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Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade
For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More
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Trump says he thinks Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea despite previous comments
US President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on Sunday a day after meeting with Zelenskyy at the Vatican, Trump said “Oh, I think so,” in response to a question on whether he thought Zelenskyy was ready to “give up” the territory.Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine could not accept US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, after Trump accused him of intransigence on the issue. Zelenskyy on Friday insisted the territory was the “property of the Ukrainian people”. He did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest comments.Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula.German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday said the US proposal for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia was “akin to a capitulation”.In an interview with the broadcaster ARD, he said that Kyiv knew that a peace agreement may involve territorial concessions.“But these will certainly not go … as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president,” Pistorius said. “Ukraine on its own could have got a year ago what was included in that [Trump] proposal, it is akin to a capitulation. I cannot discern any added value.”Despite the comments on Crimea, the US president expressed newfound sympathy for his Ukrainian counterpart on Sunday, saying he “wants to do something good for his country” and “is working hard”.Reflecting on his conversation with the Ukrainian president, the US president also said that he was “surprised and disappointed, very disappointed” that Russia had bombed Ukraine after discussions between Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff. “I was very disappointed that missiles were flying, by Russia,” the US president said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump said that Zelenskyy “told me that he needs more weapons, but he’s been saying that for three years”.Asked what he wants Putin to do, Trump replied: “Well, I want him to stop shooting. Sit down and sign the deal. We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it and be done with it.”“Do you trust President Putin?” Trump was asked.“I’ll let you know in about two weeks,” Trump said. Pressed to elaborate on what he expects to happen in two weeks, Trump evaded the question. “Two weeks or less,” he said, vaguely, “but you know they’re losing a lot of people. We have 3, 4,000 people dying every week.”Trump also said that his relationship with Zelenskyy was improved by the face-to-face at the Vatican: “Look, it was never bad. We had a little dispute, because I disagreed with something he said, and the cameras were rolling and that was OK with me.”“Look, he’s in a tough situation, a very tough situation. He’s fighting a much bigger force, much bigger,” Trump added. The president then repeated his frequent false claim that the United States had given Ukraine $350bn to aid its defense from the Russian invasion.“I see him as calmer,” Trump said, comparing the Zelenskyy he met at the Vatican with the one he confronted in the Oval Office in February. “I think he understands the picture, and I think he wants to make a deal.”The president also claimed that there had been “a little bit” of progress in trade talks with China, talks that Chinese officials have said are not taking place. “They want to make a deal, obviously,” Trump said. “Now, they’re not doing any business with us, you know, because, not because of them, because of me. Because at 145%, you can’t do business,” he said, in reference to the import tariff rate he imposed this month. “But something’s going to happen, that’s going to be possible.” More
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Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool | Jonathan Freedland
To see the true face of Donald Trump, look no further than Ukraine. Laid bare in his handling of that issue are not only his myriad weaknesses, but also the danger he poses to his own country and the wider world – to say nothing of the battered people of Ukraine itself.Don’t be fooled by the mild, vaguely theatrical rebuke Trump issued to Vladimir Putin on Thursday after Moscow unleashed a deadly wave of drone strikes on Kyiv, killing 12 and injuring dozens: “Vladimir, STOP!” Pay attention instead to the fact that, in the nearly 100 days since Trump took office, the US has essentially switched sides in the battle between Putin’s Russia and democratic Ukraine, backing the invaders against the invaded.On Friday, Trump’s real-estate buddy and special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, held talks in Moscow with Putin. But any resemblance between the US and an honest broker is purely coincidental. On the contrary, previous encounters between the two men resulted in Witkoff parroting Kremlin talking points, essentially endorsing Russia’s claim to the Ukrainian territory it seized. In that, Witkoff was merely following the lead set by his boss: the supposed peace deal Trump is now in a hurry to seal amounts to handing Putin almost everything he wants and demanding Ukraine surrender.Hence Trump’s anger on Wednesday, when he accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of making “inflammatory statements”. What had the Ukrainian president said that was so incendiary? He had calmly pointed out that he could not do as Trump demanded and recognise Russian control of Crimea, which Russia grabbed in 2014, because it was forbidden by his country’s constitution. It’s telling that Trump should be enraged by a president who thinks constitutions have to be respected.Whether Trump succeeds in making Kyiv buckle or not, the new reality is clear. The US