Weapons

Feb. 20 (Asia Today) — Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has approved a draft proposal calling for a significant expansion of lethal weapons exports, including scrapping existing limits that restrict overseas transfers to non-combat equipment.

The draft, endorsed Wednesday by the party’s Security Affairs Committee, seeks to revise operational guidelines under Japan’s Three Principles on Defense Equipment Transfer.

At the center of the proposal is the abolition of the so-called “five categories” rule, which currently limits arms exports to non-combat purposes such as rescue, transport, surveillance and mine clearance.

Under the draft, exports of weapons with lethal capability would in principle be permitted.

Kojiro Onodera, head of the committee, told reporters after the meeting that Japan’s security environment is “growing increasingly severe” and said expanding defense exports is necessary to strengthen coordination with allies and like-minded countries.

The party plans to finalize its recommendations next week and submit them to the government in early March.

Exports would be limited to countries that have signed defense equipment and technology transfer agreements with Japan. Media reports have cited between 10 and 17 partner countries, including the United States and Australia.

Decisions on lethal weapons exports would be subject to review by the prime minister and relevant Cabinet ministers at the National Security Council. Non-lethal items such as body armor and helmets would be handled at the working level within the government, with possible post-reporting to the Diet rather than requiring formal Cabinet approval in each case.

The draft also calls for allowing finished products developed through international joint programs to be exported to third countries beyond the original partner nations. Current rules restrict such transfers largely to the next-generation fighter program jointly pursued by Japan, Britain and Italy.

Another sensitive issue is exports to countries involved in armed conflict. The existing principles prohibit transfers to parties engaged in conflict, allowing only limited non-lethal support to countries such as Ukraine.

The draft would maintain a general ban on exports to countries actively engaged in combat but allow exceptions in “special circumstances” when Japan’s security interests are at stake.

Japanese media outlets including Asahi, Mainichi and Sankei described the move as accelerating Japan’s shift toward a more active defense export policy.

The push reflects efforts to revitalize Japan’s defense industry and deepen security ties with partner nations. Critics, however, have raised concerns that easing restrictions could weaken parliamentary oversight and increase the risk of arms proliferation.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260220010005980

These are the key developments from day 1,457 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Friday, February 20:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched 448 attacks on 34 settlements in Ukraine’s front-line Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring a six-year-old child and damaging homes, cars and other infrastructure, regional governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram app.
• Russian drone, missile and artillery attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson region injured five people and damaged homes, including seven high-rise buildings, the local military administration said on Telegram.
• Russian attacks also continued in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions, but local officials there noted that “fortunately, no people were injured”. According to the Kyiv Independent news outlet, overnight was “unusually quiet” following weeks of “heavy fire” in the two regions.
• A man was killed by shrapnel from a Ukrainian drone attack on Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea, Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.
• A Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil depot in Velikiye Luki in Russia’s Pskov region, local official Mikhail Vedernikov said, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.
• Russian forces shot down 301 Ukrainian drones, 10 missiles and two guided bombs in a 24-hour period, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to TASS.

Peace process

• United States President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace held its first meeting in Washington, DC, without Belarus participating, despite Trump extending an invitation to the Russian ally.
• Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that its delegation to the meeting did not receive the necessary visas to enter the US “despite carrying out all the required procedures”.
• The Foreign Ministry questioned, “What kind of peace and what kind of sequence of steps are we talking about if the organisers cannot even complete basic formalities for us to take part?”

• France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Pascal Confavreux expressed surprise to see the European Commission had sent a commissioner to participate in Trump’s meeting, noting that it “does not have a mandate from the [European] Council to go and participate”.

• Confavreux also said France would not take part in Trump’s initiative until the Board of Peace returned its focus to Gaza in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution.
• Several European Union member states have said they will not participate in the peace board after Trump extended an invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and is subject to an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.

Regional Security

• Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD said on Thursday that European countries, including the Netherlands, were facing increased hybrid threats from Russia, including cyberattacks, sabotage, influence campaigns and disinformation.

