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    Trump administration doubles reward for arrest of Venezuela’s president to $50m

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    The Trump administration is doubling to $50m a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narcotraffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Thursday in a video statement announcing the reward.Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15m reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25m – the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11attacks.Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.The prisoner swap sparked controversy, as one of the Americans freed in the exchange is an ex-US soldier who was convicted of killing three people in Spain in 2016. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, found guilty in Venezuela last year, was flown to Texas alongside the other nine freed Americans, whom rights groups had deemed “political prisoners”.Bondi said the justice department has seized more than $700m in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7m tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.In her announcement, Bondi repeated claims linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Venezuelan gang, saying: “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA … to bring deadly violence to our country … He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”Some experts have cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims that TdA is “invading America”. The narrative that TdA is a state-sponsored terrorist group wreaking havoc on the US has been used to fuel the president’s aggressive and broad attacks on Venezuelan immigrants, with policies that advocates say have trampled on people’s due-process rights. In one high-profile case, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker, was expelled to El Salvador after the US claimed his tattoos were proof he was a TdA member and “security threat”.Experts have noted that the Venezuelan government had previously protected TdA, but it was unlikely the gang was acting “at the direction” of the Maduro regime, as the White House has claimed.The Washington Post reported in April that a National Intelligence Council assessment concluded there were some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and TdA, but said the gang was not commanded by Venezuela’s leader.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Durham disclosures further undermine Gabbard’s claims of plot against Trump

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      Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup.But if her crusade was aimed at proving that Obama embarked on a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely show that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump, Gabbard made a mistake. A previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard’s case.It was a quixotic enterprise from the start.After all, the 2019 report from Robert Mueller, the original special counsel appointed to investigate the Russia allegations, and a bipartisan five-volume report the following year from the Senate intelligence committee – then chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state – both affirmed the offending January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which expressed “high confidence” in Russian interference.Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, seemed to validate the intelligence’s premise in 2018 when, standing beside Trump at a news conference in Helsinki, he admitted wanting him to win.The newly unclassified 29-page document from Durham, made public this week, contains a deflating conclusion for Gabbard. It confirms that Russian spies were behind the emails that were originally released as the result of a Russian cyber-hack of internal Democratic information channels and which Trump supporters believed showed the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, conspiring to accuse him of colluding with Moscow.“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the US-based thinktanks,” Durham writes. He is referring to Leonard Benardo, of the Open Society Foundation, funded by George Soros, a philanthropist and bete noire of Trump’s Maga base.One of the emails purportedly from Benardo proposes a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump” and adds: “Later the FBI will put more oil on the fire.”That message and others, including from a Clinton foreign policy aide, Julianne Smith, became part of the so-called “Clinton Plan intelligence”. Benardo and Smith disputed ever writing such emails.In his 2023 report annexe, released on Thursday in heavily redacted form, Durham at least upholds Benardo’s disavowal – concluding that it has been cobbled together from other individuals’ emails to produce something more incriminating than the actuality.For Gabbard, who is feverishly trying to prove the existence of a “deep state” determined to sabotage Trump, emails suspected to have been confected by Russia is hardly a brilliant look in her evidence package.Some former intelligence insiders find that unsurprising – dismissing the idea as a Trump-inspired fiction. “Trump is lying when he speaks of a ‘deep state’,” said Fulton Armstrong, a retired CIA analyst who served under Democratic and Republican administrations. “But if there were one, it would not be Democrat. The culture of that world is deeply Republican.”The national intelligence director – who has never served in the intelligence services or sat on its eponymous congressional committee when she was in the House of Representatives – is likely to see Durham’s finding as immaterial to her quest to put Obama officials on trial for “manufacturing” intelligence.But Gabbard’s insistence – echoing her boss’s view – on the existence of a plot to torpedo Trump was dismissed on Friday by John Brennan, the CIA director under Obama, who told the New Yorker that Obama issued instructions that intelligence showing Russian meddling to be kept hush-hush, at least until polling day, to ensure a fair election.“He made very clear to us [that] he wanted us to try to uncover everything the Russians were doing, but also not to do anything that would in any way interfere in the election,” Brennan said.Gabbard has cited a 2020 House of Representatives intelligence committee report – endorsed only by its Republican members – challenging the assertion that Putin wanted to Trump to win.However, Michael Van Landingham, one of the CIA authors of the 2017 intelligence assessment now in her crosshairs, said credible intelligence cast the Russian leader’s motives in an unambiguous light.“The primary evidence to get to Putin’s mindset was a clandestine source that said, essentially, when Putin realized that Clinton would win the election, he ordered an influence campaign against Hillary Clinton,” Van Landingham told PBS News Hour.“Then we saw a series of events that happened with the hacked US materials by the Russian special services or intelligence services to leak those materials similar to the information a clandestine source had provided. At the same time, we saw lots of members of the Russian media portraying Donald Trump in a more positive light.“There was other information … collected by the US intelligence community … over time, having a high-quality, clandestine source telling you that Putin was counting on Trump’s victory, having members of the Russian state saying Trump would be better to work with because of his views on Russia that don’t represent the US establishment, all of those things gave us high confidence that Putin wanted Trump to win.” More

