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Spain starts evacuating passengers from hantavirus-hit cruise ship in Tenerife – Europe live

Germany is reviving efforts to buy Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, the Financial Times is reporting. German defence minister Boris Pistorius is reportedly planning a trip to Washington to revive Germany’s offer to buy long-range systems, which was first submitted last July. The visit, however, hinges upon whether Pistorius can secure a meeting with Pete Hegseth, his US counterpart, the FT reports. “The key thing is to have the strike capabilities in Europe,” a government insider told the newspaper. Tomahawk land attack missiles, first used in combat in 1991, are long-range, guided cruise missiles typically launched from sea to attack targets in deep-strike missions. There are no European ground-launched long-range systems immediately available, according to the FT report. So the Tomahawk missiles, along with the mobile Typhon launchers Germany also reportedly wants to buy from the US, would allow the German armed forces to hit targets hundreds of kilometres deep into enemy territory if necessary.

Passengers begin evacuating cruise ship hit by hantavirus

An evacuation has begun of passengers onboard a cruise ship at the centre of a deadly outbreak of hantavirus. Spanish passengers wearing blue plastic ponchos and hair coverings were taken off the vessel by medical teams in hazmat suits on Sunday morning after being screened for the infection. They have been taken by coach to Tenerife airport. The ship arrived in the Canary Islands in the early hours of Sunday morning carrying 146 people, after three people died of the virus and eight more became ill. While nobody onboard the vessel has symptoms, passengers and crew have been confined to their cabins in the last few days to help halt the spread of the virus, which is transmitted only through very close contact. They were each being screened for hantavirus, which can cause flu-like symptoms leading to respiratory arrest and death in some cases. The 19 passengers and three crew from the UK were to be flown from Tenerife to Merseyside for hospital quarantine at Arrowe Park hospital in Wirral. Those from elsewhere will take separate flights to their home countries. The Spanish government and the World Health Organization (WHO) has said they will not come into contact with people in Tenerife. Spanish citizens were to be the first to disembark, with Spain’s health minister, Mónica García, confirming their plane was ready to take off when the passengers arrived. Next would be a flight to the Netherlands, which would transport citizens of Germany, Belgium, Greece and some of the crew. Flights to the UK, Canada, Turkey, France, Ireland and the US would follow later on Sunday. On Monday, a Dutch refuelling plane would pick up any passengers who had not yet been evacuated, authorities said. The last scheduled flight would be to Australia with six people, departing on Monday afternoon. They were being asked to isolate for 42 days from their point of potential exposure, which for most of the passengers would be many days ago. The MV Hondius is anchored slightly offshore of the southern commercial port of Grenadilla. Passengers will be taken to the dock in groups of five to 10 by a small boat. This would happen only when planes were on the asphalt ready to receive them, the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, said. Flights to some countries were yet to be arranged as authorities scrambled to get planes in place on Sunday. Winds off the coast of the island were expected to pick up from Monday, meaning any people whose flights had not arranged may be stuck onboard. Authorities have sought to make clear that the virus, though serious, would not result in another pandemic. However, the director general of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked at a press conference in Tenerife late on Saturday night whether allowing passengers to travel all over the world and relying on them to self-isolate with no oversight could cause further outbreaks. “Based on our assessment, what you have said is not going to happen,” he said. Some crew will stay onboard, going on to pick up supplies at Santa Cruz port in the north of Tenerife and then returning the ship to the Netherlands, where it is from. The polar cruise ship arrived at the Canary Islands after spending days stranded off the coast of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. Local authorities would not allow the ship to dock amid fears of a wider outbreak overwhelming the healthcare system of the small island nation. Fears of a new pandemic were unfounded, the WHO said, because hantaviruses did not spread as quickly as Covid-19 and treatment was highly effective if the virus was caught quickly enough. However, a broad incubation period, lasting between a few days and eight weeks, means infected people might have the opportunity to pass on the virus before any symptoms become apparent. For this reason, the WHO is putting together an international co-ordinated response, particularly in tracing those who left the vessel since the onset of the outbreak more than a month ago. Several countries have come together to solve the logistical challenge of tracing people who have been in close and prolonged contact with 29 people who disembarked on 24 April in the remote southern Atlantic island of St Helena. Two British people are self-isolating in the UK because they could have been exposed to the virus before getting off about a month ago. Neither has symptoms. A specialist army team and medical personnel have been parachuted on to the British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha with medical aid and equipment, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said, after a British national disembarked on to the island, where they live, with a suspected case of hantavirus. Experts in several countries are now trying to solve the mystery of how the virus, which originates from rats and mice, came to be on board the MV Hondius and how it has spread to so many people. The first patient, a 70-year-old Dutchman, died on 11 April, with his 69-year-old wife also later becoming ill. She died on 26 April upon arrival at the emergency department of Johannesburg hospital. On 2 May, a German passenger died onboard the ship after also testing positive for the virus.

