An Italian court has approved the extradition of a Ukrainian man suspected of taking part in the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, his lawyer confirmed Monday.
The explosions destroyed three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines, which had become a contentious symbol of Germany’s dependence on Russian energy after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
A WARSAW court has thrown out a German attempt to extradite a Ukrainian on charges of blowing up three of the four Nord Stream pipelines supplying gas from Russia to Germany in 2022.
The judge ruled that even if Volodymr Zhuravlyov did it, the act was justified in time of war.
The Germans are not happy. But the Poles are. They have a bit of history with German-Russian pacts and had consistently opposed the construction of Nord Stream. Even Donald Tusk, the most Germanophile prime minister in Polish history, opposed the extradition. ‘The problem with Nord Stream is not that it was blown up, but that it was built,’ Tusk posted on X.
One week ago I had the distinct feeling it was Groundhog Day, or as the Russians call it, Dyen Surka.
Amid US threats to pressure Moscow – by supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine – Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump held a telephone call. The result: the announcement of a US-Russia summit in Budapest.
Last August, amid threats of additional US sanctions against Russia, Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The result: the announcement of a US-Russia summit in Alaska.
Donald Trump’s lead negotiator has been pushing Volodymyr Zelensky to hand over the entire Donetsk region to Russia in order to end the war in Ukraine, it has emerged.
Steve Witkoff, who has met with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, five times this year, told the Ukrainian delegation visiting the White House last Friday to surrender the territory its forces control.
It is one of the key demands made by Putin, who made clear in a phone call with Mr Trump last week that he still wants Ukraine to give up the stretch of land as a precondition for peace, The Washington Post reported.
Ukrainians’ hopes that President Trump might conclusively swing behind their cause have once again been dashed.
On Friday, after a meeting with President Zelensky, Trump said he was looking forward to meeting President Putin and advocating a peace deal that would leave Russia in control of almost a fifth of Ukraine: “Stop at the battle line and both sides should go home, go to their families.”
One British diplomat said: “It’s a powerful reminder that while the Russians can often be crass and clumsy, they can also be unexpectedly nimble. This time, they outmanoeuvred Zelensky, there’s no point trying to pretend otherwise.”
News of the phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, in which they agreed to meet in person to discuss the war in Ukraine, will have come as an unwelcome surprise to Kyiv.
The country is being hit hard.
The last 24 hours alone have seen Russia launch dozens of missiles and more than 300 drones at multiple targets.
Donald Trump has said that he will meet with Vladimir Putin in Hungary to discuss ending the Ukraine war after the two leaders held a phone call on Thursday.
The date is yet to be determined. The call came after Trump threatened to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and as the president prepares to welcome Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Friday.
The US leader posted on his Truth Social platform: ‘I am speaking to President Putin now. The conversation is ongoing, a lengthy one, and I will report the contents, as will President Putin, at its conclusion. Thank you for your attention to this matter!’
Donald Trump has threatened to send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine if Vladimir Putin blocks a peace deal.
Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with the US president in Washington, DC on Friday, following two phone conversations this weekend in which they discussed the long-range missiles.
Provision of Tomahawks, which would theoretically allow Ukraine to strike Moscow and much of western Russia, would mark a major step-up in American support and a hardening of Mr Trump’s stance against Putin.
In several streets of the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, posters appeared in late September showing the image of German prisoners of war from the Second World War alongside the slogan “Nimm deine Revanche” (“Take your revenge”). Accompanied by a QR code, the posters direct readers to the official website of Ukraine’s International Legion, a unit created by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2022 to host foreign fighters against Russia.
Ratio’d
We need Ukraine as much as it needs us. Read my piece in the FT below https://t.co/6vuukmKrJ6
— Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) October 2, 2025
Barely two weeks on the job and Chrystia Freeland is making a global pitch that support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia should be viewed not as charity but a sound investment in the west’s collective strength.
In a Financial Times opinion piece published Wednesday, Freeland, who is Canada’s newly named special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine, said there is a strong geopolitical business case for providing continued financial support to the eastern European country.
“It’s time to stop thinking of Ukraine as a victim and to recognize that it can be a victor,” the former deputy prime minister and transport minister wrote.
Germany is seeking to extradite a Ukrainian man arrested in Poland on suspicion of diving down to the Baltic sea bed to plant explosives in the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack.
The man, identified in Polish media reports as Volodymyr Z and by Germany as Vladimir Z, is described as a trained diver and is sought by investigators in Germany, who believe he was part of a group that sabotaged the pipeline, consisting of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.
“He was part of a group of people who placed explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines near the island of Bornholm in September 2022,” Germany’s federal court of justice said. “The accused participated in the necessary dives.”
Until recently, when Russian drones strayed into Nato airspace during mass attacks on Ukraine, fighter jets would scramble, not to shoot them down, but to watch. The allies tracked the drones as they flew across the Nato border, either jammed off course or deliberately redirected to confuse Ukrainian air defences. In both cases, if the drones didn’t crash into a field somewhere in Romania or Poland, they always made it back to bomb Ukrainians, under the close watch of Nato’s best pilots on fully loaded warplanes.
In the eyes of Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky was once the wartime leader without any cards to play.
Yet after a private meeting between the two presidents on Wednesday, the American proclaimed Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN”.
A short time earlier, Mr Zelensky said he had some “good news” from the battlefield to share with Mr Trump.
The US president appeared to agree, describing a Russian economy in freefall and praising the strength of Ukraine’s armed forces for resisting an invasion that should have ended in victory within four days.
Ukrainians who fled war in their country for safety in Canada now find themselves in a bureaucratic bind, as many encounter delays in renewing Canadian study and work permits, and face obstacles to renewing their Ukrainian passports.
Almost 300,000 Ukrainians came to Canada after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, under a program allowing an unlimited number of Ukrainian fleeing the war to work, study and stay in Canada for up to three years.
… But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has indicated to Ottawa that his government would like Ukrainians who fled here to go back and help rebuild.
In other news (completely unrelated I’m sure to the appointment of a brand new special envoy dedicated to the reconstruction of Ukraine), earlier in 2025, the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund was created. Among the companies mentioned was a familiar Canadian one -… pic.twitter.com/FAhb5NZbZ2
— Andy Lee (@RealAndyLeeShow) September 17, 2025
The Forever War Grift paid for with Canadian Tax Dollars.
Why should we foot the bill for a war that even Ukrainians don’t want to fight?
h/t Mauser