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      Travelling to Trump’s US is a low-level trauma – here’s what Africans can do about it

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      Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I reflect on the increasing difficulty of travel and immigration for many from the African continent, and how one country is plotting a smoother path.Parallel experiences of travelView image in fullscreenI have just come back from holiday, and I’m still not used to how different travel is when not using an African passport. My British citizenship, which I acquired about five years ago, has transformed not only my ability to travel at short notice but it has eliminated overnight the intense stress and bureaucratic hurdles involved in applying for visas on my Sudanese passport.It is difficult to explain just how different the lives of those with “powerful” passports are to those without. It is an entirely parallel existence. Gaining permission to travel to many destinations is often a lengthy, expensive and sickeningly uncertain process. A tourist visa to the UK can cost up to £1,000, in addition to the fee for private processing centres that handle much of Europe’s visa applications abroad. And then there is the paperwork: bank statements, employment letters, academic records, certified proof of ownership of assets, and birth and marriage certificates if one is travelling to visit family. This is a non-exhaustive list. For a recent visa application for a family member, I submitted 32 documents.It may sound dramatic but such processes instil a sort of low-level trauma, after submitting to the violation of what feels like a bureaucratic cavity search. And all fees, whatever the decision, are non-refundable. Processing times are in the hands of the visa gods – it once took more than six months for me to receive a US visa. By the time it arrived, the meeting I needed to attend for work had passed by a comically long time.Separation and severed relationshipsView image in fullscreenIt’s not only travel for work or holiday that is hindered by such high barriers to entry. Relationships suffer. It is simply a feature of the world now that many families in the Black diaspora sprawl across continents. Last month Trump restricted entry to the US to nationals from 20 countries, half of which are in Africa. The decision is even crueler when you consider that it applies to countries such as Sudan, whose civil war has prompted many to seek refuge with family abroad.That is not just a political act of limiting immigration, it is a deeply personal one that severs connections between families, friends and partners. Family members of refugees from those countries have also been banned, so they can’t visit relatives who have already managed to emigrate. The International Rescue Committee warned the decision could have “far-reaching impacts on the lives of many American families, including refugees, asylees and green card holders, seeking to be reunified with their loved ones”.A global raising of barriersView image in fullscreenThe fallout of this Trump order is colossal. There are students who are unable to graduate. Spouses unable to join their partners. Children separated from their parents. It’s a severe policy, but shades of it exist elsewhere by other means. The UK recently terminated the rights of foreign care workers and most international students to bring their children and partners to the country. And even for those who simply want to have their family visit them, access is closed to all except those who can clear the high financial hurdles and meet the significant burdens of proof to show that either they can afford to maintain their visitors or that they will return to their home countries.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt was 10 years before I – someone with fairly stable employment and a higher-education qualification – satisfied the Home Office’s requirements and could finally invite my mother to visit. I broke down when I saw her face at arrivals, realising how hard it had been for both of us; the fact that she had not seen the life I had built as an adult. Compare this draconian measure to some countries in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, that have an actual visa category, low-cost and swiftly processed, for parental visits and residency.A new African modelView image in fullscreenBut as some countries shut down, others are opening up. This month, Kenya removed visa requirements for almost all African citizens wanting to visit. Here, finally, there is the sort of regional solidarity that mirrors that of the EU and other western countries.Since it boosts African tourism and makes Kenya an inviting destination for people to gather at short notice for professional or festive reasons, it’s a smart move. But it also sends an important signal to a continent embattled by visa restrictions and divided across borders set by colonial rule.We are not just liabilities, people to be judged on how many resources they might take from a country once allowed in. We are also tourists, friends, relatives, entrepreneurs and, above all, Africans who have the right to meet and mingle without the terror, and yes, contempt, of a suspicious visa process. If the African diaspora is being separated abroad, there is at least now a path to the option that some of us may reunite at home.