president is taking an axe to an international order constructed in the aftermath of a bloody world war, a system that has held, however imperfectly, since 1945. A central tenet of that order was that big states could not simply swallow up smaller ones, that unprovoked aggression and conquest would no longer be allowed to stand. Yet here is Trump bent on rewarding just such an act of conquest, not simply acquiescing in Putin’s land grab in Ukraine but conferring on it the legitimacy of approval by the world’s most powerful nation.Note how he speaks as if Putin had every right to seize the territory of his neighbour. Asked this week what concessions, if any, he had extracted from Moscow, Trump replied that Putin’s willingness to stop the war, rather than gobbling up Ukraine in its entirety, was a “pretty big concession”.This is not only a disaster for Ukraine, though it is obviously that. It is also the destruction of global architecture that has stood for many decades – and it is hardly a lone case. Trump’s tariff fetish is similarly upending a system of international trade that had made the world, and especially the US, more prosperous. The consequences are already visible, in plunging global stock markets, gloomy growth forecasts and warnings of a recession that will start in the US and then spread everywhere else.Trump’s eagerness to acquiesce in Putin’s seizure of Ukraine makes a dead letter of international law, with its prohibition of the crime of aggression, and that too points to a wider pattern. For Trump is at war with the law at home as well as abroad. Indeed, in three short months, it has become an open question whether the rule of law still operates in the US.That peril is revealed most clearly in Trump’s willingness to defy the orders of the US courts. Judges have issued multiple rulings, seeking, for example, to delay or overturn the deportation of migrants without due process, only for those judges to be ignored or targeted with personal invective from the president. For the latest Politics Weekly America podcast, I spoke to Liz Oyer, a former justice department official fired last month after she refused to restore gun-owning rights to the actor and Trump pal Mel Gibson: he had lost them when he was convicted of domestic violence in 2011. Oyer is a sober, nonpartisan former civil servant, but she told me of her fears if the Trump administration continues to refuse to comply with the law as laid down by the courts. “We will have a true crisis on our hands. They are testing the limits.”Part of Trump’s assault on the law has come in a flurry of executive orders, targeting specific, named law firms that had previously acted for his opponents. He offered the firms a choice: either be barred by presidential diktat from cases involving the federal government, or commit to giving Trump and his administration free legal advice worth tens of millions of dollars. So many firms have caved in, the president now has access to an estimated $1bn (£750m) war chest of pro bono legal services. Trump has been bragging about it, but there’s a word for what he has done: extortion.It’s a favourite weapon of Trump’s and it’s been on display in Ukraine too. Let’s not forget the “deal” Trump wants to strike with Zelenskyy: a degree of US protection in return for half of the revenue from Ukraine’s minerals, ports and infrastructure. This is not the behaviour of an ally, but a gangster.Everything Trump does, and has always done, he is doing in and to Ukraine. Recall the hyperbolic promise he made to end the war within “24 hours” of returning to the White House. It was of a piece with the inflated hype that puffed up his real-estate career – and about as reliable. The same goes for his campaign promise to end inflation on “day one”, when his tariff policy is only going to push up prices.Now he threatens to walk away from Ukraine altogether, impatient to get a deal in time for his 100th-day celebrations on Tuesday. That’s typical too: so often Trump’s grand plans turn to dust because, if he doesn’t get an instant reward, he gets bored and drifts away. Witkoff’s previous role was securing a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Now that’s fallen apart, he’s moved on to other things.Above all, Trump’s willingness to capitulate to Putin on Ukraine is a reminder not only of his own authoritarian ambitions – he likes Putin because he wants to be like Putin – but also of how serially bad a negotiator this self-styled artist of the deal really is. He declared tariff war on China, thinking he could squeeze the US’s great economic rival. Instead, America’s biggest retailers this week warned that their shelves could soon be empty, thanks to the havoc Trump’s tariffs are unleashing on the global supply chain. Container traffic across the Pacific from China is already down by as much as 60%, meaning Americans are not going to get the goods they’ve come to rely on. Those shortages will lead to voter anger directed at Trump. To avert it, he needs a deal with China – desperately. He goes to the table weak, facing an opponent he has made strong. So much for the maestro dealmaker.There is no mystery to Trump. It’s all plain to see – the habits of the vandal, the autocrat, the gangster and the fool – with Ukraine as clear a guide as any. Not that that is any comfort to the people of that besieged land. They don’t want to be a cautionary tale, a demonstration case of the fecklessness and menace of Donald Trump. They want to be a free, independent nation. Their great misfortune is that the mighty country that should be their most powerful friend is now in the hands of an enemy.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the host of the Politics Weekly America podcast
100 days of Trump’s presidency, with Jonathan Freedland and guests. On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More
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Ukraine, Gaza and Iran: can Witkoff secure any wins for Trump?
