Closing summary
… and on that note, it’s a wrap!
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there were no plans for Vladimir Putin to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the agenda for the meeting was “not ready at all.” “There is no meeting planned,” he said (13:40).
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said there were active discussions “at many levels” to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, as he insisted that they would offer greater protection than in previous, failed agreements in Minsk and Budapest (14:20, 14:23).
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that guarantees should be structured in a similar way to Nato’s core principle in Article 5 that an attack on one member is an attack on all (14:09).
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “Russia does not want peace,” accusing Putin of ignoring demands to end the war and “just laughing – not stopping the killing, but increase the killing, … the bombings on Ukraine” (9:48).
Hungary and Slovakia urged the European Commission to guarantee security of supplies after they said that oil deliveries through the Druzbha pipeline could be suspended for at least five days following a Ukrainian attack on a linked facility in Russia (10:26).
In other news,
This hot and dry year has already emerged as the EU’s worst on record for wildfires – and there’s still one month of the fire season left to go (16:05).
And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today.
If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at [email protected].
I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
EU wildfires worst on record as burning season continues
Europe environment correspondent
In other news, this hot and dry year has already emerged as the EU’s worst on record for wildfires – and there’s still one month of the fire season left to go.
New data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) shows 1,015,024 hectares have burned so far this year, breaking the previous full-year record of 988,544 hectares that was set in 2017.
Across the continent, and particularly in Spain and Portugal, deadly infernos have run riot this month – emptying out villages and forcing farmers to become firefighters.
The blazes have engulfed four times as much land this year as the average for the same period over the past two decades, according to official data, and spewed out extreme levels of toxic smoke.
Overwhelmed and underprepared, several governments have triggered the EU’s civil protection mechanism to help fight the flames. The Commission has sent help in the form of water-bombing planes and extra firefighters from neighbouring countries.
