Event: Russia

A U.S. military ​transport plane landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo ‌airport on Tuesday (August 25, 2026), data from ​the flight tracking service ⁠Flightradar24 showed.The large Boeing Globemaster with the U.S. registered tail number 07-7181 ‌had flown direct from Riga, in Latvia, and ‌landed in Moscow at around ‌0700 ⁠GMT.Reuters was unable to ⁠verify whether it carried any cargo or passengers.The Kremlin said it had ​no information ‌on the plane.The aircraft had arrived in Riga on August 23 from the U.S. Camp ‌Springs airbase near Washington DC, ​data from Flightradar24 showed.The last direct flight of ⁠a U.S. registered jet to Russia from Europe took place in ‌January this year, carrying special envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner for peace talks with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine.The Kremlin said last week that ‌there was no information yet on another ​visit to Moscow by Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff, as ⁠talks between the U.S. and Russia ⁠on Ukraine have largely stalled amid the war in ‌Iran. Published - August 25, 2026 07:53 pm IST

AI models trained on Ukrainian battlefield data will be used to stop protesters and foreign states targeting UK defence sites, railways and energy plants under a deal struck between London and Kyiv.Private companies will also be given access to the vast trove of data from Ukraine’s Avengers AI lab to help build new systems, the first agreement of its kind in the UK.The scheme will be piloted at a UK defence site, building a model to identify protesters or a hostile-state attack. It uses AI-optimised sensors in buried fibre-optic cables to detect different kinds of movement.The government has suggested the technology, if proven workable, could be used at airports, prisons, railways and energy infrastructure.The controversial proscription of the activist group Palestine Action was sparked after the group breached RAF Brize Norton on scooters last June, a highly embarrassing security lapse as a result of which the group was able to deface two military aircraft with spray paint before escaping the site without being detained.Palestine Action said at the time that it had targeted RAF Voyager aircraft used for transport and refuelling, and that “activists have interrupted Britain’s direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East”.Private companies will be able to access the data once approved by the MoD on a secure platform, though the data sharing is likely to raise alarm among privacy campaigners.Pilot projects have already been approved with three British AI companies – Sintela, Mind Foundry and Skyral. Sintela, a Bristol-based company that specialises in fibre-optic sensors, recently struck a $35m (£26m) deal with the Trump administration to provide surveillance on the US-Mexico border.The partnership with the Ukrainian AI lab means new UK security systems can be trained on operational drone datasets, strike mission footage and flight profiles, likely to include Russian…

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar shake hands during their meeting at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow, on August 24, 2026. | Photo Credit: AP Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday (August 24, 2026) said that he plans to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to be held at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He made the remarks at the meeting with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who called on Mr. Putin in the Kremlin.“At the beginning of our conversation, I would like to ask you to convey my very best wishes to Mr. Modi. I hope to see him soon, as we planned, as part of our work within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation,” said President Putin, further clarifying that he is expecting to meet Mr. Modi for the annual summit to be held later this year. He said “it looks like our schedules may also allow us to meet again this year”.At the meeting in Kremlin, Mr. Jaishankar briefed the Russian President about his meetings in Moscow and said: “Prime Minister Modi looks forward to meeting you at the SCO summit, then welcoming you to India for the BRICS Summit, and, in due course, as per your mutual convenience, having the annual summit, so we have a very strong picture of cooperation to present.”Mr. Jaishankar handed over a personal message from the Prime Minister to Mr. Putin.The External Affairs Minister also co-chaired the 27th India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation with First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov. “Our discussions focused on our wide-ranging cooperation in trade, investments, energy, fertilisers, nuclear, connectivity, technology, space and mobility domains,” said Mr. Jaishankar after the meeting with Mr. Manturov and his team. He said…

Sick of getting unsolicited beauty tips on social media, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, rebuffed a male cosmetic surgeon’s offer to “fix” her and advised women in similar situations to embrace self-acceptance.Frederiksen, a Social Democrat and Denmark’s second female prime minister, posted on Instagram that she had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, where she was subjected to air raid sirens, when she found a message proposing some help with her appearance.She included a screenshot of the exchange in which the doctor, who was not identified, said he could “fix that little spot on your nose”.Her retort was swift and pointed: “Oh no. I’m happy with my body – I really don’t need a male plastic surgeon to have an opinion about it!”Frederiksen, who has led the EU and Nato member country since 2019 and is one of Europe’s longest-serving heads of government, said being a woman in the public eye meant regular exposure to such unwanted and superficial scrutiny.“I’ve lost count of how many messages I’ve received over the years about my appearance,” the 48-year-old wrote. “Especially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair. That I have an ugly ‘wart’ on my nose and well-meaning advice to get some Botox.”Frederiksen’s global profile has grown this year as she stood up to US president’s repeated claims on Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory. She is also a staunch supporter of Ukraine against the Russian onslaught.In a moment of striking candour, Frederiksen admitted annoyance with pushy beauty advice while offering her own guidance how to deal with it.She said she did not volunteer opinions about other people’s looks and said that “I’m perfectly fine with my body – as it is when you’re a woman approaching 50.”Frederiksen said she was fine to stay in conversation with the public on…

The UK has handed secret blueprints to Ukraine that will allow the country to build its own long-range cruise missiles.The announcement came during Andy Burnham's first visit to Kyiv as prime minster, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.But faced with an almost daily barrage of Russian ballistic missiles, correspondent Joe Inwood explains why the offer may not be enough to win the war.

Warehouses belonging to Russia's second-largest online retailer have been hit by a wave of Ukrainian drone strikes.Ozon said its logistics facilities in the southern regions of Krasnodar, Dagestan, Stavropol and Adygea were on fire and several people had been injured following overnight strikes.Ukraine has for weeks struck sites belonging to Wildberries, the country's biggest online retailer, describing the firm as a legitimate target because it supplied components to the military, which Moscow denies.Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Ukraine had opened "Pandora's box" by striking economic targets and that Russia would hit back at Kyiv's "most sensitive economic sectors".Russia has targeted Ukraine's civilian infrastructure since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022, and recent Russian attacks have hit Ukrainian warehouses and cargo terminals.Both Russia and Ukraine deny deliberately targeting civilians.Ozon said "a fire broke out" at a logistics centre in Makhachkala, in the southern region of Dagestan, following a drone attack at around 05:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Monday.The company said earlier that a "major fire" was burning at one of its logistics centres in the city of Krasnodar, 700km (435 miles) to the east of the Dagestan site.Russia's defence ministry said three children had been killed in Krasnodar following a Ukrainian drone attack. Russia's children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said they were aged 13, 15 and 16, while six more children had been taken to hospital.Meanwhile, Ozon workers in Adygeysk, in the Adygea region, and Nevinnomyssk, in the Stavropol region, have been evacuated.Videos posted on social media of the Ozon attacks have been verified by the BBC. One shows a drone hitting a warehouse in the Orenburg region, while another shows a large plume of smoke and flames rising from its warehouse in Dagestan.Shares in Ozon fell by as much as 12% on the Moscow Exchange on…