• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned airlines and passengers against using Russian airspace because it will be filled with Ukrainian drones for the duration of the war. “Today, we want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” said Ukraine’s president. “Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such – not a single civilian aircraft. There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.” Vladimir Putin responded by calling Zelenskyy’s comments “a declaration of state terrorism”.

• Russia has started deliberately targeting the country’s railway network, Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding write, with six employees killed on Tuesday in the latest strikes on Kyiv. Ukraine’s state-owned railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said its workers died when a ballistic missile plunged into a locomotive depot. The Russians hit other railway facilities during a massive bombardment of Kyiv and surrounds. At least 12 people died, with a dozen wounded, including three children. The railway has been a lifeline for Ukraine’s civilians in wartime, transporting millions and bringing world leaders to Kyiv, including Joe Biden and Andy Burnham.

• The German government has concretely blamed Russia for the botched drone attack at Leipzig airport that unsuccessfully targeted a Ukrainian cargo plane, Kate Connolly writes from Berlin. Berlin said all indications were the Russian state provided the knowhow and equipment to “low-level agents” on the ground. Russia will face penalties – its consulate in Bonn will be closed, and Russian House, a purported cultural and science institute in Berlin, will be evicted after allegedly serving as a base for hybrid attacks and spying. A clampdown on Russia’s shadow fleet operations in German waters is planned. New blacklists of Russians would be drawn up and border controls tightened on Russians entering Germany, said the foreign minister, Johann Wadephul. The EU is preparing to toughen sanctions against Russia.

• The Russian wartime economy risks going “berserk”, Vladimir Putin’s ⁠international development envoy was quoted ⁠as saying on Tuesday. Boris Titov told business outlet RBC: “This is not an economy at all, it’s a kind of ‘berserk mode’ that can only exist for a ‌very limited time, and the necessity of which should be considered very carefully.” Titov’s ⁠comments echo a statement by Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, who argued that “killing a normal ​economy is equivalent to killing the whole ​country”. Andrei Klepach, the chief economist at the ​state development bank, lost his job last month after a public speech highlighting the economic challenges posed by the war.

• Ukraine ⁠damaged ⁠oil-processing units ​at ⁠Russia’s ⁠Novatek ​Ust-Luga ‌complex ‌in the Leningrad region during ‌an attack on Tuesday, ‌Kyiv’s ​military ⁠intelligence ​said. Key components of the oil refining facility and process equipment were damaged, said the GUR, and a major fire broke out. Russia attacked Ukraine’s Black Sea export infrastructure ⁠and a border crossing with Romania in the southern region of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday. Ukrainian state energy firm Naftogaz said Russia ​also damaged its Odesa combined heat ‌and power plant with missiles ‌and drones. Russia’s ⁠defence ⁠ministry said ⁠its forces ​struck ‌two ‌cargo ‌vessels in ‌the port ​of Pivdennyi, ⁠near ​Odesa, claiming they were carrying military goods. The claim could not be verified.

• David Petraeus has urged the UK to help lead a reinvention of Nato by adapting to a fundamental shift in warfare in the wake of the Ukraine war. The retired US army general and CIA ex-director told the House of Lords that Ukraine was the “defining military laboratory” of this century. Swift US technological advances in the defence sphere were not enough, Petraeus said, and nor was other nations simply purchasing better technology. He said Britain had shown “strategic clarity” after Russia’s full-scale invasion. “That now presents Britain with another opportunity: to become the first major western nation to organise its defence institutions around the new concept of warfare that Ukraine has been pioneering, and, in doing so, to help lead the transformation of Nato itself.”

• Russia’s presence at US-hosted G20 talks has caused unease among participants, the Canadian finance minister has said. Francois-Philippe Champagne said “it created discomfort, no doubt about that … The G7 has always been very united in our support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the face of the illegal invasion and the suffering that we see.”

Item 1 of 4 Chinese President Xi Jinping is welcomed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi upon his arrival at Cairo International Airport for an official visit to Egypt, which is his first state visit to the country in 10 years, in Cairo, Egypt, September 1, 2026. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Pool

[1/4]Chinese President Xi Jinping is welcomed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi upon his arrival at Cairo International Airport for an official visit to Egypt, which is his first state visit to the country in 10 years, in Cairo, Egypt, September 1, 2026. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Pool Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CAIRO, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Egypt on Tuesday, his ​first visit to the Arab world's most populous nation in a decade, as countries across the Middle East reassess security and economic ties ‌amid the fallout of the Iran war.

The conflict has disrupted global energy markets and raised questions about whether regional countries can count on the United States as a long-term security partner.

