AnewZ Morning Brief - 25 February, 2026
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top news stories for the 25th of February, covering the latest developments you need to...
Ukraine has brought home the bodies of 1,212 servicemen killed in the war with Russia, following a major repatriation agreement reached in Istanbul last week.
The bodies, recovered from conflict zones in Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Russia’s Kursk region, are now being transferred to forensic experts for identification.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and relevant Ukrainian agencies were involved in the handover, which occurred at an undisclosed location. Photos released by Kyiv showed ICRC personnel near several refrigerated trucks used to transport the remains.
Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, who led Moscow’s delegation in the Istanbul talks, said on 7 June that the Russian side had begun implementing the agreed steps and had delivered the 1,212 bodies in refrigerated vehicles to the exchange site. He noted that the rest of the 6,000 frozen Ukrainian soldiers’ remains are still en route.
Medinsky also stated that Russia had presented Ukraine with a first list of 640 prisoners of war—seriously wounded, ill, and under the age of 25—as part of the agreed exchange process. The two sides carried out this prisoner swap in two phases on 9 and 10 June.
Moscow has called on Kyiv to fully comply with the Istanbul agreements, after earlier accusing Ukraine of unexpected delays in accepting the bodies and carrying out the prisoner exchange.
Iran has signed a secret €500 million arms deal with Russia to rebuild air defences, weakened during last year’s war with Israel, the Financial Times has reported. The agreement, signed in December in Moscow, will see Russia deliver 500 Verba launch units and 2,500 9M336 missiles over three years.
A British national was among at least 19 people killed when a passenger bus plunged off a mountain highway into the Trishuli river in Nepal before dawn on Monday (23 February), authorities said. A New Zealander and a Chinese national were among those injured.
Seven people were killed after gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Kohat, a district in Pakistan’s north-west near the Afghan border, on Tuesday, in an attack that comes amid rising militant violence and heightened tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Taliban in Kabul has rejected Russian claims that more than 23,000 militants from around 20 international terror groups are currently operating within Afghanistan.
Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the war is no longer defined by shock but by scale.
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top news stories for the 25th of February, covering the latest developments you need to know.
Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was temporarily evacuated from The Lodge to safety on Tuesday night after an alleged bomb threat linked to upcoming performances in Australia by Shen Yun, a U.S.-based classical Chinese dance and music company banned in China.
The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR) on Tuesday (25 February) accused the United Kingdom and France of actively working to provide Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
President Donald Trump delivered the first State of the Union address of his second term to Congress on Wednesday (25 February), declaring that America’s “golden age” had begun and that the country was experiencing a “turnaround for the ages.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is heading to Beijing on for his first official visit as chancellor, aiming to strengthen political and economic dialogue with China before tackling pressing international crises.
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