'All of Ukraine is ours...': Putin's shocking message stuns Zelenskyy, hints at taking Sumy next

In a bold speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that 'all of Ukraine' belongs to Russia. The statement underscores Russia's ongoing rejection of Ukrainian sovereignty and reveals the Kremlin's deepening territorial ambitions.
Show more
Show less

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Hans India

2 hours ago

• Hans India

BRICS summit to focus on local currency trade

Weeks before top BRICS leaders converge in Rio de Janeiro for summit talks, envoys of leading member nations of the grouping hinted that it could focus on greater use of national currencies for trade in the face of uncertainties over Trump administration's aggressive policy on tariff. Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov reaffirmed Moscow's strong support for trade in local currency among BRICS member nations and described the grouping as 'a serious platform for discussing joint soluti'ons to big challenges'. The summit is unlikely to make any significant progress on the proposed BRICS currency as it will need significant structural changes and reforms. In the last few months, President Donald Trump has cautioned BRICS member nations against rolling out a BRICS currency to replace the US dollar. 'BRICS is not a counter-bloc. It is a centre of gravity for countries seeking mutual respect and non-interference,' Alipov said at a conference titled 'BRICS in Rio: Shaping an Inclusive and Sustainable World Order' that was co-organised by the Embassy of Brazil in India and Centre for Global India Insights (CGII), a leading think tank focused on global affairs. The 17th BRICS ((Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro on July 6 and 7. Brazil is hosting the summit in its capacity as the chair of the influential bloc. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and several other leaders of the member nations of the grouping are expected to attend the summit. Enhancing the use of national currencies in settling intra-BRICS trade figured prominently in discussions, with all panellists backing the proposal, which is already being implemented by BRICS countries. However, the panellists found the idea of a BRICS common currency impractical. Besides Alipov, India's BRICS sherpa and Secretary (Economic Relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Dammu Ravi, Brazil's Ambassador to India Kenneth Felix Haczynski da Nobrega, Indonesia Ambassador Ina Hagniningtyas Krisnamurthi and Egypt's envoy Kamel Zayed Kamel Galal attended the conference. In his remarks, Ravi clarified that discussions around a BRICS common currency are still at a very early stage. 'Today, for now, we are only looking at trade settlement in national currencies. Harmonisation of fiscal and monetary policies is very, very difficult to achieve, he said. Nobrega and Ravi both reiterated that a common currency would require far deeper policy harmonisation -- something the EU struggled with despite far more economic alignment.

Mint

3 hours ago

• Mint

Europe wants to show it's ready for war. Would anyone show up to fight?

