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The US Department of State has released a long-delayed, legally required report on human trafficking after an investigation by the Guardian and bipartisan pressure from Congress.The 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which details conditions in the United States and more than 185 countries, was initially scheduled for release at an event in June featuring the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Guardian has reported, but the event was scrapped and staff at the state department office charged with leading the federal government’s fight against human trafficking were cut by more 70%.The US Trafficking Victims Protection Act requires that the state department provide the report to Congress each year no later than 30 June. The delay in the release of the report this year raised fears among some anti-trafficking advocates that the 2025 document had been permanently shelved.The report was published quietly on the agency’s website on Monday without a customary introduction from the secretary of state or the ambassador tasked with monitoring and combating human trafficking, a position Donald Trump has not filled.The state department did not answer repeated questions from the Guardian about why the report had been delayed, but said it was subject to “the same rigorous review process as in years past”.The Guardian highlighted the report’s delay in a 17 September article reporting that the Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking. White House officials called the Guardian’s findings “nonsense” and said the administration remains committed to anti-trafficking efforts.Representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, who won unanimous approval from the House foreign affairs committee for an amendment that added additional oversight of federal anti-trafficking efforts hours after the Guardian’s investigation was published, expressed a mix of relief and frustration. “Let’s be clear: this report should never have been delayed in the first place,” she said in a statement.McBride said she would “be reading it closely, alongside advocates and survivors, to ensure that it lives up to its mission – shining a light on trafficking and pressing governments to act”.Current and former state department officials told the Guardian that unlike the department’s annual human rights report, which was significantly weakened amid reports of political interference, the human-trafficking report largely appears to represent an honest assessment of agency experts on anti-trafficking work abroad. There was a notable exception. Earlier this year, an effort to draft a section on LGBTQ+ victims, written in coordination with two trafficking survivors, was terminated.Jose Alfaro, one of the survivors invited to draft the now-excised section, said he was told that Trump’s executive order banning references to diversity, equity and inclusion was the reason he and the rest of the team were pulled off the project.The term “LGBTQ” doesn’t appear in the 2025 report, and Alfaro says this is a mistake. Without “critical context” about what makes some groups vulnerable to trafficking and how to identify potential victims, “we only contribute to the problem rather than solving it”, he said.According to a state department spokesperson, “Human trafficking affects human beings, not ideologies. The 2025 TIP report focuses on human trafficking issues directly, as they affect all people regardless of background.”A state department spokesperson said the US had made significant strides in ending forced labor in the Cuban export program and working with the Department of Treasury in imposing sanctions on entities using forced labor to run online scam centers.As for shifts in anti-trafficking strategy, the state department provided a statement from Rubio saying the agency is “reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens. We are continuing essential lifesaving programs and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country.”The report names Cambodia a “state sponsor” of trafficking for the first time, a designation that can lead to sanctions. It alleges senior Cambodian government officials profit from human trafficking by allowing properties they own to be “used by online scam operators to exploit victims in forced labor and forced criminality”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia – which the report says forcibly has transferred “tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, including by forcibly separating some children from their parents or guardians” – are also listed among the state sponsors of trafficking.Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who wrote the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, released a statement praising Trump. “The president is absolutely right to spotlight and criticize those countries that are not only failing to stop human trafficking, but in many cases, are actively profiting from it,” he said.Brazil and South Africa were put on a state department “watchlist” of countries that show insufficient efforts to combat human trafficking and may face sanctions for the first time, with the department citing failures of both countries to demonstrate progress on the issue, with fewer investigations and prosecutions.The document is also critical of Israel, describing as “credible” reports that “Israeli forces forcibly used Palestinian detainees as scouts in military operations in Gaza to clear booby-trapped buildings and tunnels and gather information”.The allegations were first raised by Palestinian sources and confirmed by Israeli soldiers in testimony gathered by Breaking the Silence, an organization of current and former members of the Israeli military. They have since been substantiated in investigations by Israeli media.Joel Carmel, a former IDF officer who serves as Breaking the Silence’s advocacy director, said he hoped the report “would be used to be sure Israel is held accountable” and “doesn’t end up sitting on a shelf somewhere”. He said despite a ruling by the Israeli supreme court that declared the use of human shields to be illegal, “there’s certainly the fear that this is the new norm for the IDF”.Under previous administrations – including Trump’s first – the TIP report was released with great fanfare. The secretary of state typically hosts a “launch ceremony” featuring the TIP ambassador and anti-trafficking “heroes” from around the world.The delayed report release is part of an ongoing retreat in the Trump administration’s support of anti-trafficking measures, including the impending lapse of more than 100 grants from the Department of Justice, which advocates say could deprive thousands of survivors from access to services when funding runs out today.
