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    Are Lindsey Graham’s contortions about to prod Trump into Russia sanctions?

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    Has Lindsey Graham been playing the long game with Donald Trump?Graham, who has calibrated his pro-Ukraine support since the inauguration to stay in the US president’s orbit, has said he expects this week that the Senate will begin moving his Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, a bill that he says would impose “bone-breaking sanctions” on Vladimir Putin and a 500% tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil and other goods, potentially targeting China and India.The fate of the bill still depends on whether Trump gives the go-ahead, according to congressional insiders. But Trump’s growing frustration with Putin has emboldened some in the GOP to begin speaking out on the conflict again – with the notoriously flexible Graham leading the charge for tougher sanctions on the Kremlin. Is it nearing a critical mass moment in Congress – a body that has largely abdicated its role in foreign policy since Trump’s inauguration?“I hope so, because it is the right action to take,” said Don Bacon, a Republican House representative who has criticised the White House on its Ukraine policy. “But it is risky to speak for others. I know where I stand. The Senate has an overwhelming majority in support of sanctions and we should move out. It is in our national security interests that Russia fails here and it should be obvious that Putin doesn’t want peace, but wants dominance over Ukraine.”Trump’s shift on Russia has come as his efforts to negotiate a speedy ceasefire have failed. Talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday led to little progress, and continued outreach from his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the Kremlin has not brought concessions from Vladimir Putin. A leaked draft of Russia’s demands at the negotiations depicted a capitulation: withdrawal from Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia, no Nato membership for Ukraine, caps on the size of the country’s military.Yet it has specifically been the bombardment of cities that has upset Trump, proving once again that Putin has managed to be his own worst enemy when it comes to negotiations.“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump said last week, repeating part of the comments in public. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”As the White House looks for means to increase pressure on Russia and its enablers like China, the bill backed by Graham and the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal has become a convenient tool to do just that. One person in GOP circles said that the White House was considering letting Republicans “vote their conscience” – in effect allowing Congress to support the bill without facing blowback from the Trump administration.But that would involve a final decision by the White House, and Trump has still not openly backed new sanctions as more than just a contingency.“Despite support of 82 or so senators, the bill can’t move without support in the House, and the speaker of the House won’t move it without the president’s support,” said Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute. “And it’s not clear the president has really decided Putin’s the impediment to a ceasefire. Additionally, the Senate will be consumed with passing the reconciliation bill for the next few weeks.”But as of Tuesday, the leadership appeared ready to move forward.The weather vane for Trump’s gusty foreign policy on Ukraine has been Graham, a veteran political survivor who has built a strong relationship with the president through relentless flattery and has tailored his views to match Trump’s when convenient. On Ukraine, he has been so bendable that he could not be broken.“They play a very careful game because they don’t want to upset their relationship with the big guy,” said one person knowledgable about discussions among congressional Republicans. “At the same time, I do think his heart and his head is in the right place. Just really not quite his own courage.”Graham’s interventions have been meaningful. He was instrumental in pushing the minerals deal that Ukraine signed with the US as a way to get Trump’s buy-in for its defense. Over a game of golf, he pitched Trump on the “trillions” in mineral wealth in Ukraine and later showed him a map (Trump said he wanted “half” according to one account).At the same time, he publicly fumed about Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the disastrous White House meeting of late February when Trump and JD Vance argued with the wartime leader. “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again,” Graham said, also suggesting that the Ukrainian leader should resign. (Zelenskyy shot back later that he was ready to offer him citizenship if he wanted to discuss who should lead Ukraine).Graham’s latitude has stunned some of his former colleagues. A former colleague who had worked with Graham on Ukraine policy said that his remarks about Zelenskyy had given him “whiplash”. Asked if Graham had a coherent strategy to influence Trump, the person said: “Graham’s strategy is to put Graham first.”“I think that he understands the big game,” said another person familiar with discussions over the bill. “He would like the policy to be sound, which means [putting sanctions] on the Kremlin. But he values his relationship with the president and that that trumps the first calculation. So if he really feels the president’s against, he’s not going to go for it.”Now, with Trump signaling greater readiness for sanctions, Graham has traveled to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy (all smiles) and to Brussels, where he and the EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, discussed potential EU and US sanctions packages to turn up the pressure on Moscow.“Senator Graham deserves a lot of credit for making the case for tougher pressure on the Kremlin,” said John Hardie, the Russia program deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative thinktank. “Carrots clearly haven’t worked, so it’s time to start using some sticks, including by going after Russia’s oil revenue. This economic pressure should be paired with sustained military assistance for Ukraine.”Hardie and others noted that Trump could increase pressure on Russia without the Senate bill.“If President Trump were to decide to go the pressure route, he already has the tools at his disposal to do so,” said Hardie. “For example, he could immediately designate the rest of Russia’s shadow fleet and other non-western entities facilitating Russian oil exports and could join with G7 partners in lowering the G7 oil price cap.”And even if the sanctions are passed, they will ultimately rely on Trump’s decision to enforce them.“The Senate is prepared either way,” Graham wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. “I have coordinated with the White House on the Russia sanctions bill since its inception. The bill would put Russia on a trade island, slapping 500% tariffs on any country that buys Moscow’s energy products. The consequences of its barbaric invasion must be made real to those that prop it up. If China or India stopped buying cheap oil, Mr Putin’s war machine would grind to a halt.” More