      To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday,please subscribe here. More

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      Trump’s shift on Ukraine has been dramatic – but will it change the war? | Rajan Menon

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      Donald Trump presents himself as a peerless president, an unrivaled negotiator, even a “genius”. So it’s a unique moment when he comes close – I emphasize the qualifier –to conceding that another leader has outfoxed him. Trump suggested as much recently when characterizing Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi. “Putin,” he told reporters on 13 July, “really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening.” Melania Trump may have contributed to this reassessment. As Trump recounted recently, when he told her about a “wonderful conversation” with the Russian leader, she responded, “Oh, really? Another city was just hit.”Trump’s new take on Putin is a break with the past. His esteem for Putin – whose decisions he has described as “savvy” and “genius” – has contrasted starkly with his derisive comments about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he memorably disrespected during a White House meeting and even blamed for starting the war.As recently as February, he declared that Russia’s invasion didn’t matter to the United States because, unlike Europe, it was separated from Ukraine by “a big, big beautiful ocean”. He criticized Joe Biden’s assistance to Ukraine as a waste of taxpayers’ money.Now, Trump has not only changed his view of Putin, stunning many within his “America First” MagaA movement; he’s decided to start arming Ukraine. Well, sort of.Trump has gone beyond in effect conceding that Putin has played him. He has decided to sell military equipment to individual European countries so that they can supply Ukraine and restock their arsenals with purchases from the United States. The president formally announced the change during his 14 July meeting with Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general.There was more. Trump warned Putin that if he did not accept a ceasefire – which he has steadfastly refused, just as he has ignored Trump’s demand to stop bombing Ukraine’s cities – within 50 days, Russia would be slammed with tariffs as high as 100%, as would countries that continued to trade with it after the deadline.Two things are clear. First, Trump’s perspective on Putin has changed, unexpectedly and dramatically. Second, a war that Trump once said was none of America’s business now apparently matters. The president said European countries would buy “top of the line” American military equipment worth “billions of dollars” to arm Ukraine. According to one report citing “a source familiar with the plan”, the total will be $10bn.This all sounds like a very big deal. But here’s where it becomes important to go beyond the headlines and soundbites and delve into the details.Take the $10bn figure. That’s certainly not chump change. Moreover, the main piece of equipment specified so far, the Patriot “long range, high altitude, all weather” missile defense system, will provide desperately needed relief to Ukrainian city dwellers, who have endured relentless waves of drone attacks – several hundred a night – followed by missiles that slice through overwhelmed defenses. Ukraine has some Patriots but needs more: it’s a vast country with a dozen cities whose populations exceed 400,000.However, a Patriot battery (launchers, missiles, a radar system, a control center, antenna masts, and a power generator) costs $1bn, the missiles alone $4m apiece. Ukraine may not need 10 Patriot batteries, but even a smaller number will consume a large proportion of the $10bn package. The other system that has been mentioned is the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm), which combines stealth technology and GPS guidance with a 230-mile range. Ukraine will be able to use its American-made F-16 jets to fire Jassms into Russia from positions beyond the reach of Russian air defense systems. But a single Jassm costs about $1.5m, so the costs will add up quickly. Additional items have been mentioned but only generically; still, their price must also be figured in, bearing in mind that the war could drag on. So, $10bn could be depleted quickly.Moreover, beyond a certain point the US cannot sell equipment from its own stocks without regard to its military readiness requirements. Precisely for that reason, the defense department recently declined to send Ukraine some of the equipment promised under Joe Biden.And Trump has not said that there will be follow-on sales to benefit Ukraine once the $10bn mark is reached. Even if he were to change his mind, individual European countries would be able to buy only so much American weaponry without straining their finances, especially because France and Italy have opted out of the arrangement. Trump has been uninterested in joining the recent move by the UK and the EU to impose a $47.60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil sales, toughening the $60 limit the west enacted in 2022. Finally, Trump isn’t going to resume Biden’s multibillion-dollar military assistance packages – 70-plus tranches of equipment, according to the DoD.Trump’s 50-day tariff deadline permits Putin to continue his summer offensive, and may even provide an incentive to accelerate it. Russia has already shrugged off Trump’s tariff threat. Its exports to the US in 2024 amounted to $526m, a tiny fraction of its global sales.By contrast, Trump’s secondary tariffs will hurt Russia, which earned $192bn in 2024 from its global exports of oil and related products, much of that sum from India and China. If the president follows through with his threat, Beijing will surely retaliate, and the consequence will be painful: the United States exports to China totaled $144bn last year. Will Trump proceed anyway, and during his ongoing trade wars, which have already started increasing prices in the US? His track record on tariff threats leaves room for doubt.Ukraine’s leaders are understandably elated by Trump’s reappraisal of Putin. But it’s premature to conclude that it’s a turning point that could change the war’s trajectory. Washington’s new policy may prove far less momentous than Maga critics fear and not quite as transformative as Kyiv and its western supporters hope for.

      Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies More

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      US Senate passes aid and public broadcasting cuts in victory for Trump

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      The US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.Most of the cuts are to programmes to assist foreign countries stricken by disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates the $1.1bn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as blighted by “anti-right bias”.Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But the Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting Trump’s policies since he began his second term in January.The $9bn at stake is small in the context of the $6.8tn federal budget, and represents a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Dog)e.By mid-June, Trump was blocking $425bn in funding that had been appropriated and approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.However, the president and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation, without altering Trump’s request, by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programmes, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that Pepfar, a global programme to fight HIV/Aids launched in 2003 by President George W Bush, was being exempted.The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9bn from $9.4bn, requiring another House vote before the measure could be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law.The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans , Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. “You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Murkowski said told the Senateskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said the Trump administration had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Murkowski called for Congress to assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity”.Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans had this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3tn to the country’s $36.2tn debt.Democrats accused Republicans of giving up Congress’s constitutionally mandated control of federal spending.“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, representing New York, said. “Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later.”The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by 30 September to avoid a shutdown.Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support. More

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      Tuesday briefing: What Trump’s ‘massive’ weapons deal for Ukraine means for the war – and for Putin

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      Good morning. It looks like the bromance between Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is over. Maybe for good.Last night an exasperated Trump said he had finally had enough of “tough guy” Putin’s refusal to give him what he wants: an end to the war in Ukraine. The United States, he announced, will start selling what the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, sitting alongside him at a White House press conference, called “massive numbers” of weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia.Trump also delivered an ultimatum to Putin: agree to a ceasefire within 50 days or face – you guessed it – tariffs.Yesterday’s press conference with Rutte is a sign of just how much has changed in the past six months. It was only in February that the world witnessed the excruciating spectacle of Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, humiliating and belittling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the Oval Office before a live global TV audience of millions.For Ukraine’s supporters in Congress and in Europe, this is a moment of victory with the US now firmly diplomatically and militarily in Kyiv’s corner. The issue is the extent to which Trump’s antipathy towards Putin translates into long-term support for Kyiv, and whether the extra military clout ends up being enough to turn the conflict decisively in Ukraine’s favour.For today’s newsletter, I talked to Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, about what the breakdown in diplomatic relations between Trump and Putin could mean for Ukraine and the prospects for peace. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

      Middle East crisis | A feud has broken out between the Israeli government and the military over the cost and impact of a planned camp for Palestinians in southern Gaza, as politicians attacked the former prime minister Ehud Olmert for warning that the project would create a “concentration camp” if it goes ahead.

