United States envoys proposed a “number of ideas” on how to end the Ukraine war in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin late Saturday, according to Russian authorities ahead of the envoys’ first trip to Kyiv.

US President Trump’s business partner Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner met Putin for more than three hours, as Washington tries to revive negotiations to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. Their visit to Moscow comes after the war — which has killed hundreds of thousands and forced millions to flee their homes — escalated this summer. It also follows a visit last month to Moscow by the director of the CIA.

The Russian side told the Americans that Moscow was “confident” it could achieve its military goals of seizing the rest of eastern Ukraine. Both Russia and Ukraine have vowed not to strike each other’s capitals for three days to allow for the negotiations to take place. In televised comments before the talks, Putin also said Russia would ensure the safety of the envoys in Kyiv — a city Moscow has pounded with deadly strikes throughout the war.

Earlier Saturday, however, Russia struck Kyiv’s suburbs and the Dnipro region, where local officials said five people had been killed. Zelenskyy subsequently accused Moscow of trying to disrupt the visit of the US envoys with overnight attacks on Kyiv’s two airports — as well as on civilian targets.

Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is heading for a dramatic victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, far ahead of its mainstream rivals.

Although it is projected to fall short of a majority, the AfD says it has won a mandate to govern. Charismatic leader in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said it was “sensational” and they wanted to start governing as soon as possible. US President Trump also posted a screenshot of the German TV projection on his Truth Social platform, and then Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev took a screengrab of Trump’s post and praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”.

The anti-migration AfD stands for Alternative für Deutschland. It has not only dominated the election campaign, it is emerging as the dominant force in the result and its supporters believe they are on the march.

This is the first time since the World War II era for Germany to have a leading far-right party. Critics note that some party figures have actively played down the atrocities of the Holocaust, adopted banned Nazi-era slogans, and expressed a desire to undermine representative democracy. Their platform also includes hardline policies such as segregating the children of refugees in schools and initiating mass deportations, which many worry will result in a democratic regression for Germany.

A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that global heating will reach at least 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels even under the most optimistic future scenario, making it now “unavoidable” to overshoot the 1.5°C threshold established by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The UN stresses that there are “no good outcomes above 1.5°C,” as every fraction of a degree increase intensifies destructive extreme weather events, accelerates glacier loss, damages ecosystems, and threatens coastal communities with rising sea levels.

To limit long-term destruction, the report urges the world to adopt an “overshoot, peak, and decline” trajectory by implementing immediate, aggressive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions alongside atmospheric carbon dioxide removal. Achieving net-zero emissions remains a vital milestone; experts emphasize that while returning global temperatures to 1.5°C within this century is still scientifically possible if peak warming stays below 1.8°C, it will require an unprecedented level of global political action, economic reconfiguration, and bold adaptation strategies.