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    Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine’s envoy to US in diplomatic shuffle

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    Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticised by leading Republicans, as part a diplomatic reshuffle designed to strengthen ties with the Trump administration.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the job. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors”.He indicated that several top ambassadors to G7 and G20 countries would also be moved, telling Ukrainian radio “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle”.The diplomatic shake-up comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops have been attacking across the 600-mile frontline and in recent weeks the speed of their gains has increased, with the Kremlin spokesperson declaring: “We are advancing.”Russian combat units are for the first time close to crossing into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.Late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record 728 Shahed-type drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down.The US House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, is among the Republican figures who have criticised Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic party and its candidate Kamala Harris in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.View image in fullscreenIn February she was pictured with her head in her hand during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.There were calls for her dismissal after Zelenskyy visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September. Markarova organised the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.Ukrainian officials deny any bias but acknowledge the ambassador previously had good relations with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, the then undersecretary of state for political affairs.Zelenskyy and Trump discussed Markarova’s departure during a phone call last Friday which Ukraine’s president hailed as their most constructive to date.On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing frustration with Vladimir Putin and announced US weapons deliveries to Kyiv would be restarted. His announcement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other precision munitions. It is unclear how many will be transferred. The US news website Axios reported 10 missiles would be delivered – a tiny amount at a time when Moscow has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.The overnight raid was directed at the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 injured in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the north-east and east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.A one-year-old boy, Dmytro, died in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson oblast when the Russians hit his house with drones, the local administration reported. The boy had been staying with his great-grandmother.One possible successor to Markarova in Washington is said to be Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. Zhovka’s immediate boss is Andriy Yermak, who is widely seen as the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelenskyy.Other names include the finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, and Olha Stefanishyna, who is deputy prime minister for Europe and Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as minister of justice.There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s pivot earlier this year towards Russia has been halted, if not quite reversed. One former Ukrainian official credited Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser and a veteran negotiator, with the transformation.Powell has played an important role in repairing Zelenskyy’s fraught relations with Washington after the Oval Office bust-up.He advised Ukraine’s government to avoid confronting the US president and to take his words as truth. The approach – described as “strategic patience” – was beginning to pay off, the official suggested.Zelenskyy has agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed a deal giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.On Wednesday he met Pope Leo in Rome before a two-day international conference, organised to help Ukraine’s postwar recovery. Zelenskyy said they had discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians who had been abducted by Russia and the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace negotiations.Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is due to attend the conference. In a recent call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-defence batteries from the US and to send them to Ukraine.Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also due in Rome and is likely to hold talks on weapons deliveries with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister. More

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      Trump has ‘good conversation’ with Zelenskyy after heavy bombardment of Ukraine by Russia

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      Donald Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday as the US president appears increasingly disheartened over his chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.The call with Zelenskyy comes as Washington has halted its latest shipment of military aid to Ukraine including Patriot air defense missiles and other crucial munitions meant to support the country’s defenses, and hours after Russia launched a devastating air attack on Kyiv using a record number of drones and ballistic missiles.Zelenskyy called the conversation “important and useful” and said in a post said that he and Trump had discussed Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, joint defense production and “mutual purchases and investments”, all potentially avenues for Ukraine to restart aid from the United States by providing incentives for the Trump administration to rush crucial munitions to Kyiv.He said that the two sides had also agreed to “increase aerial protection”, a particular focus for Kyiv as Russia has increased bombardments of Ukrainian cities despite outrage from Trump and other world leaders.Yet it was not immediately clear if Zelenskyy had achieved any concrete progress with Trump and in his statement he did not mention the halt of aid shipments from the US or announce their resumption. Axios reported that a source described the call as a “good conversation”.Trump said he was “very disappointed” after a telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Thursday. A Putin aide told reporters that the Russian president was not willing to make concessions on what the Kremlin has called the “root causes” of the war with Ukraine, a list of grievances that includes Nato expansion and Ukraine’s desire to join western economic and security blocs.“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there,” Trump told reporters after holding a rally in Iowa on Thursday evening. “I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed. I’m just saying, I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”The US has said that it halted the shipments, some of which were already in Poland, due to a review of US military stockpiles that suggested that the country is running low on munitions for its own troops.Germany has said that it is in “intensive talks” to buy the Patriot missiles for Ukraine, although it’s unclear whether those stocks would be available immediately.“There are various ways to fill this Patriot gap,” a German government spokesperson told a news conference in Berlin on Friday. One option being considered was for the German government to buy the Patriot missile batteries in the United States and then send them to Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I can confirm that intensive discussions are indeed being held on this matter,” the spokesperson said.The shortage of Patriot missiles was further highlighted by the record bombardment of Ukraine in which Russia sent more than 550 drones and ballistic missiles at major cities in what Zelenskyy described as a “deliberate act of terror”.The strike immediately followed the call between Putin and Trump, Zelenskyy said, and was a “clear interpretation of how Moscow interprets diplomacy”. More

