The United States has renewed efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, with American, Ukrainian and European officials meeting in Miami on Friday to explore ways to reach a peace deal before winter.

The latest diplomatic move came as US President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase diesel supplies to global markets, highlighting the growing link between the war and rising energy costs.

US envoy Steve Witkoff said the meeting focused on possible ways to reduce tensions and end the conflict, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a post on 𝕏 after the meeting, Witkoff described the discussions as “constructive” and said the participants considered ways to achieve lasting peace before winter.

He said the meeting included representatives of the E3 countries, the European Commission, Ukraine, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

According to Witkoff, the discussions covered energy security, grain exports, security guarantees and long-term arrangements to protect Ukraine and Europe against future conflicts.

He added that the officials also discussed Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, economic growth and its possible accession to the European Union.

Witkoff did not confirm whether the talks would continue on Saturday, as initially planned.

The renewed negotiations came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the failure to reach a diplomatic settlement could lead to further escalation.

Speaking to reporters in Lisbon on Thursday, Rubio said the conflict had reached a dangerous stalemate, with the possibility of the fighting spreading beyond Ukraine.

“The other way that stalemates end is through escalation,” he said, warning that neighbouring NATO countries could also be affected.

Rubio maintained that Washington did not believe it could resolve the conflict through military action alone.

“We do not believe that there is a military solution to this conflict,” he added.

The latest meeting followed visits to Moscow and Kyiv last month by Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, as the US administration sought to revive negotiations that have made little progress.

According to Al Jazeera, a source familiar with the discussions revealed that American negotiators had since been working on fresh proposals with Russian and Ukrainian officials.

Trump’s diplomatic push also coincided with an announcement that Russia would increase diesel supplies to the United States and other global markets.

Following a telephone conversation with Putin on Friday, the US president said Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel, with another 500,000 tonnes expected in November.

The US Treasury Department also announced a temporary licence allowing Russian diesel to reach global markets.

It was not immediately clear whether Trump and Putin discussed the war in Ukraine during their telephone conversation.

Trump has blamed Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries for rising fuel prices. However, the US-Israeli war with Iran has been identified in the report as the main source of disruption to global energy supplies.

European officials have also raised concerns about high energy costs and the conflict’s wider economic effects.

Naija News reports that the renewed diplomatic efforts came amid continued Russian attacks on Ukraine, including a strike on buses in the frontline city of Kramatorsk that killed 30 people.

With winter approaching, concerns are growing over further fighting and attacks on critical infrastructure, increasing pressure on both sides to consider a settlement.

However, major disagreements over territory continue to stand in the way of a peace agreement.

Trump’s previous efforts to broker an end to the war have struggled over Russia’s demand to control all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, including areas still under Ukrainian control.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected giving up territory held by his country, warning that Russia could use such areas as a base for another attack.

Russia currently occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory following its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The territorial dispute remains one of the biggest obstacles to negotiations, despite renewed efforts by Washington to bring both sides closer to an agreement.

The Miami meeting also comes as the Trump administration seeks progress on its diplomatic efforts before the US midterm elections in November.

According to Axios, Witkoff and Kushner briefed Trump on their latest proposals during a meeting on Thursday attended by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior officials.

Washington is also seeking to arrange broader discussions involving Russia and Ukraine later this month.

The Kremlin has indicated that three-way negotiations could resume in October, although no date has been announced.

Whether the renewed talks will produce a breakthrough remains uncertain, as both sides continue to disagree over territory and the security arrangements needed to end the war.

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A fresh court filing in the United States (US) has alleged that the Nigerian government pays $750,000 monthly to DCI Group AZ, LLC, an affiliate associated with American public affairs firm DCI Group.

The allegation was contained in a document submitted by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan in his ongoing lawsuit seeking US government records linked to President Bola Tinubu and an alleged federal investigation in the early 1990s involving Tinubu and Abiodun Agbele.

Naija News understands that Greenspan filed the request for judicial notice on October 8, 2026, as part of his efforts to persuade the court to allow limited discovery involving Tinubu, who joined the case in October 2023.

The filing also alleges that an online account managed by the DCI affiliate published a post attacking Greenspan on August 5, 2026.

However, the document does not establish that the Nigerian government directed or funded the alleged attack, or that the monthly payment was connected to it. It also does not establish who was responsible for the attacks on Greenspan’s website.

In the filing, Greenspan referred to allegations by federal prosecutors that a Washington public affairs and lobbying firm had engaged Israeli contractors whose operators allegedly hacked electronic accounts belonging to targets connected to a project for the firm’s client.

According to the filing, the hacked information was subsequently provided to the lobbying firm.

Greenspan cited documents filed by the US Department of Justice, statements by a defendant’s lawyer in the United Kingdom and reports by two news organizations, which he said identified the firm as DCI Group.

The filing stated: “DCI Group AZ, LLC is paid $750,000 per month by Intervenor’s government, and on August 5, 2026 an account it manages published a post attacking Plaintiff in writing.”

