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US to send envoy to Moscow to discuss proposals to end Ukraine war

Donald Trump said he would send special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss developing proposals to end the Ukraine war, but despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points. The US president said negotiations had left “only a few remaining points of disagreement” but there was no breakthrough on the issues of territorial control and security guarantees and he dampened expectations of immediate peace summits. “I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after a day of negotiations involving US, Russian and Ukrainian officials in Abu Dhabi. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he would be willing to meet Donald Trump as soon as possible to discuss the final details of an agreement. Ukrainian officials said they were close to accepting the framework of a deal, but that some details could only be discussed at presidential level. However, Trump said he would instead dispatch Dan Driscoll, the US army secretary, to Ukraine for further discussions. The official, who has suddenly taken a central role in the peace negotiations, is expected in Kyiv later this week, according to Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian officials had been working “on the text of the document” prepared in a previous round of talks in Geneva and said that “the principles in this document can be developed into deeper agreements”. But there was no suggestion that the revised US-Ukraine agreement discussed in Geneva on Sunday would be something to which Russia would agree. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that any amended peace plan would have to reflect the “spirit and letter” of what Donald Trump and Putin discussed at their summit in Alaska in August, after which Trump had appeared to conclude that Ukraine should make territorial concessions to Russia. Moscow meanwhile continued its nightly assaults on Ukrainian cities. Russian forces fired 22 missiles and 464 drones at Ukraine on Tuesday night, primarily at targets in and around Kyiv. Seven people were killed. Earlier, senior Ukrainian officials said they hoped Zelenskyy would meet Trump during this week’s US thanksgiving holiday to discuss the revised agreement and talk directly about territory. Russia continues to want Ukraine to cede the 30% of Donetsk province it has not captured, which Ukraine has said is unacceptable. A Ukrainian official told AFP that the new US-Ukraine proposal was “significantly better”. The revised term sheet raised a proposed cap on the country’s future military forces from 600,000 to 800,000 members – close to the current number of personnel on active service. “Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “We look forward to organising a visit of Ukraine’s president to the US at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump.” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday evening that any talks with Trump should include European allies, and told 40 allies that “security decisions about Europe must include Europe” in a virtual meeting of the coalition of the willing, countries willing to contribute to a post-war peacekeeping force. The issue of territorial concessions was not covered by the US-Ukraine agreement, according to Keir Starmer. “My understanding is this is not a new agreement, it is Ukraine confirming they are happy with the draft that emerged in Geneva yesterday, which of course doesn’t cover the question of territory,” the UK prime minister told parliament on Tuesday. On Monday night, Driscoll met a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi, and talks continued into Tuesday. “The talks are going well and we remain optimistic. Secretary Driscoll is closely synchronised with the White House ... as these talks progress,” his spokesperson told Reuters. Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, was also expected to participate in the Abu Dhabi talks, the Financial Times reported, though it was not clear whether there would be direct talks with Moscow’s representatives or separate bilateral talks with Driscoll. Nor was it immediately clear who was in the Russian delegation. “I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian state media. European leaders are struggling to stay engaged in the process as US officials take the lead. Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who had emerged as one of Trump’s main interlocutors among European leaders in recent months, said on Tuesday that the coming days would be decisive in attempts to find a peace settlement, after speaking by phone to Zelenskyy and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte. “Zelenskyy gave an overview of the latest situation. The future of Ukraine is for Ukraine to decide, and European security is for Europe to decide,” Stubb wrote on X. Zelenskyy also spoke to Starmer and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, cautioned against a peace deal that would be a “capitulation” for Ukraine. “What was put on the table gives us an idea of what would be acceptable for the Russians. Does that mean that it is what must be accepted by the Ukrainians and the Europeans? The answer is no,” Macron said. The US plan was originally made up of 28 points and was based on discussions between Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin aide Kirill Dmitriev, reportedly with input from the head of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov. The proposal would have involved Ukraine ceding territory occupied by Russia and other areas it would have been expected to surrender voluntarily. It would also have put limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and given all participants in the conflict an amnesty for war crimes. Driscoll, who is a university friend of the US vice-president, JD Vance, then travelled to Kyiv to brief Zelenskyy on the plan and demand he sign up to it within days. The pressure, combined with the leaking of the plan, took Ukrainian and European officials by surprise. Zelenskyy said on Friday that the country was facing one of the most difficult moments in its history and was being forced to choose between “losing our dignity or losing a key ally”. Driscoll then briefed Nato ambassadors on the plan in Kyiv. One person present said it had been “a nightmare meeting” and that European ambassadors had been shocked by the content and tone of Driscoll’s delivery. Washington then rowed back on its ultimatums and said the 28-point plan was an opening point for discussion.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine ready to move forward with US plan and discuss ‘sensitive points’ with Trump - as it happened

Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events: Donald Trump said that he has directed US special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Army secretary Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians. In his post on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon, he added that an original 28-point peace plan, which was drafted by the US, has been fine-tuned with additional input from both sides and that there are only a few remaining. In a statement on X on Tuesday, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the “Coalition of the Willing” will continue exerting pressure on Russia since “pressure remains the only language Russia responds to.” She added on X: “We need strong transatlantic cooperation. Because it delivers. Take the significant impact of our coordinated and successive waves of sanctions against the Russian economy. They are shrinking the resources Russia has to wage its war of aggression.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with US president Donald Trump in talks he said should include European allies. In a speech to the ‘coalition of the willing’, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Zelenskyy urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war. Axios reported that Zelenskyy had expressed a desire to meet Trump “as soon as possible” – possibly over Thanksgiving – to complete a joint US-Ukrainian agreement on the terms for ending the war. It cited the infomation as coming from Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak. The ‘coalition of the willing’ call on Tuesday, co-hosted by UK prime minister Keir Starmer, was attended by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, in a rare example of American involvement in the coalition’s discussions. French president Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte were also among the participants in the virtual meeting. Macron told Tuesday’s ‘coalition of the willing’ call that efforts to draw the Russia-Ukraine conflict to an end were now at a “crucial juncture”. During the same call, Starmer said talks on a potential ceasefire in Ukraine were “moving in a positive direction” but urged leaders of the coalition to “firm up” their commitments to a potential peacekeeping operation in Ukraine. Talks between US army secretary Dan Driscoll and Russia delegates on a US plan to end the conflict with Ukraine were “going well,” his spokesperson said on Tuesday. Driscoll reportedly met Russian and Ukrainian officials for talks in Abu Dhabi today. Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, killing seven and injuring 21 in Kyiv. A total of 22 missiles, including four hypersonic Kinzhals, and 464 drones, were fired by Russia in attacks that principally targeted Kyiv and the surrounding area, according to Zelenskyy.