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      The Guardian view on the US and South Africa: Trump looks to his base and partners look elsewhere | Editorial

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      The most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.On one side sat a political heavyweight who calmly asserted the facts; on the other, Mr Trump, espousing wild and inflammatory myths. One side wanted to do bilateral business; the other to pander to the grievances of his domestic base, many of whom doubtless relished the public scolding of an anti-apartheid veteran. No solution was proffered to the imaginary problem.The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has fallen far short in too many regards. Violent crime is rife. But the administration’s accusations invert reality. White South Africans are 7% of the population but still own 72% of the land. Experts say that it is poor black people, not wealthier whites, who are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence. Yet as the scholar Nicky Falkof has written, white South Africans have become a “cautionary tale for the White far right [internationally] … central to the landscape and language of White supremacy”. Look where DEI gets you.Mr Trump aired complaints about the “large-scale killing” of white farmers in his first term, amplifying conspiracy theories that originated in far-right forums. Since then, he has grown closer to the South African-born Elon Musk, who has accused politicians there of “promoting white genocide”. The US has now cut aid to South Africa, accusing the government of “unjust racial discrimination” and attacking its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice. Washington has expelled the South African ambassador and given white Afrikaners asylum even as it turns away those fleeing wars.Mr Trump’s divisive conspiracy theories and failed attempt to humiliate Mr Ramaphosa appear, ironically, to be fostering unity on foreign affairs within South African politics, where the ANC and its (white-led) coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance, have had very different histories and priorities. The US still accounts for a tenth of the country’s trade. South Africa must shore up its auto sector and agriculture, given its sky-high unemployment rate. But like other governments, Pretoria is salvaging what it can in US relations now, while looking ahead to diversifying its ties. Few expect Washington to renew duty-free trade arrangements for African states this autumn.Warming relations with other western countries is one option. But increasing closeness to China, already South Africa’s top trading partner, looks like an inevitability. Members of the Brics grouping see an opportunity to strengthen ties, though South Africa is discovering that expansion does not always mean greater influence for its dominant players. Mr Trump is looking for kudos, free planes and red meat to throw to his base. Washington’s partners are increasingly looking elsewhere. It’s in US interests to show them respect and nurture longstanding relationships.

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy has courage. Pope Francis had it too. Why are there so many cowards? | Alexander Hurst