Donald Trump’s version of Pax Americana, the idea that the US can through coercion impose order on the world, is facing its moment of truth in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.In the words of the former CIA director William Burns, it is in “one of those plastic moments” in international relations that come along maybe twice a century where the future could take many possible forms.The US’s aim has been to keep the three era-defining simultaneous sets of negotiations entirely separate, and to – as much as possible – shape their outcome alone. The approach is similar to the trade talks, where the intention is for supplicant countries to come to Washington individually bearing gifts in return for access to US markets.The administration may have felt it had little choice given the urgency, but whether it was wise to launch three such ambitious peace missions, and a global trade war, at the same time is debatable.It is true each of the three conflicts are discrete in that they have distinctive causes, contexts and dynamics, but they are becoming more intertwined than seemed apparent at the outset, in part because there is so much resistance building in Europe and elsewhere about the world order Donald Trump envisages, and his chosen methods.In diplomacy nothing is hermetically sealed – everything is inter-connected, especially since there is a common thread between the three talks in the personality of the property developer Steven Witkoff, Trump’s great friend who is leading the US talks in each case, flitting from Moscow to Muscat.View image in fullscreenTo solve these three conflicts simultaneously would be a daunting task for anyone, but it is especially for a man entirely new to diplomacy and, judging by some of his remarks, also equally new to history.Witkoff has strengths, not least that he is trusted by Trump. He also knows the president’s mind – and what should be taken at face value. He is loyal, so much so that he admits he worshipped Trump in New York so profoundly that he wanted to become him. He will not be pursuing any other agenda but the president’s.But he is also stretched, and there are basic issues of competence. Diplomats are reeling from big cuts to the state department budget and there is still an absence of experienced staffers. Witkoff simply does not have the institutional memory available to his opposite numbers in Iran, Israel and Russia. For instance, most of the Iranian negotiating team, led by the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, are veterans of the 2013-15 talks that led to the original Iran nuclear deal.Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, who attended the first Russian-US talks this year in Saudi Arabia, spent 10 years in the US as Russian ambassador. He was accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund who then visited the US on 2 April.In the follow-up talks in Istanbul on 10 April, Aleksandr Darchiev, who has spent 33 years in the Russian foreign ministry and is Russian ambassador to the US, was pitted against a team led by Sonata Coulter, the new deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who does not share Trump’s benign view of Russia.View image in fullscreenAs to the Gaza issue, Benjamin Netanyahu has lived the Palestinian conflict since he became Israel’s ambassador to the UN in 1984.Richard Nephew, a former US Iran negotiator, says the cuts to state department means the US “is at risk of losing a generation of expertise … It’s beyond tragedy. It’s an absolutely devastating national security blow with the evisceration of these folks. The damage could be permanent, we have to acknowledge this.”One withering European diplomat says: “It is as if Witkoff is trying to play three dimensional chess with chess grandmasters on three chessboards simultaneously, not having played the game before.”Bluntly, Witkoff knows he needs to secure a diplomatic win for his impatient boss. But the longer the three conflicts continue, the more entangled they become with one another, the more Trump’s credibility is questioned. Already, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll published this month, 59% of Americans think Trump is costing their country its credibility on the global stage.The risk for Trump is that the decision to address so much so quickly ends up not being a show of American strength but the opposite – the public erosion of a super power.In the hurry to seal a deal with Iran inside two months, Trump, unlike in all previous nuclear talks with Tehran, has barred complicating European interests from the negotiation room.To Iran’s relief, Witkoff has not tabled an agenda that strays beyond stopping Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. He has not raised Iran’s supply of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Nor has he tabled demands that Iran end arms supplies to its proxies fighting Israel.That has alarmed Israel, and to a lesser extent Europe, which sees Iran’s desire to have sanctions lifted as a rare opportunity to extract concessions from Tehran. Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad’s head, David Barnea, met Witkoff last Friday in Paris to try to persuade him that when he met the Iran negotiating team the next day in Rome, he had to demand the dismantling of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme.Witkoff refused, and amid many contradictory statements the administration has reverted to insisting that Iran import the necessary enriched uranium for its civil nuclear programme, rather than enrich it domestically.Russia, in a sign of Trump’s trust, might again become the repository of Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, as it was after the 2015 deal.Israel is also wary of Trump’s aggrandisement of Russia. The Israeli thinktank INSS published a report this week detailing how Russia, in search of anti-western allies in the global south for its Ukraine war, has shown opportunistic political support not just to Iran but to Hamas. Israel will also be uneasy if Russia maintains its role in Syria.But if Trump has upset Netanyahu over Iran, he is keeping him sweet by giving him all he asks on Gaza.Initially, Witkoff received glowing accolades about how tough he had been with Netanyahu in his initial meeting in January. It