Politics
Trump ‘not surprised’ as Russian strikes kill 21 in Kyiv
- EU, UK summon Russian envoys to protest over Kyiv attacks.
- White House spox says Trump will have more to say about strikes.
- Says perhaps both sides are not ready to end it themselves.
KYIV: US President Donald Trump has said that he was “not surprised” after Russia rained down missiles and drones on Kyiv, killing at least 21 people in the Ukrainian capital early on Thursday.
The deadly strikes came as the US president continues to push for peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, even as the war grinds on.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised,” given that the two countries had been at war for a long time.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike, the second-largest attack since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, was Moscow’s answer to diplomatic efforts to end its war.
US special envoy Keith Kellogg commented on X: “The targets? Not soldiers and weapons but residential areas in Kyiv – blasting civilian trains, the EU & British mission council offices, and innocent civilians.”
The European Union and Britain summoned Russian envoys to protest. There were no reports of casualties at either site.
Zelensky said the strikes also damaged a Turkish enterprise and the Azerbaijan embassy.
Leavitt told a regular briefing that Trump would have more to say about the situation later.
Leavitt said the Russian attacks had been deadly and that Ukrainian attacks had done significant damage in August to Russian oil refineries.
“Perhaps both sides of this war are not ready to end it themselves,” she said.
“The president wants it to end but the leaders of these two countries need it to end and want it to end.”
The strikes took place less than two weeks after Trump hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Alaska, a meeting the US president hoped would advance his peace efforts.
“Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table,” Zelensky said on X, calling for new sanctions on Russia. “It chooses to continue killing instead of ending the war.”
Russia said its attack had hit military industrial facilities and air bases, and that Ukraine had attacked Russian targets. The Kremlin said it was still interested in pursuing peace talks.
Moscow has regularly denied targeting civilians. Ukrainian officials say scores of civilians have died in Russian strikes on densely populated areas in recent months, and thousands since the start of the war.
During the attack on Kyiv, explosions rang out as clouds of smoke rose into the night sky. Drones whirred overhead.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko described it as one of the biggest attacks on the city in recent months. At least 63 people were wounded in the hours-long assault, which damaged buildings in all city districts, officials said.
Across the country, Ukraine’s military said Russian attacks struck 13 locations. National grid operator Ukrenergo said energy facilities were hit, causing power cuts.
A push by Ukraine and its allies to end the invasion has yielded little, despite Trump’s meetings this month with Putin, then Zelensky.
Russia has stepped up air strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far behind the front lines and pushed a grinding offensive across much of the east in an effort to pressure Ukraine into giving up territory.
‘Another grim reminder’
“This is another grim reminder of what is at stake. It shows that the Kremlin will stop at nothing to terrorise Ukraine, blindly killing civilians and even targeting the European Union,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels.
She said two missiles had struck near the EU office within 20 seconds of each other.
EU countries would soon come up with a 19th package of sanctions against Russia and were advancing work on how to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine, she added.
“We discussed our diplomatic efforts to stop the killings, to end this unprovoked Russian aggression, and to guarantee real security for our people,” Zelensky wrote on X after talks with von der Leyen.
Zelensky also said that he had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan and they would be set out on paper next week.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the assault, which he said had damaged the British Council building. “Putin is killing children and civilians and sabotaging hopes of peace,” he wrote on X.
Ukraine’s military said air defences downed 563 of nearly 600 drones and 26 of 31 missiles launched by Russia across the country.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Russian air defences destroyed 102 Ukrainian drones overnight in at least seven regions.
Ukraine’s drone force said it had struck the Afipsky and Kuybyshevskyi oil refineries as part of that attack.
A man in India’s south brutally killed his estranged wife at a women’s hostel and took a selfie with her dead body, according to NDTV.
The victim, identified as Sripriya, employed at a private firm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, had separated from her husband, Balamurugam, who was from Tirunelveli.
Police said the suspect arrived at the hostel on Sunday afternoon, concealing a sickle in his clothes, and was seeking to meet her.
They had an argument soon after the couple met, and the feud turned into a violent attack by Balamurugan, who drew the sickle and hacked the woman to death.
Furthermore, the police said he then took a selfie with her body and shared it on his WhatsApp status, accusing her of “betrayal”.
The incident spread panic and chaos in the hostel.
Following the brutal murder, the suspect did not escape from the spot but waited until the police arrived, and he was arrested at the crime scene. The murder weapon was recovered.
The initial investigation suggested that he suspected his wife of being in a relationship with another man.
- Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand witness large scale devastation.
- At least 176 people perish in Thailand and three in Malaysia.
- Indonesia’s death toll reaches 502 with 508 more still missing.
PALEMBAYAN: Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait, fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.
At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.
Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.
Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.
Months of adverse, deadly weather
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services.
More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.
“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.
“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”
The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.
Marooned for days
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.
In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.
Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding.
- Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, sister Rehana also sentenced.
- Case relates to illegal allocation of a plot of land: local media.
- Prosecutors highlight political influence, collusion abuse of power.
DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced British parliamentarian and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land, local media reported.
The verdict was delivered in absentia as Siddiq, her aunt and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana — all co-accused in the case — were not present in court.
Hasina was sentenced to five years in jail and Rehana to seven, the local media reports said.
Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 at the height of an uprising against her government, was sentenced to death last month over her government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators during the protests.
Last week, she was handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases.
Prosecutors said that the land was unlawfully allocated through political influence and collusion with senior officials, accusing the three powerful defendants of abusing their authority to secure the plot, measuring roughly 13,610 square feet, during Hasina’s tenure as prime minister.
Most of the 17 accused were absent when the judgement was pronounced.
Siddiq, who resigned in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anti-corruption efforts following scrutiny over her financial ties to Hasina, has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
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