Apple’s FaceID has long provided robust authentication. But for its smart home device, HomeView, the company is betting on new “person recognition” technology that has yet to be challenged in the wild.
DUBLIN — Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed EU governments to step up participation in Ukraine peace negotiations as he talked with world leaders hours before he’s due to hear about Thursday’s Moscow discussions between Vladimir Putin and U.S. officials.
“When the Americans and the Russians talk about this, it’s not just about security guarantees for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian president told leaders at the start of a summit in Dublin. “It’s more about some kind of new security framework between Europe and Russia.”
While he said it’s “very good that Europeans are now part of these talks,” they don’t speak directly to Russia so “we need to make sure that Europe becomes a regular part of this negotiation.”
Two days of peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. in Abu Dhabi ended on Wednesday without a breakthrough ― and without European officials joining the talks. EU governments continue to disagree over who would represent them. U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met the Russian leader on Thursday and will dash to Dublin to update Zelenskyy on Thursday evening.
Speaking on his way into the European Political Community summit in the Irish capital ― a gathering of 50 EU and non-EU leaders ― German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had received positive signals from the Abu Dhabi talks, but also stressed that Ukraine and Europe must be involved.
“I expect the Russian government and the Russian president to finally agree to these joint talks,” Merz said. “We will also discuss who, if necessary, will represent the European Union. But that is a matter we will discuss behind closed doors and not air publicly.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas struck a more skeptical tone, saying she had seen no goodwill from Moscow and insisted that a ceasefire must come before discussions on a peace agreement or Europe’s wider security architecture.
“Americans are representing American interests, Europeans are representing European interests,” she said, adding that EU treaties signal that European Council President António Costa and she should represent the bloc in any talks— a solution backed by Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal in an interview with POLITICO.
French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe must first agree on its own peace proposals and vision for future European security before deciding who should represent it.
The substance of Europe’s negotiating position should determine the format of any talks, rather than the other way around, he told reporters on the way into the summit.
“Without Europeans there is no support for Ukraine, let’s be honest,” he said, arguing that U.S. involvement has declined. “There is some mediation, fine. But at the end of the day we will be the ones to define and decide for our future security as Europeans. I have no doubt about it.”
Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden backed Costa as the EU’s representative, while Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin called for a “clear, coherent leadership from the European Union at that table” warning that it remained unclear whether Russia was genuinely interested in peace.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev warned that Europe’s place in future negotiations was still not guaranteed, while his Czech counterpart, Andrej Babiš, expressed optimism that the bloc was moving closer to securing a seat at the table.
The issue is set to be discussed at Friday’s informal European Council following Meloni’s request. Costa agreed to make time for the discussion, on top of the original agenda focusing on AI.
When (or if) Ring's security camera drone flies into our homes in January, you won't get the option to pilot it yourself. The Ring Drone Cam relies entirely on an "AI Pilot" system to follow pre-programmed routes and navigate autonomously around obstacles, with no manual control option available - and an embarrassing demonstration with CBS News might reveal why.
The video, broadcast on CBS Mornings and published on Threads, shows Ring founder Jamie Siminoff allowing technology reporter Jo Ling Kent to manually fly an early version of the drone via a mobile app with integrated controls.
KYIV — The Kremlin continued its onslaught against Ukraine just hours after peace talks in Abu Dhabi ended, attacking Kyiv with ballistic missiles and 123 attack drones Thursday.
Ukraine reportedly shot down 94 attack drones and no missiles, while one person was killed in Kyiv and five were injured, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said. Emergency services also reported fires in the Rivne and Zhytomyr regions.
Russia’s defense ministry claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was targeting drone production sites and electricity substations. Moscow also reported shooting down some 70 Ukrainian drones over eight regions overnight.
The mutual attacks came hours after Russia and Ukraine concluded another round of trilateral peace talks, mediated by the United States. While both sides agreed to prepare another major prisoner swap, other issues, including territory and Europe’s participation in future talks, reportedly caused heated debates at the negotiating table.