was claimed that Witkoff ordered the Israeli president to meet him on a Saturday breaking the Sabbath and directed him to agree a ceasefire that he had refused to give to Joe Biden’s team for months.As a result, as Trump entered the White House on 19 January, he hailed the “EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies”.But Netanyahu, as was widely predicted in the region, found a reason not to open talks on the second phase of the ceasefire deal – the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a permanent end to the fighting.Witkoff came up with compromises to extend the ceasefire but Netanyahu rejected them, resuming the assault on Hamas on 19 March. The US envoy merely described Israel’s decision as “unfortunate, in some respects, but also falls into the had-to-be bucket”.View image in fullscreenNow Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Israel to lift its six-week-old ban on aid entering Gaza is informing Europe’s rift with Trump. Marking 50 days of the ban this week, France, Germany and the UK issued a strongly worded statement describing the denial of aid as intolerable.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is calling for a coordinated European recognition of the state of Palestine, and Saudi Arabia is insisting the US does not attack Iran’s nuclear sites.Witkoff, by contrast, has been silent about Gaza’s fate and the collapse of the “EPIC ceasefire”.But if European diplomats think Witkoff was naive in dealing with Netanyahu, it is nothing to the scorn they hold for his handling of Putin.The anger is partly because Europeans had thought that, after the Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public row with Trump in the Oval Office, they had restored Ukraine’s standing in Washington by persuading Kyiv to back the full ceasefire that the US first proposed on 11 March.View image in fullscreenThe talks in Paris last week between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and European leaders also gave Europe a chance to point out it was Putin that was stalling over a ceasefire.But instead of putting any countervailing pressure on Russia to accept a ceasefire, Witkoff switched strategy. In the words of Bruno Tertrais, a non-resident fellow at the Institut of Montaigne, Witkoff is “is now presenting a final peace plan, very favourable to the aggressor, even before the start of the negotiations, which had been due to take place after a ceasefire”.No European government has yet criticised Trump’s lopsided plan in public since, with few cards to play, the immediate necessity is to try to prevent Trump acting on his threat to walk away. At the very least, Europe will argue that if Trump wants Ukraine’s resources, he has to back up a European force patrolling a ceasefire, an issue that receives only sketchy reference in the US peace plan.The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, addressing the country’s parliament on Wednesday, pointed to the necessity of these security guarantees. “Any arrangement with the Kremlin will only last so long as the Russian elite dreads the consequences of its breach,” he said.View image in fullscreenBut in a sense, Trump and Putin, according to Fiona Hill at the Brookings Institution, a Russia specialist in Trump’s first administration, may already have moved beyond the details of their Ukrainian settlement as they focus on their wider plan to restore the Russian-US relationship.It would be an era of great power collusion, not great power competition in which Gaza, Iran and Ukraine would be sites from which the US and Russia could profit.Writing on Truth Social about a phone call with Putin in February, Trump reported” “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II … We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together.”Witkoff has also mused about what form this cooperation might take. “Shared sea lanes, maybe send [liquefied natural] gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together,” he said, adding: “Who doesn’t want to see a world like that?” More
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Wednesday briefing: Can the latest ceasefire talks in London break the stalemate in Ukraine?
Good morning.Representatives from the US, Britain and France are gathering in London today to resume discussions with Ukrainian officials on a possible ceasefire in the war. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, was scheduled to attend but announced at the last minute he would no longer be present – the White House’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, will be there in his place.Overnight, the US website Axios reported that Kellogg is arriving with a full, “final” US-Russia peace plan that reportedly includes official US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and unofficial recognition of Russian control of nearly all areas occupied since the start of the invasion. Axios cited sources with direct knowledge of the proposal. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has made clear Kyiv has not been privy to any such negotiations and said on Tuesday that “there is nothing to talk about. This violates our constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine.”This latest phase of talks follows a dubious 30-hour truce and several weeks of intensified Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including a particularly brutal strike that killed at least 35 people in the north-eastern city of Sumy on Palm Sunday.The months of deadlock has frustrated Trump – last week, Rubio threatened that the president might ditch the process altogether if a resolution could not be found soon. “We are not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end,” Rubio said, adding that the US had “other priorities to focus on”.For today’s newsletter, I spoke with the Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, about the status of the peace talks, and what we can expect this week. That’s right after the headlines.Five big stories
Tariffs | The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned of a “major negative shock” from Donald Trump’s tariffs and has cut growth forecasts for every major global economy. The lender cut the UK’s expected growth from 1.6% to 1.1%, a downward trend mirrored across the world.
