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      Trump says he has spoken with Putin about ending Ukraine war

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      Donald Trump has said he held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over a negotiated end of the three year Russia-Ukraine war, indicated that Russian negotiators want to meet with US counterparts.Trump told the New York Post that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times.In comments to the outlet on Friday aboard Air Force One, Trump said he believed Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield but did not say if the Russian leader had presented any concrete commitments to end the nearly three-year conflict.Trump revealed that he has a plan to end the war but declined to go into details. “I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”Last month, Trump estimated that approximately 1 million Russian soldiers and 700,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since the invasion began – an estimate far in excess of numbers that Ukrainian officials or independent analysts have presented.The Post said the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, joined the president during for the interview.“Let’s get these meetings going,” Trump said. “They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield”.Waltz would not confirm that Trump had spoken with Putin, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that “there are certainly a lot of sensitive conversations going on” and that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”.Ending the war, Waltz added, had come up in conversations with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, China’s president Xi Jinping and leaders across the Middle East. “Everybody is ready to help President Trump end in this war,” Waltz said, and repeated Trump’s comments that he is prepared to tax, tariff and sanction Russia.“The president is prepared to put all of those issues on the table this week, including the future of US aid to Ukraine. We need to recoup those costs, and that is going to be a partnership with the Ukrainians in terms of their rare earth (materials), their natural resources, their oil and gas, and also buying ours.”But Waltz reiterated what he said was the Trump administration’s “underlying principle” that the Europeans “have to own this conflict going forward. President Trump is going to end it, and then in terms of security guarantees that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.”During his presidential campaign, Trump made repeated vows to end the war quickly if he was re-elected, often pointing to the loss of life on the battlefield.Last month, Trump said “Most people thought this war would last about a week, and now it’s been going on for three years,” and said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had expressed interest in a negotiated peace deal.During the interview on Friday, Trump again expressed sorrow for the loss of life in the war and compared the young men dying to his own sons.“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason,” Trump told the Post, adding that Putin also “wants to see people stop dying”.The Kremlin on Sunday declined to confirm or deny the report of the phone call. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS state news agency he was unaware of any such call.“What can be said about this news: as the administration in Washington unfolds its work, many different communications arise. These communications are conducted through different channels. And of course, amid the multiplicity of these communications, I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”The Kremlin has previously said it is awaiting “signals” on a possible meeting between Trump and Putin. The head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Leonid Slutsky, has said that work on preparing contacts between Moscow and Washington “is at an advanced stage”.The US president also ventured into the current stand-off between Israel and Iran, saying he “would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear” and would prefer a negotiated deal to “bombing the hell out of it… They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.”If there was a deal with Iran, he said, “Israel wouldn’t bomb them”. But he declined to go further on any approach to Iran: “In a way, I don’t like telling you what I’m going to tell them. You know, it’s not nice.”“I could tell what I have to tell them, and I hope they decide that they’re not going to do what they’re currently thinking of doing. And I think they’ll really be happy,” Trump added. More

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      Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs

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      The US justice department under Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive on Wednesday, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs would be redirected to countering cartels.The effort, launched during Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.It was part of a broader push to freeze Russia out of global markets and enforce wide-ranging sanctions imposed on Moscow amid international condemnation of its war on Ukraine.The taskforce brought indictments against the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and TV tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev for alleged sanctions busting, and seized yachts belonging to the sanctioned oligarchs Suleiman Kerimov and Viktor Vekselberg.It also secured a guilty plea against a US lawyer who made $3.8m in payments to maintain properties owned by Vekselberg.Prosecutors assigned to the taskforce will return to their previous posts. The changes will be in effect for at least 90 days and could be renewed or made permanent, according to the directive.Trump has spoken about improving relations with Moscow. He has previously vowed to end the war in Ukraine, though he has not released a detailed plan.The emphasis on drug cartels comes after Trump designated many such groups as terrorist organizations, part of a crackdown on illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.The shift also implicates enforcement of a US foreign bribery law that has led to some of the justice department’s largest corporate cases over the last decade. The unit enforcing that law, known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), will now prioritize bribery investigations related to cartels, according to the memo.A wide range of multinational firms has come under justice department scrutiny over the law, including Goldman Sachs, Glencore and Walmart. Those large corporate resolutions do not typically involve cartels.“It is a radical move away from traditional FCPA cases and toward a narrow subset of drug and violent crime-related cases that have never been the focus of FCPA enforcement,” said Stephen Frank, a lawyer at law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan who worked on FCPA cases as a federal prosecutor. More

