The U.S. is offering Ukraine security guarantees similar to those it would receive as part of NATO, American officials said Monday. The offer is the strongest and most explicit security pledge the Trump administration has put forward for Ukraine, but it comes with an implicit ultimatum: Take it now or the next iteration won’t be as generous. The proposal of so-called Article 5-like guarantees comes amid marathon talks among special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Ukrainian and European officials in Berlin as Washington tries to pressure Kyiv into accepting terms that will end the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and many European leaders have been reluctant to reach a deal without an explicit U.S. security guarantee, fearful that Russia, after a period of time, would attack again. This latest U.S. offer appears to be an effort to assuage those concerns but also to push Zelenskyy to act quickly. “The basis of that agreement is basically to have really, really strong guarantees, Article 5-like,” a senior U.S. official said. “Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now if there’s a conclusion that’s reached in a good way.” President Donald Trump said later Monday that he had spoken with Zelenskyy and European leaders by phone. Trump also said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but did not say when. “I think we’re closer now than we have been ever, and we’ll see what we can do,” Trump told reporters at the White House. Asked if the offer for security guarantees had a time limit, he said “the time limit is whenever we can get it done.” The discussions over the weekend largely focused on detailing the security guarantees that the U.S. and Europe would provide Ukraine, but they also included territory and other matters. Witkoff and Kushner were joined by Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command as well as the top commander for NATO. The U.S. expects that Russia would accept such an arrangement in a final deal, as well as permit Ukraine to join the European Union. That could prove to be an overly optimistic assessment, given the Kremlin’s refusal to give ground in peace talks so far. And Moscow has yet to weigh in on any of the new agreements being worked out in Europe over the last few days. “We believe the Russians, in a final deal, will accept all these things which allow for a strong and free Ukraine. Russia, in a final deal, has indicated they were open to Ukraine joining the EU,” a second U.S. official said. Both officials were granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations. It was not clear when or how the Trump administration would bring the new details to Moscow. Russia expects the U.S. side will update it on the talks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. He added Putin “is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.” The Kremlin said Monday it expected to be updated on the Berlin talks by the U.S. side. Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a “thankless task.” The second U.S. official said the Ukrainian delegation was pleasantly “surprised” by Trump’s willingness to agree to firmer security guarantees and to have them ratified by Congress so that they will endure beyond his presidency. The U.S. side also spoke highly of its European counterparts, who have been worried for months that the Trump team would force Ukraine to agree to unfavorable conditions. European officials also sounded upbeat. “The legal and material security guarantees that the U.S. has put on the table here in Berlin are remarkable,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters during a press conference after the talks Monday. Merz, along with his counterparts from Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, U.K., Sweden and the EU put out a statement welcoming “significant progress” in the U.S. effort and committing to helping Ukraine to end the war and deter Russian aggression, including through a European-led multinational force for Ukraine supported by the U.S. Over the weekend Zelenskyy conceded that Ukraine would not seek NATO membership, a condition that Russia has repeatedly sought. Trump, who skipped this week’s meetings in Berlin but has been briefed twice by Witkoff and Kushner, planned to call into a dinner Monday for attending heads of state, foreign ministers and security officials, the U.S. officials said. “He’s really pleased with where [things] are,” the first U.S. official said. Witkoff and Kushner also sought to narrow disputes between Ukraine and Russia over what territory Moscow would control in a final deal. Russia has so far insisted on controlling Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, even parts that Moscow hasn’t captured. One of the U.S. officials said the talks focused on many of the specific territorial considerations, stating that there is a proposal in the works but yet to be finalized for Russia and Ukraine to split control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with each country having access to half of the energy produced by the plant. But the American officials mostly avoided specifics on how they aimed to bridge other gaps on territorial disputes. They said they left Zelenskyy with “thought-provoking ideas” on how to do so. After Zelenskyy responds to the proposals, Witkoff and Kushner will discuss the matter with Russia. “We feel really good about the progress that we’ve made, including on territories,” the first official said. Next the U.S. will convene working groups, likely in Miami this weekend, where military officials will pore over maps to solve the remaining territorial issues. “We believe that we have probably solved for … 90 percent of the issues between Ukraine and Russia, but there’s some more things that have to be worked out,” the first U.S. official said. Hans Joachim Von Der Burchard in Berlin contributed to this report.

