BERLIN (AP) — Vandals set fire to a mouse statue that's a TV star and mascot for children's programming at German broadcaster WDR, the television station said Saturday.
The cartoon mouse, known only as “Die Maus,” is the eponymous star of “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (The Show with the Mouse) since it first aired in West Germany in 1971. Each short episode features other languages and educational segments.
The statue — featuring the character's famous orange body with brown ears, arms and legs — greets families and children outside a media building in Cologne, Germany.
A receptionist for WDR saw several young people standing around the statue in Cologne on a camera feed overnight Friday into Saturday. She then noticed flames and called the fire department, WDR said.
The fire blackened parts of the mouse's face and arm, images show. The station said a police complaint had been filed against an unidentified person.
Matthias Körnich, head of children's programming for WDR, said it's not just a figurine that was damaged.
“A piece of childhood, a symbol of joy and togetherness has been attacked,” he said. “The mouse belongs to Cologne.”
The mouse statue isn't the first German TV character to be attacked.
In 2009, the statue of a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) was stolen from his traditional place outside the town hall in Erfurt, where German children’s public television channel KiKA is based.
Bernd, a cult classic in Germany, was held hostage for nearly two weeks before being discovered unharmed in an abandoned barracks.
A mouse statue that has been set on fire stands in front of the WDR (West German Broadcasting Corporation) building in Cologne, Germany, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (Sascha Thelen/dpa via AP)
BERLIN (AP) — European leaders are expected to cement support for Ukraine Monday as it faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal.
After Sunday’s talks in Berlin between U.S. envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian and European officials are set to continue a series of meetings in an effort to secure the continent’s peace and security in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, one of the key European interlocutors between U.S. President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy, was spotted Monday morning in downtown Berlin.
Zelenskyy sat down Sunday with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the German federal chancellery in the hopes of bringing the nearly four-year war to a close.
Washington has tried for months to navigate the demands of each side as Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.
The U.S. government late Sunday said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after the five-hour meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia.
Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of the Donetsk region still under its control among the key conditions for peace.
The Russian president also has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.
Zelenskyy emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.
Russia fired 153 drones of various types at Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. The air force said early Monday that 133 drones were neutralized, while 17 more hit their targets.
In Russia, meanwhile, the defense ministry on Monday said forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. An additional 16 drones were then destroyed between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time Monday.
Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow itself, the Russian defense ministry said.
Flights were temporarily halted at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.
Damage details and casualty figures were not immediately available.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has spearheaded European efforts to support Ukraine alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said Saturday that “the decades of the ‘Pax Americana’ are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well.”
“Pax Americana” refers to the U.S.’s postwar dominance as a superpower that has brought relative peace to the globe.
Merz warned that Putin’s aim is “a fundamental change to the borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders.”
“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop,” Merz warned during a party conference in Munich.
Macron, meanwhile, vowed Sunday on social platform X that “France is, and will remain, at Ukraine’s side to build a robust and lasting peace — one that can guarantee Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, and that of Europe, over the long term.”
Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.
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Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland. Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.
Steve Witkoff, special envoy of the United States, leaves through a hotel garage for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz,stands in his office in the chancellory in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Maryam Majd)
Steve Witkoff, special envoy of the United States, arrives for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine, at the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)
Jared Kushner, entrepreneur and former chief adviser to President Donald Trump, arrives for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine at the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, watches Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arriving at the chancellory in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Maryam Majd)
