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      Ukraine ceasefire plans moving to operational phase, Starmer says

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      Keir Starmer has called for the “guns to fall silent in Ukraine” and said military powers will meet next week as plans to secure a peace deal move to an “operational phase”.The UK prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire was not good enough, and the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later”.He accused Putin of trying to delay peace, and said it must become a reality after more than three years of war.Starmer was speaking at a press conference in Downing Street after a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, including the European Commission, European nations, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday morning.The meeting was addressed by Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.Starmer told journalists: “Sooner or later Putin will have to come to the table. So this is the moment. Let the guns fall silent, let the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop, and agree to a ceasefire now.”He added: “Now is the time to engage in discussion on a mechanism to manage and monitor a full ceasefire, and agree to serious negotiations towards not just a pause, but a lasting peace, backed by strong security arrangements through our coalition of the willing.”He said the meeting had led to “new commitments”, including on the wider defence and security of Europe.“We won’t sit back and wait for Putin to act,” he said. “Instead we will keep pushing forward, so the group I convened today is more important than ever.”He added: “We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table.“And we agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal. So we will now move into an operational phase.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the military meeting on Thursday, he said it would lead to “strong and robust plans … to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”.Starmer had earlier called Ukraine and Zelenskyy the “party of peace”.He said Donald Trump was “absolutely committed to the lasting peace that is needed in Ukraine, and everything he’s doing is geared towards that end”.He told journalists Europe needed to improve its own defence and security, and said the UK was talking to the US on a daily basis about the war.Kyiv has already accepted plans for an immediate 30-day ceasefire but, on Thursday, Putin set out sweeping conditions that he wanted to be met before Russia would agree. They include a guarantee that Ukraine would not rearm or mobilise during the truce.Starmer said: “Volodymyr had committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place. Well the world needs action, not a study, not empty words and conditions.”On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that Russian forces were building up along the eastern border of Ukraine, which could signal an attack on the Sumy region.He said: “The buildup of Russian forces indicates that Moscow intends to keep ignoring diplomacy. It is clear that Russia is prolonging the war.”The Ukrainian president said his forces were still fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, and were not facing an encirclement, despite claims by his Russian and US counterparts.Starmer said: “President Trump has offered Putin the way forward to a lasting peace. Now we must make this a reality. So this is the moment to keep driving towards the outcome that we want to see, to end the killing, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and lasting security for all of us.” More

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      US official heading Ukraine peace plan has history of empathizing with Russia

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      A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US “military-industrial complex” and “[Joe] Biden’s national security incompetence” rather than Russia’s 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that “the US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia”. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trump’s presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonald’s résumé contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trump’s pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonald’s presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party Sanseitō, whose leader’s “conspiracist, anti-globalist worldview” has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.Braynard’s Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his “interest in meeting with organization leadership”.The revelations about the special envoy’s pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didn’t want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.Kellogg’s op-edsKellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trump’s inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trump’s defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.Described as a “White House in waiting” for Trump’s second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an “America first” foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that “Ukraine is primarily a European issue to solve”, and empathized with Russia’s point of view: “To Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.”Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be “armed to the teeth” as a deterrent, but opposed “a no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflict”.After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Biden’s announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: “This newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.”View image in fullscreenHis turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPI’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kellogg’s most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trump’s mooted peace deal.In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraine’s membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.“In the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,” they write, “the US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.”They also specifically criticize the Biden administration’s guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.“The Biden Administration’s policy of ‘nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine’ and arming Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.”They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: “The US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.”In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.The pair claimed that this was evidence “our national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.”In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: “The US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractors’ profits,” they write, adding that “the proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.“Biden’s hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,” they wrote, “but it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.”They wrote: “It was in America’s best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.”They also wrote that Putin’s sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: “It was in America’s interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.”They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as “expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability”.Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should “continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement”.Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: “President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal”.Zach Bauder’s roleAlong with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidate’s congressional campaign.Bauder – who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year – is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauder’s only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.The Guardian has previously reported on Kent’s far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a “former top aide” of Kent’s who had “white nationalist ties” in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynard’s wife.After being connected with Bauder on Kent’s campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for Sanseitō, the far-right populist party in Japan.Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their client’s aims.A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for Sanseitō.Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of “the anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movement” touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were “terminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as well”.Fahey said Sanseitō was part of the “new conspiratorial hard right in Japan” whose “media diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystem”.Fahey added that Sanseitō largely “see the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: it’s Nato’s fault, and Nato is part of the new world order”.Braynard’s filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to “win Japanese elections”.On Braynard’s account in the Fara declaration, “the principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the US”.He continues: “The principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.”In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.The filing said he texted Bauder, described as “formerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted him”.Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that “they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” and that it was a punishment akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”. More

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      Russia Presses Offensive in Kursk Amid Cease-Fire Talks With U.S.

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      Moscow said it had retaken two villages outside the town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim.Moscow is pressing its offensive to retake the full territory of Russia’s Kursk region from Ukraine as negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin continue over a possible cease-fire in the three-year war.Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had retaken two villages outside Sudzha, the main Russian town that Ukraine occupied since its surprise offensive into Russia last summer but appears to have lost in recent days. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on Russia’s newest claim and have not confirmed a retreat by its forces from Sudzha.Moscow’s advances on the Kursk front came a day after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called on Ukrainian forces still fighting in the region to lay down their arms. Mr. Putin said he would spare their lives if they surrendered.The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated Mr. Putin’s demand in comments to the state news agency Tass on Saturday.“It’s still valid,” Mr. Peskov said, although he added that “time was running out.”The Russian leader has said that Ukrainian forces are encircled in the region, an assertion that President Trump repeated in a message on Truth Social.But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine denied that the Ukrainian troops were surrounded.“Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region,” Mr. Zelensky said in a post Saturday on Facebook, referring to North Korean fighters who have been assisting Russia in Kursk. “There is no encirclement of our troops.”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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      Republican Russophilia: how Trump Putin-ised a party of cold war hawks

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      In speech that ran for 100 minutes there was one moment when Donald Trump drew more applause from Democrats than Republicans. As the president told Congress last week how the US had sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, his political opponents clapped and unfurled a Ukrainian flag – while his own party sat in stony silence.It was a telling insight into Republicans’ transformation, in the space of a generation, from a party of cold war hawks to one of “America first” isolationists. Where Trump has led, many Republicans have obediently followed, all the way into the embrace of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – with huge implications for the global democratic order.“The reversal is dramatic and the willingness of the Republican party to go along with it continues to be breathtaking,” said Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. “At least for a while it appeared that Republicans were still going to be supportive of Ukraine. But now that Trump has completely reversed our foreign policy there seems to be very little pushback.”Last month, Trump set up a peace process that began with the US and Russia’s top diplomats meeting in Saudi Arabia – with no seat at the table for Ukrainian officials. He branded Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator”, a term he has never applied to the authoritarian Putin.Along with Vice-President JD Vance, he berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, a spectacle that prompted the Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin to observe that Ronald Reagan, a Republican president who was an inveterate foe of Soviet aggression, “must be rolling over in his grave”. Trump suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia and paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until it agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.The Oval Office shakedown shocked the world but there was strikingly little criticism from Republicans. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sank into a couch and said nothing as the shouting raged around him. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had previously been supportive of Zelenskyy, even suggested that the Ukrainian president should resign.Speaking at a Center for American Progress thinktank event in Washington this week, Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama administration official, said: “What you fundamentally believe matters little if you’re acting against those beliefs.“It was astonishing to see Republican leaders who on a Monday were praising Zelenskyy and by the Tuesday were removing any reference to him from their websites. It’s an extraordinary thing to see people who used to be pretty serious on this issue, like Lindsey Graham, suddenly saying the things.”Meanwhile, other Russia hawks such as the former vice-president Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been sidelined. Republicans who were not shy about countering Trump’s foreign policy ideas during his first term are now standing by him – in public at least.Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said: “Absent Trump, I don’t think you would see this reorientation of the Republican party. Even with Trump a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, are very uneasy about it and don’t like what Trump is doing but they’re afraid to speak out.”View image in fullscreenOthers suggest that loyalty to or fear of Trump may not be the only explanation. Younger Republicans are questioning the legitimacy of institutions such as Nato and the United Nations and following far-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Putin in Russia last year and claimed that Moscow was “so much nicer than any city in my country”.Critics say Trump, Carlson and the “Make America great again” movement see in Russia an idealised version of white Christian nationalism, in contrast to the “woke” values of western Europe. Putin has mocked the US embassy for flying a rainbow flag and suggested that transgenderism is “on the verge of a crime against humanity”.From this perspective, the struggle is no longer capitalism against communism but rather woke against unwoke. In various speeches Putin has railed against the west’s “obsessive emphasis on race”, “modern cancel culture” and “reverse racism”. He said of the west: “They invented five or six genders: transformers, trans – you see, I do not even understand what it is.”All are familiar talking points from the Maga playbook. Indeed, last year, on the rightwing strategist Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve: this is a war against Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians; the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that; they’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”Bannon has made no secret of his desire to bring down the European Union and “globalist” forces. Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, draws a comparison with conservative “red” states and liberal “blue” states within the US. “Let’s make it real American tangible,” he said. “Russia is a red state and France and England and Nato – they’re blue states.”During the cold war, it was hardline anti-communism that was core to the Republican brand. Reagan branded the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and stepped up US military spending. But when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, relations improved.Reagan and Gorbachev held several summits that led to key arms control agreements. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, worked closely with Gorbachev and, later, Boris Yeltsin as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, encouraging a transition to democracy and capitalism.View image in fullscreenEarly in Republican George W Bush’s presidency, he had a relatively positive relationship with Putin, memorably saying he had “looked into Putin’s soul” and found him trustworthy. The two cooperated on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks but tensions grew over the Iraq war and US support for Georgia and Ukraine.By 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, relations had significantly deteriorated. Obama, a Democrat, initially pursued a “reset” policy with Russia, aiming to improve relations, but tensions resurfaced after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. In response, Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats.Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, according to a later Senate intelligence committee report, which found extensive evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians.Trump vehemently denied collusion even as his administration imposed sanctions on Russia. At a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. He has remained unwilling to criticise Putin, even after Russia invaded Ukraine and after the opposition activist Alexei Navalny died in prison.The Putin-isation of the Republican party should perhaps not be overstated. Older senators such as Mitch McConnell, who is retiring at the next election, Thom Tillis and Roger Wicker remain staunchly supportive of Ukraine.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I push back against the idea that Republicans have become entranced with Putin because there’s not evidence for that. There is evidence that Republicans have become tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same.”However, the balance appears to be shifting as the cold war fades into memory. About 41% of Republicans view Russia as either “friendly” or an “ally”, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released earlier this month. And just 27% of Republicans agree with the statement that Trump is too close to Moscow, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.View image in fullscreenAdam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, told the Guardian of the “Make American great again” movement: “They have definitely shown a sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic, ‘traditional’ values, which are very troubling if you care about the problems of bigotry and discrimination. There is growing sympathy and the wing of the Republican party that’s against that is getting weaker while the other wing is getting stronger.”He added: “They believe that they’re going to promote ‘traditional values’ and they see Putin as an ideological ally in that. I still think it is a minority within the Republican party but Trump’s the president. He’s the leader of that party and they’re adhering to him. Trump has an enormous amount of sympathy for that worldview and more and more of them are drifting in that direction.”Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “The Republican party during the cold war was anti-communist and from their standpoint, once communism disappeared, their major motive for opposing Russia did as well.“The fact that Russia is a rightwing autocracy doesn’t particularly trouble them. To the extent that Putin has refashioned himself as a traditionalist culture warrior, he’s actually making an affirmative appeal to what the Republican party has become.” More

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      Russia Says It Has Retaken Key Kursk Town From Ukraine

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      Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that the military had regained full control of the town of Sudzha, the main population center in the part of the Kursk region of Russia that Ukrainian troops had captured last summer.Ukrainian officials have not confirmed a retreat from the town, where the previous night Kyiv’s military had reported fierce fighting. If confirmed, that would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control — and could deny Kyiv a key point of leverage in any cease-fire negotiations as U.S. officials head to Moscow for talks.Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Wednesday night that Ukrainian troops would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.” More

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      Putin Visits Kursk to Cheer Russian Troops Trying to Oust Ukraine

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      The trip comes as President Trump looks to secure the Russian leader’s support for a 30-day cease-fire.Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.The Russian leader’s pointed visit came a day after a U.S. delegation met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials, who agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in the war. American officials planned to take the proposal to Mr. Putin, who has previously said he is not interested in a temporary truce.Dressed in a green camouflage uniform, Mr. Putin sat at a desk with maps spread out in front of him, according to photos released by the Kremlin. He appeared with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.In video footage released by Russian state media, Mr. Putin praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region. He called on the troops to seize the territory for good from Ukrainian forces, who have been occupying portions of the Russian border region since last summer. Kyiv had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in peace talks.The Russian leader also demanded that Ukrainian forces taken prisoner in the region be treated and prosecuted as terrorists under Russian law. General Gerasimov said more than 400 Ukrainian troops had been captured in the operations.“People who are on the territory of the Kursk region, committing crimes here against the civilian population and opposing our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, are terrorists,” Mr. Putin said.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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      Europe Welcomes a Ukraine Cease-Fire Offer and a Revival of U.S. Aid

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      Europeans reacted with relief to the announcement on Tuesday that Ukraine had agreed with the United States on a 30-day cease-fire in its war with Russia and anxiously awaited Moscow’s response.They were relieved because Washington announced simultaneously that it would immediately restore military and intelligence support for Ukraine. And there was expectation that Russia must now respond in kind, or presumably President Trump would put some kind of pressure on Moscow analogous at least to the blunt instruments he used against Ukraine.“The ball is now in Russia’s court,” said the two European Union leaders, António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen, in coordinated messages on social media welcoming the deal and echoing the statement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.But in the same sentence the European leaders also welcomed the resumption of U.S. security support to Ukraine, giving it equal emphasis.“We welcome today’s news from Jeddah on the U.S.-Ukraine talks, including the proposal for a cease-fire agreement and the resumption of U.S. intelligence sharing and security assistance,” the message said on Tuesday. “This is a positive development that can be a step toward a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”They also tried to remind Mr. Trump and his team that if Washington wants Europe to guarantee any peace deal in Ukraine, Europe wants to be at the negotiating table. “The European Union,” the message said (hint, hint), “is ready to play its full part, together with its partners, in the upcoming peace negotiations.”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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      Wednesday briefing: Will Kyiv’s commitment to a ceasefire appease Trump – and pressure Putin?

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      Good morning. Just 11 days after Donald Trump kicked Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House for being insufficiently grateful, negotiations over a ceasefire in Ukraine have taken on a new complexion again.After day-long talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, officials from Kyiv and Washington declared that they had agreed on an immediate 30-day ceasefire plan and called on Russia to do the same. The United States will now lift restrictions on military aid and intelligence sharing. And the deal to give the United States a 50% stake in revenues from Ukrainian minerals is back on the table.Ukraine is still a long way from a durable, secure peace, and in one sense the success of yesterday’s talks was predicated on a grim recognition – unlikely to be articulated – of how thoroughly Trump has sold out Zelenskyy and Ukraine. But it is also true that Moscow’s actions will now be judged against an unambiguous backdrop. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to see Vladimir Putin in Moscow in the coming days – and, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday, “Russia must show its readiness to end the war or continue the war. It is time for the full truth.”Today’s newsletter explains what happened at the talks, and what might happen next. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Trump tariffs | Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect on Wednesday “with no exceptions or exemptions”, as his campaign to reorder global trade norms in favour of the US stepped up. In chaotic developments on Wednesday, the US threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium but then reversed course.

      UK news | A BBC presenter whose family were murdered by a misogynist with a crossbow has said he hopes women can be inspired by how his daughter ended her relationship with her killer. On the day that Kyle Clifford was sentenced to a whole-life order for the triple murder last year, John Hunt described the former soldier as a psychopath disguised as an ordinary human being.

      North Sea collision | A 59-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with the shipping collision in the North Sea. Humberside police said they had opened a criminal investigation into the collision, in which one seaman is believed to have died.

      Phillipines | The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane headed to The Hague, hours after he was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”.

      Climate crisis | Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed. Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh, have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years.
      In depth: Is this really an end to the White House’s ‘Mean Girls’ view of the Ukraine crisis?View image in fullscreenOne measure of the public shift in tone between Ukraine and the United States came in US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s comments after the talks in Jeddah yesterday. Previously, he has attacked Zelenskyy over the notorious Oval Office meeting, saying that “he found every opportunity to try to ‘Ukraine-splain’ on every issue”. Yesterday, he said: “What’s back on track here hopefully is peace. This is not Mean Girls.”That represents a significant success for Ukraine – but it has come at a cost. Here’s what emerged from the talks, and where it leaves the key players.Jeddah talks | Success for Ukraine – but significant concessionsUkraine went into the talks saying that it was ready to consider a ceasefire in the air and at sea, but not on the ground – arguing that a full ceasefire without more permanent guarantees would simply allow Russia to regroup. It also said that any ceasefire would have to include security guarantees.By that measure, Kyiv made significant concessions yesterday. A joint statement from Ukraine and the United States said that “Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day cease-fire”, including on the ground, if Russia would make the same commitment.And there was no mention of security guarantees in the joint statement: while US national security adviser Michael Waltz said that “we … got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end, what type of guarantees they’re going to have for their long term security and prosperity”, that may simply be a reference to the minerals deal which now appears to be back on the table.But Ukraine made real progress – securing an immediate end to the suspension of intelligence sharing and military assistance, and extracting Rubio’s recognition that Russia now has to take its own steps toward peace. Perhaps just as significant is the possibility that Trump will be better disposed toward Kyiv, at least for now. He has said that he is now open to Zelenskyy returning to the White House, and said of a ceasefire: “Ukraine has agreed to it. Hopefully President Putin will agree to that also.”Pressure on Russia | A new equation for Putin to resolveThe phrase used by Marco Rubio, and repeated by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, was that “the ball is now in Russia’s court”. Donald Trump had his own corny analogy, saying that he would speak to Vladimir Putin about the ceasefire proposal this week and adding: “It takes two to tango”.But in its first substantive responses to the developments from Jeddah, Moscow did not present itself as an enthusiastic dance partner this morning. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was reported by Russian news agencies to have said that Russia will not make compromises that would “jeopardise people’s lives”. And Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “The shaping of the position of the Russian Federation does not take place abroad due to some agreements or efforts of some parties.”Russia has always had its own conditions attached to any steps towards peace. In this piece, Dan Sabbagh explains that while Russia has been talking about a ceasefire, it has said that it must be accompanied by elections in Ukraine.Kyiv will now hope that yesterday’s developments have sufficiently soothed Trump’s irritation with Zelenskyy that he will now look more sceptically at Russian claims that it is Ukraine that is blocking a ceasefire. They do appear to have removed some of the ambiguity around which side is holding up that process.While Russia has made no serious moves to show that its position is held in good faith, Vladimir Putin must now decide whether the favourable position he now holds with Trump will come under threat if he obstructs the proposals that have emerged from Jeddah – or whether he cares. Russia may also calculate that it can feint towards a ceasefire while making additional demands and continuing to attack Ukraine – and still persuade the White House that it wants peace.European reaction | Key questions over any international forceMeanwhile, in Paris, military chiefs of staff from more than 30 European and Nato countries held talks on an international security force. French president Emmanuel Macron, who addressed the meeting, said that “it was the moment for Europe to exert its full weight, for Ukraine and for itself”. Defence ministers from the five leading military powers in Europe – the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland – will hold further talks today.Paris also said that any security guarantees “should not be separated from Nato and its capabilities” and should be “credible and long-term”. But the Associated Press reported that there is no definitive plan for military options yet. Here are some of the key questions that remain unanswered: Would the force be “peacekeepers”, intended to monitor breaches of the ceasefire and keep the two sides apart; a “tripwire”, a small force whose sheer presence would create a threat of escalation in the event of a Russian advance; or a much larger “deterrent”? This post by the leading defence analyst Lawrence Freedman sets out the case for each; there is little sense that Nato countries have the will or capacity for a full-scale deterrent force. Can the US be persuaded to guarantee the kind of “backstop” – a commitment to US military action if a tripwire force came under attack – to deter Russia from a new offensive? Trump has offered little comfort on this point so far. In this piece, the International Crisis Group argues that it is counterproductive for Ukraine and Europe to pursue this idea, but the reference to Nato’s role may suggest that it is still theoretically in play. Would Russia sign up to any deal involving European troops on the ground in Ukraine? Moscow has emphatically refused to countenance such an arrangement, a point reiterated by Lavrov this morning; Trump has claimed, with little evidence, that Putin is prepared to consider the idea. In this piece on the security analysis site War on the Rocks, Jack Watling and Michael Kofman argue that the most important thing is that no peace deal excludes the possibility, even if it is not explicitly endorsed.Military exchanges | Frantic attempts to maximise leverage for talksBoth sides are still seeking leverage in anticipation of ceasefire negotiations. Ukraine launched drone attacks on 10 Russian regions including Moscow yesterday, the biggest such operation it has conducted since the start of the war. Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian national security council official, said that “this is an additional signal to Putin that he should also be interested in a ceasefire in the air”.But – despite Ukraine’s formidable drone production capacity, with the country’s armed forces expecting to buy 4.5m drones from domestic suppliers this year – such attacks are always likely to be confined to psychological operations rather than a route to significant tactical advantages.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia, meanwhile, has continued with aggressive ground operations. A situation report from the Institute for the Study of War published on Monday set out the recent success of Russian and North Korean forces taking back Russian territory in Kursk oblast, and the most recent reports suggest that Ukrainian forces are now under threat in the village of Sudzha, their last significant foothold.But the ISW also notes that in most areas within Ukraine, Russia has failed to make significant recent gains. If the land offensive within Ukraine remains at an impasse, the Kremlin has dramatically stepped up aerial attacks, with massive ballistic missile and drone strikes aimed at critical infrastructure last week. In the aftermath of that attack, Trump said that he was considering new sanctions on Russia. None have yet come into force.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Anastacia talks to Paula Cocozza about her life, from mutilating her sister’s dolls, to chart-topping success and her “toxic titties” – despite overcoming breast cancer twice, she’s lost none of the exuberance that propelled her musical success. Toby Moses, head of newsletters

      After the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte yesterday, it’s worth going back to coverage of the horrors exacted by his “war on drugs” in the Philippines. This wrenching 2018 piece by his biographer Jonathan Miller tells the story of one family that lost a father and child in the crackdown. Archie

      David Squires is in typically excellent form skewering the Fifa president’s transparent attempt to cosy up to the new king in the White House. The combo of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino is a truly horrifying glimpse at the world we live in. Toby

      Marina Hyde ponders the reaction of a Southampton fan in 2009 to the subsequent rise of Rupert Lowe: “In 16 years’ time, the richest man in the world – who’s the unofficial vice-president to Donald Trump, yes, the one off the US Apprentice – will say that Rupert Lowe should be prime minister of the United Kingdom.” Rupert Lowe?! RUPERT LOWE?!?!?! I honestly think the resultant psychiatric eruption would blow the roof off the mall.” This is correct. Archie

      What happens when gen Z and millennials swap jeans? It’s the question everyone’s asking, and luckily we have the answer, with Emma Loffhagen trading trousers with her older colleague, our fashion editor Morwenna Ferrier: “After a few hours of wearing them, I’ve never known comfort like it. I’m just not sure it’s very dignified to be aggressively on trend at my age.” Toby
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Gianluigi Donnarumma saved two penalties as PSG beat Liverpool 4-1 in a shootout to send the Paris side through to the quarter-finals. Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones were both denied from the spot after PSG won the second leg 1-0.Horse racing | Jeremy Scott’s mare Golden Ace emerged as one of the most unexpected of all Champion Hurdle winners on day one of the Cheltenham festival. Golden Ace, a 25-1 shot, won after 2023 and 2024 champions Constitution Hill and State Man were fallers.Football | Manchester United have confirmed their intention to build a new 100,000-capacity stadium in the Old Trafford area, leaving their home of 115 years. Officials claim that the project, which United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe compared to the Eiffel Tower, will create as many as 92,000 jobs and 17,000 new homes in Greater Manchester.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian leads with “US says ‘ball in Russia’s court’ as Ukraine agrees 30-day ceasefire”. The deal dominated UK headlines on Wednesday with the Times running with “Kyiv open to ceasefire as Trump restarts aid,” the i with “Ceasefire in Ukraine – if Putin agrees,” and the Daily Mail “Ukraine agrees ceasefire deal.” “Putin told to agree Ukraine ceasefire,” was the take IN the Telegraph.“Trump ratchets up Canada trade war with 50% aluminium and steel tariffs,” writes the Financial Times. The Express follows the latest on the crossbow killer with the headline: “‘I am so proud of all my girls’”. The Mirror runs with “Jail … then hell” and the Metro: “‘They’ll roll out the red carpet in hell’”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenCan Canada’s ‘rockstar banker’ PM take on Trump and win?The former governor of the Bank of England has a new role – saving his country from becoming America’s 51st state. Leyland Cecco reportsCartoon of the day | Rebecca HendinView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenThe Guardianas del Conchalito are a group of women who ignored calls to “get back to the kitchen” to create a sustainable shellfish project in Mexico. In 2017, the women were hanging out in La Paz, in the Mexican state of Baja California, and gazing at a polluted mangrove plantation. Drug dealers and tourism were ruining the area, and illegal fishing was depleting the shellfish population. “The mangroves were dying, the trash was everywhere,” Graciela “Chela” Olachea, told the Guardian’s Joanna Moorhead. The women cleaned up the mangrove and sought out funders to help make it sustainable, turning the Guardianas del Conchalito into a legally recognised community cooperative that pays members a living wage. But the project hasn’t only transformed the mangroves, it’s transformed thewomen’s lives. As Guardianas member Rosa María Hale Romero put it: “I used to ask my husband’s permission if I wanted to leave the house. Now if I go out, I just tell him: ‘I’ll be back.’ And instead of me serving him, he brings me my coffee.”Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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