Foreign Tit Bits
By Yadnom Awu/Asaba
Ukraine
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky is due to visit America on Monday, August 18, strong on the heels of a bilateral meeting between his host, Donald Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Viktor Putin yesterday.
The Monday meeting is to enable Trump fully brief Zelensky on the details of his Friday meeting with Putin at the Anchorage, Alaska, America.
The summit was the first between both world leaders in six years,after their 2018 meeting in Helsinki, Finland.
Details of the Trump/ Putin Summit remain largely out of public reach but the Monday meeting is expected to give Zelensky a fair insight into what transpired at the summit and guide him on the way forwarding on what is expected to be a tricky peace talk between his country and its bigger neighbour, Russia.
Earlier rounds of the preliminary talks on the peace deal have held in Turkiye , but had yet to yield breakthroughs beyond the precints of the exchange of prisoners and fallen troops.
Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine has lost territory to Russia in its three- year war .
Russia currently has full or partial control of four regions of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia continued its military assault on Ukraine with overnight strikes on major targets .
Ukrainian officials say that more than 80 drones were deployed in the attacks, but gave no words on casualties.
Hungary
Hungarian Leader, Orban, Hails Trump/ Putin Summit
Hungary ‘s leader, Viktor Orban, has publicly praised the summit of the Presidents of America and Russia.
Both Donald Trump and Vladimir Viktor Putin met on Friday night in Alaska , America, but failed to strike a deal on the Russia / Ukraine war.
The summit was the first between leaders of the two nuclear super powers since their similar one in Helsinki , Finland, in 2018.
Reacting to the summit, Orban said it was great that the two leaders of the two nuclear power houses met .
According to him, the meeting had largely thawed the ice in relations between the West, led by America, and Russia.
A natural outcome of the summit, he added, is a better understanding of the perspectives of both political and cultural blocs of the other, for enhanced world peace.
Orban, though leader of a member of the European Union ( E,U) often disagrees with the antagonistic posture of the EU and the larger Western alliance against Moscow.
Syria
Emergency Services Battle Wild Fires
Emergency workers are battling a plethora of wildfires in parts of Syria.
The fires, which have been burning for days,are most prominent in Hama and Latakia areas, and locals say that swathes of otherwise arable land had been destroyed by the infernos.
Emergency Services have deployed both helicopters and other conventional.methods to battle the blazes that have been fuelled by sweeping winds, and a spell of dry weather and heat wave.
The wild fires pose an additional challenge for the administration of interim president Ahmed Al- Sharaa, who has been facing a catalogue of serious security and economic challenges of late, especially in the Suwayda province where tension had risen of late between the Druze community and Bedouin tribesmen intent on greater self- assertiveness.
India
Death Toll Rises As Flash Floods Ravage Kashmir
More than 320 persons have now been confirmed dead in flash floods and landslides that have hit Indian- administered Kashmir.
The toll is without prejudice to the hundreds of others said to be missing, presumed buried under the rubble s of their mangled and swept away homes.
The floods and slides followed days of heavy rains as the annual Monsoon season kicked in both the Indian- administered Kashmir and parts of it ruled by neighbouring Pakistan.
Both countries, located on the foothold of the great Himalayan mountain, are vulnerable to unusually heavy rains and floods that trigger slides that sweep away residents, homes and other property
Libya
Factional Libyan Govt Holds Municipal Polls
The Tripoli- based internationally recognized government in Libya is conducting municipal polls that its supporters say will enhance the tempo of civil rule in the country.
But the polls are not holding in many parts of the country, especially the East, where warlord, Khalifa , holds sway. Khalifa does not recognize the Tripoli government, but has, instead, deepened his hold onthe East of the country which has such big urban settlements as Benghazi, Sert and others.
The boycott of the polls depicts detp divisions in the country which began following the killing of its former leader, Muhammad Gaddafi,and the toppling of his government in a violent uprising which effects have destabilized the country ever since.
Russia
Diplomats Savour Trump/Putin Summit Import
The Friday summit of both President Donald Trump of America and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Viktor Putin, may not have struck gold regarding the war in Ukraine.
However, analysts in Moscow and elsewhere in the vast Russian Federation are in no doubt that it was worth the while.
For Russia,the summit, the first since 2018, enabled both leaders to directly interact on Ametican soil, thus allowing Putin breach the arrest warrant placed on him by the International Criminal Court ICC in The Hague, The Netherlands, fof his war in Ukraine.
Diplomatic sources in Moscow see this a major feat, to the embarrassment of Western countries, especially the European Union( EU).
Besides, Trump, at the meeting, failed to deploy his threatened sanction regime to rein in Putin, meaning, in effect, that, much to the chagrin of the EU, Russia remained largely unscathed by the summit and even after it.
Perhaps, equally worth celebrating from Russia,’s point of view, is the fact that Trump, by his own admission, appears eager to meet Putin soon again, possibly in Russia, as Putin suggested at the close of the Friday summit