BELÉM, Brazil — Gavin Newsom can’t get out of a meeting or a talk at the international climate talks here without being swarmed by reporters and diplomats eager for a quote, a handshake, a photo. On a tour Tuesday of a cultural center with Gov. Helder Barbalho, the leader of the Brazilian state hosting the talks, a passerby recognized them both. “There’s the governor,” he exclaimed. “And there’s the California governor.” Later in the day, as Newsom rode up an escalator packed with reporters and international officials on his way to deliver a speech, a bystander shouted: “The escalator’s not broken for you!” — a dig at President Donald Trump, who once had an escalator malfunction on him at the United Nations. Newsom grinned wide: “Oh, I like that.” The adulation was gold for a governor with presidential aspirations as he steps into a power vacuum. The Trump administration is trying to dismantle climate policies both at home and abroad, and other likely Democratic presidential contenders are absent from the United Nations climate talks. Seeing a chance to plant his green flag on an international stage, Newsom is embracing the role of climate champion as his own party backs away at home and the politics of the issue shift rightward. It’s a role fitting Newsom’s instincts: anti-Trump, pro-environment and pro-technology, and with a political antenna for the upside of picking fights, finding opportunity in defiance. “We’re at peak influence because of the flatness of the surrounding terrain with the Trump administration and all the anxiety,” he told POLITICO from the sidelines of a green investor conference in Brazil on Monday. Newsom’s profile has never been higher. Just days before traveling to Brazil, he celebrated a decisive win in his redistricting campaign to boost Democrats in the midterms. He is polling at or near the top of presidential primary shortlists, and is amassing an army of small-dollar donors across the states. The governor couldn’t walk down the hallway at the conference without getting swarmed, undeniably the star of the talks on their second formal day. At one point, security officials had to physically shove away one man repeatedly. Conference attendees yelled out “Keep up the social media!” and “Go Gavin!” (and the occasional “Who is that?”). The first question by the Brazilian press: Are you running for president? And from business people: Are you coming back? Yet in touching down here — and in emphasizing his climate advocacy more broadly — Newsom is assuming a significant risk to his post-gubernatorial ambitions. The rest of the world may wish America were more like California, but the country itself — even Democrats who will decide the 2028 primary — are far more skeptical. What looks like courage abroad can read as out-of-touch back home, in a country where voters, including Democrats, routinely rank any number of issues, including the economy, health care, and cost-of-living, as more pressing than global warming. THE STAGE IS SET Other blue states were already backing away from Newsom’s gas-powered vehicle phase-out even before Congress and Trump ended it this summer, and another possible Democratic contender for president, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, may pull his state out of a regional emissions trading market as part of a budget deal, a move seen as tempering attacks from the right on climate. Even in California, where a new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace poll finds that Californians increasingly want their state government to play a bigger role on the international stage, trade trumped climate change as voters’ top priority for international talks for the first time this year. “There’s not a poll or a pundit that suggests that Democrats should be talking about this,” Newsom acknowledged in an interview. “I’m not naive to that either, but I think it’s the way we talk about it that’s the bigger issue, and I think all of us, including myself, need to improve on that and that’s what I aim to do.” In his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden prevailed not after embracing — but rather, distancing himself from — the “Green New Deal,” which Newsom acknowledged this month had become a “pejorative” on the right. Four years later, Trump pilloried Kamala Harris in the general election for her past positions on climate change. Newsom is already facing relentless attacks from the right on energy: two years ago, in what was seen at the time as a shadow presidential debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was skewering Newsom for his phase-out of gas-powered vehicles: “He is walking his people into a big-time disaster,” DeSantis said. And that was before Republicans began combing Newsom’s social media posts for material to weaponize in future ads. Even Newsom’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who made climate change his signature issue, acknowledged “climate is not the big issue in South Carolina or in Maine or in Iowa.” “Climate is important,” Brown said in an interview. “But it’s not like immigration, it’s not like homelessness, it’s not like taxes, it’s not like inflation, not like the price of a house.” Still, Brown cast climate as an