Russia released a 74-year-old American teacher as a US envoy arrived for fresh Ukraine talks, the European Union rewrote its Arctic policy around security, a French combat jet crashed during training, South Sudan blamed Sudan for a deadly market strike in Abyei, and Israel’s military reported killing a man it linked to a 2023 kidnapping.
Putin frees jailed American teacher as Witkoff opens new Ukraine talks in St Petersburg
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday that Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher from Michigan held since 2022, had been freed and was waiting at Pulkovo Airport in St Petersburg. He made the statement while meeting US special envoy Steve Witkoff in the city. Hubbard had been serving close to seven years after a closed trial found him guilty of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine. Witkoff thanked Putin for what he described as a gesture of goodwill.
Hubbard was detained in April 2022 in Izyum, in eastern Ukraine, where Russian prosecutors said he staffed a Ukrainian checkpoint. His lawyer has said the charges were false. Washington had classed him as wrongfully detained, the only American held by Russia with that status. Witkoff reached Russia a day after talks in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leaders of Norway and Finland and European and NATO officials, which a US official called constructive and focused on security guarantees and a postwar economic plan.
Witkoff, a New York property developer, has served since 2025 as a US special envoy and has acted as the main channel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin. This was his ninth face-to-face meeting with Putin. President Donald Trump, who promised during his campaign to end the war quickly, said on Tuesday that Ukraine had to want a settlement. Kyiv and its allies have voiced concern that Washington is stepping back from support, including limits on intelligence sharing and on a military satellite service.
EU places security at the centre of its updated Arctic strategy
The European Union presented a revised Arctic strategy on Tuesday that makes security its main pillar, citing expanding Russian and Chinese activity in the far north. Foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the region was no longer shielded from global tensions and that Moscow had reopened Soviet-era bases there. The plan calls for more icebreakers, a pilot satellite surveillance project, a maritime security hub with partners and closer work with NATO on moving troops quickly across the region when required.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said sovereignty and territorial integrity in the region could no longer be assumed, a reference officials linked to President Donald Trump’s earlier ambition to take over Greenland. The strategy creates a Northern Neighbourhood framework with Norway, Iceland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said the bloc would still refuse to drill for Arctic oil and gas, while the plan backs renewable power, undersea cable protection and critical mineral projects.
The EU is not a member of the Arctic Council, where Denmark, Sweden and Finland sit as Arctic states and the bloc itself only observes. It has shaped its Arctic approach since 2008 through a series of joint communications, updated in 2012, 2016 and 2021, which coordinate existing policies on climate, fisheries, shipping and research rather than forming one single strategy. Melting sea ice has opened new shipping lanes and made mineral deposits easier to reach, drawing growing interest from several powers.
French Mirage 2000D crashes near Nancy during a night training flight
A French Air and Space Force Mirage 2000D crashed on Tuesday evening near its base on the outskirts of Nancy, in the commune of Rogéville, killing at least one of its two crew members. Witnesses reported an explosion and a fireball at around 10.30pm. Colonel David Pappalardo said the base suddenly lost radio and radar contact with the aircraft and that at least one crew member appeared unable to eject. A search was launched for the second airman.
The two-seat jet, from Fighter Squadron 2/3 Champagne, carried a young pilot in training and an experienced weapons systems officer. Rescue teams from the air force, fire service and gendarmerie found the first wreckage at about 4am on Wednesday. Yves Séguy, the prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, said fog had kept helicopters grounded overnight. The air force called the crash an exceptional accident, and Pappalardo said it was much too early to determine what had caused it.
The Mirage 2000D is the conventional strike version of the Mirage 2000N, a two-seat Dassault aircraft that long formed the core of France’s airborne nuclear deterrent. Its first flight took place in February 1991, and the French air force ordered 86 of them for long-range precision attacks. The type has flown in Afghanistan and over Libya in 2011. Another French Mirage 2000D crashed in western Afghanistan in May 2011, when both crew members ejected safely and were recovered.
South Sudan says drone strikes on a market in Abyei killed 153 people
South Sudan has accused Sudan of carrying out drone strikes on Monday that killed 153 people at the Amiet market in the disputed Abyei region. Yohana Akol Ngor, the area’s caretaker information minister, said the toll was likely to rise because fires were still burning and some bodies had been reduced to ash. He said around 8,000 people had fled. South Sudan’s foreign ministry summoned the Sudanese ambassador, and Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating more than 20 injured people.
Diplomatic sources and an aid worker said the strikes hit a fuel depot in the market that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces had previously used for supplies. One witness said he heard five large blasts before the depot caught fire and saw no fighters at the site. The United Nations condemned the attack, which brought deaths from strikes in recent days to more than 250. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the relentless drone attacks were taking a heavy toll on communities.
Abyei is a border area of about 10,500 square kilometres that a 2004 protocol placed under special administrative status, treating it on an interim basis as part of both Sudan and South Sudan. A referendum on its future, promised when South Sudan became independent in 2011, has never been held. Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces have fought a civil war since 2023, and experts say Abyei has become a transit point for the paramilitary group’s supplies.
Israeli military says it killed a Hamas member linked to the abduction of Shani Louk
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that an airstrike in the Jabalya area of northern Gaza on Monday killed Tamer Mohammad Ibrahim Al-Zabaq, a Hamas member it accused of taking part in the abduction of Shani Louk on 7 October 2023. According to the military, Al-Zabaq crossed into Israel during the attack and later helped plan operations against Israeli troops while trying to rebuild Hamas infrastructure. He was killed on Monday, and the military released the details a day later.
In a separate announcement, the military and the Shin Bet security service said a strike in Gaza City had killed Akram Bassam Shaaban Yassin, whom they described as a senior figure in Hamas’s internal security apparatus, which protects the group’s leaders. The military accused him of advancing attacks in breach of the ceasefire and said it had taken steps to limit risk to civilians. It added that its Southern Command forces remain deployed in Gaza under the existing agreement.
Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist, was attending the Nova music festival near Re’im when Hamas-led gunmen attacked southern Israel. Footage of her body being driven through Gaza in a pickup truck spread widely and became one of the first viral images of the war. Israeli authorities confirmed her death weeks later after identifying a skull fragment, and soldiers recovered her body from Gaza in May 2024, after which she was buried in her home town of Srigim.