Aaron Glantz is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Bernice Yeung is managing editor at the investigative reporting program at UC Berkeley Journalism
Noy Thrupkaew is a reporter and director of partnerships at Type Investigations More
Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.He wrote: “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?”Trump added: “Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years, a war that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.”The US president said this was not making Russia look distinguished, but instead a paper tiger, pointing to the long queues for petrol inside the country. He added: “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.” He also promised “to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them”.Earlier, Trump said that he planned to enforce his demand that Nato countries stop importing Russian oil – including Hungary, led by his close ally Viktor Orbán.In his speech to the UN general assembly the US president renewed his demand for Europe to end its “embarrassing” purchase of oil and gas from Russia, saying until it did so he would not impose his long-promised economic punishment on Moscow.Trump also said he believed Nato aircraft should shoot down Russian aircraft if they entered its airspace, but later qualified his remarks by saying it depended on the circumstances.He made his remarks alongside Zelenskyy, whom he described as a “brave man”. Asked if he still trusted the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump said he would know in a month’s time.It came after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had given less wholehearted support for shooting down Russian planes in Nato airspace, saying this should only happen “if they’re attacking”.View image in fullscreenIn his speech to the UN Trump mocked Nato allies’ failure to curb oil imports, saying: “China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil. But inexcusably, even Nato countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products … I found out about it two weeks ago, and I wasn’t happy.“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one? In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs.“But for those tariffs to be effective, European nations, all of you … gathered here right now, would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures.”Trump did not specify the measures, but he has been stalling on a package that includes tariffs against countries that do business with Russia, such as India and China. He has already imposed 50% tariffs on India, but is also in the middle of negotiations that could see those lifted.Regarding Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, Trump said: “He’s a friend of mine. I have not spoken to him [about importing Russian oil], but I have a feeling if I did, he might stop, and I think I’ll be doing that.”In response to Trump’s demands, the EU is trying to bring forward the date by which it ends the import of liquid natural gas imports from Russia to 2026 – a year earlier than planned. The EU is opposed to imposing vast tariffs on China or India, but is looking at more targeted measures against Indian and Chinese oil refineries.Trump said he would be discussing the issue with EU leaders, adding: “They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia … They have to immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia. Otherwise, we are all wasting a lot of time.”The EU’s 19th sanctions package also proposes export controls on another 45 companies that are deemed to be cooperating on sanctions evasion. Those include 12 Chinese, two Thai and three Indian entities that have enabled Russia to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions.View image in fullscreenHungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, told the Guardian that Hungary could not wean itself off Russian energy supplies. He said: “We can’t ensure the safe supply [of energy products] for our country without Russian oil or gas sources,” while adding that he “understood” Trump’s approach.