The Maldives’ government officially declared its support for India’s candidature for a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council from 2028 to 2029. The statement said that India has emerged as an influential regional leader and defender of principles enshrined in the UN Charter.
In a letter to Pope Francis that was released on Monday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said that she has already stressed that “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait were the “foundation for the development of cross-Strait relations” and that “armed confrontation is absolutely not an option.”
The US on Tuesday nominated Julie Turner as its special envoy for human rights in North Korea. According to the White House, Turner is a long-time diplomat and current director of the Office of East Asia and the Pacific in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the Department of State. The post has been filled for the first time since relations broke down in 2017.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday said that Turkey would not support Sweden’s bid to join NATO after authorities permitted an anti-Islamic protest in Stockholm on Saturday, during which, a far-right leader burned a copy of the Holy Quran.
On Monday, Burkina Faso’s government spokesperson Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo confirmed the government’s Saturday announcement of ending its 2018 military accord with France, giving French troops a month to pull out of the country entirely. Ouedraogo added that “this is not the end of diplomatic relations” between the two countries, but that the ruling military wanted to be a prime actor “in the recapture of [Burkinabe] territory,” referring to large swathes of land that, in recent years, have been taken over by groups linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
On Monday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service accused Ukraine of storing Western arms, such as High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, air defence systems, and ammunition, at the Rivne nuclear power plant in northwestern Ukraine. However, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak refuted the allegations, and instead accused Russia of seizing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and keeping its military there.
Many American and European officials reportedly believe that Russia’s intelligence agency, the GRU, used an extremist organisation called the Russian Imperial Movement to carry out the letter bomb campaign in Madrid, Spain, in November and December. The six letter bombs were sent to Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s official residence, the US and Ukrainian Embassies, and the Spanish Defence Ministry, injuring one Ukrainian embassy employee. US officials remarked that it aimed to “signal that Russia and its proxies could carry out terrorist strikes across Europe, including in the capitals of member states of NATO.”
The US, UK, and EU on Monday imposed a fresh set of sanctions on Iran over human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime. Ten individuals, including several Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officials, and an IRGC-affiliated organisation were targeted. This was the ninth round of sanctions on Iranian actors responsible for the brutal crackdown on demonstrators since nationwide anti-regime protests began in September last year.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday that a record 339 million people need humanitarian assistance worldwide, an increase of almost a quarter compared to the figure in 2022. Noting that the WHO is providing medical aid to 54 health crises globally, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus set an appeal target of $2.54 billion and urged donors to be “generous and help save lives.”