World Briefing: March 26, 2025 (Late Odesa Edition)
The United States reached separate agreements on Tuesday with Ukraine and Russia to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks by the two countries on each other's energy facilities. The agreements, if implemented, would represent the clearest progress yet towards a wider ceasefire that Washington sees as a stepping stone towards peace talks to bring an end to Russia's three-year-old war in Ukraine. Both countries said they would rely on Washington to enforce the deals. "If the Russians violate this, then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here is the evidence - we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We will need clear guarantees. And given the sad experience of agreements with just Kyiv, the guarantees can only be the result of an order from Washington to Zelenskiy and his team to do one thing and not the other." The agreements, reached in Saudi Arabia, follow talks initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the war and has shifted Washington's position from firmly backing Kyiv to a stance more sympathetic with Moscow. Under the agreement with Moscow, Washington promised to help restore Russian access to markets for its agricultural and fertiliser exports. The Kremlin said this would require lifting some sanctions. The talks followed separate phone calls last week between Trump and the two presidents, Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin. Putin rejected Trump's proposal for a full ceasefire lasting 30 days, which Ukraine had previously endorsed - Reuters
Students rallied against the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a sixth night on Monday. The detention of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Wednesday sparked the largest wave of street demonstrations Turkey has seen in more than a decade and deepened concerns over democracy and the rule of law. The demonstrations began after Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu's March 19 arrest and have since spread to more than 55 of Turkey's 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police and drawing international condemnation. Police have arrested more than 1,130 people over the past six days, including 43 on Monday night, the interior minister said. Among them are journalists, including an AFP photographer. Imamoglu, 53, of the opposition CHP party, is widely seen as the only politician capable of defeating Turkey's longtime leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box. In just four days he went from being the mayor of Istanbul – a post that launched Erdogan's political rise decades earlier – to being arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a graft and terror probe. - France 24
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on Monday advised Britons against "all travel to parts of Turkey" due to the growing unrest in Istanbul and other Turkish cities over the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu last week. The foreign office warned that the demonstrations "may become violent" and that the local police have responded by using tear gas and water cannons."Large demonstrations continue to occur outside diplomatic missions connected to the conflict in major cities, particularly Israeli diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul," the foreign office said, urging Britons to avoid all demonstrations and leave the area if one develops - The Independent
Two of the Trump administration’s top intelligence officials denied in a frequently contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that classified information was shared in an encrypted group chat in which details of an attack on Yemen were discussed in the presence of a journalist who had been mistakenly added to the conversation. Pressed repeatedly about the security breach in the previously scheduled hearing, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, both denied that classified material had been shared in the chat in which they were included, and played down the seriousness of the revelation that it had taken place on a messaging system, Signal, not approved for such sensitive discussions. Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Ratcliffe also sought to distance themselves from responsibility for the presence of the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, in a conversation in which Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, shared information on timing, targets and weapons systems used in the Yemen strike, and weighed in on the president’s private thinking. Details on military operations are closely held because they could endanger the lives of the troops in the field. Democrats on the Senate committee took turns expressing outrage and incredulity during the hearing. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s vice chairman, denounced what he called “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior” by the country’s top intelligence officials. Ron Wyden of Oregon suggested Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Waltz should resign. And Jon Ossoff of Georgia appeared stunned when he asked Mr. Ratcliffe to confirm that “this is a huge mistake” and the C.I.A. director responded with a single word: “No.” The fallout from the Signal leak could present a major test for Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who also testified at the hearing on Tuesday. Mr. Patel declined to say if the F.B.I. had begun an investigation into the security breach. The White House sought to downplay the serious nature of the episode, as bipartisan criticism grew and leading Democrats called for the resignation of Mr. Waltz, who set up the group chat, and Mr. Hegseth, who shared the military strike details in it. - NYT
Away from the talks in Riyadh, a powerful cyberattack knocked out the online ticketing system for Ukraine’s state railway service, causing long queues at stations in what Kyiv officials said looked like a Russian attempt to “destabilise” the situation. Ukrainska Pravda reported that more than 100 people were injured in a massive Russian attack on Sumy today. And the United Kingdom and French defence chiefs met again in London to discuss plans for allied countries to safeguard a potential Ukraine ceasefire as part of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s so-called “coalition of the willing”.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko was sworn in for a seventh term on March 25 as human rights groups said the authoritarian leader’s rule was "unconstitutional." Lukashenko won over 86 percent of the vote in the January 26 presidential election that was widely condemned as a sham by Western countries. "They took place in conditions of a deep human rights crisis, in an atmosphere of total fear caused by repression against civil society, independent media, the opposition, and all dissenters,” said a joint statement by 10 Belarusian rights groups on March 25. Lukashenko was sworn in during a ceremony in the capital, Minsk. On the same day, hundreds of supporters of the Belarusian democratic opposition held rallies across Europe, including in Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic, to mark the country’s Freedom Day - RFE/RL