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      Ukraine Hid Attack Drones in Russia. These Videos Show What Happened Next.

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      <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Strategic bombers in at least two airfields, Belaya and Olenya, were destroyed. In total, Ukraine targeted bases in five regions, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which said attacks on three other locations had been repelled. The Times was not able to verify those claims, […] More

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      The Guardian view on UK military strategy: prepare for a US retreat – or be left gravely exposed | Editorial

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      With the prime minister’s Churchillian claims that “the front line is here”, the public might expect a military posture that meets the drama of the moment. Yet the promised rise in defence spending – from 2.3% to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 – suggests something less than full-scale mobilisation. The strategic defence review is systematic and detailed, but it remains an exercise in tightly bounded ambition. It speaks of daily cyber-attacks and undersea sabotage, but proposes no systemic institutional overhaul or acute surge in resilience. Given the developing dangers, it is surprising not to spell out a robust home-front framework.Instead, it is a cautious budget hike in the costume of crisis – signalling emergency while deferring real commitment for military financing. The review suggests that the more ambitious spending target of 3% of GDP, still shy of Nato’s 3.5% goal, is delayed to the next parliament. The plan is not to revive Keynesianism in fatigues. It is a post-austerity military modernisation that is technocratic and geopolitically anxious. It borrows the urgency of the past without inheriting its economic boldness.The review marks a real shift: it warns of “multiple, direct threats” for the first time since the cold war and vows to reverse the “hollowing out” of Britain’s armed forces. But in an age of climate emergencies and democratic drift, UK leadership should rest on multilateralism, not pure militarism. Declaring Russian “nuclear coercion” the central challenge, and that the “future of strategic arms control … does not look promising”, while sinking £15bn into warheads, risks fuelling escalation instead of pursuing arms control.Given the war in Ukraine, there is an ominous warning about changing US “security priorities”. This calls into question the wisdom of being overly reliant on America, which is now internally unstable and dismantling global public goods – such as the atmospheric data that drones rely on for navigation. Left unsaid but clearly underlying the report is the idea that the old defence model is no longer sufficient – for example, when maritime adversaries can weaponise infrastructure by sabotaging undersea cables, or where critical data systems are in commercial hands. It cannot be right that Ukraine’s sovereignty depends on the goodwill of the world’s richest man. But the private satellite network Starlink keeps Ukrainian hospitals, bases and drones online, leaving Kyiv hostage to the whims of its volatile owner, Elon Musk.The menace of hybrid warfare – including disinformation, cyber-attacks, economic pressure, deployment of irregular armed groups and use of regular forces – intensified in the last decade. This should see Britain forge deeper institutional ties with European partners, not just military but in infrastructure and information technologies. This would allow for a sovereign digital strategy for European nations to free them from dependency on mercurial actors.Though the review gestures toward greater societal involvement, it stops short of articulating a whole-of-society doctrine like Norway’s. This, when some analysts say the third world war has already begun with a slow, global breakdown of the post-1945 institutional order. The defence review should be about more than missiles and missions. It must also be about whether the country can keep the lights on, the gas flowing, the internet up and the truth intact. This review sees the threats, but not yet the system needed to confront them. In that gap lies the peril. More

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      Ukraine Says Russian Strike on Military Base Killed 12 Soldiers