existential issue. “It’s way beyond presidential politics. It is about our survival and your well being for the rest of your life,” he said. “I think he’s doing it because he thinks it’s profoundly important, and certainly politics is not divorced entirely from reality.” Newsom’s inner circle senses a political upside, too. His first-ever visit to the climate talks comes not just from his own or California’s ambitions, but from the vacuum left by Trump. “The more that Trump recedes, like a tide going out, the more coral is exposed. And that’s where Newsom can really flourish,” said Jason Elliott, a former deputy chief of staff and an adviser since Newsom’s early days in elected office. Newsom is “going against the grain,” he continued. “It’s easier to be some of these purple or red state governors in other places in the United States that just wash their hands of EVs the minute that the going gets tough. But that’s just not Newsom.” On climate, Newsom’s attempts to stand alone sit well within the California tradition. Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger — the Democrat and the Republican who preceded him — both made international climate diplomacy central to their legacies. “We have been at this for decades and decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations,” Newsom said. “That’s an important message at this time as well, because we’re so unreliable as a nation, and we’re destroying alliances and relationships.” Also in Brazil for part of the talks were Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, both Democrats, and mayors of several major U.S. cities, like Kate Gallego of Phoenix. But their pitch didn’t land with quite the same heft as California’s, a state filled with billion-dollar tech companies that, as Newsom frequently boasts, recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. He attributed his environmental streak to his family, citing his father, William Newsom, a judge and longtime conservationist. As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation composting mandate and plastic bag ban. As lieutenant governor to Brown, Newsom called himself “a solution in search of a problem” because Brown had embraced climate so prominently. But Brown said Newsom has made the issue his own. “I think Newsom comes to this naturally,” he said. Newsom pulls from a wide range of influences; prolific texting buddies include former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who ran for president largely on a climate platform, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. He frequently cites the example of President Ronald Reagan, the Republican — and former California governor — who embraced an environmental agenda. “I talk to everybody,” Newsom said. He spoke in almost spiritual terms about his upcoming trip deeper into the Amazon, where he’s scheduled to meet with community stewards and walk through the forest. “When we were all opening up those first books, learning geography, one of the first places we all learn about is the Amazon,” he said. “It’s so iconic, so evocative, so it informs so much of what inspires us as children to care about the Earth and Mother Nature. It connects us to our creator.” THE MID-TRANSITION HURT As governor, Newsom hasn’t had the luxury his predecessors enjoyed of setting ambitious emissions targets, but instead is working in a period beset by natural disasters and tensions with both the left and moderate wings of his party. His aides have dubbed it the remarkably un-sexy “mid-transition”: The deadlines to show results are here, they’re out of reach — and in the interim, voters are mad about energy prices. As a result, he’s pushed to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and directed billions toward wildfire prevention and clean-energy manufacturing — but also reversed past positions against nuclear and Big Oil, including extending the life of California’s last nuclear power plant, pausing a profit cap on refineries and expanding oil drilling in Kern County. Inside the administration, those moves are seen as not a tempering of environmental ambition but a pragmatic recalibration. “We’re transitioning to the other side, and there’s a lot of white water in that. And that’s reality. You’ve got to deal with cards that are dealt,” Newsom said in an interview in São Paulo. But it also exposes him to criticism from both the left and moderate wings of his own party. Newsom’s 2023 speech excoriating oil companies to the United Nations in New York City was one of his proudest moments of his career. This year, he faced banners attacking him: “If you can’t take on Big Oil, can you take on Trump?” At the same time, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, has seized on high gas prices in his campaign to succeed Newsom as governor in 2026 — and is partly blaming past governors’ climate policies. Adding to the crunch are the record-setting wildfires that have beset Newsom’s tenure as governor. They’ve not only devastated communities from Paradise in Northern California to Altadena in Los Angeles County but buoyed both electricity prices as utilities spend billions on fire-proofing their grid and property insurance prices as insurers flee the