Volodymyr Zelenskyy

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      Zelenskyy says he will work under Trump’s leadership as he proposes Ukraine peace plan

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed a possible peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, saying he is willing to work “constructively” under Donald Trump’s “strong leadership” and to sign a deal giving the US access to his country’s mineral wealth.In an attempt to mend fences with Washington after Trump abruptly suspended supplies of military aid, Zelenskyy said on Tuesday he was “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible”.“I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace,” he wrote on X.In an extraordinary turnaround, late on Tuesday both sides appeared to be close to signing a critical minerals deal that the White House has indicated is a precursor to peace talks, Reuters reported, underlining the chaotic nature of the relationship between Kyiv and Washington under Donald Trump.Alarmed European leaders reaffirmed their backing for Kyiv on Tuesday as it emerged that Ukraine’s Nato allies had not been told in advance of the suspension of US aid.A spokesperson for the Polish foreign ministry said Trump’s announcement “was made without any information or consultation, neither with Nato allies nor with the Ramstein group which is involved in supporting Ukraine”.Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, announced proposals to increase EU defence spending, which she said could raise up to €800bn ($848bn). “This is a moment for Europe, and we are ready to step up,” she said.In his comments, Zelenskyy sketched out a plan for how the war might stop. The “first stages” could include a release of prisoners and a ban on missiles and long-range drones used to attack energy and civilian infrastructure. This “truce in the air” might be applied to the sea as well, he said, “if Russia will do the same”.Zelenskyy’s post came hours after the Trump administration said it was blocking all deliveries of ammunition, vehicles and other equipment, including shipments agreed when Joe Biden was president.He acknowledged his meeting on Friday with Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, “did not go the way it was supposed to”. He said: “It is regrettable it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.”But his conciliatory comments appear to fall short of the grovelling apology demanded by the White House. Trump has accused Zelenskyy of disrespect, and the US president’s aides have claimed Zelenskyy provoked the row by insisting any peace deal had to come with security guarantees. Vance also repeatedly accused Ukraine’s president of ingratitude.By way of response on Tuesday, Zelenskyy thanked Trump for providing Kyiv with Javelin missiles during his first presidential term. “We really do value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence,” he said.On Tuesday, Vance denied that Trump wanted a public apology from Zelenskyy despite media reports to the contrary, saying that the “public stuff” did not matter as much as Ukrainian engagement toward a “meaningful settlement”.“We need the Ukrainians privately to come to us and say: ‘This is what we need. This is what we want. This is how we’re going to participate in the process to end this conflict,’” Vance told reporters on Capitol Hill. “That is the most important thing, and that lack of private engagement is what is most concerning.”US officials have said Zelenskyy and an adviser, Andriy Yermak, had sought the White House meeting despite the concerns of some Trump advisers who had said there was the potential for a clash. But there are also suspicions the White House was looking for a pretext to distance itself from Ukraine.At a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening, Trump is expected to propose plans to “restore peace around the world”. A White House official told Fox News he would “lay out his plans to end the war in Ukraine”, as well as plans to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza, the outlet reported.Ukraine and the US were supposed to sign a minerals deal that would have resulted in the US investing in Ukraine’s underdeveloped minerals and mining sector. Trump has said the presence of US workers in Ukraine would be enough to deter Putin from future acts of aggression, with no further security promises needed.Asked whether he believed there was still hope for the minerals deal, Vance responded: “Yeah, I certainly do.” He added: “And I think the president is still committed to the mineral deal. I think we’ve heard some positive things, but not yet, of course, a signature from our friends in Ukraine.”Kyiv was ready to sign the deal “in any time and in any convenient format”, Zelenskyy indicated. “We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively,” he wrote.“It’s a temporary pause and it’s to do a reset,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, said of the suspension of US military aid. “I am heartened by the development that President Zelenskyy has indicated that he does want to do this deal after all … I certainly encourage that to happen and he needs to come and make right what happened last week – the shocking developments in the Oval Office – and if he does that then I think this is the win-win-win scenario for everyone involved.”Moscow celebrated Trump’s decision to suspend military aid as “the best possible step towards peace”, with the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, saying the US had been “the main supplier of this war so far”.Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, told a cabinet meeting in Warsaw that Europe faced unprecedented risks, including “the biggest in the last few decades when it comes to security”. Tusk said his government would have to make some “extraordinary” decisions. “A decision was announced to suspend the US aid for Ukraine, and perhaps start lifting sanctions on Russia. We don’t have any reason to think these are just words,” he said.“This puts Europe, Ukraine, Poland in a more difficult situation,” Tusk said, adding that Warsaw was determined to “intensify activities in Europe to increase our defence capabilities” while maintaining the best possible relations with the US.France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the US decision meant it was vital Europe helped Ukraine hold the frontline against Russia, which he said was “the first line of defence for Europe and France”. The time had come for Europe to drop its dependency on US weapons, he added. “We are faced with a choice that is imposed on us, between effort and freedom, or comfort and servitude,” he told MPs.The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said the US decision to suspend weapons aid in wartime signalled that Washington was “abandoning Ukraine and letting the aggressor win” and that it was Europe’s responsibility to replace them.Bayrou told parliament that Europeans “are going to have to think about our model, about our priorities and to look at the world differently … We have seen it is more dangerous than we had though, coming from those we thought were allies.”Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said: “Two things are now essential for peace through strength: additional aid – military and financial – for Ukraine, which is defending our freedom. And a quantum leap to strengthen our EU defence.”EU leaders are scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss a five-part, €800bn (£660bn) plan presented by the European commission to bolster Europe’s defence industry, increase military capability and help provide urgent military support for Ukraine. More