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      “Courage is seeking the truth and speaking it,” Jean Jaurès, the French philosopher and Socialist party leader, told a group of high school students in 1903. “It is not yielding to the law of the triumphant lie as it passes, and not echoing, with our soul, our mouth and our hands, mindless applause and fanatical jeering.”When the first world war reared its ugly, pointless head, Jaurès refused to give in to mindless fanaticism and attempted to coordinate a Franco-German general strike to stop the rush to war. In 1914, he paid for those efforts with his life when a 29-year-old French nationalist shot him twice in the back.Courage among ordinary people is not in short supply. The doctors and humanitarian workers who rush to war zones and refugee camps to care for those who need it. Rümeysa Öztürk, the PhD student who was arrested in the US for voicing an opinion against the relentless bombing of Gaza. Israeli conscientious objectors and an increasing number of other refuseniks. The protesters in Tbilisi, Belgrade and Istanbul who have repeatedly faced down their governments’ attempts at repression.Examples of political courage from those in power, though? These feel less numerous. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has displayed it endlessly. French judges did too, when they upheld the rule of law – which in normal times would simply be doing their duty, but in our times meant facing death threats. Pope Francis pushed reforms of the Catholic church to make it more compassionate and inclusive, and didn’t veer from them. He didn’t “change strategy” when attendance failed to pick up, because he didn’t have a strategy – he was simply doing what was right.View image in fullscreenOn the other hand, we’ve witnessed so many high-profile examples of political cowardice in recent months that I can only talk about them in broad categories. The US supreme court justices who, last summer, bent over backwards to create a monarchical presidency with impunity to break the law as it desires. The law firms that have offered up hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of pro bono work to an administration busy dismantling the rule of law.The CEOs and companies that have turned on the money tap and tripped over themselves to cancel inclusion initiatives to placate a president who is tanking their share prices. An almost comically conspicuous level of grift, alleged corruption and insider trading. Congressional Republicans who have sold out their country’s constitutional principles in order to avoid primaries – or perhaps, as the senator Lisa Murkowski put it, because “we are all afraid … because retaliation is real”.What is just? Who is acting with honour? With courage? When did we stop thinking it normal to consider such questions – and to demand those things from the people who lead us? To demand that they, well, lead?Left with basically no other choice, Harvard University finally made the decision to oppose the Trump administration’s outrageous demands. That is not to downplay the moral courage in the decision; other universities might have and did make different choices when they were in the same bind. As a result of Harvard’s stand, hundreds of college and university presidents have decided that sticking together is better than falling one by one.But perhaps in this moment, Harvard and other elite schools like it might take the opportunity to reflect on exactly what kind of virtues they have been instilling in their students. For years, nearly half of Harvard’s graduates have stepped straight from campus into roles at consulting firms and investment banks. It’s disheartening but perhaps not surprising, given that according to its newspaper, the Crimson, for the past four decades far more first-years have been concerned with “being well-off financially” than with “developing a meaningful life philosophy”.When the primary metric becomes “success” in amassing something – money, followers, territory, votes – society loses its moral centre. As Pankaj Mishra wrote in his 2017 book, Age of Anger, part of the crisis of the current moment is that commercial society has unleashed individuals who are unmoored from each other or from some greater social fabric.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt may sound quaint, almost conservative, to denounce a breakdown in society’s engagement with morality in public life. But I reject that. Without an ability to think and speak in real moral language, we end up in a place where there is no more shame in hypocrisy, no dishonour in rapacious greed; where if something is true or false matters less than how many people believe it. We end up in a place where the world’s wealthiest man has overseen a series of devastating aid cuts that will indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of children and sentence millions more to death from disease. There is an appropriate descriptive word for that: the word is evil.Much of the media – US media, most certainly – have a lot to answer for in the ways that they have oriented public conversation. Far too frequently, they have approached politics primarily as a horse race. What does this or that mean for a candidate’s electoral chances? How will it play out in the polls? Who is up, who is down? Who agrees, who disagrees, and what is each party saying about the other? What the media don’t like to do, because it’s far more difficult and far riskier, is to talk about whether the policies being proposed and the decisions being taken are morally commendable, just, honourable, courageous.A focus on speaking the truth, of the kind that Jaurès extolled, opens wide other doors. Among them, the ability to move from a political question – what do we want? – to a more courageous one: is this what we should want?