state. It’s this duality that informs Newsom’s approach. “We’ve got to address costs or we’ll lose the debate,” Newsom said. “This is the hard part.” A business moderate known to hand out personal phones programmed with his number to tech CEOs, Newsom is now pitching his climate fight as one focused on economic competitiveness and jobs. Lauren Sanchez, the chair of the state’s powerful air and climate agency, the California Air Resources Board, called the state’s international leadership the governor’s “north star” on climate change. “He is in the business of ensuring that California is relevant in the future economy,” she said. In Brazil, Newsom made the time to stop by a global investors summit in São Paulo, where he held an hour-long roundtable with green bankers, philanthropists and energy execs. They told him they wanted his climate pacts with Brazilian governments to do more on economic ties. So, Newsom said, he started drafting a new agreement there and then, throwing a paper napkin on the table in reference to the cocktail napkin deal that formed Southwest. “Let’s get this done before I leave,” Newsom said he told his Brazilian counterparts. “We move quickly.” If the moment reflected California’s swagger, it also laid bare its limitations. The Constitution limits states from contributing money to international funds, like the tropical rainforest preservation fund that is the Brazilians’ signature proposal at the talks. And even at home, Trump is still making Newsom’s balancing act hard: Newsom floated backfilling the Trump administration’s removal of electric vehicle incentives with state rebates, then backtracked, conceding the state doesn’t have enough funds. And on Tuesday, reports came out that the Trump administration was planning to offer offshore oil and gas leases for the first time in decades off the coast of California — putting Newsom on the defensive. Newsom called those plans “dead on arrival.” “I also think it remarkable that he didn’t promote it in his backyard at Mar-a-Lago; he didn’t promote it off the coast of Florida,” Newsom added.

NEWPORT, Wales — Road signs around Newport still refer to this sprawling former industrial site as a radiator factory. But soon, it will generate a different kind of heat. Microsoft has chosen this area of South Wales — once the world’s steel capital — to build hulking new data centers. Five buildings, covering an area larger than three football pitches, are springing up to meet what the company describes as “exploding demand” for artificial intelligence compute power.  For Microsoft, the area’s industrial heritage is precisely why it’s investing. Newport’s legacy of heavy-duty factories means it has the infrastructure needed for energy-intensive data centers. But doubts over whether Britain can supply enough energy to keep up with demand from data centers are an urgent problem for the government’s AI ambitions. The government’s former AI adviser Matt Clifford has warned that without energy and planning reform, new data center projects and the billions of pounds of investment they bring are at risk.  Britain’s industrial electricity prices are 60 percent higher than the average of countries in the International Energy Agency, and waits for a grid connection can stretch to a decade.  “We had the biggest AI funders in the world lining up to invest tens of billions into our infrastructure if only we could sort out our energy mess,” Clifford said at an event about his time in No.10. U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens, Donald Trump’s point man in London, is also watching closely, calling Britain’s energy costs the country’s “chief obstacle” to growth. “If there are not major reforms to U.K. energy policy, then the U.K.’s position as a premier destination in the global economy is vulnerable,” Stephens warned a business gathering in London. A TALL ORDER The Newport project will need 80MW of energy – enough to power a small town – but the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) predicts the country needs to boost its total data center capacity five-fold by 2035, from 1.8GW to 9.6GW. That expansion will mean data centers’ power total demand will treble over the same period, according to NESO, the body which manages U.K. electricity demand. A spokesperson for the DSIT said it was looking at “bespoke options” to support data centers’ energy demands, adding: “The work of our AI Energy Council — bringing together regulators, energy companies and tech firms — will ensure we can do that using responsible, sustainable sources.” AI Minister Kanishka Narayan told a conference for AI researchers in London in October that there was “no better place to build” than Britain, arguing its combination of talent, access to capital and large public markets is unmatched. Investors aren’t so sure.  “People aren’t willing to pay a premium on U.K. power rates to run their workloads here,” Mike Mattacola, international general manager at AI infrastructure company CoreWeave said at the same conference. “We need to fix that.” SELLING THE SHOVELS It’s not just energy prices that are the problem. The boss of Hitachi Energy U.K., which is working with the National Grid to upgrade Britain’s power network, warned that the grid is the biggest hurdle to Britain’s AI ambitions. Laura Fleming said data centers should be at “the heart” of the country’s energy planning, but added: “I’m still not sure whether as the U.K. we have sufficiently planned for this.”  