French envoy: Europe does not want Asia to choose sides in US-China rivalry

RIYADH: Top US and Russian officials are set to meet on Tuesday in Riyadh for what are expected to be the most significant talks between the two former Cold War foes on ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The conversation could pave the way for a summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The talks come after European leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for an emergency summit to agree a unified strategy after they were blindsided by Trump’s push for immediate talks after a phone call with Putin last week.
The European leaders said they would invest more in defense and take the lead in providing security guarantees for Ukraine.
“Everyone feels the great sense of urgency,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on X. “At this crucial time for the security of Europe we must continue to stand behind Ukraine.”
“Europe will have to make a contribution toward safeguarding any agreement, and cooperation with the Americans is essential,” he said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to Putin, in Riyadh, officials from both sides said.
Initial contact
The meeting comes barely a month after Trump took office and reflects a significant departure from Washington’s position under the administration of President Joe Biden, who eschewed public contacts, concluding that Russia was not serious about ending the war.
Russia, which has occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014, launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly.
Ukraine says no agreements can be made on its behalf in the talks, to which Kyiv was not invited.
US officials sought to cast Tuesday’s talks as an initial contact to determine whether Moscow is serious about ending the war in Ukraine.
“This is a follow-up on that initial conversation between Putin and President Trump about perhaps if that first step is even possible, what the interests are, if this can be managed,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters in Riyadh.
The Kremlin, however, suggested the discussions would cover “the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” as well as preparing for talks on a possible settlement regarding Ukraine and a meeting between the two presidents.
Russia said Lavrov and Rubio in a call on Saturday discussed removing barriers to trade and investment between the two countries.
Then-President Biden and Kyiv’s allies around the world imposed waves of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine three years ago, aimed at weakening the Russian economy and limiting the Kremlin’s war efforts.
On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said Trump was a problem solver.
“We really see that President Trump and his team is a team of problem solvers, people who have already addressed a number of big challenges very swiftly, very efficiently and very successfully,” Kirill Dmitriev told reporters in Riyadh.
Riyadh, which is also involved in talks with Washington over the future of the Gaza Strip, has played a role in early contacts between the Trump administration and Moscow, helping to secure a prisoner swap last week.
How to engage Washington
It remains unclear how Europe will engage Washington after Trump stunned Ukraine and European allies by calling Putin, long ostracized by the West.
“We agree with President Trump on a “peace through strength” approach,” a European official said after the Paris meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The US decision has sparked a realization among European nations that they will have to do more to ensure Ukraine’s security.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who before the meeting said he was willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, said on Monday there must be a US security commitment for European countries to put boots on the ground.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Ukraine envoy, said he would visit Ukraine from Wednesday and was asked if the US would provide a security guarantee for any European peacekeepers.
“I’ve been with President Trump, and the policy has always been: You take no options off the table,” he said.

TORONTO: A Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.

Three people on flight DL4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, a Canadian air ambulance official said, with 15 others also immediately taken to hospitals.

Some of the injured have since been released, Delta said late on Monday.

The US carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board.

The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people. At least one of the two wings was no longer attached to the plane, video showed after the accident.

Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.

Passenger John Nelson posted a video of the aftermath on Facebook, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.

He later told CNN there was no indication of anything unusual before landing.

“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” Nelson told the television network.

“I was able to just unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. And then some people were kind of hanging and needed some help being helped down, and others were able to get down on their own,” he said.

Weather conditions

Toronto Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, FlightRadar24 data showed.

The reported weather conditions at time of the crash indicated a “gusting crosswind and blowing snow,” the flight tracking website said.

Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken said late on Monday the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions, but several pilots Reuters spoke to who had seen videos of the incident pushed back against this comment.

US aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (22 mph) from the right as it was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would go up and down.

“It’s gusty so they are constantly going to have to be making adjustments in the air speed, adjustments in the vertical profile and adjustments in the lateral profile,” he said of the pilots, adding that “it’s normal for what professional pilots do.”

Investigators would try to figure out why the right wing separated from the plane, Cox said.

Michael J. McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the Toronto crash fairly unique.

“But the fact that 80 people survived an event like this is a testament to the engineering and the technology, the regulatory background that would go into creating a system where somebody can actually survive something that not too long ago would have been fatal,” he said.

Three previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas’s MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport killing both pilots. In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark with no fatalities.

Airport delays

Flights have resumed at Toronto Pearson, but airport president Deborah Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.

She attributed the absence of fatalities in part to the work of first responders at the airport.

“We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” she said at a press conference.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the US National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.

Global aviation standards require a preliminary investigation report to be published within 30 days of an accident.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, said it was aware of the incident and would fully cooperate with the investigation.

The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, D.C., killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.