ADVERTISEMENT

       France’s president hosted China’s leader at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees on Tuesday for private meetings after Xi visited Paris, in a trip dominated by trade disputes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

       French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border, where Macron spent time as a child visiting his grandmother.

       The invitation was intended as a reciprocal gesture, after Xi took Macron to the residence of the governor of Guangdong province, where the Chinese president’s father once lived, last year.

       The winding roads up to the pass were blocked by authorities Tuesday for dozens of kilometres, as security was tightened for the visit.

       Macron and Xi — together with their wives, Brigitte Macron and Peng Liyuan — visited a mountain restaurant in the area. The leaders watched a traditional folk dance before eating local specialties.

       Macron presented Xi with a yellow Tour de France jersey — with the Tourmalet Pass one of the most famous climbs of the race — a woollen blanket made in the Pyrenees and a bottle of Armagnac, French broadcaster BFMTV said.

       Xi is on a trip to Europe aimed at reinvigorating relations at a time of global tensions. He heads next to Serbia and Hungary.

       During the last day of his visit to France, authorities searched the European Parliament office of a prominent German far-right lawmaker in Brussels on Tuesday, according to Germany’s top prosecutor’s office said.

       Maximilian Krah, the Alternative for Germany party’s top candidate in the upcoming European Parliament election, has been under scrutiny after an assistant of his was arrested last month on suspicion of spying for China.

       ADVERTISEMENT

       Ukraine's intelligence service intercepted a Russian plot to murder President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of Vladimir Putin's re-inauguration this week.

       Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian State Security Service, said in a statement that Russian intelligence agents targeting Zelenskyy sought out members of the Ukrainian military close to the president's security detail who could take the leader hostage and later kill him.

       Two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which oversees security for top officials, were detained on suspicion of participating in the plan.

       The colonels are alleged to have been recruited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The crime of treason carries a life sentence in Ukraine.

       The operation is said to have been run from Moscow, with three alleged Russian spies named as co-conspirators.

       The broader plan was reportedly to identify the location of senior Ukrainian officials and target them with a rocket attack, followed by drones and missiles.

       Ukraine has previously claimed knowledge of Russian efforts to kill the Ukrainian leader, and Zelenskyy himself said in 2022 that there had been at least 10 attempts to kill him on Moscow's behalf.

       Last month, prosecutors in Poland said a Polish national had been arrested on allegations of preparing to spy on behalf of the Kremlin's military intelligence in an alleged plot to assassinate the Ukrainian leader.

       ADVERTISEMENT

       As Israel appears to begin its long-feared assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned that the consequences for the hundreds of thousands sheltering there could be dire.

       Speaking to the press, Borrell described the blockage of a ceasefire deal that was first accepted by Hamas before being shunned by Israel as "sad news".

       "Hamas accepted, Israel rejected, and the land offensive against Rafah has started again," Borrell said, "in spite of all the requests of the international community, the US, the European Union member states, everybody asking Netanyahu not to attack Rafah. In spite of these warning and these requests, the attack started yesterday night."

       Israel appears to be pushing towards a full-blown offensive in Rafah despite ever more serious warnings from even its top international allies, including the US. It confirmed overnight that its forces had taken "operational control" of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

       The Israeli military previously warned civilians to evacuate to the city in the south of the Gaza Strip ahead of its offensive in the north, but even areas that were declared safe have seen devastating airstrikes and land attacks by Israeli forces.

       IDF strikes targets in Rafah despite Hamas accepting ceasefire proposal As Israel's Rafah ground offensive looms, EU leaders make last-ditch calls for restraint

       Some 1.4 million people are now effectively trapped in Rafah with little to no chance of escape.

       The obstruction of food and medical aid, along with the destruction of medical facilities, has exacerbated the humanitarian impact of the offensive, which Israel claims is necessary for the destruction of Hamas as a fighting force.

       "I am afraid that this is going to cause again a lot of casualties, civilian casualties," Borrell told the assembled journalists. "Whatever they say, there are 600,000 children in Gaza. They will be pushed to the so-called 'safe zones'. There are no safe zones in Gaza."

       "And the ministers will discuss about how to increase our support. But on the next Council [of the EU], the political dimension of this crisis will be once again taken into consideration."

       Help on the way

       Borrell also said that he hoped to see the full resumption of European financial support to UNRWA, the foremost UN agency helping displaced Palestinians, after many backers halted their payments to it over reports a handful of its staff were involved in Hamas' 7 October massacre last year.

       A recent UN-commissioned review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna found that the organisation has robust processes to enforce staff neutrality and displays "a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities".

       "Now the Colonna report is there, I don't see any reason for not starting again the payments, the full payments, to UNRWA," Borrell said.

       "UNRWA is a critical institution for the support to hundreds of thousands, to millions, of people, and the idea of cutting funding to UNRWA has no basis."

       EU to continue funding UNRWA as it probes alleged staff involvement in Oct 7 attacks The UNRWA case reveals a much larger problem with humanitarian aid

       Borrell declined to discuss the possibility of the EU imposing sanctions in response to a full-blown offensive but did not hold back from warning about the likely consequences.

       "I cannot anticipate the humanitarian losses that this will create," he said. "It is clear they will continue the war, will produce a greater humanitarian crisis, which is bigger than what it is already. Let’s see how we can try to mitigate the consequences of this situation."