Energy

• Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is operating on its sole remaining main power line after losing its only backup power line more than a week ago, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said in a statement.
• Hungary is considering halting power and gas exports to Ukraine and will take such steps unless Ukraine resumes the flow of crude oil shipments via the Druzhba pipeline, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff told a briefing.
• The Druzhba pipeline, parts of which run through Ukraine, is crucial for the transfer of Russian crude oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Oil flows have reportedly halted since an attack on the pipeline in January, which Kyiv has blamed on Russia.
• France’s Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry Roland Lescure said his country would provide 71 million euros ($83.5m) in additional funding for Ukraine for services including energy, health and clearing land mines.

Politics and diplomacy

• The head of Russia’s FSB security service accused Telegram messaging app founder Pavel Durov of condoning criminal activity on the platform, in an escalation of Moscow’s rhetoric as it moved to restrict the service that is used by many Russians and Ukrainians to communicate about the war.

•  Dismissing a Russian government allegation that foreign intelligence services are able to see messages sent by Russian soldiers on Telegram, the popular platform said it had not found any breaches of its encryption codes and called Russia’s claims a “deliberate fabrication”, according to the Reuters news agency.

Military aid

• Sweden announced a 12.9 billion crown ($1.42bn) military aid package for Ukraine that will include air defences, drones, long-range missiles and ammunition.

Foreign minister says regional powers have been ‘far more effective’ than European countries.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has derided the Munich Security Conference as a “circus”, accusing European powers of “paralysis and irrelevance” in efforts to revive nuclear negotiations with the United States.

Iranian officials were not invited to the annual security meeting in the German city.

“Sad to see the usually serious Munich Security Conference turned into the ‘Munich Circus’ when it comes to Iran,” Araghchi wrote on X on Sunday.

“The paralysis and irrelevance of the EU/E3 is displayed in the dynamics surrounding the current talks over Iran’s nuclear program. … Once a key interlocutor, Europe is now nowhere to be seen. Instead, our friends in the region [the Gulf] are far more effective and helpful than an empty-handed and peripheral E3.”

The E3 – which included France, the United Kingdom and Germany – were key players in the previous round of nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran. That process culminated in 2015 with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a landmark agreement aimed at limiting the scope of Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

The US under the first administration of President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and ramped up sanctions on Iran. Since then, the process has largely stalled. Still, the E3 maintained a role as a go-between with Tehran and Washington.

But since negotiations resumed last year, Gulf countries, such as Oman and Qatar, have taken the lead in facilitating talks between the US and Iran.

Araghchi made the remarks before leaving Tehran to lead a diplomatic and technical delegation to Geneva for a new round of nuclear talks with the US. The talks follow last week’s indirect negotiations in Oman, which is mediating the process, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

During his visit, Araghchi is expected to meet his Swiss and Omani counterparts, as well as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and other international officials.

Abas Aslani, a senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, said Araghchi’s comments “indicate a policy shift from the Iranian side that the E3 mechanism … is no longer a valid channel for resolution”.

“This nuclear mediation has moved from Europe to the region, and now the heavy lifting in diplomacy is done by regional players,” he said.

On Tuesday, Oman is to host talks between the US and Iran in Geneva after previous indirect negotiations in Muscat on February 6. Those talks were attended by US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.

US and Iranian officials previously held several rounds of talks in the Omani capital to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme last year. But that process was halted as Israel launched a 12-day war with Iran in June, which the US briefly joined by bombing three Iranian nuclear facilities.

The new rounds of negotiations come as tensions in the region remain high, with Trump moving more US military assets to the Middle East. On Friday, the US president said he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the region while openly talking about a change in Iran’s government.

Despite the new push for diplomacy, the two sides have maintained their positions. Iran has shown flexibility in discussing its nuclear programme, but the US wants to widen the talks to include Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support for regional armed groups – two issues that Tehran says are nonnegotiable.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not say why he believed the US would respect the limits set out in New START.

Russia has said it will abide by limits on its nuclear weapons as set out in a lapsed arms control treaty with the United States, as long as Washington continues to do the same.