      UK news | A senior coroner’s officer who first reviewed the deaths of babies at the Countess of Chester hospital for Cheshire police in 2017 has said she believes Lucy Letby has suffered a miscarriage of justice. Last month, Stephanie Davies wrote to Cheshire’s senior coroner that: “I am now extremely concerned that the convictions of Ms Letby are wholly unsafe.”

      NHS | Wes Streeting has said resident doctors’ strikes would be “a gift to Nigel Farage” before a meeting with the British Medical Association this week where he will seek to avert industrial action.

      UK news | Constance Marten and Mark Gordon have been found guilty of the manslaughter of their newborn daughter, who died after they took her to live in a tent in freezing wintry conditions to evade social services.

      Media | A report on the behaviour of Gregg Wallace has substantiated 45 allegations made against the former BBC presenter, including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact.
      In depth: ‘Tonally, today we saw a very, very different Trump’View image in fullscreenAs relationships go, it’s fair to say Trump and Putin’s status has now shifted from “it’s complicated” into more definitively hostile territory, as the former’s frustration with Russia’s refusal to budge in the stalled peace talks seems to have reached a crescendo.“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” Trump said yesterday as he announced the new US arms sales to Ukraine, noting that several of his predecessors had also become disillusioned with Putin.“Tonally, today we saw a very, very different Trump when it comes to Russia,” said Dan Sabbagh. “Up until yesterday there was this feeling that he still believed he could get Putin to the table and make some kind of sweetheart peace deal but all of that seems to have gone away. Diplomatically it is a decisive shift.”What military support did Donald Trump announce?Although neither Trump nor Rutte put a number on the value of the weaponry heading Ukraine’s way, Trump said “top of the line” equipment would be arriving to Ukraine’s European allies very soon.The US will provide a number of Patriot missile systems – a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defence system to counter tactical ballistic missiles and aircraft – funded by Germany and other Nato partners.Considering the almost nightly bombardment Ukraine and its people are coming under, this is likely to be very welcomed by Ukraine and would be a significant step in helping Ukraine to defend itself.Trump also threatened tariffs of “about 100%” if a deal isn’t done to end the war in 50 days.How have relations soured between Trump and Putin?After Trump won his first term in 2016, his admiration for Putin’s strongman image and insistence that the Russian president wasn’t such a bad guy set the US on a wholly different course in terms of its willingness to engage with Russia.The start of his second term was characterised by hostility towards Ukraine and its president, Zelenskyy – whom Trump branded a “dictator” – and a desire to negotiate one-to-one with Putin about a ceasefire and end to the war. Only this month the US briefly halted shipments of arms to Ukraine because it said its own stockpiles were too low.Still, over the past month Trump has been increasingly bewildered at Putin’s refusal to give him the peace deal he so desperately needs to make good on his boast that he can end the Ukraine war – even if not in his promised 24 hours. While Ukraine has buckled to US demands such as signing a minerals deal, Putin has given Trump nothing of any substance (apart from, of course, a flattering portrait). Trump’s sense of betrayal has only increased as Putin has stepped up his attacks on Ukrainian cities. Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening”, Trump said at the weekend.Dan said the new arms package that the US has announced for Ukraine was Trump’s attempt to claw back some leverage over the Russian leader. While it remains to be seen what difference it can make militarily, this is a diplomatic turning point in relations between the two superpowers.“For me, the fact that he’s agreed in principle to sell weapons to Ukraine is more important than any threat about tariffs,” said Dan. “Some Ukrainian analysts have been saying that they thought that Putin has overplayed his hand with Trump and I would agree with that.”What does this mean for Ukraine?Dan said that after his public humiliation in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy was quick to act on advice from European leaders to appeal to Donald Trump’s ego. One fascinating detail in an Axios report yesterday was that one of the things that seems to have worked in Zelenskyy’s favour with Trump was him wearing a suit instead of his usual military attire at the recent Nato summit.“After Zelenskyy walked into that ambush he swiftly realised that he had to be patient because Putin himself would prove to Trump that he was not a good-faith actor, which so far appears to have played out,” said Dan.While the US arms sale for Ukraine is, undoubtedly, a sign of better relations with Washington, Dan also agreed with the assessment that the new shipment was probably more to do with Trump’s anger and frustration at Putin than deep-seated support of Ukraine.“I don’t think Trump thinks he’s fallen out with Putin,” said Dan. “It could be that in a few days or weeks, if Putin starts making noises again about being prepared to make concessions, we could see Trump flexing back.”Dan thought it was significant that Trump brought up his wife, Melania, at the press conference saying that she had been sceptical about their friendly phone calls all along. “Even if he was just musing aloud it was an acknowledgment that at the heart of his family there has been someone just prodding him out of the idea that Putin was serious about peace.”How could this influence the outcome of the war?Dan said that without a concrete dollar amount in the billions attached to what the US will sell Ukraine’s European allies, it is hard to get a firm understanding of just how potentially decisive this military support to Ukraine could be.“The real question is how much these new US weapons will make a difference to the war and improve Ukraine’s ability to fight the kind of war it needs to fight, which is a hard defensive war that will allow it to remain stable and better counter these Russian missile attacks,” said Dan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDan said what is clear is that Russia is setting itself up for engaging in a “forever war” until it achieves its objectives, whatever the cost. “Russia just hopes to just grind Ukraine down,” said Dan. “It seems prepared to stomach casualties of more than 1,000 per day and has organised itself around a war economy that could keep going for a long time.”Could the US starting to send “massive” amounts of weaponry to Ukraine make the Kremlin think again?Dan doesn’t think so. “Militarily at the moment it doesn’t appear to be a decisive intervention and my instinct is that Russia isn’t going to stop and that Ukrainians have to come to terms with the fact that nothing is going to change any time soon.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      This feature by Keith Stuart is a fascinating deep dive into how creative video games like Minecraft and Animal Crossing can help Ukrainian refugee children understand and cope with trauma. Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team