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist

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      The Guardian view on Romania’s presidential election upset: a vote for stability and the west | Editorial

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      As Romanians voted on Sunday in arguably the most consequential election in the country’s post-communist history, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will have been preparing to welcome a fellow disruptor to the European stage. The first round of a controversially re-run presidential contest had been handsomely won by George Simion, a Eurosceptic ultranationalist who views Donald Trump as a “natural ally” and opposes military aid to Ukraine. On the back of a 20-point lead, Mr Simion, a 38-year-old former football ultra with a taste for violent rhetoric, was so confident of winning that he made a confrontational visit to Brussels in the last days of his campaign.Those expectations were confounded in remarkable fashion at the weekend. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Nicușor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, benefited from the highest voter turnout in 30 years to triumph comfortably. One of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mr Dan was a relieved Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who, in Hungary and Slovakia, already has to contend with two Putin-friendly governments on Ukraine’s western border.First and foremost, the stability promised by Mr Dan’s victory is good news for Romania, which has been in political turmoil since the original presidential election was cancelled amid allegations of Russian interference. Having made his name as a politically independent anti-corruption campaigner, he must now attempt to unite a deeply polarised country in which inequality, graft and poor public services have proved to be, as elsewhere, a launchpad for far-right populist insurgents.More broadly, the size of the second-round turnout – which included a huge diaspora vote – suggests that hitching a ride on the Trump bandwagon is as liable to motivate a mainstream backlash in Europe as generate Maga-style momentum. Given the global volatility unleashed by Mr Trump’s reckless, bullying style, and the dark shadow cast over eastern Europe by Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions, the strategic attractions of hugging the EU and Nato close are more readily apparent than they used to be. Handed the opportunity to turn east, a substantial majority of Romanian voters looked west.Elsewhere though, on a “super Sunday” of three European elections, outcomes were more ambivalent and less uplifting from a progressive perspective. The centre also held in Poland, where the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly won the first round of another crucial presidential election, ahead of the nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki. But the high combined vote for hard- and far-right candidates suggests that result may be reversed in two weeks’ time. One and a half years after Donald Tusk was given a prime ministerial mandate to bring Poland back into the European mainstream, Eurosceptic ultranationalism remains a force to be reckoned with.In Portugal, a snap election triggered by the centre-right governing party saw it retain power, but was notable mainly for the record number of votes cast for the far-right Chega party. Postal ballots could yet propel Chega to second place, ahead of the Socialist party, after a dismal night for the Portuguese left.Mr Dan’s famous victory was undoubtedly the story of the night, confounding a narrative of an inexorable rightwards shift in central and eastern Europe. But amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, and as mainstream parties echo far-right agendas on migration, the politics of Europe continue to feel anxious, polarised and alarmingly unpredictable.

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      Trump to speak to Putin and Zelenskyy about Ukraine ceasefire – US politics live

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      The Kremlin said that Russian president Vladimir Putin will hold a call with US president Donald Trump at 5pm Moscow time (10am EDT) on Monday, state news agency RIA reported.RIA cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that the two leaders’ discussion of Ukraine would take into account the results of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news throughout the next few hours.Donald Trump is due to speak to both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to stop what he called the “bloodbath” war in Ukraine.Trump, posting on his Truth Social account on Saturday, wrote that he will speak to Putin on Monday morning. “THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” Trump wrote, in his customary all-capitalized prose. The president has repeatedly cited a death toll for the conflict that is much higher than any official figures, or estimates based on an open-source investigation, without explaining why.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to a state-run Russian news agency that preparations were under way for a call between the US and Russian presidents.Trump’s call with the Russian president will be followed by a separate conversation with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s leader, and Nato leaders as part of the US effort to end the war that has raged since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,” Trump wrote.It’s unclear what kind of progress Trump will be able to spur, if any, in the peace process. Russia and Ukraine have just concluded mostly fruitless talks, the first of their kind since the start of the war, in Istanbul. Ukraine said it was ready for a ceasefire but was faced by “unacceptable” demands from Russia.In other news:

      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.

      As Trump wages a blunt attack on major law firms and the justice department, some lawyers are starting their own law firms and challenging the administration’s effort to cut funding and punish civil servants. The decision to start the firms come as the judiciary has emerged as a major bulwark against the Trump administration.

      The US retail company Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has insisted, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon. Walmart said last week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade.

      A proposed rule change making it easier to fire civil servants deemed to be “intentionally subverting presidential directives” could pave the way for the White House to fire statisticians employed to produce objective data on the economy but whose figures prove politically inconvenient, experts warn. With Trump under pressure to explain shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) figures amid economists’ warnings that tariffs could trigger a recession, the administration could use new employment rules to pressure workers into “cooking the books”.

      Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office announced on Sunday, and he and his family are considering options for treatment. Donald Trump expressed concern on behalf of himself and first lady Melania Trump.

      US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A rating. More

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      Trump to talk to Putin on Monday about Ukraine ceasefire proposal and trade

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      Donald Trump has said that he will speak to both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to stop what he called the “bloodbath” war in Ukraine, in a barrage of new social media posts that included baseless conspiracy theories and a demand that Walmart not raise prices for customers because of tariffs he has imposed.Trump, posting on his Truth Social account on Saturday, wrote that he will speak to Putin on Monday morning. “THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” Trump wrote, in his customary all-capitalized prose.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to a state-run Russian news agency that preparations were under way for a call between the US and Russian presidents.Trump’s call with the Russian president will be followed by a separate conversation with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s leader, and Nato leaders as part of the US effort to end the war that has raged since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,” Trump wrote.Russia and Ukraine have just concluded mostly fruitless talks, the first of their kind since the start of the war, in Istanbul. Ukraine said it was ready for a ceasefire but was faced by “unacceptable” demands from Russia, which attempted to fully invade its neighbor and has occupied the eastern flank of the country.It’s unclear what kind of progress Trump will be able to spur, if any, in the peace process. The US president has been heavily critical of Ukraine, freezing military aid and having an infamous argument with Zelenskyy at the White House in full view of the media, before appearing to soften after a face-to-face conversation at the funeral of Pope Francis in the Vatican.Trump had offered to travel to Turkey for the talks after his trip to the Middle East last week if Putin would also attend, and urged Zelenskyy to go, but Putin sent a team of low-level negotiators instead.Trump’s ire with Ukraine’s president does not seem to have abated, however, with the president telling Fox News on Friday he is upset with what the country has done with the aid handed to it by the US. “What bothered me, I hated to see the way it was, you know, excuse me, pissed away,” he said.“I think he’s the greatest salesman in the world. Far better than me,” Trump said of the Ukrainian president. “Where is all this money going?”In a social media post of his own, Zelenskyy mourned the death of nine civilians in “a Russian drone strike on an ordinary passenger bus”. He added: “Yesterday, as on any other day of this war, there was an opportunity to cease fire. Ukraine has long been offering this – a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save lives. Russia retains nothing but the ability to continue killing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMarco Rubio, the US secretary of state, reported on social media that he had spoken to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and told him that “the death and destruction must stop”. Rubio added on X, formerly Twitter, that the US “has presented a strong peace plan and we welcome the Prisoner of War exchange agreement reached in Istanbul. Let’s not miss this huge opportunity. The time for ending this war is now.”In a separate Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump complained about the impact of tariffs he has imposed, after Walmart, among other retailers, warned it will have to raise prices for Americans in response.“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump posted, adding that the company should “‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”A further post from Trump featured a video of an evidence-free conspiracy theory that not only implied that Bill and Hillary Clinton were guilty of murder but also that Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer, was the source of Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016. (Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian government hackers for hacking the email accounts of people close to Clinton in 2016 and delivering the hacked emails to WikiLeaks.) Rich was murdered in 2016 and his death provoked a slew of lies and wild conspiracy theories, fueled by Trump and other sources. Rich’s family reached a confidential settlement with Fox News in 2020 over the peddling of these lies. More

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      Wednesday briefing: Is Zelenskyy playing political poker – or Russian roulette?

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      Good morning.Talks. Istanbul. Thursday. In the geopolitical equivalent of a playground challenge, the latest move in the back-and-forth brinkmanship between Russia and Ukraine has seen President Zelenskyy call Putin’s bluff.The Russian president crushed moves by Ukraine and its European allies to force a ceasefire by instead demanding peace talk negotiations in Istanbul tomorrow. In response, Zelenskyy challenged him to travel to Istanbul to meet him face to face.Putin has yet to respond, but these latest manoeuvres by both Ukraine and Russia – who seem very far away from being able to negotiate a mutually agreeable peace deal – share one thing: a desire to get Donald Trump on their team at the negotiating table.With Trump signalling that he could take a break from browsing private jet interiors in Saudi Arabia to join the party in Istanbul, we are either gearing up for an extraordinary photo opportunity or a complete damp squib if neither Trump nor Putin shows and the deadlock continues.For today’s newsletter I talked to our central and eastern Europe correspondent, Shaun Walker, about the latest round of power games, and whether there really is any prospect for peace in Ukraine.Five big stories

