Tens of thousands of people have thronged the streets of an Amazonian city hosting the COP30 talks, dancing to pounding speakers in the first large-scale protest at a United Nations climate summit in years.

As the first week of climate negotiations limped to a close with nations deadlocked, Indigenous people and activists sang, chanted, and rolled a giant beach ball of Earth through Belem under a searing sun.

Others held a mock funeral procession for fossil fuels, dressed in black and posing as grieving widows as they carried three coffins marked with the words “coal”, “oil” and “gas”.

It was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since COP26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings had been held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan.

Called the “Great People’s March” by the organisers, the Belem rally came at the halfway point of difficult negotiations and followed two Indigenous-led protests that disrupted proceedings earlier in the week.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” said Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he added. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.”

Their demands include “reparations” for damages caused by corporations and governments, particularly to marginalised communities.

After a 4.5km (2.8-mile) march through the city, the demonstration halted a few blocks from the COP30 venue, where authorities deployed soldiers to protect the site.

Inside the venue, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago admitted that the first exhaustive week of negotiations had failed to yield a breakthrough and urged diplomats not to run down the clock with time-wasting manoeuvres.

Countries remained at odds over trade measures and weak climate targets, while a showdown looms over demands that wealthy nations triple the finance they provide to poorer states to adapt to a warming world.

A former associate of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been accused of being the mastermind behind a $100 million embezzlement scheme.

Tymur Mindich, who was once Zelenskyy’s business partner, was identified by Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs as being the orchestrator of a scheme involving top officials and Ukraine’s state nuclear power company. Prior to the scandal, some feared Mindich’s growing influence over Ukraine’s lucrative industries that he had access to because of his ties to Zelenskyy.

Mindich allegedly exerted control over loyalists who then pressured contractors for Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power company, demanding kickbacks to bypass bureaucratic obstacles. The requested kickbacks were reportedly as high as 15%.

Despite his history with Mindich, Zelenskyy was not implicated in the investigation. The Ukrainian president also issued sanctions against his former business partner once the anti-corruption findings were revealed.

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On Nov. 11, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said that a group of individuals, including Mindich, “set up a major corruption scheme to control key state-owned enterprises,” including the country’s state-owned nuclear agency, the Kyiv Independent reported. The Ukrainian news outlet said that sources confirmed law enforcement searched properties tied to Mindich on Nov. 10, but he was tipped off and fled.

Mindich remains at large, with Politico reporting that he fled to Israel as the scheme unraveled and law enforcement zeroed in on him.

“Any effective actions against corruption are very needed. The inevitability of punishment is necessary,” Zelenskyy said in an evening address, according to the Kyiv Independent.

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The NABU’s 15-month investigation allegedly involved 1,000 hours of wiretapping and resulted in 70 raids, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the agency.

“What we were hearing only as rumors now has some evidence,” activist Tetiana Shevchuk of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center told The Associated Press. “For a long time we have heard that Tymur Mindich is a shadow controller of the energy sector.”

In addition to Mindrich, Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko, who was Energy Minister from 2021 to 2025, was also raided, according to the Kyiv Independent, which cited sources.

Mindich was co-owner of Zelenskyy’s production company Kvartal 95, something that Shevchuk believes pushed him toward politics. The activist told the AP that Mindich “would have never been in politics, never been in a position of power or business without his connection to Zelenskyy, and this magnitude is worse because it’s happening during war time, and it is related to energy infrastructure at a time when Ukrainians don’t have electricity in their homes.”

This isn’t the only NABU investigation centered on Mindich. The anti-corruption agency is allegedly working on a probe into the former Zelenskyy associate’s dealings with Ukraine’s top drone manufacturer, Fire Point. However, NABU has yet to release its findings in that investigation.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Zelenskyy’s office for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.