Nobel laureate’s smuggled memoir details beatings and neglect in Iranian prisons

In an exclusive extract of writing smuggled from prison in Iran, the Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has described the “torture” of solitary confinement, and her systematic medical neglect by the prison system. The writing from the past decade will be part of a soon to be published memoir that gives a rare and alarming insight into the treatment of Mohammadi, who is in critical condition. It details beatings, constant interrogations, deprivation of medical care and long stretches in solitary confinement during her numerous imprisonments. “There is no hardship worse than illness combined with imprisonment,” she wrote. “Authoritarian regimes do not always need an executioner’s rope. Sometimes, they simply wait for the human body to fail.” After those words were written and she was rearrested, Mohammadi’s health hit another crisis point this year, with her weight dropping by more than 20kg. She was found unconscious in her cell after an apparent heart attack in March. Requests by her family and doctors for her to receive proper medical treatment from her team of surgeons in Tehran were repeatedly denied. She is now being held at a small regional hospital in Zanjan, in a critical condition. Her family have said her ongoing detention and the refusal of proper medical care constitute a “slow execution”. Mohammadi wrote of how her stretches in prison have caused significant damage to her health. She has suffered a pulmonary embolism, seizures, multiple infections, chest pain and other life-threatening medical events in prison, and describes the agonising wait for often inadequate medical care. The writings were smuggled out by fellow prisoners and visitors during Mohammadi’s time in Iran’s notorious Evin, Qarchak and Zanjan prisons, at considerable risk to their own safety. They had to be rewritten several times over the past decade, after pages or notebooks were discovered and destroyed by prison guards. The memoir, A Woman Never Stops Fighting, will be published in September. It covers Mohammadi’s early life, the way her parents helped inspire her political convictions, her path into activism, and the many years she spent in prison for public protest. Mohammadi has been arrested 14 times for her activism on advancing women’s rights in Iran, improving the conditions of prisoners and ending the regime’s use of the death penalty. She has been sentenced to a total of 44 years in prison and 154 lashes across a number of convictions. The campaigner was awarded the Nobel peace prize while in prison in 2023, during the Women, Life, Freedom protests. In December 2024, she was released on a temporary sentence suspension after a series of health events, but was violently rearrested a year later and sentenced to years’ more prison time in February this year.