      US politics | Donald Trump says he will lift sanctions on Syria and meet with the country’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, during his tour of the gulf states. Sharaa’s pitch to woo the US offered access to Syrian oil, reconstruction contracts and to build a Trump Tower in Damascus.

      UK news | Peter Sullivan, who has spent 38 years in jail, has had his murder conviction quashed in what is thought to be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history. Sullivan was wrongly convicted in 1987 for the frenzied murder of a florist and part-time pub worker, Diane Sindall, 21, in Merseyside.

      Conservatives | An MP has been charged with sexual assault over alleged incidents at London’s Groucho Club in 2023, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Patrick Spencer, the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, was charged with two counts of sexual assault against two separate women, said the CPS.

      Assisted dying | At least five MPs have decided to vote against the UK assisted dying bill, the Guardian understands. It comes as the Scottish parliament votes to consider a bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people for the first time.

      UK news | A man has been arrested in connection with a series of suspected arson attacks on property linked to Keir Starmer, Scotland Yard has said. The 21-year-old was arrested in the early hours on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life and remained in custody, the Metropolitan police said.
      In depth: ‘Putin doesn’t want to be in a room with Zelenskyy. This is what Ukraine is banking on’View image in fullscreenThe past few days have seen intricate displays of diplomatic cat-and-mouse as Ukraine and Russia try to gain the upper hand while facing increasing pressure to end the war in Ukraine.There is much at stake. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have lost their lives. Last night the air raid sirens were still wailing across Kyiv as hopes of an imminent ceasefire were once again crushed.What moves towards a peace deal have happened in the past few days?Last weekend, things seemed to be going well for Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s one-to-one meeting with Trump at the Vatican had helped repair the rupture caused by the extraordinary press conference in the White House, and momentum appeared to be with him.After recent attempts to get Russia to agree – and actually stick to – a ceasefire had failed, last weekend saw frustrated European leaders travel to Kyiv with an ultimatum for Putin: agree to a ceasefire or face new, tough sanctions.Yet Putin had other ideas. Undermining Zelenskyy’s insistence that a full ceasefire should begin ahead of any peace negotiations, Putin went on Russian TV to propose direct talks between Russia and Ukraine and named the time and place: Istanbul, on Thursday 15 May.Trump weighed in. Posting in his usual capital letters on his Truth Social platform, the president said that Ukraine should agree to Putin’s demand for a meeting immediately. “I’m starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Putin,” he wrote. “HAVE THE MEETING NOW!!!”Zelenskyy took Putin’s challenge and raised the stakes. He said he would travel to Istanbul personally and challenged Putin to do the same, saying that the two leaders should meet face-to-face for the first time since 2019.Since then, Putin has gone quiet. With the Kremlin refusing to comment, Ukraine has been ramping up the pressure. Yesterday, Shaun attended a bullish press briefing and then a sit-down interview with Zelenskyy. “His message is Ukraine is not the one to blame,” says Shaun. “He is saying to Trump that we are doing everything you ask. We’re not the problem here.” What are the peace talks in Istanbul?At the moment there is no detail on what will and won’t be discussed on Thursday, or even who will be the ones doing the negotiating.Shaun says that while Putin’s holding position is to give the impression that he wants to negotiate, Russian demands at the talks on Thursday – regardless of whether Putin shows or not – are likely to be pretty much the same as the demands they were making at the beginning of the conflict, which include Ukraine dropping its aspirations to join Nato, give up territories taken by Russia and scale back its military.On the other side, Ukraine wants to be a sovereign nation and an independent, democratic country with links – and ideally Nato membership – to the West. They will find it politically difficult to cede territory to their enemy.