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      The Guardian view on political turmoil in Paris and Berlin: an ominous end to the year | Editorial

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      After a brief weekend hiatus, action has resumed in the real-life political boxsets playing out in the EU’s two most important capitals. In the Bundestag on Monday, a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered coalition government duly paved the way for a snap election in February. Over in Paris – where the same manoeuvre collapsed Michel Barnier’s short-lived government a fortnight ago – his prime ministerial replacement was putting his feet under the desk after being appointed on Friday by an increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron.As Europe faces big decisions and dilemmas over Ukraine, how to deal with Donald Trump, and the challenge of China, this is no time for the continent’s fabled Franco-German engine to temporarily conk out. But there are no easy fixes in view on either side of the Rhine. In both France and Germany, the rise of the far right and a concomitant crisis of trust in mainstream politics have pointed to a deep political malaise for some time.Mr Scholz effectively decided to put his troubled coalition government out of its misery in November by firing his fiscally hawkish finance minister, Christian Lindner. As Germany seeks to reboot an economic model that can no longer rely on cheap Russian energy and export-led growth, the SPD leader has deliberately forced an election to seek a mandate for greater borrowing and investment.Unfortunately, he looks unlikely to get it. The most likely next chancellor is Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and a former BlackRock executive. Mr Merz has pledged to maintain the cordon sanitaire excluding the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from power. But the CDU’s plans to cut corporate taxes and rein in public expenditure would only deepen the social tensions that have fuelled the AfD’s rise.France’s problems began in earnest with Mr Macron’s disastrous decision to call his own snap election last summer. Conceived as a means of confronting Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, which had won the European elections in June, the strategy succeeded only in delivering an ungovernable parliament divided into three blocs, none boasting a majority. Mr Macron then compounded his error by refusing to allow the election’s narrow winner, the leftwing New Popular Front coalition, to provide the next prime minister.A damaging democratic fiasco has ensued. Mr Macron spectacularly lost his electoral gamble, but is stubbornly attempting to protect his unpopular pension reforms and push through an austerity budget to appease the markets and satisfy Brussels’ deficit criteria. With the rightwing Mr Barnier ousted in record time, he has now turned to François Bayrou, a veteran centrist from the rural south-west of France and longstanding ally. Mr Bayrou is the fourth prime minister to be recruited by the president this year, each lasting a shorter period of time than their predecessor. He has drily pronounced his task to be of “Himalayan” proportions.Political dysfunction in the EU’s two most powerful member states feels like a somewhat ominous way to close the year. From January, Mr Trump will doubtless be seeking to browbeat western allies on matters of economic and foreign policy. Right now, with Paris and Berlin plunged into introspection, it would be fair to say that Europe does not look fully ready for the challenge. More

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      Ex-FBI informant agrees to plead guilty to lying about Bidens’ Ukraine ties

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      A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that Joe Biden and the president’s son Hunter had accepted bribes has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, according to court papers.As part of the plea deal with the justice department special counsel, David Weiss, Alexander Smirnov will admit he fabricated the story that became central to a Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.The plea agreement comes just weeks after prosecutors filed new tax-evasion charges against Smirnov. The two sides will recommend a sentence of at least two years behind bars and no more than six years, according to the agreement.David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, attorneys for Smirnov, said they will make their case for a fair sentence in court and declined to comment further.Smirnov was arrested in February on allegations that he falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 or 2016. Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, according to court documents.Prosecutors said Smirnov had had contact with Burisma executives, but it had been routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama’s presidency and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US policy. Prosecutors said Smirnov made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Biden while the latter was a presidential candidate in 2020.Smirnov repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, changed his story about others and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials”, prosecutors said.Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion and causing a false FBI record, according to court papers.Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special counsel who brought federal gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was supposed to have been sentenced this month on his convictions in those cases, until he was pardoned by his father. More

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      Nancy Pelosi hospitalized after sustaining injury on Luxembourg trip