Cape Verde bets on tech to reverse postcolonial brain drain

For much of its history since its discovery by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of west Africa served as a hub of the international slave trade, with Africans forcibly transported to marketplaces before being distributed across the Americas and Europe. Now, almost 150 years since slavery was abolished in Cape Verde, and just over 50 years since independence from Portugal, Pedro Fernandes Lopes wants the country to become a beacon for the free movement of human and financial capital across the African diaspora. Lopes is Cape Verde’s secretary of state for the digital economy and an important figure in its drive to become a digital hub for west Africa and beyond, modelled in part on Estonia’s much-vaunted digitisation programme. The country had been developing digital governance services for use across Portuguese-speaking Africa for decades when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, tourism numbers briefly plummeted and the government accelerated plans to diversify the economy through technology. In 2021, the digital economy ministry was created with the goal of making the sector account for a quarter of GDP by 2030. In many respects, the omens are positive. The ministry already provides public services for the approximately 529,000 people living in Cape Verde’s 10 islands, as well as its vast diaspora, which is estimated to be three to four times larger than the country’s population. The archipelago’s internet penetration rate is now 75% – double the African average; schoolchildren are being taught robotics and coding in shipping containers; and more undersea cables are being laid beneath the Atlantic. “The routes enslaved people were taken along from Africa are the same routes that the submarine cables pass along in the Atlantic, which is crazy,” said Lopes in an interview in his office in the capital, Praia, opposite a large mural of prominent Cape Verdean poets painted on a rocky slope. “History repeats itself – but each generation has an opportunity to tell their own history.” The digital drive is central to another goal: reducing Cape Verde’s emigration rate, one of the world’s highest relative to population. Jessica Sanches Tavares is an adviser to the board of directors at TechParkCV, a £44.78m technology facility with an incubation centre for startups, a youth training centre and a conference auditorium. Born in Paris to parents who emigrated before her birth, Tavares has wanted to “return” to Cape Verde since childhood, and finally did so within the last few years. “There is an energy, an ambition, a will to build, and it is really stimulating to be part of it,” she said. “There are still challenges but I think we are on the right trajectory.” Most of the financing for the facility and its smaller campus in the city of Mindelo came as a loan from the African Development Bank. In December, it will host the Web Summit, one of the world’s largest technology events, for its first appearance on the continent since it began in 2009. Tavares said TechParkCV had so far attracted about two dozen companies seeking to benefit from its location in a tax-incentivised special economic zone. “Companies can develop their activities from Cape Verde, work remotely with clients [worldwide] and do it in conditions [that are] at once technically and economically competitive,” she said. “All this does not function in a silo. The talents trained can then lean on the datacentre, install themselves in the business centre, or even launch their projects via the incubation centre.” Lopes said: “[We] don’t want to rely on foreign aid or support. I think nowadays there is a big opportunity for the global south to not depend on the former colonisers … what we’re going to do is open the market of Africa for unicorns but also trying to create unicorns of Africa here.” There are barriers to progress, notably poor air connectivity to and from destinations within Africa, and recurring reports that black Africans – particularly from Nigeria, which constitutes one of the continent’s largest tech markets – are being targeted at Cape Verde’s airports for extra searches. Some within the ecosystem say startups are overreliant on government support. Up to 100 startup founders are reportedly receiving funding to cover the salaries of at least six staff members, while attendance at tech events abroad is also fully subsidised by the government. Still, Lopes struck an optimistic note: “I’m sure that this generation doesn’t want [only] to come back like their parents did when they are retired … If we change the idea that people leave the country and also tell bright minds to return, things will change. But we cannot just have the narrative. You have to walk the talk. And that’s what we are doing now.”