“For us, energy supplies are a purely physical question,” he said. “It can be nice to dream about buying oil and gas from somewhere [besides Russia] … but we can only buy from where we have infrastructure. And if you look at the physical infrastructure, it’s obvious that without the Russian supplies, it is impossible to ensure the safe supply of the country.”Budapest relies on the Druzhba oil pipeline and the TurkStream gas pipeline to receive Russian hydrocarbons.Slovakia, the second EU country still importing Russian oil, said it had already spoken to the US about the issue, and received a sympathetic response. “As long as we have an alternative route, and the transmission capacity is sufficient, Slovakia has no problem diversifying,” said the economy minister, Denisa Saková.Hungary and Slovakia are the two countries that have most frequently called for the EU to reduce its support for Ukraine. More
Back in January, with Donald Trump’s campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” still fresh in the memory, there was genuine unease in Moscow over the US president’s intentions. When Mr Trump mused that “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions” on Russia might be necessary, one high-profile and pro-war Moscow commentator wrote: “It’s better to prepare for the worst. Soon, we’ll look back on Biden’s term with nostalgia, like a thaw.”How wrong can you be? Since then, the US president has repeatedly talked the talk without coming close to walking the walk. In May, when Vladimir Putin rejected a 30-day ceasefire, and peace talks in Turkey went nowhere, a “bone-crushing” US sanctions package failed to materialise. An 8 August deadline for Mr Putin to agree to a ceasefire somehow morphed into a red carpet welcome in Alaska, where Mr Trump applauded a leader wanted for war crimes as he disembarked from his plane. The “severe consequences” threatened by Mr Trump if the Alaska talks failed to lead to peace never happened.Emboldened, Mr Putin has thus continued to prosecute his war aims in Ukraine, and probe for western weaknesses. Last week’s incursion of Russian drones into Polish territory laid bare inadequate Nato planning, as F-35 and F-16 fighter jets were hastily scrambled to deal with cheap kamikaze devices that cost around $10,000 each to produce. It also communicated a warning of possible escalation in the event of any future “reassurance force” deploying European troops on Ukrainian soil. Such a provocation called for a robust and unified response, exerting the kind of pressure on the Kremlin which Mr Trump has so far refused to countenance. Instead the US president appears, once again, to prefer bullying his European allies to targeting Mr Putin. In a statement which reeked of bad faith, Mr Trump declared over the weekend that the US was “ready” to impose tougher sanctions on Russia, but only if certain unlikely conditions were met.Eyeing a considerable economic prize, Washington is insisting that the EU must increase its imports of US liquified natural gas at a rate that analysts judge undoable. Other demands include the imposition by the EU of 50%-100% tariffs on Russia’s most important ally, China, and an end to all imports of Russian oil by Nato members. This includes Turkey, which has refused to sanction Moscow, imports 57% of its oil from Russia, and lies outside the EU.Those looking on the bright side in Brussels hope that Mr Trump’s pressure may persuade Maga-friendly governments in Hungary and Slovakia to end their deep dependence on Russian energy imports. That is extremely unlikely to happen, as Mr Trump and his advisers must know. Nor can the EU afford to court the kind of economic retaliation from Beijing that caused Mr Trump himself to back down from a full-blown trade war recently.During this week’s state visit, it will be Sir Keir Starmer’s turn to try to pin Mr Trump down on decisive action. But from the unproductive Alaska talks to his latest diversionary tactics with the EU, Mr Trump keeps finding reasons not to get tough on Russia. Last week’s drone incursion in Poland represented an ominous upping of the ante. Ukraine’s prospects, and wider European security interests, are being steadily undermined by a president who, in this context, barks but never bites.