Jair Bolsonaro ordered to start 27-year prison term for plotting Brazil coup

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, Brasília, after his conviction for plotting a coup. The far-right populist, 70, who governed Latin America’s largest democracy from 2019 until 2022, was handed the punishment in September after the supreme court found him guilty of leading a criminal conspiracy to stop his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking power. The plot – which involved a plan to assassinate Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin – foundered after military chiefs refused to take part and the court later convicted Bolsonaro and six accomplices of trying to “annihilate” Brazilian democracy and plunge the country back into dictatorship. On Tuesday, the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Bolsonaro should start serving his sentence after the case formally ended following a period for appeals. Bolsonaro has been living under house arrest since August and was taken into preventive custody on Saturday after unsuccessfully trying to cut off his electronic ankle tag with a soldering iron. Bolsonaro’s six co-conspirators were also ordered to start their sentences. The former defence minister Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, and the former minister for institutional security Gen Augusto Heleno were arrested and imprisoned in the Planalto Military Command in Brasília. They received sentences of 19 and 21 years respectively. The former navy commander Adm Almir Garnier Santos, who received a 24-year sentence, was reportedly arrested by navy officials and held on a navy base. Bolsonaro’s former defence minister, Gen Walter Braga Netto, who received a 26-year sentence, was already in custody having been arrested last December. The former justice minister, Anderson Torres, who received a 24-year sentence, was expected to be sent to a penitentiary for police officers and other “special” prisoners in Brasília called Papudinha. The former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem received a 16-year sentence, but recently fled to the US to avoid jail. Bolsonaro’s incarceration has sparked jubilation among progressive Brazilians who remember his four-year government as a calamitous spell of environmental devastation, international isolation and hostility to minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians died during a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro was accused of catastrophically mishandling with his anti-scientific stance. Mustafa Baba-Aissa, the owner of a Rio de Janeiro record store, has marked the historic occasion by decorating its facade with a white banner announcing: “Bolsonaro’s in jail!” “He’s a contemptible man who has done nothing with his life apart from living off public money … I’ve no idea how he was elected,” said the business owner, who plastered his shop’s windows with homemade posters celebrating Bolsonaro’s downfall. Bolsonaro supporters condemned the jailing of their leader, a paratrooper-turned-politician who was elected in 2018 and posed as South America’s answer to Donald Trump. “He’s been kidnapped,” complained Ronny de Souza, a 43-year-old Bolsonaro activist, as he stood outside the federal police base where the politician was taken last weekend after being arrested amid suspicions he was about to abscond to a foreign embassy. Lenildo Mendes dos Santos Sertão, a politician from the Amazon who uses the nickname Delegado Caveira (“Police chief Skull”), claimed his ally was the victim of a witch-hunt. “He fought against the system and now the system has unfairly and illegally incarcerated him,” Sertão said. Bolsonaristas vowed to battle on, even with their movement’s helmsman in prison and out of the political game. “He represents millions of people in our country,” said Souza, predicting that large numbers of followers would flock to Brasília to protest Bolsonaro’s plight. But so far there has been no sign of mass protests or unrest, with only small groups of Bolsonaristas demonstrating and praying outside the federal police compound where he has spent the last three nights. Experts say the former president’s influence has waned dramatically in recent months, particularly after Bolsonaro was arrested for tampering with his ankle tag. Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s new right, said recent polls revealed a clear decrease in support for Bolsonaro – both in the streets and social media. One study found that only 13% of voters now supported Bolsonaro “no matter what”. Last month, a rally in Brasília organized by Bolsonaro’s family drew about 2,000 people – far smaller than the huge crowds the former president mobilized when at the peak of his powers. “Could there be more protests? Sure. But I think this declining trend is established,” said Rocha, who saw Bolsonaro in “a dead-end situation”. Rocha believed Bolsonaro’s arrest was good news for the rightwing politicians hoping to inherit his votes, as well as for voters hoping to see “a reduction in anti-democratic extremism” in Brazil. Not all of the pro-Bolsonaro schemers sentenced over the coup could be imprisoned on Tuesday. Ramagem, the former head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, Abin, recently skipped the country despite having his passport cancelled. “I’m safe in the US,” Ramagem announced in a social media video on Monday, urging Bolsonaristas to take to the streets to defend “our greatest leader”. On Tuesday afternoon, as the plotters began to serve their sentences, there was no immediate sign citizens would heed his call. After visiting his father earlier in the day, Carlos Bolsonaro told reporters: “He’s psychologically devastated.”

UK accused of caving-in to British Virgin Islands over access to companies register

