Australian tanks reach Ukraine after nine months
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Kremlin expects 'difficult' talks with Ukraine in Istanbul
Russia said it expected peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul later Wednesday to be "difficult", downplaying expectations of a breakthrough after nearly three and a half years of war. Both delegations have arrived in Istanbul and are expected to meet later in the evening, according to Russian state media and Ukrainian officials. The two sides previously met in the Turkish city in May and June, but managed to agree only on exchanges of prisoners and soldiers' bodies. US President Donald Trump last week gave Russia "50 days" to end the war or face sanctions, but the Kremlin has not indicated it is willing to compromise on its demands. "No one expects an easy road," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about his expectations for the talks. "It will be very difficult," he added. Ukraine said it hoped the two countries would discuss the release of prisoners and lay the ground for a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. "Everything will depend on whether Russia stops speaking in ultimatums and takes a constructive position," a source in the Ukrainian delegation told AFP. "This will determine whether results can be achieved at this meeting," the source added. But Moscow has said that a lot of work is needed before even discussions can take place about possible talks between Putin and Zelensky, who last met in 2019. - Radically different positions - The two sides have radically different positions for ending the conflict. Russia has called on Ukraine to effectively retreat from the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed in September 2022, a demand Kyiv has called unacceptable. Ukraine has ruled out any negotiations on territory until after a ceasefire and says it will never recognise Russia's claims over occupied territory -- including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Russia's full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Ukraine said former defence minister Rustem Umerov, who currently serves as security council secretary, would head its delegation. The Kremlin said it would send political scientist Vladimir Medinsky to lead its negotiating team. Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in the two previous rounds of negotiation, is not seen as a powerful decision maker. He has been described by Ukraine as a puppet. At the last talks on May 16 and June 2, the two sides agreed to large-scale prisoner exchanges. They also exchanged their draft terms for ending the conflict, which the Kremlin said were "diametrically opposed". - Russia claims advances - Wednesday's talks come as the White House steps up pressure on Russia to agree a compromise. Trump announced last week he was giving Russia until September to strike a peace deal with Ukraine or face bruising sanctions. The US leader has been trying to broker an end to the war since his inauguration in January, but has failed to extract any concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated phone calls with Putin. Russia has meanwhile intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, while advancing across several different areas of the front line. Between late Tuesday and early Wednesday, Russia fired 71 drones at four different regions of Ukraine, said the Ukrainian air force. The Russian defence ministry said Wednesday it had captured the village of Varachyne in Ukraine's northern Sumy region, where Moscow has been advancing for weeks. A Russian drone attack on the Sumy region cut power to more than 220,000 people earlier Wednesday, Zelensky said. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month called on both sides not to "shut the door" on dialogue.
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Israel's not-so-secret nuclear weapons
It's widely accepted that Israel has nuclear weapons. How many? Well, it's impossible to know because to this day the Israeli government has never officially confirmed or denied that it possesses a nuclear arsenal at all, instead it maintains a policy of 'strategic ambiguity'. In truly one of the most extraordinary stories we've told on this show - we get to the bottom of how Israel hides its nukes, how we found out about them, and why the global community seems to be fine with it. If you're in Canberra and interested in coming to our live show on the 21st of August at the Canberra Theatre Centre you can buy tickets here: Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube:
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
BTN Newsbreak 23/07/2025
AI SCAMS First up, AI scams. Experts say they're on the rise, and one CEO is particularly worried. This is Open AI's CEO, you know the company behind ChatGPT, and today, he shared his fears about the future of AI scams. Look, scams aren't a new problem. Just last year, Australians lost more than two billion dollars to them. And new data shows the Australian Financial Complaints Authority has received more than 100,000 complaints for a second year running. But thanks to AI, scams are only getting more sophisticated and believable. Experts say the best way to beat AI scams is critical thinking. Asking yourself: does this actually seem like the person I think it is? Does the scenario seem realistic? Families are also being encouraged to create a safeword, a word you can ask someone to say when you're unsure about their identity. UNESCO US President Donald Trump has decided to pull the US out of UNESCO, the UN's culture and education agency. According to the White House, UNESCO's values are at odds with President Trump's America First Policy. It's not the first time he's done it. Mr Trump originally pulled the US out of UNESCO back in 2017 during his first term as president. But a couple of years ago, that decision was reversed by Joe Biden, who was the president at the time. UNESCO's director general says while she's upset by the decision, she was kind of expecting it. HECS DEBT Now that parliament's returned everyone is talking about Labor's election promise to reduce student loans. Yep, today legislation has been introduced to parliament to reduce student debt. It was one of Labor's big promises ahead of this years election proposing a one-off, 20% reduction to all outstanding loans. Now, if it passes about 3 million Aussies who have debts from studying at university, or debts from doing things like apprenticeships will have their debt reduced! You see, here in Australia, it costs money to go to university but Aussie students can apply for HELP, which lets you borrow money from the government and pay off your debt bit by bit once you start earning a certain amount of money. But over the years, the cost of uni has gone up, making student debts more and more expensive so there have been a lot of calls for a reduction of student debt like this one. Meanwhile others aren't too happy with the idea because it'll cost the budget 16 billion dollars. Money that they reckon should be spent elsewhere. NIGERIA ROBOTS First up, to a robotics competition in Nigeria. Where young inventors are showing off robots they've designed to solve specific problems. Among the inventions was a land mine detecting robot, a tractor slash irrigator for farmers, and a prototype fire truck dubbed the "firebot". SHIPWRECK Now to a partial shipwreck on a remote beach in Scotland. A local schoolboy discovered it last year, and it's taken researchers until now to work out – it's actually a 250 year old wreck from an old navy boat turned whaling boat called the Earl of Chatham. BUTTER SCULPTURES And finally to these sculptures made entirely out of butter at the Ohio State fair in the US. The butter cow is a bit of a tradition here with the butter being donated by dairy farmers, and according to organisers it'll all be recycled once the fair is over.