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      The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack, saying that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”A Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian military training base killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded more than 60 others on Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, in a rare statement acknowledging casualties within its ranks.The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack on the base, in the Dnipro region, saying in a statement that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”Ukraine’s military said it was investigating the circumstances, but emphasized that there was not a mass gathering at the time of the attack — an apparent attempt to demonstrate lessons learned from previous incidents.“At the time the air raid alert was announced, all personnel were in shelters, except for those who may not have had time to reach it,” Vitalii Sarantsev, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ground Forces, said in an interview with Ukrainian news media.Ukraine’s military does not typically disclose official casualty figures, which are treated as a state secret and are a highly sensitive topic in the country. Past attacks with large numbers of military casualties — like when a Russian missile killed soldiers gathered for an awards ceremony in southern Ukraine in late 2023 — have raised questions about security protocols.The strike on the training base came on the eve of another round of peace talks in Istanbul, proposed by Moscow. While Kyiv had insisted it see a promised memorandum outlining Russia’s cease-fire terms before sending any officials to the talks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announced on Sunday that Kyiv would in fact send a delegation.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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      Judge Blocks Shutdown of Biden-Era Migrant Entry Programs

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      The sweeping order applied to hundreds of thousands of people legally in the country through programs put in place for Ukrainians, Afghans and others.A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from pulling legal protections from hundreds of thousands of people who entered the United States through Biden-era programs, ordering the government to restart processing applications for migrants who are renewing their status.In a sweeping order that extended to Ukrainians and Afghans, as well as military members and their relatives, the judge, Indira Talwani of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, wrote that the Trump administration’s categorical termination of legal pathways for those groups was probably unlawful and had the potential to sow discord across the country.The decision is a major victory for civil and immigrant rights groups that had sued to stop the administration amid a wider campaign by President Trump to strip legal status from a variety of groups living, working and studying in the country on a temporary basis.Judge Talwani wrote that the overarching campaign to strip the protections from those who had already been granted them represented a major escalation by the Trump administration that would cause chaos once the programs were wound down.In April, she had issued a similar order that applied more narrowly to hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status through another program. The government is seeking a reversal of that decision before the Supreme Court.“This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families,” Judge Talwani wrote. “Nor is it in the public interest for individuals who enlisted and are currently serving in the United States military to face family separation, particularly where some of these individuals joined the military in part to help their loved ones obtain lawful status.”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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      Trump Rebukes Putin, Calls Escalation of Attacks ‘Absolutely Crazy’

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      “He’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all,” President Trump said of his Russian counterpart.President Trump on Sunday condemned the decision by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to unleash one of the largest offensives in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and said he was considering imposing more sanctions on Russia in response.Speaking to reporters in New Jersey before boarding Air Force One, Mr. Trump said he was “not happy” with Mr. Putin escalating his attacks, especially as the two countries negotiate a cease-fire deal to bring the three-year war to an end.“He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve known him a long time. Always gotten along with him. But he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”He added, “We’re in the middle of talking, and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities.”Mr. Trump continued criticizing Mr. Putin hours later, writing on social media that his Russian counterpart “has gone absolutely CRAZY” and was shooting missiles and drones into Ukraine’s cities, “for no reason whatsoever.”“He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers,” Mr. Trump wrote.Mr. Trump, who has largely focused on trade and other benefits to Russia if it ended its war against Ukraine, also wrote that Mr. Putin’s continued incursion could have dire consequences.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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      EU Plans New Sanctions on Russia in Push for Ukraine Cease-fire

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      The European Union has now targeted Moscow’s fleet of covert oil tankers and plans more restrictions, as the Trump administration’s approach to the war shifts.European Union defense and foreign ministers approved a new package of sanctions on Russia on Tuesday, targeting covert oil exports, days after the top E.U. official announced plans for a further set of even tougher restrictions.The point is to intensify Russia’s economic pain — and by doing so, to prod President Vladimir V. Putin toward peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. The push comes as questions mount about how the United States will approach future sanctions.After a call between President Trump and Mr. Putin on Monday, the White House backed off its demand that Russia declare an immediate cease-fire. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said at a news conference that it was unclear whether the United States would join with Europe in stepping up sanctions.E.U. nations have imposed extensive sanctions on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The ones they approved on Tuesday are the 17th set. These take aim at Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — old tanker ships that Moscow uses to covertly transport and sell its oil around the world.Officials are already discussing an 18th package. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U. executive arm, said last week that officials could go after gas pipelines, hit banks and push to further crimp Russia’s global energy sales.“It takes two to want peace, and it takes only one to want war,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said on Tuesday. “In order to make Russia want peace, also, we need to put more pressure on Russia.”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 Romania’s presidential election upset: a vote for stability and the west | Editorial