British Steel | Redundancy plans have been halted after the government took control of the Scunthorpe steelworks this month, potentially saving up to 2,700 jobs.
US | Republican lawmakers have followed Donald Trump’s lead and rallied behind Pete Hegesth, the beleaguered US secretary of defence, who has defended his use of the Signal messaging app to share details of US military strikes on Yemen to a group including his wife and brother.
UK | Number 10 has said that Keir Starmer no longer argues that trans women are women. Starmer said yesterday that he welcomed the “real clarity” of last week’s supreme court ruling on gender recognition.
Health | More than 150,000 additional people in England are living with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – or ME – than previously thought, with the total number thought to be about 404,000.
In depth: A win-win for Russia?View image in fullscreenLast week, Emmanuel Macron hosted peace talks in Paris in an effort to reassert Europe’s role in bringing an end to the war in Ukraine. “Everyone wants to achieve peace – a robust and sustainable peace. The question is about phasing,” the French president said. The talks suggest Trump, increasingly frustrated by his inability to end the war in the decisive manner he promised, is seeking to involve Europe more directly in the negotiations – though it remains unclear whether any real progress is being made.Russia at the tableThough Vladimir Putin has paid lip service to the idea of peace – even going so far as to express a willingness to engage in bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time in years – he has not seemed “particularly serious in his desire”, Dan says, in part because Moscow has continued to pursue its maximalist objectives of controlling all of Ukraine’s partially occupied provinces – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.However, according to a report in the Financial Times, the Kremlin has said that it would halt its invasion of Ukraine along the current frontline if the US agreed that Crimea belonged to Russia. Ukraine has rejected any Russian claim on Crimea and reiterated that discussions should take place around the table, not in the headlines.The overall US proposal, thought to be linked to Trump’s threats to walk away from the table completely, is perhaps the first time since the early days of the war that Moscow is stepping back from its maximalist demands. On top of “de-facto recognition” of most of the occupied territories, the plan reported by Axios also includes assurances to Russia that Ukraine will not become a part of Nato, the lifting of sanctions against Russia and bigger economic cooperation between Russia and the US.In a previous attempt to pressure Kyiv into agreeing to a 30-day ceasefire, Trump has suspended all US military aid to Ukraine and blocked billions in critical shipments. There will likely be renewed pressure to accept these news terms.The change in Russia’s demands comes after Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, whom Ukraine has accused of peddling Russian narratives, met with Putin for several hours last week.What now?After today’s meetings in London, the US is expected to relay Ukraine’s response to Putin, as Witkoff is set to visit Moscow later this week in his fourth meeting with the Russian president.Ukraine’s priority seems to still be a 30-day ceasefire, as opposed to pivoting to this new US-led framework. How this will shake out in negotiations, as Trump grows increasingly tempestuous, is unclear.What if the US walks away?Bringing an end to this war has proven far more difficult than the Trump administration had hoped. Rubio’s suggestion that the US may be willing to withdraw from the talks and remove itself from the situation entirely, represent the most explicit expression of frustration and impatience so far. “To try and bring about peace is an action, but to not be involved is also an action that has consequences, such is the weight of US power,” Dan says.So what might that look like? US military aid and funding to Ukraine has already dropped significantly, with European allies stepping in to try to fill the gap. However, a complete withdrawal by Washington could still have serious consequences. “They could shut off some of the intelligence sharing, make it difficult for Ukraine to operate certain US-supplied weapons systems, which would certainly worsen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, though it is unclear how much worse it would become,” Dan adds.“In any event, it would affect Ukrainian morale and their determination to resist Russian aggression.”Whether or not Trump ultimately walks away, this is a win-win scenario for Russia, Andrew Roth writes in his analysis: Russia is “either taking a favourable deal with the White House or waiting for Trump to lose patience”.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreenA global survey has found that 89% of people across the world want stronger action on the climate crisis but trap themselves in a “spiral of silence” because they think they’re in the minority. Damian Carrington spoke to experts who said that making people aware that theirs is the majority view could unlock a “social tipping point”. Annie Kelly
Now more than ever, it “seems that Congress – with both houses controlled by Republicans – exists to do little else but flatter the man who lives at the other end of the Mall, and ratify his edicts” writes Antonia Hitchens in the New Yorker, in a comprehensive (and chilling) piece that lays bare the extent of the sycophancy and unquestioning loyalty that define the Trump White House. Nimo
On 27 February 2010, Pedro Niada woke in the middle of the night to find his house being swept into the south Pacific Ocean by a colossal tsunami wave. His story of how he and his family survived is a gripping read by Jonathan Franklin. Annie