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The random and unprovoked killing of a young woman in North Carolina several weeks ago has become a viral video, a political football, and a powerful rightwing talking point – even as the horror and anger her death has provoked obscures what experts say is a vital story about the failures of the American mental health system.The alleged perpetrator, Decarlos Brown Jr, 34, has a long history of problems with the law and mental health issues. He had been arrested 14 times and served a five-year stint for armed robbery. Brown had also come to believe that there was something alien and malevolent inside him – a “man-made material”, he told people, possibly a computer chip implanted by the government that was fighting him for control of his body.Brown was riding a light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina, last month when he allegedly stood up with a pocket knife, abruptly stabbed a nearby woman, then walked away. The victim, Iryna Zarutska, was a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who worked at a pizza parlor and hoped to become a veterinary assistant. Haunting security-camera footage shows her curled up weakly as she bleeds to death in her restaurant uniform. In a phone call from jail after his arrest, Brown, who reportedly has schizophrenia, told his sister that Zarutska had been trying to read his mind.Initially a tragedy covered by mostly local news outlets, Zarutska’s death has grown in recent days into a cause célèbre on the American right. In more centrist conservative accounts, Zarutska’s killing is a symbol and symptom of a lax criminal justice system that should never have allowed Brown to freely walk the streets. In more inflammatory, far-right discourse, the story of a formerly incarcerated Black man’s killing of a defenseless blond woman has become racist fodder for sinister theories about white persecution and Black criminality.On X, Elon Musk has tweeted or retweeted dozens of posts about the story, many arguing that the media would have covered the story more aggressively if a white person had attacked a Black victim, and contrasting it with the media attention given to cases like that of Daniel Penny, a white man who was arrested in New York in 2023 for killing an unhoused Black man with mental illness on the subway in what he described as self-defense. (He was acquitted in trial.)Viral content online has claimed that Brown targeted Zarutska specifically because she was white, though as of now there is no evidence that he did. Some rightwing accounts have noted with pointed irony that a photo that has circulated of Zarutska appears to show a Black Lives Matter poster in the background. Musk and others have pledged money to a campaign to put up George Floyd-style murals of her across American cities.Outrage has reached the highest levels of the US government. Donald Trump has declared on social media that the “ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.”View image in fullscreenJD Vance, the vice-president, called Brown a “thug” and noted his lengthy arrest record. “It wasn’t law enforcement that failed,” Vance wrote. “It was weak politicians … who kept letting him out of prison.” Earlier this year Brown was arrested for allegedly making unfounded 911 calls, and released after signing a written promise to reappear in court.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, has announced federal charges against Brown – despite the strong possibility that Brown is mentally ill and could thereby be deemed not culpable by reason of insanity, and despite the fact that the federal government would not typically become involved in the prosecution of a tragic but random act of local violence.Emmitt Riley, a professor of politics and African American studies at Sewanee, the University of the South, said that Zarutska’s death is an undeniable tragedy but has become politicized in a way with obvious racial overtones.“Donald Trump has a history of calling for the death penalty, in particular for Black and brown people,” he said – most famously in the case of the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers who were imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a woman jogging in New York. Although they were later exonerated, Trump has never apologized.Experts on mental health and criminal justice believe the true story of this case is less sensational than tragic, and indicative of a fraying American mental health system that failed to protect Zarutska in part because it first failed to protect Brown from himself.“When I hear people define this as [solely] a criminal justice problem or lack of being ‘tough on crime,’ I think: ‘Let’s be real. Let’s define the problem as what it is,’” Sheryl Kubiak, the dean of the school of social work at Wayne State University, said. “We have a mental health crisis in this country, and we need to address it with appropriate mental health resources.”Jails, she said, were not created for treating mental illness, nor equipped to do so.Although Brown had a long history of reckless behavior, his mental problems seemed to get worse after he was released from prison in 2020, members of his family have told the news media. He walked around talking to himself and was given to unexpected angry outbursts.Like many people with seeming severe mental illness, Brown was offered treatment but resisted accepting it. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his mother told ABC, but refused to take medication. She and other members of the family repeatedly tried to get him help. At one point she asked a hospital to admit him but was told, she said, that the hospital could not “make” a person accept treatment. At another point a mental health facility kept him for in-patient treatment but released him after two weeks.Kubiak and other experts note that cases like Brown’s illustrate two longstanding and overlapping debates about the treatment of mental illness. One concerns “institutionalization”, the treatment of serious mental illness in dedicated institutions segregated from larger society, and the other concerns “involuntary” treatment of those who need treatment but refuse it.