Ukraine on Monday signed a letter of intent to buy up to 100 Rafale warplanes, drones, air defence systems and other key equipment from France over the next 10 years, as part of efforts to strengthen the country’s long-term security. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who signed the document with French president Emmanuel Macron, called it “a historic deal” at a joint news conference at the Elysée presidential palace. The letter is a preliminary commitment of Ukraine stating its interest in buying a series of French defence equipment.
Several families of Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia on Monday sounded the alarm about their fate, saying all contact had been cut off, as they called for international support. During a rare news conference in Paris, Darina Repina, the legal guardian of two children who were forcibly taken to Russia after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said Russian authorities were ignoring all requests to facilitate the return of the children.
A drone struck a Turkish-flagged tanker and set it ablaze on Monday in southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials said, a day after Zelenskyy signed a deal to import US liquefied natural gas through the area. The MT Orinda was hit during the offloading of liquefied petroleum gas at Izmail port, Turkey’s Directorate for Maritime Affairs said. All 16 crew on board evacuated and no one was hurt, it said.
Romanian authorities said Monday they had evacuated two villages near the Ukrainian border after the drone attack on the MT Orinda. Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian ports in the Danube region, triggering alerts in neighbouring Romania.
US president Donald Trump is willing to sign legislation to impose sanctions on Russia as long as he retains ultimate decision-making authority over any such measures, a senior White House official said on Monday. Trump told reporters late on Sunday that it was “OK with me” that Republicans were working on legislation to impose sanctions on countries doing business with Russia over Moscow’s failure to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has described an explosion along a section of railway line used for deliveries to Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage” that could have led to disaster. It came as a statement from public prosecutors on Monday evening said an investigation had opened “regarding acts of sabotage of a terrorist nature […] committed on behalf of a foreign intelligence service against the Republic of Poland.”
China is ready to deepen cooperation with Russia in energy, agriculture and other investments, Premier Li Qiang said during a meeting with Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow on Monday. Li told Mishustin that China welcomes more agricultural and food products from Russia, according to the official news agency Xinhua. China also hopes Russia will make it easier for Chinese enterprises to invest and operate there, Xinhua said in its report, citing Li. Mishustin told Li that the cooperation between the two sides has repeatedly proven its resilience to external challenges.