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi welcomed Xi at Cairo International Airport, where they walked a long red carpet flanked by uniformed soldiers, folk dancers and young Egyptians ​waving Chinese flags, Egyptian state TV footage showed.

Over the past week, Egyptian state media has trumpeted Cairo's growing economic and military ties with Beijing and Egypt's ​role as the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic ties with China 70 years ago.

"Egypt and China ⁠have become partners contributing together to strengthening the role of the Global South in the international system," Sisi wrote in an op-ed in state newspaper Al-Ahram.

Xi's ​visit is the second leg of his second overseas trip this year, following his participation in a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan where he spoke with ​Russian President Vladimir Putin and others.

In commentary published by Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi said the two countries were "close brothers standing by each other" in the face of imperialism and colonialism and that he looked forward to exploring a deeper partnership.

GROWING MILITARY TIES

Last month Egypt – which receives about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid – hosted ​its second annual military exercises with China, launched last year as Beijing sought to chip away at U.S. influence in the region.

The drills marked the ​first deployment of China's J-16 jets to Africa and a rare air combat drill involving the Chinese-made fighters and French-made Rafales, according to Chinese state media.

A Chinese air ‌force tanker ⁠was also pictured refuelling a Rafale, offering Beijing a closer look at Western-made equipment.

Egypt has been seeking deeper ties with Beijing since at least 2014, when recently elected Sisi travelled to China to sign a strategic partnership deal, said H. A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

Cairo's messaging toward Washington has softened since then, but "questions of American reliability and volatility" raised by the wars in Gaza and Iran have reinforced ​its desire to diversify partnerships, he said.

"Egypt ​sees itself as moving toward ⁠greater strategic autonomy," Hellyer said. "It wants strong relations with Washington, but also Beijing, Moscow, and Europe."

Bordering Israel, Sudan and Libya, and home to the vital trade artery of the Suez Canal, Egypt is often seen by foreign ​powers as a strategic linchpin in a volatile region riven by multiple conflicts.

Egypt was an "obvious choice" for Xi to visit because it is at the heart of a variety of regional issues, said Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project.

"It touches on Israel, and the Palestinian issue. It touches on Africa. It touches ⁠on the ​Persian Gulf issue," he said.

Last week, Xi hosted Jordan's King Abdullah in Beijing, where the ​issue of Palestinian rights featured prominently. Xi is expected to visit India and the U.S. later this month.

Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Mohamed Ezz and Menna Alaa El Din in Cairo, Xiuhao ​Chen and Joe Cash in Beijing, and Nikita Maria Jino in Bengaluru; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Ros Russell and Gareth Jones

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WASHINGTON -- A week after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow, questions remain over what prompted the unusual mission and what Washington believes Russia may be preparing to do.

Ratcliffe reportedly warned Russian officials against attacking or testing NATO, with particular concern about the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. He also reportedly discussed Russia's support for Iran. US President Donald Trump described the visit as "semi-routine," saying Washington wanted to see the war in Ukraine end, and that "something may come" from it.

The CIA has not publicly disclosed the full agenda. The Kremlin said Ratcliffe did not meet with President Vladimir Putin, describing the trip as part of continuing contacts between the two countries' security services.

US officials have briefed NATO allies about concerns over Russia's potential behavior, while Ukraine has said it was briefed before and after Ratcliffe's trip.

Ratcliffe's visit was the first publicly known trip to Moscow by a serving CIA director since William Burns traveled there in November 2021, months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The comparison raises an obvious question: How serious does intelligence have to be for a CIA director to personally travel to Moscow to deliver a warning?

For Edward Bogan, a retired CIA operations officer with 24 years of national-security experience, the intelligence did not necessarily have to amount to a highest-confidence assessment. But the decision to send the CIA director suggests Washington considered the threat credible and important enough to warrant a face-to-face warning.

"The fact that a director would get on a plane and come over suggests to me that it was a credible threat, and that it was important to say face to face, you know, don't do this, irrespective of what we know," Bogan told RFE/RL.

That does not mean US intelligence has concluded Russia has decided to attack a NATO member or that an attack is imminent. But it suggests Washington saw enough potential risk to communicate directly with Moscow.

A Warning -- And Deterrence

The reported focus on the Baltics is significant. All three countries are NATO members and former Soviet republics, and all three share borders with Russia.

The concern may not be that Moscow is preparing for a major war with NATO. A more limited military action or hybrid operation could instead test whether the alliance would respond collectively and whether Moscow could exploit divisions among its members.