The UK government has been accused of caving-in to pressure from the British Virgin Islands by allowing it to limit access to a register of company share ownership to only those deemed to have a legitimate interest. The restriction, to be discussed at talks starting on Tuesday between Foreign Office ministers and leaders of the British overseas territories (BOTs) in London, is in defiance of legislation passed by the UK government as long ago as 2008 that would make the register available to all. Public registers of beneficial share ownership have long been seen as the best means to expose corruption and tax evasion in overseas territories. The backsliding by the BOTs has led an all-party group of MPs to urge ministers to recognise that the talks this week represent “the last chance” to clamp down on embarrassing corruption in the UK’s own back yard before the Foreign Office holds a high-profile international anti-corruption conference next year. The conference was announced by the previous foreign secretary, David Lammy. A letter coordinated by the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, Phil Brickell, urges ministers to ensure certain jurisdictions, including the BVI and Cayman Islands, introduce long-promised transparency measures. It warns that this week’s joint ministerial council gathering “represents the last chance to put the [BOTs’] house in order before next year’s much-anticipated Global Illicit Finance Summit, a flagship event central to the government’s vision of making the UK ‘the anti-corruption capital of the world’”. Brickell said: “This has gone on for long enough. Time and time again promises have been broken and Britain’s reputation as a clean and fair place to do business has been dragged through the mud. “Those overseas territories which continue to block and frustrate the will of parliament are letting the rest of the British family down, including those jurisdictions which have already acted in good faith and opened up their books.” The government’s anti-corruption champion Margaret Hodge visited the BVI in September and said she hoped the joint ministerial council would be the occasion where an agreement on registers was reached. Lady Hodge was instrumental in passing the original laws requiring all BOTs to make registers publicly available. At the last council meeting in 2024, all BOTs that had not already done so agreed to design and implement open corporate registers by June 2025. The UK originally set a deadline of December 2023 for the preparation of public registers, giving them more than five years since the original legislation was passed. In defining those with a legitimate interest, the BVI includes anyone seeking to investigate, prevent or detect money laundering, terrorist financing or proliferation financing, but it also states the registrar can deny access if it believes it is in the public interest of the BVI to do so. The relevant company would have to be notified if a request was being made. The BVI is thought to have 12 companies registered for every individual BVI citizen. The Financial Action Task Force grey-listed the BVI in June 2025, citing its lack of transparency surrounding beneficial ownership. Transparency International said the BVI rules meant “legitimate interest users will only see a subset of data, rather than what is being submitted to the register. This means users will most likely end up seeing the name of nominee shareholders or trustees holding the company on behalf of a hidden beneficiary.”

Protests erupt in China’s Guizhou province over cremation mandate

Protests have erupted in China’s southern Guizhou province, the latest in a string of rural demonstrations that have seen incidents of unrest increase by 70% compared with last year. The protests in Shidong town started over the weekend in response to a directive from local authorities that people should be cremated rather than buried after their death. Guizhou is a poor, rural province away from the urban hubs of Shenzhen and Shanghai. In unverified footage from the protests shared on X by the protest-tracking account Yesterday Big Cat, a villager can be heard shouting: “If the Communist party is digging up ancestor’s graves, go dig up Xi Jinping’s ancestral tombs first”. Another video collected by China Dissent Monitor (CDM), a project run by Freedom House, which tracks unrest in China, showed dozens of villagers surrounding a police car. The local area has a high proportion of people of the Miao ethnicity, an ethnic minority for whom tradition dictates that the deceased should be buried rather than cremated. On Tuesday, as the protests continued, the local government published a notice stating that the directive to promote burial rather than cremation was based on a 2003 law. It said that cremation was necessary to preserve land resources and promote a “frugal new funeral style”. In recent years China has struggled with crowded cemeteries and the government has encouraged people to consider alternative funeral practices, such as sea burials. But for many rural people, traditional burials are a core part of their culture. One villager from Xifeng county, the administrative district for Shidong town, posted on social media that his grandfather had been cremated earlier in the year because of pressure from local officials. He said that his family was warned that failure to comply would lead to negative consequences for three generations. Many comments on Douyin, a video-sharing app, were supportive of the protesters. “Yes everyone, let’s stand up and support traditional burial practices!” wrote one user. This year CDM has recorded 661 rural protests in China, a 70% increase on the whole of 2024. In the third quarter of 2025, CDM logged nearly 1,400 incidents of unrest, a 45% increase on the same period in 2024. Many protests appear to be driven economic struggles and related grievances. But in some cases, such as the cremation protests in Guizhou, the initial trigger can be the state’s intrusion into what many people see as a deeply personal matter. Kevin Slaten, the research lead for CDM, said that the protests in Guizhou were unusual for the fact that they have lasted several days. “Protests are more likely to be large scale and last longer if it involves something very personal. Whether that is a major hit to someone’s economic livelihood … or something like that’s their heritage or dealing with ancestors. People are much more likely to feel motivated to take the risk of protest.” In August, a protest in Sichuan province over a school bullying incident spiralled into a multi-day clash between hundreds of locals and the authorities. The Xifeng local government declined to comment. Additional research by Lillian Yang

