Moscow, Sep 26: Russian President Vladimir Putin said that an escalation of tensions would not achieve the outcome sought by Kyiv and could only worsen the situation in Ukraine.

“They must understand that no provocative acts or escalation of tensions will deliver the outcome they seek. Such moves will only make the situation worse for them,” Putin said at a press briefing on Friday.

He said Russia’s military responses had prompted Kiev to seek ceasefire arrangements covering several areas, including attacks on energy facilities and airstrikes, Xinhua news agency reported.

Russia has begun responding to what he described as actions taken by Ukraine, including an alleged bid to impose a naval blockade and strikes on storage facilities and civilian infrastructure, he said, adding that, according to Russian assessments, Ukraine had damaged more than 100 vessels in the Black Sea.

Earlier this month, Moscow said that sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas exports will not revive relations with the United States or lead to peace with Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump signed the Russia sanctions bill into law. The legislation targets Russia’s energy and defence industries, as well as its “shadow fleet” of tankers.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has largely adapted to the sanctions and found ways to minimise their impact, adding that the country’s trading partners oppose such restrictions.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he President Trump had agreed to meet in New York, and said Ukraine was ready to take serious steps towards peace in coordination with the American team.

“We agreed to meet in New York, and this meeting could change a lot. There is diplomatic momentum,” Zelensky said in a post on X after speaking with Trump.

Washington, Sep 25: US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping used military honours, conciliatory language and a lavish White House dinner to steady the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. But their day in Washington produced a framework for managing rivalry, not a settlement of it.

The visit’s central achievement was political choreography.

Trump personally received Xi at Joint Base Andrews, an unusual courtesy for a visiting head of state. A red carpet, US service members and a flyover by two B-1 bombers gave the arrival both grandeur and an unmistakable display of American power.

The next morning brought another formal welcome at the White House. Trump called their relationship a “truly great friendship” built on “mutual respect and the vital interests of our people”.

He said their talks would cover security, technology and “superintelligence”.

Xi answered with the language of guardrails. He called for candid dialogue, greater government-to-government contact and regular military communication.

“China and the United States must hold the line of no conflict and no confrontation between us,” Xi said.

That sentence captured the summit better than its ceremonial excess.

Neither leader suggested that the competition over advanced computer chips, artificial intelligence, military power or influence in Asia had disappeared. Xi said competition should be “healthy” and “kept within bounds”. Trump stressed their common interests.

Trade supplied the clearest immediate result.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a tariff truce, due to expire in November, had been extended until January 10. The arrangement keeps some US tariffs suspended while China maintains supplies of rare-earth minerals needed by American manufacturers.

It buys time. It is not the larger economic bargain both governments say they want.

The Wall Street Journal reported before the meeting that semiconductor export controls, one of Washington’s strongest sources of leverage, were not on the agenda. Agriculture and lower-technology trade offered easier ground.

Artificial intelligence exposed the same pattern.

Xi said the two countries had “the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good” and ensure its development remained under human control. US officials have discussed an incident-notification channel, effectively an AI hotline.

No binding AI agreement or verification system was announced.

The gap between tone and substance was also visible on Taiwan, Iran and human rights. These are issues on which the two governments’ interests sharply diverge. Yet the public remarks offered no new formula on Taiwan, no clear Chinese commitment on Iran and no announced progress on detained Americans or political prisoners.

For Trump, the summit showcased his preference for leader-to-leader diplomacy. For Xi, the full honours demonstrated that Washington received China as an equal despite deep distrust.

The Washington Post described the airport reception as a rare gesture. The New York Times reported criticism that Trump was giving Xi unusually deferential treatment.

As the presidents met, Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, extending the day’s carefully planned cultural diplomacy.

The state dinner completed the message. American technology executives filled the room. Trump presented Xi with a bald-eagle sculpture and toasted “a future of harmony, peace, and success”.

Xi said their talks had produced “common understanding on many issues”, but did not identify a major new agreement. He argued that China’s national rejuvenation and Trump’s effort to make America great again “can surely be mutually reinforcing”.

Trump and Xi restored ceremony, high-level contact and a vocabulary for coexistence. The rivalry remains. What changed was their joint effort to keep it from becoming uncontrollable.

India has a direct stake in that effort. New Delhi’s border dispute with Beijing, participation in the Quad and dependence on global technology, energy and mineral supply chains make the course of US-China relations important for its security and economy.

Trump and Xi had met seven times before the Washington summit, including encounters in Florida, Germany, Argentina, Japan, South Korea and Beijing. Xi’s latest trip was his second formal state visit to the United States and his first visit to Washington in more than a decade.

United Nations, Sep 25: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly defended his country’s bombing of Iran claiming, “If we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead”.

In his address to the General Assembly on Thursday, he also shot down accusations of carrying out a “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza, calling it “the greatest lie of the century”.

On Iran, he said, “Israel and America acted together, not only to protect ourselves, but to save civilization”.

“In this battle against the barbarians, we’ve had no greater partner than President (Donald) Trump”, he said.

Both countries bombed several targets in Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and several leaders.

That attack, however, led to Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz and choking off 20 per cent of petroleum and gas supplies that pass through it, setting off an economic crisis that affects many countries.

The US and its allies have not been able to bring the conflict to an end.

As he stepped up to the podium to speak, delegates from dozens of countries walked out, and Netanyahu shouted at them, “Cowards”.

His supporters countered, shouting in Hebrew, “Am Yisrael Chai,” meaning “Nation of Israel Lives”.

Netanyahu projected a powerful country that was fighting on seven fronts, against “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea Samaria (West Bank)”.

“They all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the Earth. They failed”, he said.

When Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza in October 2023, he said, “We didn’t collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions”.

In Israel’s massive retaliation, 70,000 people are said to have died.

Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas, who spoke before Netanyahu, had accused Israel of conducting a “genocidal war” in Gaza.

“Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century”, he said and asked rhetorically if it was a “genocidal regime”, would it have given a million polio vaccinations to the enemy’s population or enabled the distribution of two million tons of food in Gaza.

One of the many leaders he attacked was Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he called “a tyrant who also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs”.

He accused the leaders of Western countries of having “chosen to succumb to the antisemitic mobs”.

Some countries, Britain being the latest, have put limited sanctions on Israeli products from the West Bank.

“Many in the free world are afraid to defend freedom”, he asserted.

He brushed aside the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank as the work of “a handful of juvenile delinquents”.

Even though it is magnified in the media, he said, he doesn’t tolerate them and is taking action because “we’re a country of law”.