      This interview by Ruaridh Nicoll with the Guardian’s Gaza diarist, the anonymous writer who catalogued his life during the five months of the war, is a devastating but urgent read about his life under fire and how he escaped into exile. Annie

      John Merrick is pointed on how “a new chorus of ‘declinism’” is becoming part of the national consciousness once again – and with it comes racialised undertones that distract us from the true causes (it’s not migrants) and solutions (hello, wealth distribution). Craille

      I absolutely hoovered up this beautiful ode to Pamela Anderson by Caitlin Flanagan in the Atlantic (£). A gorgeous piece of writing about her love for Anderson and what she can teach us about resilience and grace in the face of industrial-levels of misogyny. Annie

      Thanks to Rukmini Iyer, who has not only solved supper at my house with her recipe for cashew rice bowls with stir-fried tofu, but helped me see what I might do with kimchi, an ingredient I enjoy but don’t often reach for. Craille
      SportView image in fullscreenCricket | England beat India at Lord’s to take a 2-1 lead in the series after a tense final day. Third Test: England, 387 & 192, bt India, 387 & 170, by 22 runs.Football | The president of Fifpro has described the Club World Cup as a “fiction” and compared Gianni Infantino to the Roman emperor Nero, as the dispute between the players’ union and Fifa continued to escalate.Cycling | Ben Healy rode himself into the ground to become the first Irishman in 38 years to wear the yellow jersey, as Simon Yates claimed victory in stage 10.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian print edition leads with “Trump issues warning to Putin as he does deal with Nato to arm Kyiv”. The Telegraph says “Trump threatens China over Russian oil” and the Financial Times has “Trump threatens 100% trade levies if Russia does not end war in 50 days”. The Daily Mail splashes on “The killer aristocrat” and further offers “Revealed: why daughter of privilege had four children taken into care”. “Arrogance of monster parents” – that’s the Metro about the same case. The Daily Mirror’s top story is “Sacked Gregg: I won’t be the last” while the Times runs with “New grant to push sales of electric cars for net zero” and the Express predicts “Next tax raid will ‘pick the pockets’ of the grafters”. In the i paper you can read “UK to offer new bumper mortgages for £30,000 earners as Reeves sweeps away crash rules”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenThe law change that could transform toxic workplacesZelda Perkins was Harvey Weinstein’s PA – and has spent the last eight years campaigning against the non-disclosure agreements used to silence abused employees. Now she has won a major victory. Alexandra Topping reportsCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenFussy eaters are often mocked and, as Jason Okundaye writes, they are misunderstood. “I am of Nigerian heritage after all, and I grew up eating and loving a range of dishes – abula, efo riro, bokoto – that would probably flip the stomachs of many Europeans on sight.” What stresses him out are ordinary foods with textures he finds unpleasant: nuts in desserts, cheese, oats, tuna, brown bread. “But I eventually grew tired of my own fussiness”, he admits, and so he made one small change: every week, he would eat as much of a food containing a single ingredient he had previously avoided, a kind of culinary exposure therapy. It’s still a work in progress: he’s overcome his nut aversion thanks to baklava but can’t stomach the oats in Hobnobs. But while he “recently braved the evil mayonnaise, and heaved so violently that I thought I was dying”, Okundaye gives himself full points for trying. His old dislikes, he realises, are a matter of taste – not a reason to panic.When he’s not forcing food down, Jason edits The Long Wave, our weekly Black life and culture newsletter – make sure you sign up here.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      in US Politics

      Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside

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      Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his rightwing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.” More

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      in US Politics

      Threats, delays and confusion: 10 key points to understand another week of Trump tariff turmoil

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      Donald Trump ramped up his trade rhetoric this week, firing off more than 20 letters to governments outlining new tariff rates if agreements aren’t reached by 1 August.In April, Trump announced a 10% base tariff rate and additional duties ranging up to 50% for many other countries, although he later delayed the effective date for all but 10% duties until 9 July after market panic.Trump officials initially suggested they would strike dozens of deals with key economies by the 9 July deadline, but as the 90-day pause ended this week, the president announced a range of new rates for various countries, but delayed their implementation until next month.Here’s what’s happened:

      Trump informed powerhouse suppliers Japan, South Korea and a number of other nations at the start of this week that they will face tariffs of at least 25% starting from August unless they can quickly negotiate deals.

      On Wednesday he announced more tariffs on countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Algeria, as well as a 50% tariff on products from Brazil, tying the move to what he called the “witch-hunt” trial against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Trump criticised the trial Bolsonaro is facing over trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, threatened to hit back with reciprocal 50% tariff on US goods.

      On Thursday, Trump announced the US would impose a 35% tariff on imports from Canada, despite ongoing negotiations and prime minister Mark Carney’s decision last month to rescind a digital services tax that faced criticism from the US president. Carney said his government would continue to defend Canadian workers and businesses in their negotiations and work towards the 1 August deadline.

      Trump also said on Thursday that a letter would be sent to the European Union, the US’s biggest trading partner, “today or tomorrow”. Last week the EU and US were closing in on a high-level “framework” trade deal that would avert 50% tariffs on all exports from the bloc.

      The steep tariff rates announced throughout the week range from 25-50%, with some of the harshest levies imposed on developing nations in south-east Asia, including 32% for Indonesia, 36% for Cambodia and Thailand and 40% on Laos and Myanmar, a country riven by years of civil war.

      On his first official visit to Asia, US secretary of state Marco Rubio sought to reassure regional powers of Washington’s commitment to them, saying countries there may get “better” trade deals than the rest of the world. Prior to Rubio’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim condemned the tariffs at the opening of an Asean foreign ministers’ meeting.

      Trump has also vowed to implement tariffs of up to 200% on foreign drugs and 50% on copper. Copper prices hit a record high in the US after the announcement.

      US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said he expected several trade announcements this week, but to date the US has secured just two deals with trading partners. The first with the UK, signed on 8 May, includes a 10% tariff on most UK goods, including cars, and zero tariffs for steel and aluminium. A second deal was reached with Vietnam last week that sets a 20% tariff for much of its exports, although the full details are unclear, with no text released.

      On Thursday, Trump said the tariffs had been “very well-received”, adding that the stock market “hit a new high today”.

      Global stock markets have largely shrugged off the latest threats. Analysts say traders now expect a deal or another delay, while investors appear to be waiting until a deal is done or the tariffs kick in. More