“My reading is that it is very clear that Putin’s only goal for Ukraine is for it not to be a threat – in the way he perceives it – to Russian interests, and become this beacon of ‘anti-Russianness’ that will cause him problems,’” Shaun says. “At the talks, the Russian delegation will most likely continue pushing for terms that will still be fully unacceptable to Ukraine.”How likely is it that Putin will show?Shaun says that he’d be very surprised if Putin makes a personal appearance in Turkey on Thursday. “Putin doesn’t like being pressured into things. He doesn’t want to be in a room with Zelenskyy. This is what Ukraine is banking on,” he says. “I’d give it about a 5% chance that somehow Putin and Trump talk to each other this week and both go. I think the most likely scenario is that we’ll have Zelenskyy in Istanbul on Thursday recording a video saying, ‘Look, I’m here but nobody else turned up.’”At the moment Zelenskyy is travelling to Ankara, the Turkish capital, to meet with its president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and will go to Istanbul if Putin shows. It’s unclear if he will be bringing a delegation with him who could start talks with the Russian team in the absence of Putin.In some ways, Zelenskyy calling for a personal summit with Trump is potentially a high-stakes move, because if Putin does show up then Ukraine could face pressure to show they are willing to concede to some of Russia’s demands. Yet Shaun thinks a Putin no-show at this point is almost certain.How much is this all about Trump?Shaun says that the only thing uniting both Russia and Ukraine at the moment is their desire to get Trump onside.“Ever since that disastrous White House meeting, Zelenskyy has been trying very hard – and with some success – to get Trump back on Ukraine’s team,” says Shaun.Trump knows he wields huge power and influence on the global stage and hasn’t been afraid to use it. Since he took office, he has become increasingly frustrated with the Ukraine war and wants to show that he can do what he promised the US voters would be easy – to end the war and use whatever aggressive boardroom tactics he has at his disposal to force the two sides to bend to his will.He is currently in Saudi Arabia for a lavish four-day trip where he hopes to enrich both the US and his own family with a raft of multi-billion dollar deals (and fly home in his new Qatar-gifted luxury jet). Trump will want to build on this momentum and return home triumphant, able to say that he is dictating the terms of global politics.The danger for Ukraine, says Shaun, is that even though the Biden administration moved much slower than the Ukrainians would have liked, America has been Ukraine’s most significant ally, providing weapons, intelligence sharing and other support.“Now with Trump they know he doesn’t like it when things get difficult so their fear will be that he’ll just give up and say, ‘Sorry, this is your mess to fix,’ and walk away like he’s promised to do so many times,” says Shaun.Shaun says that for Russia, Trump bailing on the war would be a good outcome. “If the negotiations fail and Trump walks then Ukraine could risk losing US support, which would be catastrophic for them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the talks fail, what next?Shaun says that in the event that nothing is agreed in Turkey, the big question will be whether the Europeans can get Trump on board and once again ratchet the pressure up on Moscow for a ceasefire. European leaders have indicated they will press ahead with further sanctions if talks this week fail to achieve real progress.The issue, as ever, is Trump’s unpredictability. “We know from experience that there could be a new command or request from the Americans at any time and everything could change again,” he says.In such a high-stakes game of political poker, it’s impossible to place a safe bet on what will happen next. Until then, the sirens will continue and the war will grind on.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

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      The Zelenskyy-Trump deal – podcast

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      After the heated exchange between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, the prospect of a deal between the US and Ukraine was uncertain.“Every week, it feels like we get a new position from Donald Trump,” Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent based in Washington DC, tells Michael Safi. “Sometimes we get multiple new positions from Donald Trump in a single morning. Nobody really believed that that was going to happen until the two names were on the dotted line.”And yet, last week the countries agreed a momentous minerals deal, agreeing to split future profits of the minerals industry in Ukraine 50/50.“We’re talking about natural gas, oil, possibly, but more importantly we’re talking about critical earth minerals. These include a couple of things, lithium, graphite, titanium. These are rare, important, critical minerals that are used in all kinds of industries around the world,” says Roth.Does US economic interest in Ukraine bring the country closer to peace?Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More