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States built large, then state-of-the-art mental hospitals across the country to house and treat patients. But institutionalization fell out of favor in the 1950s and 1960s, due to changing cultural and legal attitudes, advances in medication, and a fear that institutions were overused and risked abuse. Mental health practices instead emphasized treating people within their communities. Civil libertarians also lobbied for the bar for involuntary treatment to be stricter. Many of the hospitals were shuttered.View image in fullscreenYet the government has not properly funded and organized a system to replace the older one, Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, said. Where someone with severe mental health problems might have previously had access to dedicated, long-term treatment facilities, they are now likely to end up in a revolving door of jails, ERs, and psychiatric wards with too many patients and too few beds.“Now we have probably more people with serious mental illnesses on any given day in one of our massive big city jails, like Cook county jail in Chicago or the Los Angeles county jail or Rikers Island [in New York], than we ever had in these asylums,” he said. “And it’s really a scandal.”Some progressives are opposed to involuntary treatment, casting it as a violation of consent. Mental health experts tend to take a more nuanced view, Swanson said, particularly in the case of patients whose illnesses are severe and defined by “anosognosia,” a term that means that someone doesn’t recognize that they are ill.A well-known argument for involuntary treatment, he added, says: “We wouldn’t let our grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease wander around and sleep in the subway just because she doesn’t know that she needs treatment; that’d be inhumane. So why do we tolerate that for young adults with schizophrenia?”His own opinion, he said, is complicated by the inadequacies of the current mental health system. “If you’re going to coerce someone into treatment for their own good, you have to have the system capacity to provide those services. I mean, otherwise, it’s really ironic to say: ‘We’re going to force you into treatment that doesn’t exist. We’re going to force you, but we don’t have a bed for you.’”Zarutska was buried in Charlotte on 27 August. Family members who were also in the US as refugees attended the funeral, but her father, who cannot leave Ukraine due to wartime restrictions, had to watch by video call.The Ukrainian embassy offered to help repatriate her body for burial, according to an uncle who spoke to People, but her family chose to inter her in the US; she had fallen “so much in love with the American dream”, he said.Her death is something “I would wish on no one,” Riley, the professor of political science, said. Yet until the US has better systems for treating mental health, “this will be a repeated cycle.” More
Twenty-six nations have pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air, Emmanuel Macron said after a summit at which European leaders sought to pin down Donald Trump on the level of support he is willing to give Kyiv.“The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” the French president told a press conference at the Élysée Palace in Paris, standing alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy.After the summit, Macron told reporters: “We have today 26 countries who have formally committed – some others have not yet taken a position – to deploy a ‘reassurance force’ troops in Ukraine, or be present on the ground, in the sea or in the air.”The troops would not be deployed “on the frontline” but aim to “prevent any new major aggression”, Macron said.Macron initially said the 26 nations – which he did not name – would deploy to Ukraine. But he later said some countries would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example by helping to train and equip Kyiv’s forces. He did not say how many troops would be involved in the guarantees.The Ukrainian president hailed the move. “I think that today, for the first time in a long time, this is the first such serious concrete step,” he said.US contributions to the guarantees would be finalised in the coming days, Macron said.On Friday, a spokesperson for the Kremlin said that western countries “cannot” provide security guarantees for Ukraine, according to remarks reported by Russian state media.“This cannot be a guarantee of security for Ukraine that would suit our country,” Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti.Thursday’s meeting of 35 leaders from the “coalition of the willing” – of mainly European countries – was intended to finalise security guarantees and ask the US president for the backing that Europeans say is vital to make such guarantees viable.Many European countries including Germany, Spain and Italy have refused so far to provide troop commitments. A German spokesperson said: “The focus should be on financing, arming and training the Ukrainian armed forces,” a formula that is not vastly different from what Europe is now providing.Alarmed European leaders travelled to the White House in the wake of the August Alaska summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin fearing that the US president may be about to force Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a humiliating surrender, including loss of territory.View image in fullscreenTrump responded to the European lobbying by claiming he had won the Russian leader’s agreement to hold direct talks with the Ukrainian president, but Russia rejected any such commitment and largely maintained its demand for the surrender of Ukrainian territory and a commitment that Ukraine will never join Nato.Trump had set a deadline of 1 September for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, but Trump is known to set deadlines that he then ignores.