Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to discuss ways to end the Ukraine war that has been going on for more than four years. Putin told the American delegates, in a video recording broadcast by Russian media, that “the situation is not easy.”
The two envoys are expected to head to Kyiv today, in an attempt to revive faltering peace efforts. US President Donald Trump hinted that the United States has a concrete proposal aimed at ending the war, but he declined to reveal whether the new plan includes giving up territory to Ukraine, as he previously indicated.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine would stop its air attacks on Moscow during the envoys' visit. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also announced that President Vladimir Putin issued an order to stop raids on Kiev for 72 hours.
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegener admitted, in an interview published on Saturday, that sensitive data was stolen as a result of a cyber attack on the German capital's municipality in August.
The RBB General Group confirmed that the electronic pirates published more than a million of this data on Friday via the dark web (Dark Web), after their request for a ransom in exchange for refraining from doing so was not responded to.
Der Spiegel weekly reported that the stolen data included protection procedures within the Berlin fire service, payrolls, banking information, digital copies of official identities, confidential information related to employees, and files related to the expansion of the German Chancellery's headquarters.
In an interview with Bild newspaper published on Saturday, Wegener admitted to stealing the data, once again refusing to give in to blackmail by hackers.
He asked: “Who guarantees that if we pay (the ransom), this data will not remain for a long time elsewhere?”
Local media reported that the value of the ransom was approximately two million euros.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government is closely following the information and investigation related to the leak of this data.
According to local reports, a hacker group known as “Rhysida” is behind the cyber attack, which has previously claimed responsibility for attacks, most notably on the British Library in London in the fall of 2023.
The group then demanded a ransom exceeding 760,000 euros from the ancient library. In light of the fact that its request was not met, the group published about 500,000 files on the dark web that included the personal data of visitors, subscribers, and employees.
Due to the cyber attack that occurred on August 14, several departments in the German capital, especially the departments concerned with housing and the environment, were unable to access the network for a week. This led to the inability to submit and disburse housing subsidy applications for days.
The Berlin state government said today (Saturday) that it is reviewing with the utmost scrutiny a set of stolen data, while investigators try to assess the scale and impact of the cyber attack. This electronic attack on the Berlin network comes less than a month before elections in the state on September 20.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday that a ceasefire in Zaporizhya brokered by the agency had entered into force to enable repairs to be made with the aim of restoring energy supplies to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine.
The station has been cut off from external power supplies since August 20, and it relies on emergency diesel generators to cool its critical safety systems.
The United Nations agency said that the station's diesel fuel reserves are running out, and it faces the risk of a complete power outage within days unless power is restored or more diesel is transported to the site.
She added that Ukrainian technicians are scheduled to begin work to repair the damaged Viroslavna electricity line, after removing mines from the area, according to Reuters.
Russian forces seized the plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
Alexei Likhachev, head of Rosatom, said that a temporary ceasefire entered into force this morning in the vicinity of the station to create the necessary conditions for repair work, and it is expected to last about a week.
He added that repairing the Virosplavna line would not necessarily guarantee the resumption of external power supplies to the station. He said that another electricity line was repaired on July 23, but was not reconnected due to what he described as the inaction of the Ukrainian authorities, and Ukraine did not comment publicly on the ceasefire or Likhachev's statements.
During the war, Moscow and Kiev regularly accused the other of carrying out military actions that endangered nuclear safety.