Seven killed in Kyiv as Russia hits Ukraine’s energy sector with missiles and drones

Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, killing seven and injuring 21 in Kyiv as a fresh round of US-brokered peace negotiations began in Abu Dhabi. A total of 22 missiles, including four hypersonic Kinzhals, and 464 drones, were fired by Russia in attacks that principally targeted Kyiv and the surrounding area, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “All partners must remember that lives need to be saved every single day,” the president said. “Weapons and air defence systems are important, as is the sanctions pressure on the aggressor. There can be no pauses in assistance.” The Ukrainian leader said the Kremlin must not feel it was able to win the war while talks continued. He said: “What matters most now is that all partners move toward diplomacy together, through joint efforts. Pressure on Russia must deliver results.” Zelenskyy said four drones had also crossed “into the airspace of our neighbours – Moldova and Romania”. Romania had deployed four fighter jets to track two drones early in the morning, its defence ministry said. The widescale attacks came as reports emerged that a fresh round of US-brokered peace talks had begun on Monday night in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, with Dan Driscoll, the US army secretary, flying in to meet a Russian delegation and a Ukrainian team led by Kyrylo Budanov. Four people were killed and three injured following an attack near a warehouse in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district in the west, and two people were killed and five injured when a nine-storey building was hit in the Dniprovskyi district. Four drivers were killed and three injured following after a warehouse for the Novus supermarket chain was destroyed in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district, the company said. Two people were killed and five injured when a nine-storey building was hit in the Dniprovskyi district. Among those killed were Vadym Tupchiy, 65, an actor, musician and set-builder from Kyiv. His son, Anton, posted on Facebook that he and his mother recognised his body when it was recovered. “I hate the world,” Anton wrote. There were 13 separate reports of attack damage or falling debris, including to a 22-storey residential apartment block in the Perchersk district. Four stories were burnt out in the strike, Ukraine’s state emergency service reported. Liubov Petrivna, a 90-year-old resident of a damaged building in the Dniprovskyi district, said “absolutely everything” in her apartment had been shattered by the strike and “glass rained down” on her. Petrivna told Associated Press she did not believe in the peace plan under discussion: “No one will ever do anything about it. Putin won’t stop until he finishes us off.” Explosions were heard in two waves in the capital, first shortly after 1am, and again at about 7am, and also in the Dnipro, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Cherkasy regions in a wide-ranging assault against the country’s already battered infrastructure. Emergency power outages to Kyiv’s already disrupted service were announced by the Ukrenergo electricity generator, while heat supply was also affected in large parts of the capital on Tuesday morning as the city began a clear-up process. “The Russians are deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and housing. Cynical terror,” Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the military administration for the capital, said on Telegram.

Nato scrambles jets as Russian drones make deepest incursion into Romania

Nato jets were scrambled to track two Russian drones that crossed into Romania on Tuesday in the deepest and first daytime incursion into the country’s airspace since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. German Typhoon and Romanian F-16 fighter jets took off in pairs to follow the uncrewed aircraft. The first flew back into Ukrainian airspace, but the second was later found downed in Puieşti, about 70 miles from Ukraine. Ionuț Moşteanu, Romania’s defence minister, said two of the German pilots had been given orders to shoot down the second drone. In the end, he said it appeared to have crashed, possibly because it had run out fuel. Examination of the wreckage showed the drone was unarmed, the minister added. “It could have been destroyed if all the conditions had been met ... the pilots needed to see it, to engage it, to lock it on radar and to be able to fire a missile at it.” The first drone was detected at 6.28am local time (0428 GMT) and the second at 7.50am, the defence ministry said. People in three Romanian border counties were told to take cover in the morning until the incident was resolved. It is the 13th time Romanian airspace has been breached by Russian drones, the third incident in the past week and the first during daytime. Villagers on the Romanian side of the border with Ukraine were evacuated last week when a tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas was struck and caught fire in the nearby Ukrainian port of Izmail across the Danube. Six drones also crossed into Moldova’s airspace overnight, according to the country’s defence ministry. One of them, a distinctive delta-wing model with a Russian Z symbol spray painted on the tailfin, landed on a roof in the village of Cuhureştii de Jos, 15 miles from the Ukrainian border. After an inspection, the country’s police said the drone was an unarmed Gerbera decoy, used by the Russians to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences and increasingly in incursions into the airspace of neighbouring countries. They suggested the drone had landed when it ran out of fuel. In September, 21 unarmed Gerbera drones crossed into Poland in an apparently deliberate incursion by Russia. The incident led Nato to create the Eastern Sentry mission, with increased fighter jet patrols of countries on the alliance’s eastern flank. However, using fighter jets to shoot down drones is an expensive way to deal with the threat – and not always practical because of the dangers of bringing down a Russian or unknown craft above a populated area. Gen Christopher Donahue, the commander of the US army in Europe and Africa, said on a visit to Romania’s Mihail Kogǎlniceanu airbase that a new capability to shoot down drones would be deployed to the country. “We have tested and it is in the final stages of being employed. Romanian soldiers and other alliance soldiers have been trained on this capability and I know you’re going to see this capability in the delta [of the Danube] very soon,” he said.

