Closing summary
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has resigned after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies conducted searches at his apartment. Zelenskyy announced the departure of Yermak, who had been leading the country’s peace negotiations with the US, in a late-afternoon social media video on Friday.
The president praised Yermak but made clear that “there should be no reason to be distracted by anything other than the defence of Ukraine”. Yermak had submitted his resignation, the president said. The search for a successor would begin on Saturday and the office of the president of Ukraine, which Yermak led, would be “reorganised” as part of the process.
A daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma has resigned as an MP, after being accused of tricking 17 South African men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia to train as bodyguards for the Zumas’ uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party. Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, the most visible and active in politics of her siblings, volunteered to resign and step back from public roles while cooperating with a police investigation and working to bring the men home, the MK chair, Nkosinathi Nhleko, said at a press conference in Durban.
Belgium has hit back against an EU plan to use Russia’s frozen assets to aid Ukraine, describing the scheme as “fundamentally wrong” and throwing into doubt how Europe will fund Kyiv. In a sharply worded letter, Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said the proposal violated international law and would instigate uncertainty and fear in financial markets, damaging the euro.
A spokesman for the European Commission, Guillaume Mercier, told Ukrainian local news station Radio Svoboda on Friday that they were following the corruption investigation closely and the searches showed that Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies were working. He added that fighting corruption was central to the country’s European Union accession.
Polish authorities have charged five people alleging they acted for foreign intelligence services of an unspecified country and threatened Poland’s security by taking photographs of critical infrastructure and putting up posters and graffiti, the public prosecutor’s office said. The group consists of two Ukrainians (including an teenage girl) and three Belarusians. Four of them have been detained pending trial, with the fifth one only placed under travel restrictions due to his ill health.
German authorities have placed a Ukrainian man in custody who is suspected of damaging the Nord Stream pipelines over three years ago, AP reported. A judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe issued an arrest warrant on Friday for 49-year-old Ukrainian Serhii K. and ordered he be held in custody, federal prosecutors said.
Hungary’s Orbán has met with Russia’s Putin in Moscow in another show of close relations between the two leaders and countries and much to the frustration of the EU. Welcoming him to the Kremlin, Putin praised Orbán’s “balanced” position on Ukraine, after Hungary repeatedly tried to block further sanctions on Russia.
Keir Starmer’s attempt to reset relations with the EU have suffered a major blow, after negotiations for the UK to join the EU’s flagship €150bn (£131bn) defence fund collapsed. The UK had been pushing to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund, a low-interest loan scheme that is part of the EU’s drive to boost defence spending by €800bn and rearm the continent, in response to the growing threat from Russia and cooling relations between Donald Trump’s US and the EU.
Strikes and protests in Italy on Friday against Giorgia Meloni’s government caused the cancellation of dozens of flights and disrupted train services around the country. The hardline USB union and smaller worker organisations called the one-day action against the government’s plans to raise military spending and its support for Israel.
A spokesman for the European Commission, Guillaume Mercier, told Ukrainian local news station Radio Svoboda on Friday that they were following the corruption investigation closely and the searches showed that Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies were working.
He added that fighting corruption was central to the country’s European Union accession.