“We had a great relationship,” Trump said of Putin in an interview with the rightwing news website The Daily Caller. He said he was now very disappointed in the Russian president: “Thousands of people are dying; it’s a senseless war.”Europe has been desperate to ensure Trump does not wash his hands of the war, but it has been unable to convert Trump’s stated frustration with Putin into a plan to try to strangle the Russian economy.Macron in Paris sought to give the impression that Europe, unlike Russia, stuck to its commitments. He said: “The contributions that were prepared, documented and confirmed at the level of defence ministers under the strictest secrecy allow us to say: this work is complete and will now be politically approved.”Europe has been hoping for months that Trump would activate long-promised sweeping economic sanctions on countries that import Russian oil. The 50% tariffs that the US imposed on India, partly for importing Russian oil, appear to have driven the traditionally non-aligned Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, closer into the arms of China and Russia.Stung by his diplomatic failure so far, Trump has given the impression of wanting to focus on domestic policy, including crime and the economy.The US was represented at the Paris talks by Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who also met Zelenskyy separately.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenAfter the summit, Starmer’s office said it was necessary “to go even further to apply pressure on Putin to secure a cessation of hostilities.”“The prime minister said Putin could not be trusted as he continued to delay peace talks and simultaneously carry out egregious attacks on Ukraine,” No 10 added.Russia has said it will not tolerate European troops in postwar Ukraine.The coalition of the willing includes about 30 nations backing Ukraine, mainly European but also Canada, Australia and Japan. It has met repeatedly at military and political level but not published any detailed plan of action, reflecting internal divisions and uncertainty about the nature of the US contribution.In a breakthrough of sorts, the plan for Europeans to buy US arms for use in Ukraine has started to bear fruit. On 28 August, the US state department announced the delivery of 3,350 ERAM long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, worth $825m (£615m, €705m).The funding came from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the US, but the financial contribution of each country was not disclosed. The ERAM missiles have a range similar to that of the Franco-British Scalp-EG missiles, which Ukraine fired at occupied Crimea and the Russian region of Kursk.Zelenskyy said he had not seen “any signs from Russia that they want to end the war”.The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, said it was not for Putin to decide if European troops would be stationed inside Ukraine. He said: “I think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful.”The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, described Putin as the most severe war criminal of our time.On Wednesday in Beijing, Putin attended a military parade alongside Xi Jinping and hailed Russian forces’ progress in Ukraine, saying troops were advancing on “all fronts”.But there are signs that sanctions are finally taking a toll on the Russian economy after two years of high growth fuelled by defence spending.The Sberbank chief, German Gref, one of Russia’s most powerful bankers, warned on Thursday that the economy was stagnating and that unless the central bank cut interest rates then the country would fall into recession.Russia’s war economy grew at 4.1% in 2023 and 4.3% in 2024 but it is slowing sharply under the weight of high interest rates required to dampen inflation. More
Russia accused western European leaders on Sunday of not wanting peace in Ukraine, as Moscow’s most senior diplomat praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, while Vice-President JD Vance said the US would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made the comments during a sometimes contentious interview on NBC on Sunday morning, during which he denied his country had bombed civilian targets in Ukraine.Trump, he said, had set himself above European leaders who accompanied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House last week, immediately after the summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August.“We want peace in Ukraine. He wants, President Trump wants, peace in Ukraine. The reaction to [the] Anchorage meeting, the gathering in Washington of these European representatives and what they were doing after Washington, indicates that they don’t want peace,” Lavrov said.The Alaska talks produced neither a ceasefire nor an agreement for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet, and was widely considered to be a public relations triumph for the Russian leader.Lavrov brushed aside Trump’s apparent frustration at the outcome and the US warning of “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both” against Moscow. He said “yes” when asked if Putin wanted peace and said Putin and Trump respected each other, while assailing the alliance of leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer and European Union president Ursula von der Leyen who came to the White House last week to bolster Zelenskyy’s visit.European leaders in recent days have pledged to support security guarantees as part of a peace agreement, although Russia has flatly rejected the prospect of troops from countries in Europe being positioned in Ukraine.Trump has ruled out sending the US military, and on Friday it was reported that his administration had blocked Ukraine’s use of US-supplied long-range missiles to attack Russia.Meanwhile, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told Zelenskyy on Sunday that he backed Ukraine’s calls for robust security guarantees and that Canada would not rule out sending troops.Earlier, Lavrov became defensive when NBC asked him if Putin was “stringing along” Trump by appearing conciliatory to his peace overtures but continuing to bomb Ukraine, attacks which last week included an airstrike on an American electronics manufacturing company in the west of the country.