More than half all applications for a grid connection are now made by data centers, according to the National Grid. Energy regulator Ofgem is trying to get a grip of things, grumbling that amid the “credible data center projects” applying for a grid connection, they want to get rid of “less viable projects that may crowd out those with genuine merit.” Power providers, meantime, are lining up to find the opportunities in this uncertainty. Two hundred miles to the north of Newport, the U.K.’s largest power station is offering itself as one solution. Drax Power Station burns wood pellets imported from North America and wants to build data centers hooked up to its four biomass terminals.  Richard Gwilliam, director of future operations, revealed that Drax has already held talks with hyperscalers and plans to bring a data center online in the early 2030s. He hoped the 2.6-gigawatt power station could offer “big scale stuff” to the market. Gwilliam also said the existing connections gave biomass a trump card to play in the data center race. SQUARING THE CIRCLE The rush for power is also clashing with Britain’s net zero ambitions. The most in-demand energy source for data centers is still fossil fuels, specifically gas. National Gas said it has had inquiries from five big data center projects since last November, equivalent to 2.5GW worth of energy capacity, or twice the capacity of Britain’s biggest nuclear power station, Sizewell B.  Its chief commercial officer, Ian Radley, argued gas provided customers with “the flexibility and capacity they need to enable the Government’s strategic AI ambitions.”  But environmental groups point out that the surge in carbon emissions from new data centers have not been factored in to the  U.K.’s Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, which sets out a path for the government to hit legally-binding climate goals up to 2037.  “It’s unclear how the government intends to square the circle of encouraging a construction frenzy of new, highly polluting data centers while not overshooting the binding climate targets they need to meet,” said Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at campaign group Foxglove. This tension is also being played out at the AI Energy Council, a body the government formed in January to bring AI and energy companies together, but which has only met twice.  It is co-chaired by two ministers with different priorities. Ed Miliband, as energy secretary, needs to cut Britain’s emissions to zero by 2050, while Technology Secretary Liz Kendall needs to turn AI’s promises of investment and growth, particularly to left-behind areas, into a reality.  The government has pushed the idea AI Growth Zones — huge data center campuses on former industrial land, which already have grid connections and will get fast-tracked through planning — as a solution. One has already been announced in Northumberland, but a decision on a second, planned for Teesside in north-east England, has been delayed until the end of this year by Miliband, whose department has to make a call on whether to greenlight plans for a hydrogen plant on the same site, which could preclude data centers being built there. “There is a large fight going on inside of government where Ed Miliband seems to have set himself up against not just the prime minister, but a number of secretaries of state,” Houchen told POLITICO during Conservative Party Conference in October.  THE NUCLEAR OPTION Long term, the government is betting on a cleaner, but more expensive energy source — nuclear, specifically small modular reactors. Michael Jenner, CEO of nuclear firm Last Energy UK, said they had received dozens of enquiries from data center builders and argued that the green credentials of nuclear was an ace card it could play against rival bids from gas companies.   “If you’re thinking about building data centers in South Wales, which a lot of people are, you have a problem with the authorities because they don’t want new gas there,” he said.  In September, EDF Energy announced plans to work with American company Holtec International building a crop of data centers next to small modular nuclear reactors at a disused coal plant in Nottinghamshire.  The Tony Blair Institute, which is influential with government ministers, has argued nuclear has a “unique” advantage when it comes to data centers. It also believes the country should scale back its net zero plans in favor of reducing energy costs to attract data center investment.  “Cheap, firm power is … not a ‘nice to have’ but a prerequisite for attracting AI-driven growth,” it argued in a report last month. Gas, meanwhile, should be part of that energy mix, the Institute recommended in July. Firms represented at the AI Energy Council have urged ministers to green-light greater use of gas turbines in the short term. The clock is ticking. Gas, nuclear, renewables or even wooden pellets — ministers willing on an AI revolution need to make decisions fast.  