Defence sovereignty: Europe races to build the low-cost weapons of future

In a small workshop in England’s East Midlands, engineers at the British startup Skycutter are designing weapons for Ukraine. A row of 3D printers make the fuselage for interceptor drones, while parts such as motors and navigation chips are slotted together by hand. The same process happens hundreds of thousands of times a month in partner Ukrainian factories. The swarms of cheap, deadly and often autonomous drones deployed in that war have already changed combat completely. Troops far behind the frontline must move constantly to avoid attack from the air, travelling along netted tunnels and landscapes crisscrossed by fibre optic cables used to steer drones past radio jamming. Cities are terrorised by guided missiles that are cheaper and therefore more widely used than those that came before. Europe’s militaries are scrambling to catch up, in a drive to spend billions on weaponry – with added pressure from Donald Trump’s wavering on the Nato alliance and the US president’s insistence that members increase defence budgets. The unsettling combination of Trump and war on the doorstep has sharpened long-running criticism that the continent has relied too much on US weapons makers. The EU has responded by promising to spend €800bn on defence over four years. The UK has also pledged to put aside more, with Keir Starmer likely to come under pressure to show progress after Labour’s heavy losses in Thursday’s elections. With a new focus on defence sovereignty – the ability to make and use weaponry without unreliable America’s help – much of this money is pouring into homegrown companies. A crop of well-funded startups are gaining momentum and expanding production, making big promises – many still unproven – that they can do a better job than traditional manufacturers and Silicon Valley rivals. Survivable v attritable Militaries do not believe they can totally dispense with people – infantry – or heavier machinery such as tanks, artillery and ships. But a big chunk of the planned spending will go on drones of various sizes, whether for the air, land, sea or below the waves. Gen Sir Roly Walker, the UK’s chief of the general staff, last year said he wanted the forces’ equipment to be 20% “survivable” (because they have people inside), 40% “attritable” (you aren’t too worried if they’re destroyed), and 40% “consumable” (single use). The growing feeling across Europe is that “we should be able to stand up on our own two feet”, according to one person at a fast-growing weapons startup. “Sovereignty is about control. If you buy things off the shelf from elsewhere you are always ceding some control.” That applies to parts and materials as well. The UK is consulting on how much needs to come from Britain for a product to be sovereign. Manufacturers cannot necessarily rely on parts and materials from various countries who could become adversaries – notably China. “A lot of supply chain diversification dreams have evaporated,” says Kusti Salm, a former Estonian defence mandarin turned chief executive of the anti-drone missile startup Frankenburg. “I think it’s natural if Europe wants to sustain its prosperity and freedom.” Ricardo Mendes, chief executive of the drone maker Tekever, says the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles has prompted “a radical transformation in how defence technology is built”, with companies betting on future demand for kit rather than locking in long-term contracts before starting. Tekever, which Mendes co-founded in Portugal in 2001, reached a billion-dollar “unicorn” valuation last year, and has 1,200 people, including new factories in the UK’s drone cluster in Swindon, Wiltshire, and another in Cahors, south-west France. Other European defence tech unicorns include Helsing, a German company backed by the Spotify founder Daniel Ek, and the German drone makers Quantum Systems and Stark Defence. Stark and Helsing recently won orders from Germany’s military for attack drones, while all but Quantum are investing in UK factories. The British missile maker Cambridge Aerospace – controversially chaired by the former defence secretary Grant Shapps – is reportedly also close to joining the billion-dollar ranks. US rival unicorns include the drone maker Shield AI, the autonomous boat company Saronic Technologies, and the anti-drone weapons company Epirus. But two companies with names taken from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings lead the American pack: the software company Palantir and the autonomous weapons maker Anduril. Both are making significant inroads into Europe, particularly the UK, but that expansion is coming under scrutiny as European politicians balk at their stridently pro-Trump backers. Palantir was backed by the billionaire Trump donor Peter Thiel. Thiel, a vocal critic of liberal democracies, has also backed Stark, which has raised concerns in Germany, though Stark says Thiel has no direct operational or strategic influence. Palantir’s chief executive, Alex Karp, has repeatedly extolled American dominance, while Anduril is run by 33-year-old Palmer Luckey, who has personally hosted a Trump fundraiser and has cultivated close ties with the administration. Cat and mouse game