“It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlet to decide what President Trump is motivated by. We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests. And I have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests,” he said.Critics, including some conservative voices, are alarmed by what they see as Putin manipulating Trump over Ukraine and US elections.Lavrov meanwhile denied that Russia attacks civilian targets including schools, hospitals and churches, hinting at Russia’s extraordinary claims throughout the war that Ukraine is attacking its own people.“Our intelligence has very good information, and we target only military enterprises, military sites or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for [the] Ukrainian army,” he said.Vance appeared separately in the same Sunday morning program and insisted Russia deserved credit for indicating it was ready to end a conflict that Trump has said more than 50 times he would solve “in one day”, while in contrast the vice-president warned of a longer process.“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said.“They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”Vance said historically that peace negotiations go “in fits and starts” and warned that he did not think ending the war was “going to happen overnight”.Vance said of Russia, in a comment that was not further clarified: “Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress”. Trump in February blamed Ukraine, saying, “you never should have started it.”Any sanctions against Russia, Vance said, would be on a “case by case basis”, but he remained hopeful that US efforts could bring Zelenskyy and Putin together.“It’s complicated, but we’re going to keep on trying to convince these parties to talk to each other and continue to play the game of diplomacy, because that’s the only way to get this thing wrapped up.”Lavrov remained adamant that Russia also wanted peace, and acknowledged “Ukraine has the right to exist”. But he said it “must let people go”, referring to Putin’s demand that it give up Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, as well as southern and eastern parts, such as the Donbas, captured since 2022, as part of a peace agreement.“In Crimea [they] decided that they belong to the Russian culture,” he said, citing a disputed 2014 referendum condemned by most of the world as illegal.On Friday, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNN that stronger US action was needed because “Putin is not going to stop until we stop him.”
Reuters contributed reporting More
US defense officials have blocked Ukraine from using US-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia since late spring as part of a Trump administration effort to get Vladimir Putin to engage in peace talks , according to a report on Saturday.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon has blocked Ukraine from using US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms.Two US officials told the outlet that on at least one occasion, Ukraine had sought to use Atacms against a target but was denied under a “review mechanism” developed by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, that governs how US long-range weapons or those provided by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components can be used.The review process also applies to Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile because it depends on US targeting data, according to two US officials and a British official, the Journal said.The review system reportedly gives US defense secretary Pete Hegseth approval over the use of the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles (305km). Ukraine was previously given authority by the Biden administration to use the missile system against targets inside Russia in November after North Korean troops entered the war.Before the inauguration in January, Trump told Time magazine that the decision to allow Ukraine to use US weapons systems to attack targets inside Russia had been a mistake.“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done,” he said.It is unclear whether the US defense department’s review process amounts to a formal policy change. But it comes alongside increasing control of munitions to Ukraine as US stocks are themselves depleted.In a statement to the Journal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “has been very clear that the war in Ukraine needs to end. There has been no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time.”But last week, amid efforts to broker talks between the Russian president and Voldomyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war.“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning.”Last month, the US agreed to supply Ukraine with new weapons systems but only if European nations paid for them. While Trump has said that the US is “not looking” to provide longer-range weapons that could reach Moscow, US officials told the Journal that the administration has approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or Erams, which have a range of 280 miles (400km). More