A member of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, described negotiations as some of the toughest yet, saying the Russians made strict demands and left little room for compromise.
“Every inch of our land will be returned,” Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation, said after the negotiations, describing Ukraine as “an abscess that burst.” In addition to demanding Ukrainian territories, the Kremlin called for the establishment of a new security architecture in Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said territory remained one of the many topics discussed during the latest round, with the U.S. mediators focusing on different ways to solve the territorial spat, mainly in the Donbas region.
“They believe that to stop this war, we must leave our own territory. It is impossible to speak to us in such a way when it concerns the independence of our country. They are trying to find some variations of this. And I have heard various things,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference in Dublin on Wednesday.
“The idea was something like this: If the war were to stop along the current front line, then parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions could subsequently be administratively transferred to the jurisdiction of a different oblast. But that was just one of roughly a million different ideas,” a senior official, who was granted anonymity to discuss classified details, told POLITICO.
“This does not mean that Ukraine will ever recognize the occupied territories as Russian,” the official added.
THE HAGUE — Beijing is overseeing nearly 1,250 overseas policing outposts in more than 90 countries to crack down on dissidents, according to a report by a human rights advocacy organization.
The report described Europe as a hotspot with hundreds of Beijing’s policing offices across some two dozen European countries, which it said exposed China’s growing attempts to control its diaspora.
Researchers at the Spain-based organization, Safeguard Defenders, gathered open-source evidence from the Chinese Party-state to examine the extent to which the Chinese diaspora is monitored, surveilled and policed around the world.
These policing outposts “act as the Chinese Communist Party operatives for community surveillance and enforcement abroad,” according to the report.
The report lands at an awkward time for Europe’s trade officials. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the EU’s trade department — which has been working to balance the trade relationship with Beijing — will meet with China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Ling Ji in Brussels on Thursday.
Europe is attempting to walk a fine line with its relations with Beijing. EU legislation proposed in January seeks to kick risky Chinese suppliersout of Europe’s most critical industries over cybersecurity concerns, while supply chain dependencies and political coercion remain ongoing challenges. The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas has also raised concerns about what she said was China’s enabling of Russia’s war in Ukraine and credible reports of China training Russia’s military.
Overseas outposts
The report builds on initial revelations from Safeguard Defenders in 2022 that identified more than 100 facilities around the world, which the NGO described as overseas outposts of China’s security apparatus. Back then, that report said Beijing announced its “first batch” of “30 overseas police service stations in 25 cities in 21 countries.”
Following the revelations, some governments denounced the overseas police stations as illegal, and some pursued criminal investigations, the NGO said in its latest report. In response, Beijing claimed the stations had been closed, it added.
“Far from closing, the evidence shows expansion: today more than 10 police forces from five Chinese provinces work through a global network of Chinese Communist Party operatives abroad,” the new report says.
The latest paper was presented at a conference hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a gathering of 52 cross-party lawmakers from 30 countries that campaigns for a more coordinated response to the Chinese Communist Party. Policymakers raised numerous concerns at the event in The Hague earlier this month — about what they considered security threats of critical infrastructure, trade dependencies and potential risks from a future conflict between China and Taiwan that would disrupt shipping.
The Chinese foreign ministry and state media have previously called IPAC an “anti-China” group and accused it of spreading disinformation and interfering in China’s internal affairs, particularly over Taiwan.
China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its European Union mission didn’t respond to requests for comment on the report. China has previously denied running overseas police stations and says it doesn’t interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and that it respects international law.
In 2023, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson rejected the term “police stations,” saying the “institutions helped overseas Chinese who could not return to China due to the pandemic, renew their driving licence and perform physical examination.”
Tip of the iceberg
These 1,250 offices were “the tip of the iceberg,” according to the NGO, which said it was conservative in how it mapped and linked them to China’s policing system. To be counted, they had to be officially connected to China’s police or prosecutors and have open-source evidence of overseas activities, report author Laura Harth said. This meant broader influence or interference operations were excluded.