Last month, the government announced plans to get rid of the leasehold system and switch it out with a new law that makes all new build flats commonhold. Jessica Murray and Robyn Vinter helpfully explain what that means in practice. Nimo
“Good honest folk in this country are paying for this”; the cost of spiralling energy theft across the UK is laid bare in this report by energy correspondent Jill Ambrose who investigated how cannabis farms and bitcoin miners pile an extra £50 a year on every one of the country’s household bills. Annie
skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSportView image in fullscreenFootball | Matheus Nunes scored in stoppage time to hand Manchester City a 2-1 victory over Aston Villa and give the hosts a major advantage in the top-five race.Rugby union | England’s most-capped player, Ben Youngs, will be retiring from professional rugby after representing England a record 127 times. Youngs made his professional club rugby debut as a 17-year-old for Leicester and has been a one-club player ever since.Golf | The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A) has said it would “love” Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course to host the golf Open Championship in July, a reversal of its decision in 2021 that Trump’s course would not be used to stage championships after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian has for its splash today “IMF blames Trump tariffs for ‘major negative shock’ to world economy”. But, says the Express, “Reeves cannot blame Trump for UK’s growth ‘mess’”. The Times runs with “Slave labour setback to Miliband’s green goals”. “In the arms of God” – the Mirror has a full-page picture of Pope Francis lying in state. “Kemi: PM owes apology to so many women” – fallout from the supreme court sex ruling, in the Daily Mail. The i reports “Dash for cash ISAs: savers scramble to lock in best rates before reforms hit”. “Trump to let Putin keep seized land” says the Telegraph and the Financial Times has “Putin’s offer to halt war at current front line piles pressure on Ukraine”. “Instant sack for bad cops” is the main story in the Metro.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenThe UK supreme court and the definition of a womanA ruling on equality law has caused relief, fear – and confusion. Libby Brooks reportsCartoon of the day | Rebecca HendinView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenWorking with seaweed ink reminded the acclaimed artist Antony Gormley of the “plough mud in West Wittering”, instantly transporting him back to the smell and atmosphere of his childhood.Gormley is one of 16 artists asked to create ocean-inspired artworks using ink made from kelp grown in the waters off the island of Skye to raise money for ocean conservation. The project clearly held great emotional resonance for Gormley who spoke of how he feels most alive “when I am in the embrace of seawater” and his belief that the oceans will endure the devastation humanity is wreaking on them and continue to nurture life on earth.The art created from the Art for Your Oceans project will be sold to raise money for WWF ocean conservation projects in the UK and beyond.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.Quick crossword
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- in US Politics
Ex-UK defence minister ‘disgusted’ by Trump’s attitude to Putin and Russia
Pronouncing himself “disgusted” by Donald Trump’s favorable attitude to Russia and Vladimir Putin, the former UK defence minister Grant Shapps said the US president calling a Russian missile strike that killed dozens in Ukraine last weekend a “mistake” was an example of “weasel language we used to hear … from the IRA” terrorist group.“All anybody needs Putin to do is get the hell out of a democratic neighboring country,” Shapps told the One Decision podcast, regarding attempts to end the war in Ukraine that has raged since Russia invaded in February 2022.“And I just have to [put] this on record: it disgusts me, I feel disgusted [by] the idea that the leader of the free world cannot tell the difference between the dictator who locks up and murders his opponents and invades innocent democratic countries and the country itself that has been invaded.“This lack of moral clarity is completely demoralizing for the rest of the democratic world.”Shapps, 56, filled numerous roles in Conservative cabinets before becoming minister of defence in August 2023, becoming a key player in maintaining international support for Ukraine. He lost his seat in parliament last July, as Labour won power in a landslide. This month, Shapps was given a knighthood.One Decision is a foreign policy focused podcast, with co-hosts including Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of the British MI6 intelligence service, and Leon Panetta, a former US defense secretary and CIA director.On the campaign trail last year, Trump repeatedly said he would secure peace in Ukraine in one day. Instead, he has angered allies by rebuking the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office; sought to extract concessions from Kyiv over access to rare minerals; and deployed a negotiator, Steve Witkoff, whose effusive praise for Putin has attracted widespread scorn. On Monday, Trump repeated his incorrect claim that Zelenskyy started the war.Though talks have been held in Saudi Arabia, the war has continued. This month has seen devastating Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. First, nine children were among 19 people killed in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s home town. In Sumy last Sunday, missiles killed at least 35 and injured more than 100.