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Sweden says China must release bookseller Gui Minhai from jail
After a visit to Beijing, Sweden’s foreign minister called on China on Friday to release Swedish citizen Gui Minhai from jail, continuing a long diplomatic standoff between the two countries over the Chinese-born bookseller.
Gui, a Hong Kong-based publisher of books critical of China’s communist leaders, was handed a 10-year prison term by Beijing in 2020 for illegally providing intelligence overseas.
Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, in a post on X, said she had raised the case with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during her visit.
“Our stance remains firm: Gui Minhai must be released and reunited with his family,” Malmer Stenergard wrote.
China’s foreign ministry on Thursday said that Gui was a Chinese national and that it firmly opposes any country, organisation or person interfering with its judicial sovereignty in any form.
Gui, 61, was first abducted in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya in 2015 before surfacing in Chinese detention. He was released in 2017 and detained again by the mainland police in 2018, while with Swedish diplomats on a Beijing-bound train.
A court in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo that sentenced Gui said he had asked to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated. Sweden at the time said Gui had not asked to have his Swedish citizenship revoked and reiterated demands for his release.
Morning Opening: Orban to speak with Putin as Hungary prepares to host Trump-Putin meeting
Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday that he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin later in the day, as Budapest prepares to host a meeting between Putin and US President Donald Trump.
Trump announced earlier this week that he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Orbán, a Trump ally who has also kept close ties with Russia, has said the meeting “will be about peace” and told state radio that the meeting could take place within the next two weeks.
“Last night I gave orders to set up an organising committee, we have set out the most important tasks and preparations have started,” Orbán said.
He added: “Budapest is essentially the only place in Europe today where such a meeting could be held, primarily because Hungary is almost the only pro-peace country … For three years, we have been the only country that has consistently, openly, loudly, and actively advocated for peace.”
Hungary has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons or allow their transfer across its borders since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Orbán has threatened to veto certain EU sanctions against Moscow and held up the bloc’s adoption of major EU funding packages to Kyiv.
In other developments:
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy will head to the White House on Friday for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump, hours after the US president said he had agreed to another summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest after a “very productive” call. The possible supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the Ukrainian president’s visit. Trump has repeatedly hinted in recent weeks that he may deliver Tomahawks, which would give Kyiv its longest-range weapon yet that would be capable of striking Moscow with accurate, destructive munitions.
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Zelenskyy said on Friday he has already met with US firm making Tomahawk missiles and Patriot systems that Kyiv has been requesting to ramp up defences against Russia. “We discussed Raytheon’s production capacity, potential avenues for our cooperation to strengthen Ukraine’s air defence and long-range capabilities, and the prospects for Ukrainian-American joint production,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
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Putin convened a meeting of Russia’s Security Council after a phone call with Trump, reported Russian news agencies on Friday. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that Putin provided a detailed briefing about the conversation to the powerful council. Trump and Putin agreed on Thursday to another summit on the war in Ukraine, a surprise move that came as Moscow feared fresh US military support for Kyiv.
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An explosive device detonated under the car of one of Italy’s leading investigative journalists that was parked outside his home, prompting condemnation Friday from prime minister Giorgia Meloni and others. No one was injured. Report, the investigative series on Italy’s state-run RAI3, said the explosion overnight destroyed the car of Sigfrido Ranucci and damaged a second family car and the house next to it in Pomezia, south of Rome. It said the blast was so powerful that it could have killed anyone passing by. Meloni expressed her solidarity with Ranucci, the lead anchor of Report, and condemned what she called “the serious act of intimidation he has suffered”. “Freedom and independence of information are essential values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend,” she said in a statement.