“All of them serve to control and instill fear in diaspora communities … all of them represent a standing national security risk,” she said.
Slovakian MEP Miriam Lexmann, who is part of the European Parliament’s trade committee and China delegation — lawmakers tasked with maintaining and managing legislative ties between the EU and China — said people needed to become more aware of the security threats posed by China.
“It means that our free countries are no longer free anymore for everyone because they are not able to guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of behavior to people who are in our country,” she told POLITICO in reference to the operations.
China’s surveillance through facial recognition and interference in communications was “the exact behavior of the former Soviet Stasi,” she said, but worse since the technology is now much more sophisticated.
The main concern expressed by lawmakers attending the IPAC conference was China’s relationship with Russia, and its help in propping up the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. Their discussions included what this could mean for a future conflict and war on two fronts if Beijing were to try and take Taiwan militarily while NATO countries were attacked by Russia.
“The road to escalation in the Taiwan Strait can run right through what’s happening in Ukraine and in Kyiv,” said Dutch lawmaker Jan Paternotte, who co-chaired the IPAC conference.
ANTALYA, Turkey — World leaders and industry must make electric cars and heat pumps affordable if they are to ensure “people on all incomes” can “make the green transition,” U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the COP31 climate summit.
During a flying visit to this year’s U.N. conference in Turkey, Burnham — who has made affordability his core domestic political focus — reaffirmed the U.K.’s commitment to the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
But he warned that the world had “not moved as quick as I had hoped in the past five years” to show citizens that climate action and electrification have cost-of-living upsides.
“The last of these meetings I attended was COP26 as the mayor of Greater Manchester,” Burnham said, referring to the 2021 summit hosted by the U.K. He warned at the time that the climate movement must not lose sight of the “struggles of ordinary families.”
“The world feels very different now, and we need to adapt,” Burnham said. “Electrification in transport, heat and industry is how we make clean power, cheap power.”
While voicing support for COP31 hosts Turkey and Australia’s electrification push, Burnham stopped short of backing the specific target of 35% of global energy use shifting to electricity by 2035.
But he emphasized the benefits the switch could bring, while urging industry to help ensure it helped all consumers.
“If you drive a new electric car today in the U.K., it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. These technologies are becoming cheaper, but they are not available to everybody on all incomes,” he said.
“As a government, we are doing our bit by investing in innovation and subsidizing upfront costs for the public. But we need industry to play their part too, and help people on all incomes to make the green transition.”
The focus on EVs and heat pumps comes despite Burnham’s government cutting the subsidy pot for heat pumps at last month’s budget. Ministers are also weighing proposals to water down industry EV quotas.
Nonetheless, Burnham reiterated the U.K.’s over-arching strategy to cut dependence on fossil fuels.
“The climate crisis is not a distant threat. It is upon us all now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere. Meanwhile, two wars across two continents have sent fuel prices and gas bills soaring for families and businesses across the world,” he said. “The common thread running through all of this: our dependence on fossil fuels.”
He announced the U.K. would use its G20 presidency next year to “put climate resilience back on the agenda, with debt, development, and insurance as key issues.”
Burnham’s government has also created a new role of special representative for climate security, appointing former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee Chair Madeline Alessandri to the post.
Over 50 leaders are descending on Dublin today for the European Political Community summit — but it’s not a popular one.
Today on the show, Zoya Sheftalovich and Kathryn Carlson discuss why insiders don’t find the forum particularly useful, and some even hope it will end once French President Emmanuel Macron — who spearheaded the initiative — leaves office.
One meeting leaders are more eager to attend, however, is Friday’s informal European Council, also taking place in Dublin. High on the agenda is the thorny question of who should represent Europe in future Ukraine peace talks, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ups the pressure with a November deadline. Plus, AI will be a crucial topic: from Europe’s place in the global AI race to cybersecurity concerns.
Finally, Finland’s embassy in Canberra is going viral … and no one quite knows why.
Questions? Comments? Message us on WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
ABU DHABI — When Jared Kushner walked into the briefing room to announce the results of two days of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, he didn’t try to conceal how hard it had been.