Nice tanks you got there, Europe—got anyone to drive 'em? Such are the taunts the continent's generals might have to endure following the announcement of a splurge in defence spending expected from the NATO summit in The Hague on June 24th-25th. Assuming European governments don't bin their commitments to bigger defence budgets once some kind of peace is agreed to in Ukraine—or Donald Trump leaves the White House—spending on their armed forces will roughly double within a decade. A disproportionate slug of the jump from a 2% of GDP spending target to 3.5% will go towards purchasing equipment. But armies are about people, too. Attracting youngsters to a career that involves getting shot at has never been easy; a bit of forceful nagging (known in military jargon as 'conscription") is already on the cards in some countries. Even dragooning recalcitrant teens into uniform will not solve a problem that is lurking deep in the continent's psyche. Europeans are proud of their peaceful ways. If war breaks out there, will anybody be there to fight it? Polling that asks people how they would behave in case of an invasion ought to send shivers down the spines of Europe's drill sergeants. Last year a Gallup survey asked citizens in 45 countries how willing they would be to take up arms in case of war. Four of the five places with the least enthusiastic fighters globally were in Europe, including Spain, Germany and notably Italy, where just 14% of respondents said they were up for taking on a foreign foe. Given Russia's snail-paced advances since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, countries over a thousand kilometres away from today's front lines may not feel the chill wind of the Kremlin. But even in Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine (and with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad), fewer than half of respondents say they would fight in a war involving their country. In a separate poll taken before the invasion, 23% of Lithuanian men said they would rather flee abroad than fend off an attack. Citizens asked to stand up and be counted are giving a resounding shrug instead. To some Europeans, a citizenry with no appetite for fighting is the reflection of a job well done. The union at the continent's heart bills itself as a 'peace project". The past seven decades have been about ensuring Germany would never take up arms against France and vice versa. Meshing economies together within the European Union and even outside it was meant to make invasions impractical at first and unthinkable in time. The bureaucratic pacificism that endures within the EU—'make meetings not war!" would be a fine motto—may have resonated a bit too much with some citizens. Some may have forgotten that those outside the club, like one Vladimir Putin, were not privy to such arrangements. Military matters were at most an afterthought. Only in the past year has the bloc appointed a commissioner for defence, while making clear the job is about overseeing the companies making shells and missiles, not the armed forces per se. To what can the broader population's lack of appetite to bear arms even in case of war be attributed? Sociologists speak of Europe as a 'post-heroic" society, where individualism and aspirations of 'self-realisation" trump the supposed patriotic fervour of generations past. T he continent's polarised politics have played a part: support for parties of the hard right and left has surged in recent decades, and their voters are notably cooler on the idea of fighting for their country. Older people tend to be less gung-ho about taking up arms, and Europe is an ageing continent. Places with recent histories of dictatorship, such as Spain and Portugal, are also gun-shy. Seeing misfiring American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq (in which Europeans had at best a supporting role) comforted pacifists that theirs was the right way. Notwithstanding its peace-mongering ways, Europe does not lack men and women in uniform. Despite a scything in the number of troops since 1990, to less than half the previous figure in many countries, the continent still has more soldiers than America, and roughly as many as a share of its overall population. Still, some countries like Poland are now talking of bringing some form of conscription back (a few, like Denmark and Greece, never quite got rid of it). Abolishing military service was once hailed as a liberal accomplishment. Now drafting youngsters is seen as a way of promoting the idea that national defence is everybody's job, not just the role of a few paid soldiers. The fog of peace That notion may take a while to take hold. For something strange happens when you ask Europeans about defence matters. In surveys carried out by the European Commission, the bloc's citizens list Russia's invasion of Ukraine and matters of defence as the biggest threats facing the EU as a whole. Well over half think that fighting within the union's borders is likely in coming years. But asked what issues affect them personally and Europeans forget about Russia altogether, worrying more about inflation, taxes, pensions and climate change than they do about potential invaders. It is not that Europeans don't see the looming threat. It is that they think it is somebody else's problem. The upshot is a continent that gives the impression of being battle-weary without having fought the battle. Already Trumpians have a dim view of Europeans' fighting verve. J.D. Vance, the American vice-president, in March dismissed the possibility of 'some random [European] country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years" credibly deterring Russia by putting boots on the ground in Ukraine. It was offensive precisely because it contained elements of truth. Getting Europeans to shell out for more of their own defence has taken decades of Americans nagging. Convincing them to give war a chance might take even longer. © 2025, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on

The Hindu

3 hours ago

• The Hindu

Belarus frees dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski, 13 others after a rare visit from top U.S. envoy