Russia has repeatedly denied plans to attack NATO and dismissed such assessments as "nonsense." Moscow also denied planning to invade Ukraine before launching its full-scale war in February 2022.

For Sean Wiswesser, a former CIA chief of station who wrote a book about Russian intelligence tactics, Ratcliffe's visit was "an encouraging sign" and showed that Washington was prepared to push back against what he called "the reckless escalation by Russia's intelligence services."

But he said a warning would have limited value without a threat of consequences if Moscow ignored it.

"They won't stop till we stop them," Wiswesser told RFE/RL. "But for any warning to be effective, it needs to come with consequences for Russia if they fail to heed the warning and cross more alleged red lines."

His assessment of the broader deterrence problem was stark: "So far it has been only unchecked escalation from Russia and failed deterrence from the alliance," he said, referring to NATO.

The question, then, is not simply what Washington told Moscow, but whether Russia believes the United States and its allies are prepared to act if the warning is ignored.

Bogan urged caution in assessing Russia's ability to escalate militarily. "Russia speaks like it has a lot more options than it actually does," he said.

Russia has substantial military capabilities, but its forces are bogged down in a war in Ukraine that has lasted far longer than the Kremlin had anticipated.

Bogan said observers sometimes imagine Russia as having a large unused military reserve that could suddenly be turned against Europe. "If they had such a capability, they would be applying it to the Ukraine fight," he said.

That does not mean Russia lacks options. Bogan said the intelligence behind Ratcliffe's visit could involve an effort to change the military calculus around NATO. "Something's up," he said. "Changing the calculus, coming into NATO spaces in some military manner could very well be what it...was about."

At the same time, Bogan said he did not believe Moscow necessarily wanted a direct confrontation with NATO. "I don't think they're prepared to be able to do that," he said.

A CIA Channel

Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA and Department of Homeland Security intelligence officer, said using the CIA to communicate with adversaries can be appropriate when sensitive issues require a discreet channel and conventional diplomacy is inadequate.

But he questioned whether Ratcliffe was carrying a coherent US policy message to Moscow.

Cash cited what he called the "apparent disjointedness of American policy" and noted the absence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio from the publicly known diplomacy surrounding the visit.

"What policy was Director Ratcliffe actually carrying to Moscow?" Cash asked.

He said the broader concern was whether the administration had an orderly, intelligence-informed process for developing policy.

"The appearance is not of the United States government speaking through a carefully considered national policy but of one would-be autocrat sending an emissary to parley with the representative of another autocrat," Cash said.

A discreet channel, Cash argued, is useful only if the policy behind the message is coherent and strategically sound.

"If the substance has been poorly conceived -- or is at odds with what our allies, our diplomats, our military, and even other parts of our own government understand American policy to be -- then the secrecy and sensitivity of the channel do not make the communication more effective," he said.

"They simply transmit confusion more efficiently."

MYLA, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a warehouse west of Kyiv that Ukrainian officials say was storing shells, mines and other ammunition, sparking massive explosions and fires that swept through dozens of nearby homes and buildings and killing 37 people.

The Friday night attack on the warehouse in Myla, a village in the Bucha district, was the war’s deadliest attack this year and came on the second of three days of nearly round-the-clock Russian strikes that have severely disrupted life in and around the Ukrainian capital.

Attacks on the capital and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Ukraine have been nearly constant since Thursday. Kyiv officials say Russia builds up missile stocks and launches major attacks every few days, hoping to exhaust Ukrainian defenses through the sheer weight of numbers.

The warehouse strike sparked fires that raced through homes and damaged at least 50 residential buildings, said Tymur Tkachenko, who heads the local regional military administration. He was later cited by local media as saying 34 of the people killed were residents of a care home for elderly and disabled people. More than 370 people were evacuated.

The blasts rocked Myla, causing people to frantically seek cover.

“At about 8 p.m., the drone hit a warehouse somewhere and then the detonation began,” Oleksandr Vodolaz, a village resident, told The Associated Press. “No one knew that weapons were stored there.”

Another local, Zhanna Kravchuk, said she had so many questions about what happened.

“Why are weapons like this ... in warehouses and not on the front lines where they would help?” she said.

As crews raced to get people to safety and extinguish blazes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a “terrible situation” and said it appeared to be the result of “terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people.”

He noted that Ukrainian law forbids the storage of ammunition close to people’s homes and said criminal proceedings had been opened.

“Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions,” the president said.

Kyiv investigates warehouse targeted in attack

In a social media post Saturday, Zelenskyy shed more light on the situation.

