• Trump says Putin agrees to another summit.
• US president has telephonic conversation with Putin.
• Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to visit Oval Office tomorrow. 
  

US President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Thursday to another summit to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, one day before the US president was due to speak with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump said he and Putin would soon meet in Budapest after a more than two-hour-long phone call he described as productive. The Kremlin did not immediately comment.

The surprise development came as Zelenskiy was headed to the White House on Friday to push for more military support, including potential long-range offensive missiles.

Yet the positive tone following the US-Russia call appeared to leave in question the possibility of such support in the near term.

Energy systems targeted

Kyiv and Moscow have been escalating their war with massive attacks on energy infrastructure while Nato struggles to respond to a spate of Russian air incursions.

The Trump-Putin meeting will follow lower-level talks between Moscow and Washington next week, Trump said. No date was provided for the leaders’ meeting.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would brief Zelenskiy on the Russia talks in the Oval Office tomorrow.

“I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he added.

Ukraine wants to expand attack range

Ukraine has been seeking US Tomahawk long-range missiles, which would put Moscow and other major Russian cities within range of missile fire from Ukraine.

Trump, a Republican who has vowed to end the war that Russia started with its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had before Thursday expressed increasing frustration with Putin over ongoing attacks.

Trump has said he could supply the long-range weapons to Ukraine if Putin fails to come to the negotiating table.

In its latest barrage, Russia launched more than 300 drones and 37 missiles to target infrastructure across Ukraine in overnight attacks on Thursday, Zelenskiy said. Kyiv has ramped up its own attacks on Russian targets, including an oil refinery in the Saratov region on Thursday.

Russia has been hitting Ukraine’s energy and power facilities for consecutive winters as the war drags into its fourth year.

In the latest warnings to Russia, Trump said on Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pledged to stop buying oil from Russia, and that the administration would push China to do the same.

India has not confirmed any such commitment, though Reuters reported some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that Washington would “impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression” unless the war ends.

• French PM comfortably survives both no-confidence votes.
• Lecornu offer to suspend pension reform wins him vital support.
• Socialists help Lecornu survive but now want other concessions. 

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu survived two no-confidence votes in parliament on Thursday, winning crucial backing from the Socialist Party thanks to his pledge to suspend President Emmanuel Macron’s contested pension reform.

The two motions presented by the hard-left France Unbowed and the far-right National Rally (RN) secured just 271 and 144 votes respectively — well short of the 289 votes needed to bring down Lecornu’s days-old government.

Lecornu’s offer to mothball the pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election helped sway the Socialists, giving the government a lifeline in the deeply fragmented National Assembly.

Despite the reprieve, the motions underscored the fragility of Macron’s administration midway through his final term.

“A majority cobbled together through horse-trading managed today to save their positions, at the expense of the national interest,” RN party president Jordan Bardella wrote on X.

The French bond market remained steady after the back-to-back votes, with the government victory widely expected by investors.

Lecornu faces arduous budget negotiations 

By putting the pension reform on the chopping block, Lecornu threatens to kill off one of Macron’s main economic legacies at a time when France’s public finances are in a perilous state, leaving the president with little in the way of domestic achievements after eight years in office.

There are 265 lawmakers in parliament from parties that said they would vote to topple Lecornu, and only a handful of rebels from other groups joined their cause.

If Lecornu had lost either vote, he and his ministers would have had to immediately resign, and Macron would have come under huge pressure to call a snap parliamentary election, plunging France deeper into crisis.

But despite the outcome of Thursday’s votes, Lecornu still faces weeks of arduous negotiations in parliament over passing a slimmed-down 2026 budget during which he could be toppled at any point.

“The French need to know that we are doing all this work… to give them a budget, because it is fundamental for the future of our country,” said Yael Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly and an ally of Macron.

“I am pleased to see that today there is a majority in the National Assembly that is operating in this spirit: work, the search for compromise, the best possible effort,” she added.

After winning the pension concession, the Socialists on Wednesday set their sights on including a tax on billionaires in the 2026 budget, underlining just how weak Lecornu’s hand is in the negotiations.

Political Kryptonite

France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades as a succession of minority governments seek to push deficit-reducing budgets through a truculent legislature split into three distinct ideological blocs.

Reforming France’s generous pension system has been political kryptonite ever since Socialist President Francois Mitterrand cut the retirement age to 60 from 65 in 1982.

In France, the average effective retirement age is just 60.7, compared to the OECD average of 64.4.

Macron’s reform raised the statutory retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Although that only brings French policy into line with other European Union member states, it chips away at a cherished social benefit beloved by the left.

• Modi assured India will stop buying Russian oil: Trump.
• Russia remains India’s top source of oil imports.
• India says its main goal is to protect consumers.
  

Some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, with the US pressuring New Delhi to stop buying Russian crude to help end the war in Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured that India will stop buying oil from Russia, India’s top source of imported oil.

India said on Thursday the country’s two main goals were to ensure stable energy prices and secure supply.

“It has been our consistent priority to safeguard the interests of the Indian consumer in a volatile energy scenario. Our import policies are guided entirely by this objective,” the foreign ministry statement said in a statement.

The statement did not refer to Trump’s comment about India’s purchases of Russian oil.

Trade-off against steep tariffs

Indian officials are in Washington for trade talks, with the the US having doubled tariffs on Indian goods to pressure New Delhi to reduce Russian oil imports. US negotiators have said curbing those purchases would be crucial to reducing India’s tariff rate and sealing a trade deal.

India and China are the two top buyers of Russian seaborne crude exports, taking advantage of the discounted prices Russia has been forced to accept after European buyers shunned purchases and the US and the European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“So I was not happy that India was buying oil, and he (Modi) assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters during a White House event on Wednesday.

India’s foreign ministry said it was discussing deeper energy co-operation with the United States.

“The current Administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India. Discussions are ongoing,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in the statement.

Indian refiners said they have not been formally told by the government about stopping Russian oil purchases, sources said. They declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to media.

The sources said it would be difficult to immediately stop buying Russian oil as a sudden switch to buying other crudes would drive up global oil prices and threaten to stoke inflation.

In April to September, the first six months of this fiscal year, India imported 1.75 million barrels per day of Russian crude, with its share declining to about 36% of India’s total oil imports from 40% in the same period a year earlier, government data showed.

India’s US crude imports rose 6.8% on year to about 213,000 bpd, making up 4.3% of imports.

The share of Middle Eastern oil in the six months to September 2025 rose to 45% from 42%, the data showed.