The falling costs of parts such as sensors and motors opened the door to the startups. The big, traditional manufacturers were caught flat-footed by the drone revolution, perhaps because it is hard to earn juicy profits on mass-produced products. Armin Papperger, head of the 137-year-old German manufacturer Rheinmetall, caused consternation earlier this year by describing Ukraine’s drones as low-tech “Legos” made by “housewives” with 3D printers. Rheinmetall was later forced to backtrack, but the statement unwittingly highlighted the changing economics of war. Falling prices make it much easier to do a lot of damage with relatively cheap weapons, such as Iran’s Shahed drones that Russia uses to terrorise Ukrainian cities and Tehran fired against its neighbours as it faced US-Israeli attacks. Shaheds are estimated to cost about $30,000 (£22,200). By contrast, many of Nato’s air defence systems use missiles that cost hundreds of thousands or, in the case of US Patriot interceptors, millions of dollars. Startups have focused instead on knocking Shaheds and other drones down with much cheaper kit. Frankenburg’s guided missiles are understood to cost “in the low five figures” in dollars, while Skycutter says its cheapest ground-to-air interceptors come in at about $2,000. Every startup emphasised the need to be more agile than traditional defence manufacturers, known as primes, as war brings a frenetic pace of change. Skycutter is smaller than many of the other companies raising hundreds of millions of pounds, with 15 people in the UK and 50 contractors in Ukraine. Its founders turned their hobby into a business making civilian drones for inspecting pipelines in 2018, before Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion suddenly meant their knowhow was in demand. They went out to Ukraine and worked directly with frontline units. It is a constant “cat and mouse” game of adapting the technology to new jamming abilities, says one of the directors, who asked not to be named after Russia threatened European drone makers. “Unless you’re there and working with units and what the Russians are trying to do, you fall behind,” they say. Mendes says Tekever has created more than 100 iterations of its main product in the first three years of the Ukraine war, with software updates and the newest sensors or propulsion fitted in as soon as they are ready. “This is constant,” he says. “You are constantly exposed. The only constant that you have is that it is evolving.” Running out of time Yet there are problems with this pace of change: militaries and governments are not experienced at adjusting so quickly. For instance, the UK last year published a strategic defence review that called for much more use of drones, but its author last month accused British leaders, including Keir Starmer, of a “corrosive complacency” towards defence. Starmer slashed international aid in order to pay for new weapons – a deeply controversial decision for many Labour MPs – and yet so far money has not been forthcoming. A defence investment plan is months overdue, blocked by the Treasury. BAE Systems, Britain’s dominant prime, last month took the unusual step of publicly saying that work on a next-generation fighter jet would stop in June unless more funding was allocated. Last week, the Financial Times reported that finalising the defence plan – and papering over an alleged £28bn funding gap – would form part of Starmer’s post-election “reset”. “The UK has been slower than most” to increase spending says Kevin Craven, chief executive of ADS, a UK aerospace and defence lobby group. “We are disappointed with the pace.” Skycutter caused a stir recently when it beat a range of rivals in the US military’s Drone Dominance programme. It has been vocal about the risks of delays to UK spending: videos of its interceptors taking down Shahed drones in Ukraine have attracted a host of offers for it to move to other countries, but spending has not come through from the UK. “We were knocking at the door of the MoD,” says the Skycutter director. “Unfortunately, the MoD weren’t interested at the time. “We need to make a strategic decision as a company,” the director adds. “Do we stay in the UK or leave the UK? The UK ultimately is our home. There’s no money at the moment because there’s no defence investment plan. We’re running out of time.” Across Europe, there are still doubts over whether those who buy the kit are ready for the bewildering pace of technological change forced by war, although several executives say attitudes are shifting. “It’s a really fast-moving ecosystem and I don’t think the procurement is ready to deal with it,” says James Acuna, a former officer at the US’s Central Intelligence Agency and now chief operations officer at Ondas Capital, a US drone investor. Mike Armstrong, UK managing director at Stark, says military attitudes are changing because “delivery timelines that stretch several years are no longer feasible. “Modern defence depends on sustained, industrial-scale production, rather than one-off procurement decisions,” he says. “So long-term signals around demand and procurement really matter, because that gives companies like us the confidence to invest and scale at the pace the current security environment requires.”