“The first strike was on an ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn’t have been there – a Defense Forces storage facility. Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated.”

Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi didn’t specify what was in the warehouse, but he referenced a July attack on the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve that struck an ammunition depot, killing 22 people and triggering detonations and fires that tore through nearby homes.

“Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” Koretskyi said. “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.”

The 37 killed surpassed the 31 who died in a July 2 strike on Kyiv, which had been the war’s deadliest attack of 2026.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it hit a warehouse in Myla that was storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also said it attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, and a logistics center and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region.

Russian jet-powered drones pose a problem for Kyiv

Russian strikes damaged homes and apartment blocks in the southern Kherson region on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 27 more, including a child, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region administration, said in a statement.

Prokudin said earlier in the week that Russia had intensified its attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, which is about 70% under Russian control. He also urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.

Although officials haven’t said whether they were used in the warehouse attack, Russia has significantly increased its use of jet-powered drones, and their numbers will keep growing as Moscow sees their effectiveness, Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told reporters Friday.

“Means of attack always outpace means of defense. We will certainly need to adapt. It will take time,” Palisa said. He said interceptor drones currently available to Ukraine, which could theoretically intercept jet-powered drones, have not yet demonstrated the expected effectiveness, though Ukraine is working on solutions.

Ukraine vows to increase long-range strikes

Meanwhile, Ukraine has stepped up its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months. The attacks, which use domestically made drones, are meant to cut into a source of Moscow’s war funding and make Russians feel the consequences.

In his evening statement to the nation Friday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv hoped to increase its long-range strikes to reach 1000 drone launches every day.

“Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range sanctions,” Zelenskyy said, his preferred term for Kyiv’s long-range attacks that have also lately targeted Russian large-scale online retailers. “There must be more. We have a very specific goal, and we will achieve it.”

Moscow’s forces destroyed 313 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 11 people in Russia’s Rostov region, Gov. Yuri Slyusar said. Writing on social media, he said that nine people were hospitalized, including four children.

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This story was updated to correct that 31 people, not 30, were killed in the July 2 attack on Kyiv.

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Davies reported from Manchester, England, and Yurchuk from Kyiv. Associated Press reporter Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke contributed to this report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a large aerial assault in and around Ukraine’s capital overnight into Tuesday morning, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than a dozen others, including three children, local authorities said.

The strikes marked the sixth straight day of heavy Russian attacks on Kyiv that began last week and are an unprecedented stretch of consecutive aerial assaults since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor more than 4½ years ago. Moscow’s aim is to grind down civilians by disrupting their daily life, Ukrainian officials say.

Several million Ukrainian schoolchildren returned to classes Tuesday for the new school year, just as Russia unleashed its onslaught of cruise and ballistic missiles, jet-powered drones, glide bombs and artillery salvos at Kyiv as well as eight other regions of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 12 people were killed, including an Indian citizen.

The attack struck civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in several districts of Kyiv, authorities said, with eight people killed in the city itself and three others in the surrounding region.

Six employees of state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia were among those killed in Kyiv when a ballistic missile hit a depot and other premises, company chairman Oleksandr Pertsovskyi said in a social media post.

Nearly 350 emergency workers were deployed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, Zelenskyy said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces carried out a “massive strike” on Ukraine overnight with “precision-guided weapons” and long-range drones. The assault targeted facilities manufacturing and storing weapons as well as military-related infrastructure, it said.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia began the attack at 6 p.m. Monday, using ballistic, cruise and anti-radar missiles, as well as 218 drones and decoys. About a third of the drones were jet-powered, which are much harder to intercept than the propeller-driven version.

The main Russian targets were in the Kyiv and southern Odesa regions, the air force said in a statement.

The attack on the Odesa region, located on the Black Sea, damaged civilian infrastructure and wounded one person, regional head Oleh Kiper said.

Two residential buildings were damaged, while a fire broke out at a textile factory. Russian forces also struck the Orlivka international ferry crossing on the border with Romania, he said.

Russia also shelled the northern Zhytomyr region, starting fires at an industrial facility and a warehouse, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said.

In the capital, first responders worked to clear rubble from damaged apartment buildings and free trapped residents.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its air defenses overnight intercepted 516 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea.

In the Leningrad region, the drone attack sparked a fire in the port of Ust-Luga, Gov. Alexander Drozdenko said, as Ukraine extended its campaign to hurt Russia’s oil sector, which is a mainstay of the economy.

Ust-Luga is one of Russia’s largest oil and gas export terminals more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away from Ukraine. It has been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone attacks this year.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine