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      in Elections

      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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      in Elections

      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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      in Elections

      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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      in US Politics

      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.

      Quick crossword

      Cryptic crossword

      Wordiply More

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      in US Politics

      A Trump-Putin pact is emerging – and Europe is its target | Rafael Behr

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      A prime time current affairs programme; a discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “He’s doing excellent things,” says a firebrand politician on the panel, before listing White House actions that have belittled Volodymyr Zelenskyy and weakened his battlefield position – military aid suspended; satellite communications obstructed; intelligence withheld. “Do we support this?” It is a rhetorical question.“We support it all. Absolutely,” the celebrity host responds. “We are thrilled by everything Trump is doing.”Such approval might not be out of place on polemical rightwing channels in the US, but these exchanges weren’t broadcast to American audiences. The show’s anchor is Olga Skabeyeva, one of Vladimir Putin’s most dependable propagandists. To hear the highest pitch of praise for Trump’s bullying of Ukraine you need to watch Russia’s state-controlled Channel One.This being a Kremlin script, the enthusiasm was soon leavened with suspicion. For now the pressure on Kyiv is great, Skabeyeva continued, but what will the Americans want in return?It is a good question, although that doesn’t mean there is an answer. It is a mistake to project coherence on to the erratic moves of an overgrown toddler-tyrant. Illusory patterns might be traced in the chaos, the way faces can be found in drifting clouds if you stare hard enough. But Trump does have predictable tastes and grudges. He loves money and status. He hates obstacles to the acquisition of those things. He is well disposed to Russia, seeing it as the kind of place where good deals can be done. He is hostile to the upkeep of Ukrainian independence, which he sees as a bad use of US treasure, wheedled out of Joe Biden (withering disdain) by the crafty Zelenskyy (deep dislike).These petty prejudices are strongly enough held to sway US foreign policy in a Kremlin-friendly direction without the additional requirement of a strategy. There is plenty for Putin to work with.When Russian and US delegations met in Saudi Arabia last month to discuss a resolution to the war in Ukraine, the most revealing feature of the conversation was the exclusion of any Ukrainians.Less discussed, but still significant, was the inclusion in Putin’s delegation of Kirill Dmitriev, an alumnus of Stanford University, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, now head of the Russian state investment fund. His pitch was that US businesses have foregone billions of dollars in profits by quitting Russia. Sanctions against Moscow are presented as another way that Ukraine and its European accomplices are ripping off America. Shortly after the Saudi meeting, Dmitriev was formally appointed Putin’s “special representative for investment and economic partnership with overseas countries”, with a mandate covering deals with the US.The proposed model, unnamed but also unhidden, is partition. Washington gets access to Ukrainian mineral resources. Moscow gets a fat slice of Ukraine. Russia and America reset diplomatic relations and renew commercial ties without any of the old fuss around rule of law and human rights – an oligarch entente.There are many reasons to recoil from such a deal. It would be a cynical betrayal of Ukraine and a renunciation of the transatlantic alliance. It would reward a dictator’s rapacious territorial aggression. It would embolden him to violate the sovereignty of other neighbouring countries, whose western orientation Russia has never stopped resenting since they escaped Soviet vassalage. It would license similar ambitions wherever authoritarian regimes fancy unilaterally redrawing disputed borders.But none of those objections move Trump. Not long ago they might have found a voice in the Republican party establishment. But the Maga personality cult appears to have deactivated the GOP’s capacity for foresight, erased its memory and dissolved its conscience.Instead of applying a corrective lens to Trump’s venal myopia, America’s former cold warriors add their own distorting filters to the White House’s pro-Russia tilt. One common rationalisation is to cast it as a tactical play in a great game with the ultimate goal of isolating and containing China. Advocates of this manoeuvre seem not to have considered the possibility that Beijing is the obvious beneficiary from sabotage of the international legal apparatus that Washington built. China will gladly fill any void left by America’s retreat into narcissistic commercial protectionism.Meanwhile, the evangelical Christian side of the US right finds inspiration in examples of reactionary dogmas of the Russian Orthodox church wired into laws of authoritarian repression. Putin has proscribed “LGBT extremism” and, late last year, “child-free propaganda” – anything that discourages women from fulfilling their patriotic duty to breed new citizens.This ideological affinity is cherished also by Russian nationalist commentators. They welcome the Trump regime as a powerful ally in global resistance to the effeminate moral degeneracy emanating from the continent they call “Gayrope”.Hostility to Europe, and the EU in particular, is where the various strands of a potential Maga-Putin front come together. The Russian and US presidents share a venomous resentment of the soft power that Brussels wields through the aggregation of many national markets into one trading bloc.From Trump’s point of view, the EU is a wicked cartel, denying US farms and businesses their inalienable right to sell to millions of European consumers. For Putin, it is an enemy apparatus, part of the post-cold war western expansion that locked Russia out of its natural sphere of influence.For both men, the idea of pooling sovereignty among democratic nations for mutual economic advantage is incomprehensible. To negotiate as equals with the EU – a flimsy paper entity without any tank divisions to call its own – is absurd and abhorrent. Their answer to soft power is to confront it with the hard stuff, connive in its dismemberment and share the spoils.This is the subtext of negotiations to end the war that Putin started and that Trump wants to end without regard for justice. They are rehearsing a shared agenda through the proxy of partitioning Ukraine, exploring the scope of a partnership that has a deeper foundation than America’s former allies want to admit. It might not come to fruition. Trump is easily distracted, but also easily bought and Russia has put a predatory joint venture on the table. Europe is the prey.

      Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to speak to Putin about ceasefire as Zelenskyy accepts 30-day truce and says ‘Ukraine is ready for peace’ – live

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      US president Donald Trump said he hopes Russia will agree to a ceasefire plan drawn up by US and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.Trump, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said he would invite Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy back to the White House.He said he hopes the proposal can be solidified “over the next few days”, adding:
      I know we have a big meeting with Russia tomorrow, and some great conversations hopefully will ensue.
      He said he will speak to Russian leader Vladimir Putin about the ceasefire proposal this week. “It takes two to tango, as they say.”Responding to Ukraine accepting the US’s ceasefire plan, the UK’s Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said: “The fastest way to bring peace in Ukraine is for Putin to withdraw his troops immediately.“I’m relieved Trump has now reversed his senseless decision to suspend intelligence-sharing and security aid. There’s no doubt it cost Ukrainian lives and emboldened Putin.“The terrifying thing is: Trump’s so unreliable, we can’t count on him not to do it again.“Now more than ever we must stand with Ukraine and work alongside our European partners to support a just peace, even in the absence of a reliable ally in the US.”Poland has welcomed a deal that will immediately restore US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine.“We are ready as Poland, with an airport, with a hub in Rzeszow, in Jasionka, to accept this aid,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Polish foreign minister, told the TVN24 news channel.“We maintain operational capability all the time, and we are fully prepared to resume American support.”US president Donald Trump said he wanted to “get this show on the road” and end the war in Ukraine after the countries agreed a plan for a 30-day ceasefire.Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said: “Ukraine, ceasefire, Ukraine, ceasefire, just agreed to a little while ago.“Now we have to go to Russia, and hopefully President Putin will agree to that also, and we can get this show on the road.“We want to get that war over with.”Seemingly referring to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s turbulent visit to the White House last month, the president said: “I think it’s a big difference between the last visit you saw in the Oval Office, and this.“That’s a total ceasefire – Ukraine has agreed to it, and hopefully Russia will agree to it.“We’re going to meet with them later on today and tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll be able to wipe out a deal.”He added: “If we can get Russia to do it, that’ll be great. If we can’t, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed, lots of people.”It’s 11pm in Kyiv, midnight in Moscow and 5pm in Washington. Here’s a recap of the latest developments on the war in Ukraine:

      Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia following talks with senior US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. “Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the US proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” a joint statement by the Ukrainian and US delegation said.

      The US announced it would immediately lift its restrictions on military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. US officials said they hoped the agreement would help lead to talks to end the war. The decision came more than a week after the US cut off crucial aid to Ukraine, including deliveries of military radars and ammunition, as well as information sharing, which put significant pressure on Ukraine to agree to a US-proposed deal.

      Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Donald Trump and said Ukraine was committed to seeking a peace “so that war does not return”. “Ukraine is ready to accept this proposal – we see it as a positive step and are ready to take it,” Zelenskyy said. “Now, it is up to the United States to convince Russia to do the same. If Russia agrees, the ceasefire will take effect immediately.”

      Trump said he hoped Vladimir Putin would reciprocate and agree to the ceasefire proposal. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Moscow in the coming days to propose the ceasefire to Vladimir Putin. “Ukraine has agreed to it. And hopefully Russia will agree to it,” Trump told reporters. Trump also said he would welcome Zelenskyy back to the White House after their clash last month.

      US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the ball was “now in Russia’s court” after the negotiations concluded. Rubio told reporters after the talks that he hoped Russia would say yes to the deal. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here,” he said.

      European leaders welcomed the news of the agreement. European Council president António Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described the news as a “positive development” and said the EU “is ready to play its full part”. France and its partners “remain committed to a solid and lasting peace, backed by robust security guarantees for Ukraine,” president Emmanuel Macron said.

      UK prime minister Keir Starmer also welcomed the agreement. “We now all need to redouble our efforts to get to a lasting and secure peace as soon as possible,” Starmer said in a statement, adding that he would be “convening leaders this Saturday to discuss next steps”.
      In other news in Europe:

      Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of the war overnight on Monday. The Russian defence ministry reported that 337 drones were launched at Russia, including 91 targeting the Moscow region, killing three people, causing fires and disrupting flights and train services.

      Portugal’s parliament rejected a motion of confidence in the centre-right government, whose prime minister Luís Montenegro is embroiled in a controversy over a possible conflict of interest.

      Romania’s top court upheld a decision to ban presidential election frontrunner Călin Georgescu from standing in a rerun of the vote in May, sparking protest in Bucharest and leaving the country’s far right parties four days to find a candidate.

      Voters on the vast Arctic island of Greenland are going to the polls after a dramatic election campaign that the territory’s prime minister said had been “burdened by geopolitical tensions”.
      Russian and US officials could communicate with each other in the next few days, Russia’s foreign ministry said.“We do not rule out contacts with US representatives within the next few days,” foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Russian state news agency Tass.A Ukrainian presidential official has confirmed that the US has resumed military assistance to Ukraine following talks in Saudi Arabia.Palvo Palisa, deputy head of the presidential office, said:
      I have confirmation that US military assistance has been resumed. The agreements are being implemented.
      French president Emmanuel Macron has also welcomed the news that Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia.“The ball is now clearly in Russia’s court,” Macron said in a statement on X.
      France and its partners remain committed to a solid and lasting peace, backed by robust security guarantees for Ukraine.
      Suddenly the ball is in Russia’s court. The flow of US intelligence and military aid to Ukraine is to resume – and the Kremlin is being asked to agree to a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv has already told the Americans it will sign up to.It is a dizzying turnaround from the Oval Office row between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump and the apparent abandonment of the White House’s strategy to simply pressurise Ukraine into agreeing to a peace deal. Now, for the first time, Russia is being asked to make a commitment, though it is unclear what will follow if it does sign up.Announcing the peace proposal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that he hoped Russia would accept a peace agreement “so we can get to the second phase of this, which is real negotiations”.That may leave plenty of room for interpretation. Russia has also been pushing for a ceasefire, though the Kremlin had wanted that to be followed by elections in Ukraine, before any full negotiation about territory and Kyiv’s future security.Ukraine, meanwhile, will want strong security guarantees to avoid a resumption of the war, involving European peacekeepers on the ground, which Russia has so far said it is against. An open question, perhaps, is whether peacekeepers could enter Ukraine during a ceasefire period, but this is speculative.Read the full analysis: Dizzying turnaround in US-Ukraine relations leaves all eyes on RussiaUkrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has described his meeting with senior US officials in Saudi Arabia today as a “serious step forward”.Posting to X, Sybiha‎ said the meeting was a step forward for the “path to peace” and the strategic Ukraine-US partnership, adding:
      This is what a frank, open, and constructive dialogue brings.
      He thanked his US counterpart, secretary of state Marco Rubio, US national security adviser Mike Waltz and “our Saudi friends”.US president Donald Trump said he hopes Russia will agree to a ceasefire plan drawn up by US and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.Trump, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said he would invite Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy back to the White House.He said he hopes the proposal can be solidified “over the next few days”, adding:
      I know we have a big meeting with Russia tomorrow, and some great conversations hopefully will ensue.
      He said he will speak to Russian leader Vladimir Putin about the ceasefire proposal this week. “It takes two to tango, as they say.”The UK prime minister Keir Starmer said he “warmly” welcomes the agreement between Ukrainian and US officials after talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.A statement from Starmer reads:
      I warmly welcome the agreement today in Jeddah and congratulate President Trump and President Zelenskyy for this remarkable breakthrough.This is an important moment for peace in Ukraine and we now all need to redouble our efforts to get to a lasting and secure peace as soon as possible. As both American and Ukrainian delegations have said, the ball is now in the Russian court. Russia must now agree to a ceasefire and an end to the fighting too.

      H added that he will be convening virtual meeting of countries ready to support a ceasefire on Saturday “to discuss next steps”, adding:We are ready to help bring an end to this war in a just and permanent way that allows Ukraine to enjoy its freedom.
      European Council president António Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have issued a joint statement welcoming the news from Jeddah on the US-Ukraine talks.“This is a positive development that can be a step towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” they said.“The ball is now in Russia’s court.
      The EU is ready to play its full part, together with its partners, in the upcoming peace negotiations.
      Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said Europe “stands ready to help reach a just and lasting peace” after the joint US-Ukraine announcement that Kyiv is ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire with Russia.Posting to X, Tusk wrote:
      It seems like the Americans and Ukrainians have taken an important step towards peace. And Europe stands ready to help reach a just and lasting peace.
      We reported earlier that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv is ready to accept as US proposal for a “30-day full interim ceasefire”.Zelenskyy said he received a report from the Ukrainian delegation on the meeting with US officials in Saudi Arabia.“ The discussion lasted most of the day and was good and constructive,” he said. “Our teams were able to discuss many important details.”Here’s Zelenskyy’s full video statement, posted to X: More

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      The Guardian view on Nigel Farage: not even Donald Trump is as damaging to Reform as its own leader | Editorial

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      One constant of British political life is that Nigel Farage never stays out of the spotlight for long. Having built a political career on railing against the establishment – while, paradoxically, embedding himself within it – Mr Farage finds himself embroiled in yet another melodrama. This time, however, the threat comes not from the usual suspects – remainers, the BBC or “woke” elites – but from his own side.The affair revolves around Rupert Lowe, a little‑known businessman, elected as one of Reform UK’s five MPs in 2024 under Mr Farage’s leadership. That should have been the beginning of a forgettable contribution to British public life. Yet, thanks to the intervention of Elon Musk – the world’s richest man and Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” tsar – Mr Lowe has a starring role in Mr Farage’s latest soap opera.Earlier this year the tech billionaire was so annoyed by Mr Farage’s decision to distance himself from the imprisoned far-right agitator Tommy Robinson that he touted Mr Lowe as a possible replacement. Relations between Mr Farage and Mr Lowe have deteriorated since. Their feud burst out into the open this month, culminating this weekend with Reform UK alleging misconduct by Mr Lowe, which he denies. Mr Lowe, who has been suspended from the party and lost its whip in parliament, derides it as a vanity project driven by one man’s ego. He has threatened to sue Reform UK for libel.Mr Farage’s reaction, however, is telling. For all his bravado about free speech, the moment a rival emerges – however minor – his instinct seems to be to cut them down. This is not the first time. His political parties – Ukip, the Brexit party, Reform UK – have operated more like personality cults than democratic organs, and loyalty to the leader has eclipsed ideological purity. Challenging Mr Farage doesn’t end well for those who dare. The difference this time is that Mr Musk’s intervention gives the affair an absurdly transatlantic flavour.This illuminates a larger problem. If Mr Farage’s goal is to broaden his electoral appeal, association with Trumpism is a hindrance, not a help. While Mr Trump retains a firm grip on the Republican party, the US president remains deeply unpopular in Britain, where even Tories see him as a liability. The perception that Mr Farage is too close to Mr Trump and too sympathetic to Vladimir Putin is hurting him in the polls. The opportunist in Mr Farage knows this. His strategy has been to present himself as the plebeian face of rightwing populism – foregrounding his love of pints over his attendance at Mar-a-Lago banquets. Yet the contradictions are piling up.Mr Farage seeks to appear an insurgent, yet he operates like an autocrat. He wants to court the support of Trumpian figures, yet he knows their influence is more likely to repel than to attract British voters. He wants Reform UK to grow – but only under him. For all the bluster, this latest episode only highlights that Mr Farage, like Mr Trump, has always been far better at breaking things than building them. That ought to be a warning to mainstream parties seeking to emulate Trumpian talking points around cutting foreign aid or sacking bureaucrats – especially with an upcoming byelection in a Labour stronghold. If Reform UK eventually ends up on the scrapheap of history, it won’t be because of Mr Lowe or Mr Musk, or even Mr Trump. It will be because, in the end, Mr Farage is his own biggest problem.

      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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      ‘Will Trump give up the store?’ Edward Fishman on how US economic warfare works – and doesn’t

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      Edward Fishman’s first book, Chokepoints, is a study of American economic warfare. Densely reported but fast-moving, the book examines recent US sanctions policy regarding Iran, Russia and China, and how the dollar’s dominance of international financial systems has allowed administrations to pursue political aims.Fishman’s own service under Barack Obama, at Treasury, Pentagon and State, stands him in good stead. So does teaching at Columbia and being a Washington thinktank fellow.As Chokepoints comes out, Donald Trump is beginning talks with Russia aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Russia is seeking relief from US sanctions, which Trump seems inclined to give, and Ukraine and Europe are increasingly isolated from the US.“The record of the first Trump administration on Russia is not particularly strong,” Fishman said, diplomatically, when asked what the US might expect from a president widely held to be in thrall to Vladimir Putin – and speaking before Trump’s spectacular Oval Office argument with Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and subsequent suspension of US military aid.Fittingly, as the author of a history of modern sanctions, Fishman looked back to look forward – and did not find encouraging signs.View image in fullscreenIn 2018, “under pressure from Congress, Trump imposed sanctions on Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate in Russia … Deripaska owned Rusal, which is the largest aluminum company in Russia, and produced almost 10% of the world’s aluminum. And overnight, basically, aluminum prices skyrocket, Rusal stock collapses, and there’s significant chaos in metal markets.“And Trump gets all these calls from the Russians, from CEOs, saying, ‘What are you doing? Stop.’ And he just pulls back the sanctions.”Years later, that episode is “concerning” to Fishman, “for a few reasons. One is, I think it signals to Russia that as soon as [Trump’s US faces] even the slightest amount of blowback, he will cave, even absent any concessions. It wasn’t like Putin gave any political concessions [in 2018]. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, we’re gonna free these prisoners overnight, we’re gonna stop this bombardment in Ukraine,’ because there was a low, simmering conflict being fought at the time. Trump just pulled back the sanctions.“And after that is when Russia shifts basically all of its foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro and the yuan, the Chinese currency, and gold. So that was the key moment. Putin realizes [about Trump], ‘This guy, he doesn’t have the stomach to do anything, but also he’s so erratic.’ I think that was when the US lost leverage it needs with Russia, though I think it contributed to Putin underestimating the sanctions he would face in 2022”, from Biden, when he ordered a full invasion.US sanctions have hurt Russia deeply – and therefore should be among Trump’s strongest cards to play. Typically, he has been inconsistent. Usually friendly to Moscow, on Friday, Trump used his social media platform to say that because Russia was “absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield” he was “strongly considering large scale” sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire could be reached.Fishman pondered the issue: “Do I think that Trump will give up the store? I don’t know … I would say I’m not confident that he’s going to get a just peace in Ukraine. But I’m not yet saying, ‘This guy is failing, we’re about to give up everything to Russia in exchange for nothing,’ though I think it’s possible and it’s certainly what the Russians want. It’s very clear they want to cut a deal with Trump that basically couches sanctions relief as a favor to the US, to say, ‘We should have open trade and investment with you. It’s good for America. It was Biden who put on all these restraints. He was just restraining US-Russia relations for no good reason.’“They want to basically get the US to give up their biggest bargaining chip before full negotiations over Ukraine even start.”Fishman studied at Yale, Cambridge and Stanford after 9/11. He noticed that “Iran’s nuclear program shot to the top of the foreign policy agenda”, even though “it was very obvious that the US was not willing to fight another war in the Middle East. And as a result, a number of people were thinking, ‘OK, what do we do about it?’”Joining the US government, Fishman found himself looking for a good book on sanctions.“I had an interesting mix of roles. Some were in the action, doing sanctions, diplomacy, and in others I was more of an adviser to really senior people. I worked for Secretary of State John Kerry and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey … And what I noticed was in the Situation Room, when the top leaders were discussing US foreign policy, whenever it turned to economic warfare, sanctions, etc, the level of conversation was so low, and I think it was because most people in the room had no idea what sanctions were.“It felt arcane. It felt mysterious. And so a big goal [with Chokepoints] was to demystify this and to create a way for average people just to read a book and say, ‘OK, I get it enough that I can develop my own opinions.’”The book is written to keep the reader moving, short chapters introduced with journalistic flourishes. Character traits are sharply noted, short anecdotes from lives away from work help present diplomats and bureaucrats in sharp relief.The importance of the sanctions policy such characters have shaped over the last 20 years is hard to overstate. The first part of Fishman’s book concerns the Iran nuclear deal, reached under Obama through diplomacy and economic pressure, meant to stop the Islamic Republic getting the bomb, dumped by Trump in 2018. Fishman also considers Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the US-led response – one subject of angry debate in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy visited last week – then switches to how Obama and Trump approached China.Fishman is a proud Obama alum but he is not afraid to apportion criticism.“Trump was significantly less risk-averse than Obama was when it came to sanctions. And I think that hopefully the Obama-Russia section [of Chokepoints] shows that in some ways, that risk aversion did not serve American interests.“The Obama administration also toward the end started to become quite concerned about China building islands in the South China Sea, all kinds of other aggressive acts. I think some Obama people would say this was too late in the administration to do anything about it but I would have been surprised, honestly, if you had seen a kind of frontal assault on Chinese economic aggression, even if Obama had more time.“So I think the benefit of Trump, with respect to China, was that he showed us that we have more leverage than we think we do, that we have more flexibility to actually push back against things that China was doing to hurt American interests, because I think it was well documented that Chinese IP theft was one of the ways that they were damaging American business interests, damaging the US economy, and we really hadn’t done anything about it.“So I do think that what Trump got right on China was that you can punch back without necessarily destroying the relationship … the US-China relationship didn’t really collapse during the Trump administration until the very end, until Covid, because they had signed the phase one trade deal in January 2020.“The thing that strikes me about the first Trump administration, and I think is going to be true about this one, is that Trump … on most issues, he vacillates. And China’s one of them. He goes back and forth from being extremely tough to being like, ‘Xi Jinping is my best friend.’”Trump is inconsistent toward other countries too, particularly those he threatens with tariffs, adversaries and friends alike, as demonstrated this week by 25% tariffs slapped on Mexico and Canada, then partially delayed.“Tariffs are taxes on imports,” Fishman said. “Let’s say we were to impose a tariff on Russian oil of 20%. That would mean that US companies could buy Russian oil, but if they were to do so, they’d have to pay a 20% tax. So a US refinery, down the street from me in New Jersey, could pay a tax to the US government to buy that Russian oil.“A sanction would be basically saying you can’t buy any oil at all. So a tariff is a significantly weaker form of a sanction. Historically, as a result, tariffs have not been used for national security reasons. They’re an economic bargaining chip. Sometimes you use tariffs to protect important domestic industries.“What Trump has done is basically just made tariffs yet another weapon in the US economic arsenal, alongside sanctions and export controls. And I think that’s OK. But it’s important for people to realize that tariffs are a significantly weaker tool than sanctions or export controls, so the idea of using them to address key national security problems is somewhat ludicrous.“Trump recently threatened tariffs on Russia. We import $2bn or $3bn worth of goods from Russia. So what good is that going to do? The tariff threat against the Brics countries – a lot of these things don’t make a lot of sense. I think he has a fixation with tariffs. Let’s see if one of his red lines is crossed, if he actually just relies on tariffs, or if there’s sanctions too.”A “chokepoint” is a point at which trade can be squeezed: physically, in corridors such as the Bosphorus or the Panama canal, electronically, through financial networks from which the US can freeze enemies out.“Geographic chokepoints have never fully lost their relevance,” Fishman said. “With the invention of the airplane, there are ways to ship commodities without access to chokepoints. But a lot of things, like oil, still travel by sea or by pipeline. And so that’s why the Bosphorus today is still a really important chokepoint. The Suez canal is very important, and the Strait of Hormuz.“What’s different about economic warfare today is that throughout almost all of human history, up until 20 years ago, cutting off any of these chokepoints would have required taking a navy vessel and parking it there, and saying, ‘OK, thou shall not pass.’ The difference now is you can have an official in the treasury department sign a document and block a chokepoint from thousands of miles away. That’s why you’ve seen this sort of unchained economic warfare, because it’s not like military force, it’s not like you’re actually putting US troops and US ships in harm’s way.”Trump has implied willingness to use US troops, to seize the Panama canal or Greenland. Fishman sees actual deployments as a possible consequence of Trump fueling a breakdown of economic order.“The thing I worry about, about some of Trump’s rhetoric, not just about Panama but Greenland … is that I think that we are certainly headed toward a breakdown in globalization. I think that in order to regain a sense of economic security, we’re going to see an erosion of economic interdependence.”Economic nationalism is on the rise. Fishman worries that “Trump may be driving us towards deploying these weapons of economic warfare not just against the Chinas and Russias of the world, but against Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Colombia, Brazil – all these different countries he’s threatened tariffs and sanctions against.”His book ends on a pessimistic note. In conversation, he warns: “History shows us that when states can’t acquire markets and resources through open trade and finance, that’s when wars break out. They try to conquer them. If you have that mindset, if you say, ‘We don’t feel like we can access these resources unless we physically plant our flag there,’ then that’s not a world that any of us is going to be happy living in.”

      Chokepoints is out now More