Argentina in spotlight over hantavirus as authorities retrace footsteps of ship’s passengers

An outbreak in rural communities 30 years ago in the Patagonia area of Argentina led scientists, for the first time, to document person-to-person transmission of hantavirus, which until then had been known only to spread through contact with rodents. Nearly a decade ago another outbreak, also in Patagonia, provided detailed evidence of inter-human transmission when an infected 68-year-old rural worker attended a birthday party in a small village. The infection spread and resulted in 11 deaths. These cases are being recalled after three people died from the virus on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius that departed from Argentina bound for Cape Verde. Although it is not yet confirmed how the passengers were infected, a hypothesis being investigated by the World Health Organization (WHO), which has already categorically ruled out an epidemic, is that transmission occurred before boarding, placing the South American country under global scrutiny. Tests on passengers who survived also confirmed they were infected with the Andes strain, the only strain in which human-to-human spread has been documented and which is found mainly in parts of Argentina and Chile. However, Argentinian scientists who have studied the virus for decades agree that despite a slight recent increase in cases, Argentina is not facing anything significantly new or different from previous decades. “Argentina is used to dealing with hantavirus,” said Dr Roberto Debbag, an infectious disease specialist and vice-president of the Latin American Society of Vaccinology, noting that the country made reporting hantavirus infections mandatory after the 1996 cases. “Since then, there have always been cases and outbreaks … but nothing has really changed.” Since July last year, Argentina has recorded 101 hantavirus cases, with 32 deaths; in previous epidemiological seasons, between July and June, the figures were lower, such as 64 cases and 14 deaths in 2024-25 and 82 cases and 13 deaths in 2023-24. Dr Raúl González Ittig, a biologist and professor at the National University of Córdoba, said he believed the increase was more closely linked to rodent behaviour, noting that there was a significant drought in 2023 and 2024, followed by increased rainfall in subsequent years, which meant greater vegetation cover and more food for the animals. “Global climate change is altering everything, and that could also lead to hantavirus cases emerging in places where they had not previously occurred,” he said. Even with the rise, Argentina remains within its historical annual average of about 100 cases – far below, for example, China and the Republic of Korea, where there are thousands of cases annually according to the WHO. The vast majority of up to 100,000 annual hantavirus cases occur in Asia and Europe, but the key difference lies in the severity caused by different strains: while in those regions the fatality rate is up to 15%, in the Americas it can reach 50%. Nevertheless, the WHO has said the risk of hantavirus to the general population is “absolutely low”, noting that person-to-person transmission does not occur easily. Even though it is far from leading global case numbers, Argentina still has the highest total in Latin America, which scientists attribute to the climate crisis and ecological imbalances such as the loss of natural predators. To determine where contamination on the MV Hondius may have occurred, Argentina’s health ministry plans to capture rodents for analysis along the route taken by the Dutch couple who first developed symptoms. They had been in the country since 27 November, making multiple car journeys, including trips to Chile and Uruguay, before boarding the ship on 1 April from the port of Ushuaia. The ministry has reiterated that it is “not confirmed that the infection occurred in Argentina” and notes that in the province from which the ship departed, Tierra del Fuego, there has not been a confirmed case of hantavirus in the past 30 years. On Thursday, the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Argentina should “reconsider” the decision taken by its president, Javier Milei, and formalised in March to leave the organisation, following the example of his US ally, Donald Trump. Addressing the US and Argentina, Ghebreyesus said “viruses don’t care about our politics and they don’t care about our borders” and that “solidarity is our best immunity”. For Ittig, Milei’s decision to leave the WHO is yet another facet of the problems caused by the libertarian’s “chainsaw” policy of deep spending cuts in science, education and healthcare, which could affect efforts to combat hantavirus. “The experience and knowledge to tackle the hantavirus exist, and Argentina has them,” he said. “The problem is that investment is needed – and that is not what is happening now.”

Ukraine war briefing: Moscow and Kyiv trade accusations of violating ceasefire

Russia and Ukraine on Saturday traded accusations of violating a three-day ceasefire, but no major strikes were reported. “Since the beginning of the day, the number of attacks by the aggressor has reached 51,” the Ukrainian military general staff said. Volodymyr Petrov, from the 33rd separate mechanised brigade in the eastern Kharkiv region, told Agence France-Presse that “the ceasefire is ongoing” but that the Russians were still attacking with drones and artillery. “We’re responding in kind,” he said. Russian drones killed two civilians and wounded three in Ukraine’s central-eastern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, local authorities said. In Russia’s western Belgorod region, three people were wounded by Ukrainian drone strikes, said the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. No attacks were recorded on Russia’s diminished Victory Day parade on Red Square. The Russian defence ministry said that “despite the declaration of a ceasefire, Ukrainian armed groups launched attacks using drones and artillery against our troops’ positions”. It did not provide the exact number of violations on Saturday. Casualties were still reported on both sides, as Moscow and Kyiv continued to exchange drone strikes. Vladimir Putin has said he thinks the Ukraine war is winding down – remarks that came a few hours after he had vowed to defeat Ukraine at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. “I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since the second world war. Putin said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder – of whom many in Europe will be sceptical given his background as a close friend and ally of Putin, and history of business ties to Russia. In 2022, after the war broke out, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, called Schröder “disgusting” for meeting with Putin and speaking in his favour. Pjotr Sauer writes that Moscow on Saturday was blanketed in heavy security, with internet services switched off across the city after a week in which Ukraine continued to rattle the Kremlin with long-range drone and missile strikes – forcing organisers to strip the Victory Day parade of its usual pageantry. The customary display of missiles and armoured vehicles, a fixture since 2017, was absent entirely. In its place, guests were shown a video showcasing Russian drones and nuclear weapons. The audience included only a small delegation of foreign leaders from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, who watched as a column of North Korean soldiers also marched across the square. Putin said on Saturday that Russia has not received any proposals from Ukraine on a prisoner swap announced as part of their ceasefire. “We are counting on the Ukrainian side to respond to the proposal made by the president of the United States. Unfortunately, we still have not received any proposals so far,” Putin said.

Vladimir Putin suggests Ukraine war is ‘coming to an end’

Vladimir Putin has said he thinks the Ukraine war is winding down – remarks that came a few hours after he had vowed to defeat Ukraine at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. “I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin said of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since the second world war. He said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Putin, who has ruled Russia as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, faces a wave of anxiety in Moscow about the war in Ukraine, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, left swathes of Ukraine in ruins, and drained Russia’s economy. Russia’s relations with Europe are worse than at any time since the depths of the cold war. Russian forces have so far been unable to take the whole of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces have been pushed back to a line of fortress cities. Russian advances have slowed this year, though Moscow controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Speaking on Saturday, Putin slammed western support for Kyiv, as the first day of a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire was marked by mutual accusations of violations. “They [the west] started ratcheting up the confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. “I think it [the war] is heading to an end but it’s still a serious matter. “They spent months waiting for Russia to suffer a crushing defeat, for its statehood to collapse. It didn’t work out. “And then they got stuck in that groove and now they can’t get out of it.” Putin added that he was ready to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a third country only once all conditions for a potential peace agreement were settled – holding to his usual position on a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. “This should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves,” he said. Asked if he was willing to engage in talks with the Europeans, Putin said: “For me personally, the former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr Schröder, is preferable.” Many in Ukraine and Europe will be sceptical of involving Schröder given his background as a close friend of Putin and history of ties to Russian business and projects, such as the Nord Stream gas pipelines. In 2022, after the war broke out, Zelenskyy called Schröder “disgusting” for meeting with Putin and speaking in the Russian ruler’s favour. Russia, Ukraine and Donald Trump on Friday announced that a three-day ceasefire between both sides would come into effect from Saturday. Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations of violations amid continued drone activity and civilian casualties on both sides. The Kremlin said there were no plans to prolong the truce. The warring sides also agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners each during the truce. Putin said on Saturday that Russia had not yet received any proposals from Ukraine on the exchange. The Victory Day parade was vastly smaller compared to previous years, with no military hardware on display for the first time in nearly two decades and only a handful of foreign dignitaries in attendance – most of them leaders of Russia’s close allies. In the week prior there had been clear notes of desperation from the Russian side that the parade not be disturbed by Ukrainian attacks. Moscow threatened to bomb the centre of Kyiv including foreign embassies, warning overseas missions to evacuate their staff. For his part, Zelenskyy – after earlier issuing a “decree” allowing the Moscow parade to go ahead – observed Saturday as Europe Day, which is celebrated as a foundational day of the EU. He said Ukraine was an “inseparable part of the European family”. “From the first days of the full-scale war until today, Europe has stood with Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. “And this is not charity – it is a choice made by Europeans: to stand on the same side as the brave and the strong.” Only the leaders of Belarus, Malaysia, Laos, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were listed as attending Putin’s parade, in contrast to high-profile visitors including China’s Xi Jinping during last year’s event. Now in its fifth year, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and spiralled into Europe’s deadliest since the second world war. The European Council president, António Costa, said last week that he believed there was “potential” for the EU to negotiate with Russia, and to discuss the future of the security architecture of Europe. With Reuters and Agence France-Presse