China is likely to work to ensure that a Saudi conference to discuss peace plans for Ukraine does not become an “anti-Russian” event, analysts said.

More than 30 countries have reportedly been invited to the two-day conference in Jeddah this weekend, where Ukraine is likely to seek more international support. Russia, which recently pulled out of a deal to protect Ukrainian grain exports, has not been invited.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and China’s Xi Jinping spoke by phone Wednesday — their first conversation since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago and a signal that Beijing may be angling to play a mediating role.

China will send a special representative to Ukraine and other countries to hold talks with all parties on resolving the “crisis,” Xi told Zelensky, according to a Chinese readout of the call.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a call Wednesday that he will send a peace envoy to the war torn nation as Russia continues its brutal assault. 

According to a government statement on the call, China will send an envoy to not only Kyiv, but other nations as well "to conduct in-depth communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis."

President Volodymyr Zelensky talked to Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 26 for the first time since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

Zelensky tweeted that he hopes the "long and meaningful phone call" and the appointment of Ukraine's ambassador to China will "give a powerful impetus" to the development of the countries' relations.

Donald Trump is settling on a simple foreign policy pitch in his second bid for the White House: Want World War 3? Vote for the other guy.

Over the past week, Trump has assailed President Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan. He has said he could end the almost year-long conflict in Ukraine within “24 hours,” but without any indication how, and suggested sending tanks to the country could spark nuclear war. He has railed against China and called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a “globalist.”

Here are 3 ways Russia's war impacts the U.S.

The Ethiopian war in Tigray is over.

On November 2, federal forces and rebel authorities agreed on a “cessation of hostilities,” ending a conflict believed to have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. All sides committed abuses, as documented by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and other international observers.

“No one has been clean in this war,” said Desta Heliso, a visiting lecturer at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. “As Christians, we have to feel sorry about this.”

This year will be key to determining whether the ceasefire reached in November can deliver a lasting peace in northern Ethiopia.

Major issues remain to be resolved, including the withdrawal of Eritrean and other forces that have fought alongside the government and the future of disputed territory claimed by both Tigray and the neighbouring region of Amhara.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his troops to observe a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine, but Kyiv flatly rejected the idea and cast it as blatant “hypocrisy” from Moscow, while U.S. officials said Mr. Putin likely would use any break in the fighting to rest and refit his weary forces for further assaults.

A fragile peace has been restored but for tens of thousands of displaced people who fled to Sudan there is no prospect of going home

When she remembers the corpses on the asphalt, the bodies of her neighbours and of the boy who used to play with her children, Lemlen Abraha breaks down in tears.

“They just shot him,” she says of 14-year-old Kalayu Mebrahtom, killed by government soldiers in the first weeks of Ethiopia’s civil war and left to be buried by his grandmother. “I’d left my home to buy sugar – I saw it on the street, I saw it with my own eyes.”