Russia yesterday said it had handed over three navy ships it seized a year ago from Ukraine, in the latest move to ease tensions between the two countries ahead of a crucial summit.
After an exchange of prisoners in September last year and the withdrawal of some front-line forces over the past few weeks, the handover marked another step in trying to resolve the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Efforts have been building since the election this year of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and on Friday France announced he would hold his first face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris on Dec.
The talks, which are to also include French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are to be the highest-level negotiations on the conflict since 2016.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the ships — two gunboats and a tugboat — had been handed over to Ukraine.
It said they had “illegally crossed the Russian border” and been held as evidence, but were no longer needed.
There was no immediate confirmation of the handover from Kiev. The Ukrainian ships were seized in November last year in the most serious confrontation between the two countries since the start of the conflict in 2014.
Russian forces boarded and took control of the vessels as they headed through the Kerch Strait, a narrow waterway giving access to the Sea of Azov that is used by Ukraine and Russia.
They captured 24 Ukrainian sailors, who were returned to Ukraine as part of the September prisoner swap.
Border officials had said on Sunday that the ships would be returned and local television showed footage of them being towed by the Russian coastguard through the Kerch Strait.
The election of Zelenskiy, a television comedian who shocked the country’s elite by winning the presidency in April, has raised hopes the conflict with pro-Moscow separatists can finally be resolved.
Zelenskiy has said ending the war — which has left about 13,000 people dead — is his top priority.
The conflict in Ukraine’s industrial east broke out after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which led the West to impose wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
RSS