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      Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, suffered an injury on a trip to Luxembourg and has been admitted to a hospital for evaluation, her office said in a statement on Friday.Pelosi, 84, is the first woman to serve as speaker of the House and had also been a longtime leader of the House Democratic caucus.“While traveling with a bipartisan congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” a Pelosi spokesperson, Ian Krager, said in a statement.Krager added: “Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work.”The San Francisco congresswoman stepped down from her role as speaker – a powerful position second in line to the presidency after the vice-president – in 2023 but she has continued to serve in the House.She was re-elected in November to another two-year term beginning on 3 January.Pelosi played a key role in passing Joe Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure bill in 2022 and famously feuded with Donald Trump during his first four years in office, culminating with the moment when she tore up his State of the Union speech on national television in 2020.Pelosi has been a prominent figure in Washington over a tenure spanning seven presidential administrations. She first served as House speaker from 2007 to 2011, then regained the job in 2019 after her party took back control of the chamber in the 2018 midterm elections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats lost their House majority in 2022, and Republicans will again hold a narrow majority next year when President-elect Trump returns to the White House. More

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      in Elections

      Scholz Calls for Confidence Vote, in Step Toward German Elections

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      Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had few alternatives after his three-party coalition broke up, is widely expected to lose when Parliament takes up the measure on Monday.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called for a confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday, taking the first formal step toward disbanding the German government and leading to snap elections likely to oust him from office.The move, culminating in a parliamentary vote on Monday, became all but necessary in November, when the chancellor fired his finance minister, precipitating the breakup of his fragile three-party coalition.“In a democracy, it is the voters who determine the course of future politics. When they go to the polls, they decide how we will answer the big questions that lie ahead of us,” Mr. Scholz said from the chancellery in Berlin on Wednesday.Mr. Scholz expects to lose the vote. The collapse of the government along with the early election on Feb. 23 amount to an extraordinary political moment in a country long known for stable governments.The political turbulence in Germany and the fall last week of the government in France have left the European Union with a vacuum of leadership at critical moment: It is facing challenges from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the imminent return to the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States.Mr. Trump has threatened a trade war with Europe and has consistently expressed skepticism about America’s commitment to the NATO alliance that has been the guarantor of security on the continent for 75 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Guardian view on the EU-Mercosur trade deal: another farmer flashpoint approaches | Letters

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      Anticipating the strong protectionist winds that will blow from Donald Trump’s White House, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been responding by making her own economic weather. Last week, Ms von der Leyen flew to Montevideo, 5,000 miles south of Washington DC, to controversially conclude negotiations in one of the biggest free trade agreements in history. Twenty-five years in the making, the Mercosur trade deal opens up trade between the EU and a Latin American bloc of partners comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.In theory, the agreement promises a more open market of 700 million people for products ranging from Argentine beef to German cars. For European manufacturers, it would eliminate tariffs on a majority of goods. As Mr Trump threatens to impose heavy tariffs on Chinese and European exports, here was evidence, asserted Ms von der Leyen, “that openness and cooperation are the true engines of progress and prosperity”.This sunny analysis does not, however, tell the whole story. From an economic perspective, the Mercosur deal makes sense for Europe, offering an alternative market in the event of US tariffs and amid the continuing Chinese slowdown. It also deepens European connections with the global south, at a time when Beijing is doing the same in systematic fashion. But the political realities are treacherous: opposing Mercosur is a common cause celebre among European farmers, who fear being undercut by Latin American producers who are not subject to the same environmental standards.At the end of a year in which farmers’ protests have made headlines across the continent, and far-right parties have exploited rural resentment to attack the EU’s green transition, this is territory to be navigated with extreme care. The deal has yet to be ratified, and EU member states are split. Germany, desperate to shore up its export industry, is strongly in favour. France, whose farmers famously carry immense political clout, is implacably opposed. Serious reservations have been expressed by the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Italy and Ireland.Less than a month after officially beginning her second term in office, Ms von der Leyen is taking a risk by pushing ahead at pace when such divisions exist. Approval of the trade part of the overall deal may be subject to a qualified majority vote, meaning that France would not be able to exercise its veto. That would be grist to Marine Le Pen’s mill, given that, in one recent poll, almost two-thirds of French citizens said they no longer had confidence in the EU. Meanwhile, the prospect of a disunited European front – with France and Germany at loggerheads – as Mr Trump enters the White House, is not an uplifting one.In the quarter of a century since the Mercosur negotiations began, the negative impacts of globalisation on particular European regions and economic sectors have driven a backlash that has benefited the far right. Trade deals are about politics as well as economics. To avoid the fallout of this deal overshadowing the economic gains, Brussels should make it a priority that losers from it are adequately compensated. Bypassing a necessary battle for hearts and minds, as the EU confronts new geopolitical challenges without and the rise of Eurosceptic nationalism within, is not a viable option.

