Russian backing for the ruling junta has not stopped rebel fighters striking significant blows in recent days

• Mali in turmoil after insurgents seize towns and kill defence minister

When Assimi Goïta, the leader of Mali’s military junta, sat down with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Kremlin last summer, it symbolised Moscow’s commanding sway over Mali at the expense of the west.

As the two men spoke, roughly 3,500 miles to the south, about 2,000 Russian troops were propping up the regime in the landlocked desert country, as part of Moscow’s broader push for influence across the Sahel region.

Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, 41, is a figure in European history. For Ukraine, he is a hero: the medals he has received attest to this. But his significance transcends his country. The name of Sukharevskyi, the current deputy commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the East, appears in the annals of war not because of the current Russian invasion, which began in 2022, but because of a decision he made on April 13, 2014, in Sloviansk. This city in the Donetsk Oblast, in the Donbas region, remains under Ukrainian control today, largely thanks to him.

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“It’s really a question of our life, of surviving.” Volodymyr Zelenskiy couldn’t have put it more clearly this Wednesday in an interview on CNN. The Ukrainian president was referring to the €90 billion ($105 billion) loan that the European Council approved for his country on Thursday. The approval comes after months of delays and just when economists were warning that the Ukrainian government only had enough resources left to last until summer.

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MPs call for investigation into Essar Energy, owner of Stanlow refinery, which shifted loans from ‘Putin’s piggy bank’ VTB to Mauritius

Days after the first wave of Russian tanks surged over the border into Ukraine in March 2022, dockers at a port in northern England took a stand.

Appalled by Vladimir Putin’s brutality, workers at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire vowed never to unload any Russian oil destined for the nearby Stanlow refinery, a major hub for UK fuel supplies.

With the EU approving a €90bn loan for Ukraine, a surprise visit from Prince Harry, and data suggesting Russian troops made almost no territorial gains in March – are there reasons for optimism in Kyiv? Lucy Hough speaks to senior international correspondent Luke Harding – watch on YouTube

There are images that never fade from a country’s memory, from its political and popular consciousness. One of them is that of Joschka Fischer (Gerabronn, Germany, 78 years old) wearing sneakers and being sworn in as a minister in the state of Hesse in 1985. For the first time, the Greens, a grassroots movement born a few years earlier, entered a regional government. It was a turning point. Thirteen years later, Fischer would become vice-chancellor and foreign minister in the first federal government with the Greens, allied with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democratic Party.

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Faced with Donald Trump’s aggressive and erratic policies during his second term in the White House, his southern neighbors are increasingly looking more favorably toward China, the United States’ main strategic rival. The Asian giant is the only major power gaining prestige among Latin Americans, according to a survey conducted by the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation, the magazine Nueva Sociedad, and the Diálogo y Paz group, released this week. China is gaining new supporters in the region (up by 6 points) while the positive image of the U.S. is plummeting (a 17-point drop) and that of Europe is declining, dragged down by Germany and France. Twelve thousand people in 10 countries participated in the survey.

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