It may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin’s continuing war.Much of the public analysis of the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, and the Washington collection of European leaders protecting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from the temperamental Trump, has been replete with red-herring issues. For example, Putin did not invade Ukraine because of feared Nato expansion. The unanimous consent of all Nato members required to admit Ukraine is nowhere on the horizon, especially since article 5 of the Nato treaty would require all Nato members to defend Ukraine from the ongoing Russian incursion.Ironically, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has strengthened Nato. It encouraged Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. It led Nato members to vow to dramatically increase their defense expenditures to 5% of their gross domestic product. And it has made some Nato members more likely to deploy troops in Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” to secure a possible peace deal.Nor did Putin invade to liberate the Ukrainian people from the rule of Zelenskyy, whom he regards as illegitimate and even a “neo-Nazi”. This claim is rich because Zelenskyy was chosen in a free and fair election, but Putin risked only an electoral charade while imprisoning, ultimately lethally, his most charismatic opponent, Alexei Navalny.And the war is not about Putin’s pining to resurrect the Soviet Union, whose collapse he sees as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. That logic would endanger the other 13 former Soviet states, three of which – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are Nato members.Rather, Putin invaded Ukraine to quash its democracy. Unlike the established democracies of Europe, Ukraine looks too much like Russia for Putin to ignore the possibility that Russians will see an alternative future in its accountable, elected government. Like Russia, Ukraine is Slavic and Orthodox. And far from a small statelet, Ukraine, with the second largest population among post-Soviet states after Russia, cannot be ignored.Putin has long preferred Ukraine as a Kremlin vassal state. The Euromaidan protests of 2013-14, which ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych after he suspended talks for a closer relationship with the European Union, led to Putin’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea and parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.Today, Putin’s most controversial demands would enhance the possibility of Kyiv’s renewed subordination. His insistence that Ukraine hand over large portions of Donetsk province – the “land swaps” that Trump casually suggests – would relinquish far more land than Russia has managed to take by force since November 2022, at enormous cost in Russian soldiers’ lives – land that had been home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.It would also compel Ukrainian forces to abandon key defensive lines – Ukraine’s “fortress belt’’ – that stand in the way of Russian seizure of much larger chunks of territory. Comparisons with Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement of Adolf Hitler by sacrificing Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland – a prelude to war – would be inevitable. Putin’s demand that Ukraine disarm would make Russia’s further aggression even easier.Precluding that possibility is why security guarantees are so important for Ukraine. Given that Putin has a history of ignoring agreements with Ukraine, Kyiv reasonably wants some assurance that the Russian military will not use a lull in the fighting to replenish its diminished forces, rearm and reinvade. The best guarantee would be a European peacekeeping force on the ground, but European governments understandably seek a US backstop to deter Russian attack. Trump’s stated willingness to consider air support for a European force is an important step forward. The Russian government’s insistence on the power to veto any security guarantees raises obvious questions about Putin’s intentions.For now, Putin seems to see advantage in continuing the war. To avoid angering Trump, he hasn’t outright refused to meet with Zelenskyy but is slow-walking the matter by insisting on time-consuming prior steps. Given that Putin’s quest to undermine Ukraine’s democracy stems from his calculation of what it takes to retain power, the only way to soften his maximalist demands is by making his recalcitrance even more politically costly.This is where Trump has a role to play. Entering the Alaska summit, Trump had threatened “severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. The mercurial Trump then seemingly abandoned that threat after a few hours with Putin.Trump could take various steps that would force Putin to recalibrate the rationale for his war. Trump could increase the supply of arms to Ukraine. He could further use tariffs to deter the sale of oil and gas that prop up the Russian military. He could press European governments to devote to Ukraine’s defense and rebuilding the $300bn of sovereign Russian assets that are now frozen in western accounts.It is deeply disturbing that matters of war and peace, democracy and autocracy, depend on stroking and flattering the fragile ego of the self-absorbed Trump. But that is the world we live in.European leaders have an essential role to play in nudging him in the right direction. They must get Trump to overcome his usual disdain for democratic rule, and admiration for autocrats like Putin, to acknowledge the centrality of defending Ukraine’s democracy for any fair resolution of the Ukraine conflict.These are counterintuitive steps for the American president. But if he wants to orchestrate an end to the horrible slaughter in Ukraine, he will have to summon the vision to take them.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His new book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane More