“The reality is there’s no trust right now between the sides,” Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted envoy told POLITICO during a post-talks briefing. “There were some pretty tough discussions.”
The two sides, one led by a Kremlin aide and the other by Ukraine’s spy chief, discussed all the most difficult topics including the toughest — what happens to disputed territory — and fought hard for their own objectives, according to those in the room.
The mood cooled from the first day to the second. On Tuesday, with negotiations lasting four and a half hours, officials on the ground in Abu Dhabi who were familiar with the talks described them as “constructive.” The best they could muster on Wednesday, when the session broke up after just two hours, was that the exchange had been “neutral.”
In truth, few on the Ukrainian side ever believed this week’s resumption of face-to-face negotiations would deliver a breakthrough. The biggest announcement concerned the non-trivial matter of a planned prisoner exchange — which Kushner said would be the biggest in the war so far, but on even this they failed to announce the final agreed numbers.
Yet despite the muted rhetoric, the meeting in the air-conditioned environs of a secure government guest house — where staff were constantly on hand to provide coffee, sandwiches and even pizza — was nevertheless a significant moment in the stop-start journey toward peace after nearly five years of war.
Here’s what you need to know about where things stand.
What did they discuss?
Everything. According to Kushner, there was no significant topic that was not raised over the two days. The question of territory, he said, would clearly be “the hardest” to resolve. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv’s negotiators scored a major win on day one by convincing the Americans to accept their analysis of where the front line stands, and just how much less Ukrainian territory Russia has conquered than Moscow claims.
It’s hard to see a quick resolution on that issue, although privately U.S. officials say both sides have shown some flexibility on how to settle territorial claims. Zelenskyy still insists, and it seems the American mediators agree, that matters relating to the fate of Ukrainian land can only be discussed at the level of leaders. That kind of meeting is still very far away. “Clearly, there’s not great trust or love between the leaders,” Kushner said.
What did they agree?
A big prisoner exchange — potentially the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. But even this isn’t yet final: Kushner made it clear that it would depend on approval from Vladimir Putin, and that he’d try to obtain that on Thursday on a visit to Moscow .
“One of the positives was that we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners — we’re gonna finalize the numbers tomorrow,” Kushner said. He said he would be traveling with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s other envoy, “to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin, to go over what was discussed today, and try to make more progress on some of the issues.”
Ukraine’s negotiators said “strict directives” from Moscow had limited the scope of their Russian counterparts to reach agreements this week, making the talks harder.
What happens next?
The Moscow trip is key. Kushner said his other big goal in speaking to Putin would be to get him to allow Europeans to join the next round of negotiations. “I believe that hopefully tomorrow in Moscow, Steve and I will be successful and President Putin will give the blessing for that to occur. I think that if he agrees to that we will be able to make a lot more progress,” Kushner said in response to a question from POLITICO.
Then the Americans plan to head to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy in person and try to push the agenda forward. The Ukrainians want to get the next date in their diary for more talks because they hope to have a deal before the end of the year, with Russia ramping up strikes on Ukraine’s power grids and energy facilities and another winter looming.
The big shift
Arguably, the biggest change in recent days has been in America’s attitude. This was never simply a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, after all; ever since Trump returned to power nearly two years ago, Kyiv and Brussels have been trying to persuade Washington to take their arguments more seriously. For Ukraine’s European allies, that lobbying has paid off.
Kushner and Witkoff now want European officials to join the next round of negotiations — so they can move on to discussing one of Putin’s most totemic obsessions: Relations with NATO, and the future system of European security.
“We need to have the Europeans at the table,” Kushner said, answering a question from POLITICO at the briefing. “We have relayed to President Putin directly several times and to his team that the only way to get this done is to have them by our side, and I think they are receptive to it.”
Ukrainian negotiators said Russian attitudes only started to soften — and open to dialogue — once the U.S. moved to discuss postwar settlements for both sides.