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said of the Sumy strike: “I think it was terrible. And I was told they made a mistake. But I think it’s a horrible thing.”Shapps said: “It’s a sort of weasel language. We used to hear it from the IRA [the Irish Republican terrorist group, after attacks killed civilians]. I mean, it’s just appalling to hear this sort of thing. It’s appalling not to be able to condemn it properly.”Alluding to years of reporting on why Trump has such a favorable view of Putin, with theories ranging from admiration for autocrats to Russia holding compromising material, Shapps said: “I think I do know what hold Putin may have [over Trump] but I mean, it is not right.”Asked by co-host Kate McCann what he meant by “hold”, Shapps first noted that Trump’s first impeachment, in 2020, was for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to get Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.Shapps also said that by appeasing Putin, Trump was offering encouragement to other autocrats with territorial ambitions.“Even if you are the Trump White House, surely you must understand that if you let one dictator get away with it, what do you think will happen when another dictator walks into a neighboring state or one maybe just over the water and takes it over? Do you think that people will believe the west when we say you can’t do that?” More
- in US Politics
Civilian deaths in Sumy attack may force Washington to get tough with Putin
Even by the warped standards of wartime, Russia’s Sunday morning attack on Sumy was astonishingly brazen. Two high-speed ballistic missiles, armed, Ukraine says, with cluster munitions, slammed into the heart of the border city in mid-morning as families went to church, waited for a theatre performance or were simply strolling about on a mild spring day.The death toll currently stands at 34, including two children. Images from the scene show bodies or body bags on the ground, a trolley bus and cars burnt out, rubble and glass scattered around. It was reckless, cruel and vicious and its consequences entirely predictable to those who gave the order and pressed “launch”.To contemplate a daytime city-centre attack, in the full knowledge that civilians will be present, reflects a Russian culture of impunity that has been allowed to endure without effective challenge. Nevertheless, Washington’s approach, under Donald Trump, has been to try to negotiate an end to the war by talking directly with Moscow, while remaining mostly silent on Russian attacks on civilians.Talks between the US and Russia have continued unabated over the past two months at a time when Russian attacks on Ukraine’s cities appear to have stepped up. Nine adults and nine children were killed when a Russian ballistic missile using cluster bombs struck a children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih at the end of last week.People were burned alive in their cars and the bodies of children were found dead in the playground, yet the attack was weakly condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, who, toeing the White House line, would not say the deadly missile was from Russia as she tweeted: “This is why the war must end.”Brink has since announced she will step down and been more forthright. On Sunday, the ambassador attributed the Sumy attack to Russia and repeated that it appeared cluster bombs had been used. But now that she is on her way out, it is easier for her to speak her mind while Russia’s Vladimir Putin toys with Trump and the rest of the US administration in peace talks that have hardly developed in two months.View image in fullscreenOn Friday, the Russian leader spent four hours in talks with Steve Witkoff, a donor real estate developer who has become a key Trump adviser on Ukraine as well as the Middle East. What they talked about is unclear, but reports suggest Witkoff has been pushing the idea that the quickest way to get Russia to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine is to force Kyiv to hand over the entirety of four provinces that are only partly occupied by Russia’s military, including the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.The dissonance between the killing and destruction in Sumy on Sunday and the photographed handshake between Witkoff and Putin is all too evident to most observers. It is not clear why it should even be contemplated that Ukraine hand over territory (something that even the US cannot easily force on Kyiv) when Russia is willing to countenance daytime attacks on civilians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Moscow believes, and acts like it believes, it can get away with it. The Kremlin will ignore condemnation from European leaders and wait for the news cycle to move on – and will almost certainly continue to attack Ukrainian cities to little military purpose. Not only are drone attacks commonplace, but there are now concerns they are routinely being armed with cluster munitions, while almost every day one or two hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles are thrown into the deadly mix.In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hopes that gradually Trump will realise Putin is not negotiating in good faith. Certainly, the attack on the centre of Sumy hardly suggests a strong appetite for peace. But it is unclear at what point, if any, the White House is prepared to conclude that killing of civilians means that it needs to put genuine pressure on Russia to negotiate rather than indulge the Kremlin. More
- in US Politics
I worked in Trump’s first administration. Here’s why his team is using Signal | Kevin Carroll