The New START agreement expired earlier this month, leaving the world’s two biggest nuclear-armed powers with no binding constraints on their strategic arsenals for the first time in more than half a century and sparking fears of a new global arms race.

In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow was in no rush to start developing and deploying more weapons – backtracking on comments made by his ministry last week that said Russia considered itself no longer bound by the treaty’s terms.

“We proceed from the fact that this moratorium, which was announced by our president, remains in effect, but only while the United States does not exceed the outlined limits,” said Lavrov.

“We have reason to believe that the United States is in no hurry to abandon these limits and that they will be observed for the foreseeable future,” he said, without explaining the basis for that assumption.

US President Donald Trump rejected an offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to voluntarily abide by the limits set out in New START for another year, saying he wanted a “new, improved and modernised” treaty rather than an extension of the old one.

Russia has also indicated it wants to strike a new arms control agreement.

Washington is pushing for China to be included in the talks, pointing to its growing nuclear arsenal.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than that of any other country by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023.

However, Beijing refuses to negotiate with the US and Russia because it says it has only a fraction of their warhead numbers – an estimated 600, compared with about 4,000 each for Russia and the US.

As the treaty expired, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that China would not be joining the bilateral arms-reduction talks.

Moscow says if China is brought into a new deal, then so too should the US’s nuclear allies, the United Kingdom and France, which have 290 and 225 warheads, respectively.

New START, first signed in Prague in 2010 by the then-presidents of the US and Russia, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, limited each side’s nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads – a reduction of nearly 30 percent from the previous limit set in 2002.

Deployed weapons or warheads are those in active service and available for rapid use as opposed to those in storage or awaiting dismantlement.

It also allowed each side to conduct on-site inspections of the other’s nuclear arsenal, although these were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not resumed since.

Russia in 2023 rejected inspections of its nuclear sites under the treaty, as tensions rose with the US over its nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

But it said it had remained committed to the quantitative limits set down.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke out against intervention by ‘alien Westerners’ during a rally to mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Celebrations have been taking place after weeks of US threats of military action.

Washington wants Beijing to join a new nuclear weapons treaty after expiration of the New START accord between the US and Russia.

An international monitor said it has seen no evidence to support the claim by a senior United States official who accused China of carrying out a series of clandestine nuclear tests in 2020 and concealing activities that violated nuclear test ban treaties.

US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno made the assertions about China at a United Nations disarmament conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, just days after a nuclear treaty with Russia expired.

“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tonnes,” DiNanno said at the conference.

China’s military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognised these tests violate test ban commitments,” he said.

“China conducted one such yield-producing nuclear test on June 22 of 2020,” he said.

DiNanno also made his allegations on social media in a series of posts, making the case for “new architecture” in nuclear weapons control agreements following the expiration of the New START treaty with Russia this week.

“New START was signed in 2010 and its limits on warheads and launchers are no longer relevant in 2026 when one nuclear power is expanding its arsenal at a scale and pace not seen in over half a century and another continues to maintain and develop a vast range of nuclear systems unconstrained by New START’s terms,” he said.

Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, said in a statement on Friday that the body’s monitoring system “did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion” at the time of the alleged Chinese test, adding that that assessment remains unchanged after further detailed analyses.

China’s ambassador on nuclear disarmament, Shen Jian, did not directly address DiNanno’s charge at the conference but said Beijing had always acted prudently and responsibly on nuclear issues while the US had “continued to distort and smear China’s national defence capabilities in its statements”.

“We firmly oppose this false narrative and reject the US’s unfounded accusations,” Shen said.

“In fact, the US’s series of negative actions in the field of nuclear arms control are the biggest source of risk to international security,” he said.

Later on social media, Shen said, “China has always honored its commitment to the moratorium on nuclear testing”.

Diplomats at the conference said the US allegations were new and concerning.

China, like the US, has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans explosive nuclear tests. Russia signed and ratified it, but withdrew its ratification in ⁠2023.

US President Donald Trump has previously instructed the US military to prepare for the resumption of nuclear tests, stating that other countries are conducting them without offering details.