On Ukraine, too, American attitudes have changed. Only a few weeks ago Trump was angrily demanding that Zelenskyy be replaced amid a bust-up over Ukraine’s criticism of the U.S. president’s diesel deal with Putin. Russia, Trump said, had been “fine” on Ukraine.
Now, however, Kushner is careful to praise the Ukrainian negotiating team and “the great efforts” they made in Abu Dhabi. “I think they fought very, very hard for their issues, were very constructive, and I think it was a very productive session.” The Ukrainians also expressed gratitude to the U.S. side.
Europe’s big question
It’s one thing to be invited to take part in real talks with Russia and Ukraine — and Europeans have yet to be given even this chance. But it’s another to participate and then influence the conversation when it finally happens. For that, Europe needs to choose its representatives wisely.
Zelenskyy says he wants to be consulted on who should get the role of speaking for Europe — and that it should be a single person. He also wants Europe to decide by the end of this month.
So far, however, Europe’s approach has been anything but streamlined. Attending the talks on the sidelines in Abu Dhabi were representatives of the European Commission, the European Council, NATO, the U.K., France, Germany and Italy.
Wearing his diplomatic hat, Kushner described this arrangement as “strong” — but added that “If Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf, that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiation.”
Europe’s danger moment
If the latest negotiations have achieved nothing else, after months of worrying about being left on the sidelines, Europe now finds itself — subject to Putin’s approval, of course — in the thick of the most perilous negotiations in the continent’s recent history.
One critical question is how far talks about changing the continental security framework, which is underpinned by NATO, will be tied to the peace negotiations regarding Ukraine. Europeans have long campaigned for Ukraine to get the strongest possible security guarantees to prevent Russia from attacking again when the war ends. And U.S. officials want to explore the idea of providing a NATO-like collective defense agreement with Ukraine that could even involve NATO itself as a guarantor.
Officials in European capitals say the sequencing of these talks will be critical. The European side has signaled its willingness to explore the continent’s wider security system to allay Russia’s concerns — in parallel with the Ukraine peace process. But they don’t want to sign up to any wider reforms until peace has been achieved.
‘Trying to survive’
Kushner said the aim was to discuss all the issues and then “find a pathway to settle them all at the same time.”
“I think that having these discussions is very important,” he said. “But the implementation of postwar security will not occur until there’s an agreement on territory and on all other bilateral issues.”
If that position holds, it could work for Europe. But in the end, anything agreed among officials in the negotiating room is always provisional. All it would take is a phone call from Putin to Trump.
Some Europeans are wary. German officials involved in the Abu Dhabi talks see very little potential upside and view the process as a “Russian trap” to give a false impression that Moscow is willing to make peace, said one German official with knowledge of talks, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.
“The Europeans are only trying to survive this,” the official said.
James Angelos and Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
BRUSSELS—The European Union should have a plan to respond to serious artificial intelligence incidents, two EU countries said ahead of a key Friday meeting of national leaders focused on AI.
In a letter seen by POLITICO, Finland and Estonia say the bloc “can still compete at the frontier” of AI by mobilizing capital and building up compute power, but this should go hand in hand with “governing it responsibly.”
The two countries, considered among Europe’s digital leaders, call for “EU-level arrangements for responding to serious AI incidents.”
AI safety and security are on Friday’s agenda of the first-ever European Council meeting devoted to the revolutionary new technology.
Concerns about whether Europe is prepared to respond to AI-powered threats have been picking up steam since a series of incidents this summer in which AI agents went rogue and hacked into other companies. Recent cyberattacks and revelations of coding vulnerabilities have also raised concerns that security systems must be better equipped for the arrival of artificial intelligence.
Hungary pushed for a network of national contact points in case AI model providers lose control of their models, in an October paper seen by POLITICO. The country also pushed for a team of “pre-vetted, security-cleared” independent evaluators who can be ahead of incidents.
The letter from Finland and Estonia called for investment in European frontier AI models “as an economic priority and as a foundation for Europe’s influence on the future of AI.”
The countries warn that Europe requires “independent capacity to evaluate the most advanced models and their safety and security risks.”