Belarus has freed Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a key dissident figure and the husband of exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and 13 others following a rare visit by a senior U.S. official, Mr. Tsikhanouskaya's team announced on Saturday (June 21, 2025). Mr. Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger and activist who was imprisoned in 2020, arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, alongside 13 other political prisoners, his wife's team said. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy for Ukraine in Minsk. Keith Kellogg became the highest-ranking U.S. official in years to visit Belarus, Moscow's close and dependent ally. A video published on Mr. Tsikhanouskaya's official Telegram account showed Mr. Tsikhanouski disembarking from a white minibus, smiling broadly despite his shaved head and emaciated frame. He pulled his wife into a long embrace as their supporters applauded. 'My husband is free. It's difficult to describe the joy in my heart,' Ms. Tsikhanouskaya told reporters. But she added her team's work is 'not finished' while over 1,100 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus. Mr. Tsikhanouski, known for his anti-Lukashenko slogan 'stop the cockroach,' was jailed after announcing plans to challenge the strongman in the 2020 election. Following his arrest, his wife ran in his stead, rallying large crowds across the country. Official results of the election handed Mr. Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as a sham. A crackdown snuffed out protests after 2020 election Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets in the aftermath of the August 2020 vote, in the largest protests in the country's history. In the ensuing crackdown, more than 35,000 people were detained, with many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures either fled the country or were imprisoned. Mr. Tsikhanouski was sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison on charges of organising mass riots. Mr. Lukashenko has since extended his rule for a seventh term following a January 2025 election that the opposition called a farce. Since July 2024, he has pardoned nearly 300 people, including imprisoned U.S. citizens, seeking to mend ties with the West. At the meeting in Minsk, Mr. Lukashenko hugged and warmly welcomed Mr. Kellogg and the American delegation to his residence. 'I really hope that our conversation will be very sincere and open. Otherwise, what is the point of meeting? If we are clever and cunning in front of each other, we will not achieve results,' Mr. Lukashenko said. 'You have made a lot of noise in the world with your arrival.' Mr. Lukashenko's press secretary, Natalya Eismont, told Russian state media hours later that he freed the 14 prisoners following a request from U.S. President Donald Trump. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Kellogg's visit might pave the way for the lifting of some US sanctions against Minsk, imposed over the brutal crackdown against the 2020 protests and Mr. Lukashenko's support of Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine. 'Lukashenko is clearly trying to get out of international isolation, and the release of such a large group of political prisoners signals a desire to start a dialogue with the U.S. in order to soften international sanctions,' Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich told The Associated Press. 'After five years, Lukashenko is trying to loosen the knot with which the Kremlin tied him, using him for the war against Ukraine,' Mr. Karbalevich said. Belarus has allowed the Kremlin to use its territory to send troops and weapons into Ukraine, and also to station its forces and nuclear weapons there. Others remain behind bars Many other prominent dissidents still languish in Belarusian jails, among them Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate serving a 10-year prison sentence on charges widely denounced as politically motivated. Mr. Bialiatski, founder of Viasna, Belarus' oldest and most prominent rights group, was arrested in 2021 during raids by the country's main security agency that still goes by its Soviet-era name, the KGB. In March 2023, he was convicted on charges of smuggling and financing actions that 'grossly violated public order,' and sentenced to 10 years. Authorities labelled him especially dangerous because of alleged 'extremist' tendencies. He, his family and supporters say the charges against him are politically motivated, and a U.N. panel of human rights experts called on Belarus to release him. In 2022, when Mr. Bialiatski was behind bars, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties. Mr. Bialiatski has been serving his sentence at a penal colony for repeat offenders in the city of Gorki. The facility is notorious for beatings and hard labour. Mr. Bialiatski's wife warned last year about his deteriorating health, saying the 62-year-old battles multiple chronic illnesses. Also behind bars is Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Mr. Lukashenko's main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a close ally of Mr. Tsikhanouskaya and charismatic leader of that year's mass protests. With her close-cropped hair and trademark gesture of forming her hands into the shape of a heart, Mr. Kolesnikova became an even greater symbol of resistance when Belarusian authorities tried to deport her. She responded by tearing up her passport at the border and walking back into Belarus. A journalist walks free, but many more languish Released alongside Mr. Tsikhanouski was longtime Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty correspondent Ihar Karnei, the U.S. government-funded broadcaster confirmed. Mr. Karnei, who had also worked with prominent Belarusian and Russian newspapers, had been serving a three-year service on extremism charges he rejected as a sham. 'The release was a big surprise for me," Mr. Karnei told AP in a phone interview Saturday. "I didn't believe it until the very end, but now I understand that other political prisoners deserve the same.' He said that he spent about six months in solitary confinement. 'Most people suffer simply for their beliefs and do not deserve these terrible conditions and terms,' Mr. Karnei said. RFE/RL's Belarusian service had been designated extremist in the country, a common label handed to anyone who criticizes Lukashenko's government. As a result, working for it or spreading its content has become a criminal offense. 'We are deeply grateful to President Trump for securing the release of this brave journalist, who suffered at the hands of the Belarusian authorities,' the broadcaster's CEO Stephen Capus said Saturday in a press release. Mr. Karnei was detained several times while covering the 2020 protests. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose to stay in Belarus despite the ensuing repression. He was arrested again in July 2023, as police raided his apartment seizing phones and computers. The group Reporters Without Borders says Belarus is Europe's leading jailer of journalists. At least 40 are serving long prison sentences, according to the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists. Many face beatings, poor medical care and the inability to contact lawyers or relatives, according to activists and former inmates. Belarus also freed an Estonian national who had set up an NGO to raise funds for Belarusian refugees. According to the Estonian Foreign Ministry, Allan Roio was detained last January, and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on charges of establishing an extremist organisation.