KYIV — Top corruption watchdogs said they carried out dozens of raids Monday across Ukraine during an investigation into the energy sector. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) are probing top officials at Ukraine’s state energy companies, including nuclear energy operator Energoatom. Searches took place two days after Russia launched its largest attack yet against the Ukrainian energy system, including nuclear plants and electric substations, and hammered power operator Сentrеgenergo’s electricity-generating capacity. Lengthy blackouts are still occurring throughout the country, as authorities struggle to restore power, while Ukrainians question whether energy facilities were properly protected from Russian attacks. NABU said its 15-month investigation and 1,000 hours of wiretapping involving the bureau’s entire staff culminated Monday in 70 raids. Some of the wiretappings were from July, the same month Ukraine’s government and parliament tried to strip NABU of its independence and bring it under political control, citing Russian influence on the bureau — in a move that was later reversed following nationwide protests. NABU refused to reveal the names of the main suspects in the corruption probe, but said there were noted businesspeople and energy officials among the alleged perpetrators.  The main goal of the scheme they co-organized, according to NABU, was to obtain illegal benefits amounting to 10-15 percent of a state contract value — theoretically running into the millions of euros — from counterparts of Energoatom, including companies involved in building protective structures for energy infrastructure. Energoatom declined to comment due to the ongoing investigation.

Five drones were spotted flying over Belgium’s Doel nuclear power plant near the Port of Antwerp on Sunday evening, energy company Engie said. “Initially we had detected three drones, but then we saw five drones. They were up in the air for about an hour,” Engie spokesperson Hellen Smeets told POLITICO Monday morning. The first report of the three drones came shortly before 10 p.m. on Sunday, Smeet said, adding that the sightings had no impact on the plant operations. Belgium’s national Crisis Center, which is currently monitoring the situation, confirmed the incident. Earlier in the evening, air traffic at Liège Airport was briefly suspended after multiple drone reports, with flights halted around 7:30 p.m. and resuming less than an hour later. The latest incidents comes amid a surge of drone activity disrupting key infrastructure across Belgium. Airports in Brussels and Liège faced repeated interruptions last week, while drones were also spotted over military bases and the Port of Antwerp. Belgium held a National Security Council meeting Thursday, after which Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said that authorities had the situation “under control.” While the government has avoided attributing blame, Belgium’s intelligence services suspect foreign hands, with Moscow seen as the most likely source, according to local media. Defense Minister Theo Francken said Saturday that “Russia is clearly a plausible suspect.” On Sunday, the U.K. announced it will join France and Germany in sending personnel and equipment to help Belgium counter drone incursions around sensitive sites.