ATHENS — A controversial maritime border deal between Libya and Turkey has riled Greece, annoyed the European Union — and could intrude on Friday’s EU leaders’ summit.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will raise the issue during the informal meeting of EU leaders in Dublin, according to a senior official in Athens who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity. The summit is supposed to focus on AI and Ukraine.
The row centers on a Turkey-Libya agreement that claims a corridor in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Cyprus — waters Athens says fall within its exclusive economic zone and where the EU has backed energy and connectivity projects.
“Greece has explicitly stated … that in the event of any escalation, it will request sanctions and support from the European Union,” Greece’s Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said last week in an interview with local TV.
Despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have quarreled over maritime boundaries and overlapping claims to their continental shelves. Athens fears Ankara could invoke the Libya deal to challenge offshore exploration south of Crete and the EU-funded undersea electricity cable linking Greece and Cyprus, turning both projects into flashpoints.
Turkey signed the agreement in 2019 with Libya’s U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, and it was unanimously ratified by rival authorities in eastern Libya on Oct. 20.
The EU immediately responded.
“This agreement infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states, it does not comply with the Law of the Sea, and is null and void,” said a joint statement on Oct. 20 from the heads of the European Commission and Council.
Egypt also rejected the border pact, as did Bahrain, Cyprus (which has its own separate disputes with Turkey over Ankara’s occupation of the northern part of the island since the 1970s), Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkish foreign ministry accused Brussels of adopting what it called the “maximalist and illegal” positions of Greece and Cyprus that were “detached from reality.”
“We expect them to respect the joint will of our country and Libya,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a recent Cabinet meeting.
“There is no precedent for such a diagonal delimitation,” he said in New York, holding up a map to illustrate Greece’s position. “Geography cannot be rewritten … and sovereign rights cannot be erased by drawing arbitrary lines on a map.”
The underwater border demarcation is part of a broader Turkish policy of stressing its sovereignty over coastal areas. Ankara aims to codify what it calls its Blue Homeland doctrine by year’s end.
The big test
Greece and Cyprus warn that Turkey’s claims could be used to block strategic projects in the eastern Mediterranean.
The EU’s latest report on Turkey’s stalled EU accession progress specifically referred to Ankara’s continued obstruction of a €1.9 billion electricity interconnection between Greece and Cyprus. The project was interrupted in 2024 amid a standoff between Athens and Ankara.
Three months ago, French company Meridiam became the project’s majority shareholder.
On Tuesday, a French vessel sailed from Heraklion, Greece, to start working on the project. Gerapetritis told a parliamentary committee last week that Athens is bracing for a Turkish reaction.
Tension over the maritime border and the energy project comes as Turkey’s already difficult ties with the EU — from protecting the car industry to Ankara’s role in Black Sea security — come under greater pressure, noted Carnegie Europe Turkey analyst Marc Pierini.
“In the eastern Mediterranean, several divergences over maritime borders have widened the gap between Turkey and EU governments,” wrote Pierini.
ABU DHABI — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said European countries supporting his cause must decide fast who will represent them in peace talks.
That means ideally one person should have a mandate from the EU and other non-EU countries that have backed Ukraine, such as the U.K. and Norway, because “unity” is important, he suggested.
“I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations,” he said. “It will be better because they will get [a] mandate for negotiations and they will get a mandate from all Europe, all this coalition.”
With Europe set to take on a more important role in talks with Russia and the United States, Zelenskyy’s comments join a growing chorus of demands for the EU and others to unite behind one top negotiator or a small team at the highest level.
Speaking to reporters during his trip to Denmark on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader said he wanted a “dialogue” with the EU and other European powers over who will represent them. He said it would be “better” this way, rather than just presenting their answer to Ukraine, which is “not good, really.”
“I hope that not later than the end of November — better in Germany on 19th [at a Coalition of the Willing meeting] — fix it. We will see.”