The request asks the court to take judicial notice of the existence and contents of public records attached to the filing.

A separate one-page document submitted alongside it is marked as a proposed order. Although the document contains wording that would grant the request, the copy provided has neither a date nor a judge’s signature. It therefore does not establish that the court approved the request.

The application for judicial notice is also separate from Greenspan’s main request for permission to pursue limited discovery.

Tinubu joined the lawsuit in October 2023, citing privacy concerns over confidential tax records and federal law-enforcement documents.

In April 2025, US District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration could not maintain blanket refusals to confirm or deny whether records responsive to Greenspan’s requests existed.

However, the judge upheld the Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to confirm or deny the existence of such records.

The ruling concerned the agencies’ responses to Greenspan’s information requests. It did not establish criminal wrongdoing by Tinubu or direct the release of all the records sought by the plaintiff.

The latest filing is part of Greenspan’s continuing effort to obtain permission to pursue limited discovery in the case.

In September, it was reported that Greenspan had asked a federal court in Washington for permission to put four questions to Tinubu over a series of denial-of-service attacks on his website, PlainSite.

In a reply filed on September 28 in Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Case No. 1:23-cv-01816-BAH, Greenspan argued that Tinubu, who had intervened in the lawsuit, had not denied that he, his government or anyone acting on his behalf, including DCI Group AZ, was involved in the attacks.

“If that is so, the four requests for admission can be answered in minutes,” Greenspan wrote.

The filings, however, do not establish that Tinubu or DCI Group carried out the attacks. They also contain no evidence identifying those responsible.

Greenspan Disputes Tinubu’s Position On Attack Evidence

Tinubu’s opposition to Greenspan’s discovery request, filed as ECF No. 109, argued that “there is no independent verification” of the alleged attacks.

Greenspan rejected the argument, pointing to a technical mitigation report attached to an earlier motion. The report was generated on May 29, 2025, by PlainSite’s internet service provider through its own mitigation system.

According to Greenspan, the report recorded traffic reaching 941.9 megabits per second and 1.8 million packets per second at PlainSite’s protected address.

About half of the traffic was identified and dropped as hostile, while 110,700 source hosts were blocked.

Greenspan argued that Tinubu’s opposition did not address the report, challenge its authenticity or present contrary technical evidence.

He also told the court that attacks on the website resumed after he filed his motion on September 9.

In a supplemental declaration made under penalty of perjury, Greenspan said the number of individual addresses blocked by PlainSite’s firewall had fallen to about 69,000 by September 7, after the intense attacks stopped in late August.

He said the number began rising sharply around September 18, reached approximately 500,000 on September 23 and stood at 390,957 on the morning of September 24.

Greenspan also drew attention to the timing of the increase. September 18 was the original deadline for the government to reply to his cross-motion for summary judgment before the deadline was extended to September 23.

That was the same day Tinubu’s legal team and the Justice Department filed their respective submissions.

However, the timing cited in the declaration does not, on its own, establish a link between the court filings and the website attacks.

Greenspan’s declaration indicated that the September attacks were less disruptive than those recorded in August.

He said the August attacks pushed the server’s load average above 300, while the September attacks did not overwhelm the server because PlainSite’s adaptive firewall automatically identified and blocked attacking networks.

According to him, the server’s load average remained below 25 during the later attacks.

Greenspan also reported that the firewall dropped more than 200,000 packets per minute on September 23, while total web traffic exceeded 480,000 packets per minute.

He explained that some of the largest traffic spikes recorded on September 23 and 24 appeared in the category classified by the firewall as ordinary visitor traffic.

According to Greenspan, this happened because traffic from attacking sources was initially counted in that category before the firewall identified and blocked those sources.

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Death row inmate, Christa Pike has scored a legal victory after a judge reopened her case against being put to death by lethal injection following her botched execution.

The convicted murderer, 50, was due to be the first woman put to death in Tennessee for over 200 years on Sept. 30 but instead became the country’s first death row inmate ever to survive the lethal injection.

In January, her legal team filed a complaint in court challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol, which was later dismissed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in May, according to court documents obtained by The Post.

In an order issued on Thursday, Judge I’Ashea Myles ruled that the case should be reopened in the Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville.

Myles wrote that Pike had established “extreme, unique, exceptional, or extraordinary circumstances” allowing her to seek relief from the court.

The original complaint filed in January called for the court to stop the use of the lethal injection against Pike, arguing that in her case it was unconstitutional.

“Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, calling for a single drug (pentobarbital), is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill medical role,” Pike’s lawyers wrote.

“As the State of Tennessee seeks to execute its first woman in 250 years, and the only woman on Tennessee’s death row ––- Christa Gail Pike –– those problems have come to head.

“The new protocol, as applied to the Plaintiff and her unique medical conditions, is unconstitutional under the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution.”

The attorneys also argued that Pike’s “physical characteristics,” including small veins, made insertion with a needle difficult.

Pike was sentenced to death for the sadistic murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Jan. 1995, when she was 18.

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