Several Ukrainian regions suffered power outages on Sunday after Russia launched what the state grid operator called the “most massive strike” against Ukraine’s power plants since the beginning of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country. Kyiv responded with a counterattack of drones overnight into Sunday, targeting energy infrastructure and leaving the Russian city of Voronezh and around 20,000 people without electricity, Reuters and AFP reported. Ukraine’s grid operator said the Russian strikes hit its energy plants continually from Friday into Saturday, and the country’s generation capacity was “zero” on Saturday. The Russian assault included hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles. “We lost everything we were restoring 24 hours a day! Every time the enemy strikes even more brutally, even more cynically,” the operator said in a post on Facebook. The company scheduled power cuts that can last up to 16 hours in some regions, as it works to repair the power supply. “Emergency power cuts have been introduced in a number of regions of Ukraine,” Energy Minister Svitlana Vasylivna Hrynchuk said on Telegram. They “will be canceled after the situation in the power system stabilizes.” The main targets of the attack were the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions, according to the Ukrainian air force. The Russian strikes have targeted energy, heat and water supplies in many Ukrainian cities, as well as the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear plants, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said. “Russia is deliberately endangering nuclear safety in Europe. We call for an urgent meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors to respond to these unacceptable risks,” Sybiha wrote on X.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered top officials to come up with proposals for the potential resumption of nuclear testing for the first time since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump instructed the Pentagon to “immediately” start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with nuclear testing programs in other nations. Putin, speaking at Russia’s Security Council, told the country’s foreign and defense ministers, its special services and the relevant civilian agencies to study the matter and “submit coordinated proposals on the possible commencement of work to prepare for nuclear weapons testing.” Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin at the meeting that it would be “appropriate to immediately begin preparations for full-scale nuclear tests.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later clarified that “the president did not give the order to begin preparations for the test” but merely ordered a feasibility study. Russia announced last week that it had successfully tested a nuclear-powered torpedo, dubbed Poseidon, that was capable of damaging entire coastal regions as well as a new cruise missile named the Burevestnik, prompting Trump to respond. The U.S. today launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, Minuteman III, in a routine test. The Cold War was characterized by an intense nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the superpowers competed for superiority by stockpiling and developing nuclear weapons. It ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of nuclear treaties such as START, which aimed to reduce and control nuclear arsenals. The Soviet Union conducted its last test in 1990 and the U.S. in 1992. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin at the meeting that it would be “appropriate to immediately begin preparations for full-scale nuclear tests.” | Contributor/Getty Images A report this year by the SIPRI think tank warned that the global stockpile of nuclear weapons is increasing, with all nine nuclear-armed states — the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea — upgrading existing weapons and adding new versions to their stockpiles.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Gesetze abschaffen statt neue schaffen: Das Kabinett hat sich ganz dem Thema Bürokratieabbau verschrieben. Acht Gesetzesentwürfe sollen 100 Millionen Euro sparen. Rixa Fürsen spricht mit Rasmus Buchsteiner darüber, wie realistisch dieses Ziel ist, warum Digitalminister Karsten Wildberger zufrieden wirkt und weshalb Industrie und Wirtschaft deutlich mehr erwarten. Danach geht es um Energiepolitik. Gemeinsam mit Josh Groeneveld aus dem POLITICO Energie & Klima-Team geht Rixa der Frage nach, ob Deutschland wirklich ein Comeback der Atomenergie plant. Nach Aussagen von IAEA-Chef Rafael Grossi soll Wirtschaftsministerin Katharina Reiche Interesse an kleinen modularen Reaktoren signalisiert haben. Offiziell dementiert die Bundesregierung, aber die Debatte könnte damit zurückkehren. Das Probe-Abo unseres POLITICO-Newsletters PRO Energie & Klima am Morgen findet ihr hier. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

President Donald Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea on Oct. 30, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. The president will participate in a bilateral meeting with the Chinese leader at the end of a trip through three countries in Asia. She did not provide any details on the content of the meeting. While Trump said weeks ago that he would meet with Xi at the APEC summit, no date had been announced. The meeting would be Thursday morning local time in Busan, South Korea. On Wednesday, Trump predicted that the two leaders would come to agreements on everything from trade to nuclear power. He also plans to address China’s purchase of Russian oil. Trade tensions between the two nations have flared in recent weeks after Trump announced 100 percent tariffs on Chinese exports, which are set to take effect two days after the leaders meet. Trump’s pledge came after China announced newly imposed export-controls on rare earth metals and related technology in electronics and military goods. The new U.S. tariffs would be “over and above any Tariff” that China is already paying, Trump wrote in a social media post earlier this month. Trump added Wednesday that his priority is to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Xi “would now like to see that war end,” the president said. It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders since 2019, when the two met in Japan at the G20 summit. Leavitt added that Trump will also participate in bilateral meetings with the leaders of Malaysia, Japan and South Korea during the trip.

BRUSSELS — The EU is bracing for national leaders to vent their concerns about its green agenda — and hoping it doesn’t turn into an outright rebellion. On Thursday, the 27 heads of state and government will have their say on a new target for slashing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by 2040, a core promise of Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president. It’s a critical balancing act for von der Leyen. She is looking for a way to appease the economic and political concerns of a growing number of EU members without allowing them to erode a set of stringent climate laws she built during her first five years leading the EU executive. Von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa “are responsible for the success” of Thursday’s summit, said Linda Kalcher, director of the Brussels-based Strategic Perspectives think tank. “It’s in their interest to manage the debate well and avoid unravelling with leaders opening the Pandora’s box to weaken laws.”  The discussion is meant to break a stalemate that is holding up an agreement on the new climate goal, but could just as easily lead to demands to weaken the policies designed to cut pollution.  In an effort to preempt such demands, von der Leyen this week offered a slate of concessions — vowing to tweak existing climate laws to address governments’ economic concerns, but without substantially weakening the measures. The question is whether that will prove enough.  SEARCHING FOR INCENTIVES Von der Leyen has already spent much of her second term chipping away at green laws she proposed over the previous five years, slashing requirements for companies and promising more flexible rules. Those efforts have been balanced, however, with her desire to protect the core of the bloc’s mission to zero out climate-warming pollution by 2050. Her proposed 2040 target also grants significant leeway to governments, even allowing them to outsource a portion of the required emissions cuts abroad. To date, this approach hasn’t placated leaders. Ahead of Thursday’s summit, 19 countries were calling for even more deregulation from the Commission. A vocal contingent — including Poland’s Donald Tusk and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni — have made far-reaching demands that the bloc’s existing measures be weakened, in return for even considering supporting the 2040 goal.  Leaders are not expected to spend much time discussing the actual target, although some countries that are unhappy with the Commission’s proposal — a plan to cut emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040 — are bound to vent their frustration.  Costa, who chairs the discussion, has instead asked leaders to discuss how the bloc can marry climate efforts with economic competitiveness.  Ursula von der Leyen has already spent much of her second term chipping away at green laws she proposed over the previous five years. | Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images Both he and von der Leyen were unwilling to debate the target itself, according to one diplomat from an EU country and a European official briefed on the preparations for Thursday’s summit.  But his invitation to leaders to outline their conditions for supporting the 2040 target risks “a Christmas tree” effect, the diplomat said, where each leader hitches their own pet policies to the target.  The diplomat, who was granted anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the summit, added that French President Emmanuel Macron — who pushed for the leaders’ debate — was seen as pivotal.  The Commission has offered France significant concessions for backing the 2040 target, including a large hike on steel tariffs. The attitude Macron brings to the summit could make or break the talks, the diplomat warned. Other leaders are expected to push to weaken existing rules as a tradeoff for backing the target. Poland hopes to delay a carbon tax on fossil fuels used in transport and heating, while Italy has requested changes to the EU’s combustion-engine phaseout.  Others want reassurances about future policies. France would prefer to avoid a fresh renewable energy target that sidelines its nuclear power fleet, and Germany wants a less onerous decarbonization path for its heavy industry.  The details of what is agreed will be key. “It depends on the nature of the tweaks,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.  Those might simply make compliance easier, or conversely could weaken the bloc’s climate efforts. “But overall, yes, we are entering dangerous territory.”