The US president said on October 31 that Washington would start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Moscow and Beijing, but without elaborating or explaining what kind of nuclear testing he wanted to resume.

He has also said that he would like China to be involved in any future nuclear treaty, but authorities in Beijing have shown little interest in his proposal.

The U.S. government has accused China of secretly conducting at least one “yield-producing nuclear test” in recent years despite the country having a stated moratorium on such activities. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to engage in new nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with China and Russia, but it remains unclear what that might mean and what action has been taken. The new test allegation also comes as American officials continue to call for a new nuclear arms control treaty that includes China to succeed the New START agreement with Russia, which sunset yesterday.

“Today, I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said during a speech at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland this morning. “The PLA [China’s People’s Liberation Army] sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.”

China is a signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), but has never ratified it. The same is true of the United States. Both countries have stated self-imposed moratoriums on yield-producing nuclear testing. The CTBT does not prohibit sub-critical testing, which does not involve a full-fledged nuclear reaction. China’s last acknowledged critical-level nuclear test was in 1996. The last U.S. test of that kind was in 1992.

“China has used decoupling – a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring – to hide its activities from the world,” DiNanno added. “China conducted one such yield-producing nuclear test on June 22nd of 2020.”

The CTBT’s primary verification method is a global network of hundreds of seismic monitoring stations.

As an aside, the last official nuclear test in Russia came in 1990, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. The United Kingdom, France, India, and Pakistan also conducted yield-producing nuclear tests at various points in the 1990s. North Korea is the only country known to have conducted such tests since 2000, with the detonation of five devices in separate instances between 2006 and 2017.

The video below offers an excellent graphical representation of the extent of known nuclear testing, covering detonations between 1945 and 1998.

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 – by Isao Hashimoto

At the time of writing, the U.S. government does not appear to have provided further details about the newly alleged Chinese nuclear testing. When American officials arrived at their current assessments about these activities is also unclear.

The U.S. State Department made no mention of any such testing in China in its most recent routine international arms control compliance report, published in April 2025. That report did reiterate previous U.S. accusations that Russia has engaged in supercritical nuclear testing in violation of its commitments to multiple test ban treaties, something DiNanno also highlighted in his speech today. Russia is a signatory to the CTBT and had previously ratified it. Russian President Vladimir Putin revoked that ratification in 2023 after the country’s parliament, or Duma, passed a law approving that action.

The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, published in December 2025, also makes no mention of Chinese nuclear testing.

President Trump may have alluded to this allegation in an interview with CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” last November.

“They [China and Russia] don’t go and tell you about it,” Trump said. “You know, as powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They — they test way under — underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test.”

“You feel a little bit of a vibration. They test and we don’t test,” Trump continued. “But Russia tests, China — and China does test, and we’re gonna test also.”

Ukraine braced for more attacks on its energy infrastructure this week as winter temperatures continued to fall to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), and sought to adapt its defences against Russian drones.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyal, warned Ukrainians to prepare for more power blackouts in the coming days as Russian air attacks continued.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia had struck energy infrastructure 217 times this year. Shmyal said 200 emergency crews were working to restore power to 1,100 buildings in Kyiv alone.

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power stations, gas pipelines and power cables since mid-January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heat or electricity at various points.

On January 29, US President Donald Trump told a cabinet meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week, something the Kremlin confirmed.

“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,” Trump said.

It was unclear when that conversation happened, exactly, but on Tuesday this week, Russia unleashed one of its biggest strikes ever on energy infrastructure in Kyiv and Kharkiv, deploying 71 missiles and 450 drones.

Ukraine’s Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said Ukraine had only managed to shoot down 38 of the missiles because a very high proportion of them were ballistic.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed it was targeting storage sites for unmanned aerial vehicles, defence enterprises and their energy supply.

The strike coincided with a visit to Kyiv by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and came a day before tripartite talks among Russia, Ukraine and the US resumed in Abu Dhabi.

“Last night, in our view, the Russians broke their promise,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his news conference with Rutte. “So, either Russia now thinks that a week is less than four days instead of seven, or they are genuinely betting only on war.”

