostanin told a joke about a supposed encounter with a legless beggar in the Moscow metro, Reuters reported. Investigators opened a case against him at the weekend after Sergei Zaitsev, the head of a self-styled public movement named Zov Naroda (Call of the People), complained that the beggar could be a casualty of Russia's war in Ukraine. «His jokes, mocking an invalid — essentially our soldier who lost his legs in the special military operation — cross all boundaries of morality and ethics,» Zaitsev said. Ostanin, in a subsequent online interview, denied the accusations and said there was not a word in the joke about the Ukraine war. But on Tuesday, investigators said in a statement that he had been arrested on suspicion of inciting hatred and debasing human dignity, an offence that carries a jail term of up to six years.

digital arsenals" to interfere in Western democracies, while their messaging around the war in Ukraine had become increasingly aligned. «Foreign information manipulation and interference is a major security threat to the EU,» foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a report. «We must not underestimate the power that this has over us, or the intentions of those behind it.» In its latest annual report on the subject Brussels said that last year it tracked disinformation attacks against over 80 countries and more than 200 organisations. The war in Ukraine remains a major target for Russia — but events such as the Olympics in Paris, elections in Moldova and farmers' protests in Germany were also in the crosshairs.

Trump moves to axe Voice of America and other US-funded media, China and Russia are eager to fill the void. The targeting of VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia not only freezes some of the most dogged reporting on countries with heavily restricted media, but it comes after years of concerted efforts by Beijing and Moscow to promote their own worldview on the global media landscape. Trump issued an executive order Friday to pare down the nearly $1 billion US Agency for Global Media, with hundreds of journalists swiftly put on leave or fired, in his latest sweeping cut to the federal government. Lisa Curtis, who was a senior official on the National Security Council in Trump's first term and serves as board chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, formed in the Cold War to reach behind the Iron Curtain, said that closing the service «will actually help our adversaries.» «Countries like China, Russia and Iran are investing hundreds of millions of dollars pumping out anti-American propaganda and disinformation,» she said.

During junta chief Min Aung Hlaing’s recent visit to Moscow, it was announced that Russia had established a joint satellite imagery analysis centre in Myanmar. It was also revealed that Russia had offered to “share information captured by its reconnaissance satellites with the regime for military purposes”. This would boost the junta’s ability to plan military operations against rebel groups, said experts on Myanmar affairs. After the meeting between Min Aung Hlaing and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow—the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Tuesday for construction of a small nuclear power plant in Myanmar with Russian support. Rosatom, Russia's state-run nuclear power corporation, said the plant would have a capacity of 100 megawatts with the possibility of trebling it. Russia, which supplied 90% of Myanmar’s energy needs last year, has agreed to step up energy supplies to the Southeast Asian country. The junta chief during the visit also sought Moscow’s support for other projects in Myanmar besides hailing Buddhism links between the two countries, said people familiar with the visit.