Europe has been struggling to work out a plan for how to engage in top-level dialogue with Moscow and Washington over ending the war in Ukraine. Despite providing most of the foreign financing for Ukraine’s war effort, EU countries have been split over who should represent them, or whether they should be talking to Russian leader Vladimir Putin at all.
Leaders are due to grapple with these questions at a summit in Dublin later this week.
As talks with Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. resumed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, American officials made clear they wanted Europe fully at the table next time the negotiations take place. That is partly because the U.S. wants to bring a review of wider European security arrangements for Europe into the negotiations over peace in Ukraine — a longstanding Russian demand.
ABU DHABI — After a nine-month break, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met to restart face-to-face talks on how to end the four-and-a-half-year war, with tentative signs of early progress.
The two sides discussed an exchange of prisoners, but contrary to some reports, it has not yet been finalized, according to one official familiar with the matter, who was granted anonymity because the meeting was confidential.
The talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday focused on what security guarantees Ukraine — and Russia — want to see after the war ends. On the second and final day of the meeting on Wednesday, negotiators are due to turn to the highly sensitive question of territory. Privately, U.S. officials who convened the meeting say both Russia and Ukraine have shown at least some readiness to be flexible on the issue of land.
The meeting with Russia and the U.S. was “constructive and quite substantive,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on X after receiving a report from his negotiating team. “They had time to discuss the need and possible parameters for humanitarian steps. The release of prisoners is a priority.”
Zelenskyy said the negotiating teams spoke “in detail” about what security guarantees would be required to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine again in the future.
In a significant move toward easing Ukraine’s fears, the U.S. is asking the Russian side if they would consent to America providing Ukraine with NATO-like commitments to collective defense, or even for NATO to sign such an agreement itself.
“Real tools are needed to block any recurrence of the war,” Zelenskyy said.
According to Russian state media, the talks ended after 4.5 hours and were conducted in Russian. Alongside the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators, the United Arab Emirates foreign minister and NATO’s top commander in Europe were also at the table.
Earlier in the day, European representatives held talks with the American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who convened the negotiations. The European side agreed with the Americans to review Europe’s wider security architecture as part of the peace process for Ukraine — a step toward meeting one of Russia’s central demands.
“It looks like the talks in Abu Dhabi were very productive,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris. “There’s a lot of work to be done in that regard. It’s not like something that’s on the verge of being solved in the next 24 hours or anything like that.”
As espionage targets go, Jensen Huang is perhaps one of the least surprising on Earth. The Nvidia CEO runs one of the world's most valuable companies, controls the in-demand technology fueling the AI boom, and is cozy with presidents, CEOs, and all manner of important people. He also wears a cool leather jacket.
Which makes Huang's admission that he had an affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy - reportedly while her spying was known to US intelligence and even President Donald Trump - all the more shocking. The fallout goes well beyond his marriage, his reputation, or Nvidia itself. Experts tell The Verge the incident threate …
PARIS — Tehran denied accusations by Paris that it was behind the recent series of cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigerators in France, calling the claims “baseless and biased.”
The Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it “strongly condemns” France’s “worn-out policy of making accusations against Iran.”
French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot on Monday said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for the “unprecedented” cyberattacks against several supermarket chains last month. On Tuesday, Barrot said Paris would not “rule out anything” in its response to the attacks, which affected 700 food distribution sites.
“We’ll take all measures, including those we will not disclose publicly, which we ourselves consider proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks and punish those responsible for this unacceptable aggression,” he said.
Iran’s ambassador to France has been summoned to the foreign ministry after French prosecutors said that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.
According to French investigators, Iran’s cyber unit linked to the IRGC, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks.
The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.
“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.
On Monday, European Council President Kaja Kallas said that the topic of alleged Iranian hacks would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”
The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which European Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”
The remote access giant also urged its self-hosted customers to take down their own servers amid a "critical security incident," fearing the possibility of cyberattacks.
Hugging Face executive Irene Solaiman warns that growing cyberattacks on open AI platforms could force tighter security restrictions, threatening the accessibility that makes open-source communities valuable to developers worldwide.
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