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      As Romanians voted on Sunday in arguably the most consequential election in the country’s post-communist history, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will have been preparing to welcome a fellow disruptor to the European stage. The first round of a controversially re-run presidential contest had been handsomely won by George Simion, a Eurosceptic ultranationalist who views Donald Trump as a “natural ally” and opposes military aid to Ukraine. On the back of a 20-point lead, Mr Simion, a 38-year-old former football ultra with a taste for violent rhetoric, was so confident of winning that he made a confrontational visit to Brussels in the last days of his campaign.Those expectations were confounded in remarkable fashion at the weekend. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Nicușor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, benefited from the highest voter turnout in 30 years to triumph comfortably. One of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mr Dan was a relieved Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who, in Hungary and Slovakia, already has to contend with two Putin-friendly governments on Ukraine’s western border.First and foremost, the stability promised by Mr Dan’s victory is good news for Romania, which has been in political turmoil since the original presidential election was cancelled amid allegations of Russian interference. Having made his name as a politically independent anti-corruption campaigner, he must now attempt to unite a deeply polarised country in which inequality, graft and poor public services have proved to be, as elsewhere, a launchpad for far-right populist insurgents.More broadly, the size of the second-round turnout – which included a huge diaspora vote – suggests that hitching a ride on the Trump bandwagon is as liable to motivate a mainstream backlash in Europe as generate Maga-style momentum. Given the global volatility unleashed by Mr Trump’s reckless, bullying style, and the dark shadow cast over eastern Europe by Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions, the strategic attractions of hugging the EU and Nato close are more readily apparent than they used to be. Handed the opportunity to turn east, a substantial majority of Romanian voters looked west.Elsewhere though, on a “super Sunday” of three European elections, outcomes were more ambivalent and less uplifting from a progressive perspective. The centre also held in Poland, where the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly won the first round of another crucial presidential election, ahead of the nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki. But the high combined vote for hard- and far-right candidates suggests that result may be reversed in two weeks’ time. One and a half years after Donald Tusk was given a prime ministerial mandate to bring Poland back into the European mainstream, Eurosceptic ultranationalism remains a force to be reckoned with.In Portugal, a snap election triggered by the centre-right governing party saw it retain power, but was notable mainly for the record number of votes cast for the far-right Chega party. Postal ballots could yet propel Chega to second place, ahead of the Socialist party, after a dismal night for the Portuguese left.Mr Dan’s famous victory was undoubtedly the story of the night, confounding a narrative of an inexorable rightwards shift in central and eastern Europe. But amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, and as mainstream parties echo far-right agendas on migration, the politics of Europe continue to feel anxious, polarised and alarmingly unpredictable.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump to speak to Putin and Zelenskyy about Ukraine ceasefire – US politics live

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      The Kremlin said that Russian president Vladimir Putin will hold a call with US president Donald Trump at 5pm Moscow time (10am EDT) on Monday, state news agency RIA reported.RIA cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that the two leaders’ discussion of Ukraine would take into account the results of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news throughout the next few hours.Donald Trump is due to speak to both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to stop what he called the “bloodbath” war in Ukraine.Trump, posting on his Truth Social account on Saturday, wrote that he will speak to Putin on Monday morning. “THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” Trump wrote, in his customary all-capitalized prose. The president has repeatedly cited a death toll for the conflict that is much higher than any official figures, or estimates based on an open-source investigation, without explaining why.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to a state-run Russian news agency that preparations were under way for a call between the US and Russian presidents.Trump’s call with the Russian president will be followed by a separate conversation with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s leader, and Nato leaders as part of the US effort to end the war that has raged since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,” Trump wrote.It’s unclear what kind of progress Trump will be able to spur, if any, in the peace process. Russia and Ukraine have just concluded mostly fruitless talks, the first of their kind since the start of the war, in Istanbul. Ukraine said it was ready for a ceasefire but was faced by “unacceptable” demands from Russia.In other news:

      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.

      As Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants. The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration.

      The US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon. Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade.

      A proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn. With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating. More