The strike also came just as Kyiv had managed to reduce the number of apartment buildings without heat from 3,500 three days earlier, to about 500.

At least two people, both aged 18, were killed as they walked on a street in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine.

Even on relatively quiet days, Russia causes civilian deaths. On Sunday, February 1, Russia killed a dozen miners when a drone struck the bus that was taking them to work in Ukraine’s central Dnipro region.

Evolving drone tactics

During the few days in which it did observe the moratorium on energy-related strikes, Russia focused on striking Ukrainian logistics instead and made attempts to extend the reach of its drones.

Ukrainian Defence Ministry Adviser on Technology and Drone Warfare Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov reported that Russian drones were striking Ukrainian trucks 50km (31 miles) from the front line. He also said Russia had adapted its Geran drone to act “as a carrier” for smaller, first-person view (FPV) drones, doubling up two relatively cheap systems for greater range.

Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne said Russia had begun these new tactics in mid-January.

Ukraine’s Air Force has managed to down about 90 percent of Russia’s long-range drones, and a high proportion of its missiles – almost 22,000 targets in January alone.

Zelenskyy recently demanded better results, however, and one of the Ukrainian responses to Russian tactics has been a new, short-range “small air defence” force that uses drones to counter drones.

“Hundreds of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] crews have already been transferred to the operational control of the Air Force grouping – they are performing tasks in the first and second echelons of interception,” wrote Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii on Wednesday this week.

Ukraine’s second response has been to disable Russian Starlink terminals, which Russia uses extensively on the battlefield, and has recently begun mounting on UAVs.

Starlink uses low-orbit satellites and is impervious to jamming, allowing Russia to change a drone’s intended target while it is in mid-flight.

Ukraine’s newly installed defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been creating a “white list” of Starlink terminals used by the armed forces of Ukraine, and sent them to Starlink owner Elon Musk, asking him to keep these operational while shutting down all others in the Ukraine theatre.

“Soon, only verified and registered terminals will operate in Ukraine. Everything else will be disconnected,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.

“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Fedorov and Beskrestnov have been asking Ukrainian soldiers and civilians to register any Starlink terminals they acquire privately on the white list.

More sanctions on the way

On the day of Russia’s large strike, Zelenskyy appealed to the US to pass a bill long in the making that would impose more sanctions on buyers of Russian oil. China is the biggest, followed by India.

The previous day, Trump said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian oil. “He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine,” he wrote on his social media platform.

A Russian government source told Reuters that an assumed 30 percent drop in oil sales to India, and lower sales to other customers, could triple Moscow’s planned budget deficit this year from 1.6 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent or 4.4 percent. Government data released on Wednesday showed the Kremlin’s revenues from energy at $5.13bn in January, half the level of January 2025.

Zelenskyy also discussed a 20th sanctions package under preparation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We can already see what is happening to the Russian economy and what could follow if the pressure is applied effectively,” he said.

Russia has made little headway in its ground war in the past three years, a fact repeatedly documented, most recently by a CSIS report. Despite this, its top officials continued to insist last week on terms of peace that would force Ukraine to give up control of four of its southeastern regions, cut down its armed forces and agree not to join NATO – terms Ukraine refuses.

The resumed talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday yielded only a prisoner-of-war exchange of 157 a side.

Friedrich Merz said concerns about a further escalation with Iran have dominated his trip to the Gulf region.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned of the threat of a military escalation in the Middle East before talks between Iran and the United States in Oman on Friday.

Speaking in Doha on Thursday, Merz said that fears of a new conflict had characterised his talks during his trip to the Gulf region.

“In all my conversations yesterday and today, great concern has been expressed about a further escalation in the conflict with Iran,” he said during a news conference.

Merz also urged Iran to end what he called aggression and enter into talks, saying Germany would do everything it could to de-escalate the situation and work towards regional stability.

The warning came in the run-up to a crucial scheduled meeting between officials from Tehran and Washington in Muscat.