Jacob Zuma’s daughter accused of tricking men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine

South African police are investigating allegations that a daughter of the former president Jacob Zuma tricked men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia for a paramilitary training course. Another of Zuma’s daughters, Nkosazana Zuma-Mncube, filed a police report on Saturday alleging that her sister Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla and two others, Siphokazi Xuma and Blessing Khoza, had recruited 17 men who are now trapped on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. A copy of Zuma-Mncube’s statement shared by South Africa media outlets read: “These men were lured to Russia under false pretences and handed to a Russian mercenary group to fight in the Ukraine war without their knowledge or consent. Among these 17 men, who are requesting the South African government for assistance, are eight of my family members.” Zuma-Mncube accused the three of breaking laws against people trafficking, providing assistance to foreign militaries and fraud, saying she was “driven by moral obligation”. A spokesperson for the South African police service confirmed they had received the statement. Thandi Mbambo, a spokesperson for the Hawks serious crime unit, which is now handling the case, said: “Investigation in this matter is still at an early stage, with the docket received only Sunday, so there is nothing much to report except that investigation is under way.” The South African news outlet News24 said it had received videos from three of the South African men trapped in Ukraine, in which the men alleged Zuma-Sambudla had persuaded them to sign contracts in Russian that they did not understand and said she would spend a year in Russia training with them. Zuma-Sambudla has now filed charges against Khoza, claiming she was duped into recruiting men for what she thought was a legitimate training programme, according to the local media outlet Daily News. Mbambo confirmed the Hawks had also received allegations from Zuma-Sambudla, but would not confirm their contents. Zuma-Sambudla did not respond to a request for comment. Xuma and Khoza could not be reached for comment. Zuma-Sambudla is an MP for her father’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which won 14.6% of the vote in the 2024 national elections after he broke away from the African National Congress party. The 43-year-old is currently on trial on charges of inciting violence via posts on X, then known as Twitter, in deadly riots that broke out in 2021 when her father was sent to jail for contempt of court. She has denied the allegations. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its fourth anniversary, reports have grown of both sides enlisting foreign fighters. Russia has done so on a much bigger scale, amid allegations that they have relied on coercion and deception. There have been numerous reports of Russian state actors and murky intermediaries forcing or duping people from Africa into fighting for them, as well as recruits from India, Nepal, Syria, and Cuba. They are often drawn in by false promises of well-paid non-military jobs advertised on social media. In September, the Ukrainian military released a video of a captured Kenyan fighter who said he had been deceived into fighting for Russia. Meanwhile, thousands of North Korean soldiers have been sent by their government to fight for Russia, with hundreds thought to have died. Ukraine has encouraged foreign volunteers to join its armed forces and recently recruited 2,000 contract soldiers from Colombia. On 6 November the office of South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said it was investigating how 17 men aged 20 to 39 ended up being trapped in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. It said it was working to bring them home after receiving “distress calls for assistance”. The men “were lured to join mercenary forces involved in the Ukraine-Russia war under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts”, the statement said, noting that South Africans are not permitted to assist or fight for foreign militaries without government authorisation. Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya declined to comment further.

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