No senior US government official in the now-infamous “Houthi PC Small Group” Signal chat seemed new to that kind of group, nor surprised by the sensitivity of the subject discussed in that insecure forum, not even when the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimed in with details of a coming airstrike. No one objected – not the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was abroad and using her personal cellphone to discuss pending military operations; not even the presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow at the time. Yet most of these officials enjoy the luxury of access to secure government communications systems 24/7/365.Reasonable conclusions may be drawn from these facts. First, Trump’s national security cabinet commonly discusses secret information on insecure personal devices. Second, sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China intercept such communications, especially those sent or received in their countries. Third, as a result, hostile intelligence services now probably possess blackmail material regarding these officials’ indiscreet past conversations on similar topics. Fourth, as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. And fifth, no one seems to have feared being investigated by the justice department for what appears to be a violation of the Espionage Act’s Section 793(f), which makes gross negligence in mishandling classified information a felony; the FBI director, Kash Patel, and attorney general, Pam Bondi, quickly confirmed that hunch. Remarkably, the CIA director John Ratcliffe wouldn’t even admit to Congress that he and his colleagues had made a mistake.The knock-on effects of this are many. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, needs to address his colleagues’ characterization of European partners as “pathetic” with foreign ministers now dubious of the US’s intentions. Allies already hesitant to share their countries’ secrets with the US, because of valid counterintelligence concerns regarding Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, will clam up even more rather than risk their sources being compromised by Trump’s appointees. Gabbard and Ratcliffe may have perjured themselves before Congress regarding whether their Signal chat included classified national defense information; certainly, their credibility on Capitol Hill is shredded. As a former CIA case officer, I suspect these directors’ own subordinates will prefer not to share restricted handling information with them going forward. Hegseth, confirmed as secretary by a vote of 51-50 despite concerns over his character and sobriety, lost any moral authority to lead the defense department by reflexively lying about his misconduct, claiming that the story by Jeffrey Goldberg, the unsuspecting Atlantic editor improvidently included in the text chain, is somehow a “hoax” despite the fact the White House contemporaneously confirmed its authenticity.Trump dismisses this scandal, now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, as a witch-hunt, and his followers will fall in line. But every senator who voted to confirm these national security officials, despite doubts regarding their temperaments and qualifications, quietly knows that they own part of this debacle. For fear of facing Republican primary challengers funded by Elon Musk, these senators failed in their solemn constitutional duty to independently provide wise advice and consent regarding nominations to the US’s most important war cabinet posts. How would the senators have explained their misfeasance to service members’ bereaved families – their constituents, perhaps – had the Houthis used information from the Signal chat, such as the time a particular target was to be engaged, to reorient their antiaircraft systems to intercept the inbound aircraft?I happen to have served in Yemen as a sensitive activities officer for special operations command (central). Conspicuous in their absence from the Signal chat were uniformed officers responsible for the recent combat mission: the acting chair of the joint chiefs of staff Adm Christopher Grady, central command’s Gen Michael Kurilla and special operations command’s Gen Bryan Fenton. These good men would have raised the obvious objection: loose talk on insecure phones about a coming operation jeopardizes the lives of US sailors and marines standing watch on warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, naval aviators flying over the beach towards the target, and likely special operators, intelligence officers and human sources working in the shadows on the ground.You don’t need 30-plus years in uniform to know that holding a detailed yet insecure discussion about a pending military mission is wrong; the participants in the chat knew, too. They just didn’t care, not as much as they cared about keeping their communications from being legally discoverable. They’re safe in the knowledge that in a new era without benefit of the rule of law, Patel’s FBI and Bondi’s justice department will never bring charges against them, for a crime which uniformed service members are routinely prosecuted for vastly smaller infractions. As the attorney general made plain in her remarks about this matter, federal law enforcement is now entirely subservient to Trump’s personal and political interests.Most senior US government officials in 2025 are, unfortunately, far gone from the fine old gentleman’s tradition of honorable resignation. But participants in the Signal chat should consider the Hollywood producer character Jack Woltz’s pained observation to the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather about his indiscreetly wayward mistress: “A man in my position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous.” Trump, the justice department and the Republican Congress may not make them resign, but to the US’s allies and adversaries, and to their own subordinates, these officials now look ridiculous.
Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the former homeland security secretary John Kelly and as a CIA and army officer More