Mediators from Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt have presented Iran and the US with a framework of key principles to be discussed in the talks, including a commitment by Iran to significantly limit its uranium enrichment, two sources familiar with the negotiations have told Al Jazeera.

Before the talks, both sides appear to be struggling to find common ground on a number of issues, including what topics will be up for discussion.

Iran says the talks must be confined to its long-running nuclear dispute with Western powers, rejecting a US demand to also discuss Tehran’s ballistic missiles, and warning that pushing issues beyond the nuclear programme could jeopardise the talks.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said the US is eager for the talks to follow what they see as an agreed-upon format.

“That agreed-upon format includes issues broader than what the US understands Iran is willing to discuss in this initial set of talks,” she explained.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that talks would have to include the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed groups around the Middle East and its treatment of its own people, in addition to its nuclear programme.

A White House official has told Al Jazeera that Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key figure in his Middle East policy negotiations, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, have arrived in the Qatari capital, Doha, in advance of the talks.

Halkett said that Qatar is playing an instrumental role in trying to facilitate these talks, along with other regional US partners, including Egypt.

“We understand, according to a White House official, that this is perhaps part of the reason for the visit – to try and work with Qatar in an effort to try and get Iran to expand and build upon the format of these talks.”

Pressure on Iran

The talks come as the region braces for a potential US attack on Iran after US President Donald Trump ordered forces to amass in the Arabian Sea following a violent crackdown by Iran on protesters last month.

Washington has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East, as well as an aircraft carrier, other warships, fighter jets, spy planes and air refuelling tankers.

Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on Iran.

This is not the first time Iranian and US officials have met in a bid to revive diplomacy between the two nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since 1980.

In June, US and Iranian officials gathered in the Omani capital to discuss a nuclear agreement, but the process stalled as Israel launched attacks on Iran, killing several military leaders and top nuclear scientists, and targeting nuclear facilities. The US later briefly joined the war, bombing several Iranian nuclear sites.

These are the key developments from day 1,435 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Thursday, January 29:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday rose to six, after the remains of several bodies were recovered from the wreckage, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said on the Telegram messaging app.
• At least six people were injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on Telegram.
• Russian forces attacked several locations across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring at least two other people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, said on Facebook.
• One person was killed in a Ukrainian attack on the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional emergencies task force reported, according to the country’s TASS state news agency.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the city of Enerhodar, in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s locally appointed official Yevhen Balitsky said, according to TASS.
• Fedorov has ruled out installing anti-drone netting as a mode of defence, saying that “there are more effective ways to combat Russian attacks”, Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency reported.

Military aid

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that France will deliver more “French aircraft, missiles for air defence systems, and aerial bombs” to Ukraine this year, following a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Regional security

• Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an event in Paris that a 2035 target for rearming Europe “would be too late”.
• “I think rearming ourselves now is the most important thing,” Frederiksen said. “Because when you look at intelligence, nuclear weapons, and so on, we depend on the US,” she added.

• Switzerland plans to inject an additional 31 billion Swiss francs ($40.4bn) into military spending starting from 2028 by increasing sales taxes for a decade.
• “The world has become more volatile and insecure, and the international order based on international law is under strain,” the Swiss government said, noting that other European countries have also been increasing their defence spending.

Politics and diplomacy

• Vladislav Maslennikov, a top European Affairs official at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told TASS that restoring relations with the European Union will only be possible if European countries “cease their sanctions policy”, stop “pump[ing] weapons into the Kyiv regime, and sabotag[ing] the peace process around Ukraine.”

• President Macron said at an event in Paris that European countries must focus on asserting their “sovereignty, on our contribution to Arctic security, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, and on the fight against global warming”.
• “France will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the United Nations Charter,” said Macron, who has turned down an invitation for France to join Trump’s Board of Peace, which some critics say is an attempt to replace the United Nations.

Peace talks

• United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that negotiations over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is part of the Donbas region that is now 90 percent occupied by Russian forces, are “still a bridge we have to cross” in talks between Russia and Ukraine.
• “It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one,” Rubio said.

Energy

• Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 639 apartment buildings in Kyiv remain without heat, with temperatures forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.