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      Trump to attend Notre Dame reopening as Macron weathers political storm

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      The restored Gothic spire of Notre Dame is to provide a dramatic backdrop for Donald Trump’s return to the geopolitical stage this weekend, as the US president-elect prepares to make his first visit to Europe since the election to mingle with world leaders at an official reopening ceremony in Paris on Saturday.The medieval cathedral, which was ravaged by a fire in 2019, has been reconstructed in a painstaking €700m (£580m) effort that took just five years, involving the application of carpentry methods dating to the 13th century and enabled with donations from 150 countries.Festivities will stretch over two days, starting with an address by the beleaguered French president, Emmanuel Macron.Speaking before Saturday’s opening ceremony, Macron said: “The shock of the reopening will – I believe and I want to believe – be as strong as that of the fire, but it will be a shock of hope.”Macron had initially been expected to deliver the speech on the limestone forecourt outside the cathedral followed by a liturgical ceremony inside but late on Friday, Macron’s office and the Diocese of Paris said heavy winds would force the celebrations to be held entirely inside.The archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, will strike the 850-year-old edifice’s heavy door with his crosier, accompanied by the singing of Psalm 121, to symbolise the cathedral’s reawakening. The service continues with the “awakening of the great organ”, which has not been heard since the fire, a solemn blessing and the singing of the Te Deum.On Sunday, which marks the annual feast of the Immaculate Conception, the archbishop will hold an inaugural mass that Notre Dame’s rector said would be attended by people in need: “the poorest among Parisians”. The new main altar will be consecrated in a special ritual and the relics of five saints, including Saint Catherine Labouré and Saint Charles de Foucauld, will be sealed into the altar.But for Macron, what should be a moment of triumph comes at a time of spiralling national crisis, just days after his prime minister was turfed out in a no-confidence vote and amid fears of a looming budgetary crisis.Compounding Macron’s misery, the European Commission on Friday finalised a long-delayed trade deal between the EU and South America’s Mercosur bloc that France says poses an “unacceptable” existential threat to its own farming industry.Soon after the office of Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, said she was not planning to participate in Saturday’s opening ceremony, where approximately 50 world leaders, including the outgoing US president, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill are expected. Pope Francis will also not be in attendance, having announced in September to some surprise that he would be making a historic visit to the French island of Corsica instead. Prince William will represent the UK.Trump’s attendance may also prompt a visit to the ceremony from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is keen to enter a dialogue with the US leader over the future of his war-torn country. In the run-up to the US election, Trump promised he would be able to settle the conflict “within 24 hours” of taking office.The Republican was serving his first term as president when a fire erupted at Notre Dame on 15 April 2019. He commented on X, then known as Twitter: “So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out?”Macron had an ambivalent relationship with Trump during the latter’s first term in office, with the French president initially setting out to woo and flatter his American equivalent in spite of their apparent political differences. He invited the US’s 45th president to the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées, leading Trump to hail him as “one of your great presidents”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the cordiality began to unravel in 2018, as Trump attacked Macron over plans to build up a European army, in spite of the fact that his own declared intention to withdraw defence commitments in Europe had triggered them. On the campaign trail this year, Trump mocked the French president’s accent as he recounted one of their meetings.After the US elections in November, Macron was one of the first global leaders to congratulate Trump, saying he was “ready to work together”.Announcing his visit on the Truth Social network on Monday, Trump lauded the French leader in uncharacteristically positive tones: “President Emmanuel Macron has ensured Notre Dame is restored to its highest glory – and even beyond,” he said. “It will be a very special day for all!”The Notre Dame fire was watched on live TV by millions of viewers around the world, who looked on as flames tore through the building, destroying most of the wood and metal roof and the spire. The precise cause of the blaze was never established but investigators believed it to be accidental, started by either a discarded cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system.In a televised tour of the renovated interior on 29 November, Macron promised: “The shock of the reopening will be as great as that of the fire, but it will be a shock of hope.” He thanked the craftspeople and donors who contributed to the restoration effort for healing a “national wound”.Before the fire, about 12 million people a year visited Notre Dame. Visitor numbers are expected to be higher after the reopening. While entry to the cathedral will remain free, visitors will need to book a dedicated time slot through an online ticketing system. More