(WARSAW, POLAND) – US President Donald Trump is expected to speak by telephone with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and then with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, according to TVP World.
Russia and Ukraine continue exchanging fire. Overnight into Monday, Russian drones struck Zaporizhzhia. Emergency crews worked to put out subsequent fires at various locations.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones targeted the Perm region in Russia, damaging a residential building. There are no known casualties there at the moment.
The calls follow weekend visits of US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv. The meetings aimed to help bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. No major breakthroughs were announced.
Following his talks with the envoys, Zelenskyy said he expects the war will continue into winter despite the ongoing peace efforts.
In Germany, the far right Alternative for Germany party secured a huge victory in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. According to preliminary results, the party may fall short of an absolute majority.
The AfD won 43.8 percent of the vote and delivered a drubbing to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, reflecting the deep unpopularity of Germany’s ruling coalition. The result marks a major advance in the AfD’s push for national power and a significant setback for Merz’s coalition government.
Broadcaster ZDF put the turnout at 77 percent, significantly up from previous years. Germany’s mainstream parties have all refused to work with the AfD, which wants a hard line on migration and closer ties with Russia.
Merz’s conservatives said they would explore talks with other parties, although that could require pulling together parties with vastly different policy agendas.
US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the results without comment on his Truth Social site. Far right leaders in other European countries cheered the election as a mandate for change. The Kremlin’s special economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev described it as a historic win.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote online that in Poland only idiots or traitors could rejoice at the triumph of the AfD.
The AfD was founded in 2013. Initially, the party was mainly opposed to the euro and to German financial policies in Europe, gaining only around 4.7 percent of the votes during national parliamentary elections in that same year. However, it has since moved sharply to the right. Topics and criticism regarding Germany’s current immigration and asylum policies have become central to the party’s platform, especially since the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016.
The AfD wants to limit immigration, is EU sceptic and campaigns against issues such as climate policy. There have been many questions about the party’s links to Russia. In November 2025, the party’s co-leader Tino Chrupalla said during a talk show on German public TV channel ZDF that he does not currently see Russia as a threat to Germany.
Some AfD politicians have maintained close contacts with Moscow. In June of this year, several members of the party travelled to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. In late August, cameras captured a mug bearing the symbol of the Russian armed forces with the words Russian army written on it in the office of Hans Thomas Tilne, a member of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament. Tilne said the mug was a gift from a trip to Russia and carried no significance.
The party has recently enjoyed its greatest success in eastern Germany, not only in Saxony-Anhalt but also in states like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where elections will take place in about two weeks. This region has undergone decades of economic and social transformation since 1989. Wages and wealth remain lower on average in the eastern states than in many western regions of the country.
Latest national polls show the AfD at around 28 percent while Chancellor Merz’s CDU hovers around 20 percent. Analysts do not think the AfD has a serious chance to enter the federal government. It is on the rise and has a lot of support in East Germany, but it is still too weak to become a majority party on the federal level.
The German Domestic Intelligence Service reported in 2023 that it has found sufficient evidence of anti constitutional tendencies within the AfD in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The party’s 35 year old top candidate Ulrich Siegmund is now seeking to strengthen the AfD not only in Saxony-Anhalt but on the national level.
The EU could lose 300,000 manufacturing jobs by the end of the year, Eurometal, the EU’s leading steel trade association, has warned. This is because China is deliberately embedding itself in key supply chains to control the entire value chain.
A protest aimed at drawing the authorities’ attention to the issue is expected to take place in Brussels on Monday. European manufacturing is facing the prospect of 300,000 job losses by the end of the year as Chinese manufacturing increasingly squeezes European factories.
Manufacturers on the European continent are increasingly finding themselves in a position where Chinese suppliers become ubiquitous in their own supply chains, providing everything from chemicals, steel and components to European factories. This makes them not only in direct competition with each other, but also increasingly reliant on Chinese made products.
At the same time, European industry is dealing with high energy and labour costs, and the wider competitiveness gap is becoming harder to absorb. China now runs a record trade surplus with the EU of around one billion euros a day.
European companies say Chinese competition is moving further up the value chain from being a source of cheap goods to becoming a direct competitor in increasingly sophisticated industries. That message is set to be brought to Brussels where protesters representing the steel industry will bring their protests to the European Commission.
Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic is set for a round of intensive talks in Beijing in October. He has warned that he is issuing an ultimatum to China, expecting concrete results by the time of his visit.
The European Union is investing in Greenland financially and politically. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travelled to the semi autonomous Danish territory with fresh EU funding following months of US threats over Greenland’s status.
The visit by von der Leyen alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, hosted by the Greenlandic prime minister, was a moment to show support to the territory. A Thetis class military Danish ship was stationed in Nuuk, a sign of Danish support and protection for the security of Greenland and its sovereignty.
The European Commission and Denmark are pledging to continue backing Greenland in the face of threats from the United States and from Donald Trump. There is going to be a doubling of the European Union support for Greenland in the coming weeks. Two hundred million euros was announced by the commission, along with a doubling of the EU budget more long term.
Iran is warning of a faster and heavier response to any further attacks after US forces struck three Iranian vessels. The latest exchange follows a relative lull in August and raises concerns about further conflict and disruption to global energy supplies.
The US Central Command said it had struck three Iranian vessels on Saturday. Among them, one off the coast of Kharg Island, located near Iran’s key oil export hub. The attack came in response to Iran targeting two US Navy ships with ballistic missiles that were travelling through what Tehran said were unauthorised routes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday issued a stark warning to Washington against any further attacks.
“From now on, any attack against Iran’s interests in security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response,” Ghalibaf said.
Much of August saw a pause in military action. However, with the start of September came the biggest flare up since July. US attacks along Iran’s Gulf coast prompted Iran to retaliate and target US bases in the Arab states.
Six months into the war, the conflict appears to be in a stalemate with little progress made through diplomatic channels. Measures taken by the US further expanded secondary sanctions that target countries doing business with Iran, further crippling its economy. But Iran has shown it is still able to disrupt oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a major choke point responsible for a fifth of global oil supplies before the war.
The war, unpopular among most Americans, disrupted global energy supplies, pushing up fuel prices globally and creating a political issue for US President Donald Trump as the country approaches November midterms.
At least five people are dead after an Amazon Prime Air cargo plane overran the runway while attempting to land at Miami International Airport. Five more people were also injured in the crash, and three of them are in critical condition.
As the plane overshot the tarmac, it hit rows of cars parked at the airport. At least two people were inside the vehicles as the plane crashed into them. The pilot and co-pilot of the aircraft then became trapped in the cockpit. So far, there is no confirmation of the identities of the victims.
The report was broadcast by TVP World.
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