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      The Guardian view on the US suspension of military aid: Ukraine and Europe’s race against time | Editorial

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      How long do Ukraine and Europe have to respond to US betrayal? When Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, each day that Kyiv held out was a victory. The west rallied to Ukraine’s support at equally remarkable speed.Now, as the Trump administration turns upon the victim, and embraces the aggressor, Europe is accelerating nascent plans to bolster Ukraine and pursue security independence. Trump allies blame Friday night’s extraordinary Oval Office confrontation between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump and JD Vance for the shocking halt to all US military aid. Others suspect that the administration was seeking a pretext for the suspension. Mr Zelenskyy pledged on Tuesday to “work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts” and expressed gratitude for his first-term approval of Javelin missile defence systems sales.That may or may not be enough. The suspension concluded a fortnight in which Mr Trump attacked Mr Zelenskyy as a “dictator”, the US sided with Russia against western allies at the UN, and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, suspended offensive cyber operations against Moscow. There are reports that the US is preparing plans for loosening the economic pressure on Russia – even as it imposes punitive tariffs on allies. Little wonder the Kremlin crows that Washington “largely coincides with our vision”. Vladimir Putin has reportedly offered to mediate US-Iran nuclear talks. Observers were braced for further developments in the US president’s address to Congress on Tuesday.Analysts suggest that Ukraine’s forces should be able to continue fighting at their current rate for a few months if US aid does not resume, depending on what it has stockpiled. Though it is far less dependent on the US than three years ago, key elements like Patriot air defence missiles will be hard to replace. If US logistical and intelligence assistance and Elon Musk’s Starlink’s services were suspended, those would be further punishing blows.Mr Trump is in a hurry – hence his angry threat that Mr Zelenskyy “won’t be around very long” if he doesn’t cut a deal. This came after the Ukrainian president suggested on Sunday that the end of the war was “very, very far away”. Yet he has also squandered leverage he might have exerted on Moscow before reaching the table. He has emboldened Russia to pursue further territorial gains, especially if it can shape a deal with the US before a ceasefire.The US has already undermined central pillars of Sir Keir Starmer’s approach – maintaining military support for Kyiv and economic pressure on Moscow, and creating a “coalition of the willing” to guarantee Ukrainian security. Mr Vance derided “20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years”, then claimed that he was not referring to Britain or France.European leaders must continue trying to buy time, deferring further US perfidy, and hasten rearmament for themselves and Ukraine. On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, announced a proposal, including changes to EU fiscal rules, which she said could mobilise nearly €800bn for defence spending. A rival operator to Starlink is in talks with European leaders about satellite services.But this is an administration which moves abruptly and erratically. Ukraine and Europe are racing against the clock, not knowing when zero hour will arrive. It is likely to be sooner rather than later. More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump-Zelenskyy meeting: ‘Embarrassing, chilling and confusing’

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      Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s shocking rebuke of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a disastrous White House press conference.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert braced himself on Monday to recap Friday’s chaotic White House meeting between Trump, JD Vance and Zelenskyy that devolved into a shouting match between the two world leaders, with Trump as the aggressor, blaming Zelenskyy for continuing Russia’s war in his country.“In just 10 minutes, Donald Trump reversed 80 years of postwar US foreign policy,” the Late Show host explained. “A mere six weeks ago, America defended democracy against autocrats and promoted free and open societies all over the world. Now, we’re on the same pickleball team with Russia. And you don’t want to know who’s pickled balls we’re playing with.“So our friends are now our enemies, our enemy is now our friend, we’re breaking up with Europe, we’re friends with Russia,” he continued. “You could argue that’s a good thing, you could argue that’s a bad thing. But what you can’t argue with is that’s the thing.”The talks, nominally to sign a deal in which Ukraine promised the US 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals, collapsed within 10 minutes. “So things were looking promising, but then everything exploded and collapsed. It’s a phenomenon political scientists refer to as the Emilia Pérez Oscar campaign,” Colbert quipped.“Zelenskyy kept reminding these numbnuts that Putin breaks every single deal he ever signs,” he added. When a reporter then asked Trump what would happen if Putin broke any deal, the president responded: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now.“Yeah, that’s how Putin’s going to break the ceasefire,” Colbert responded. “This meeting was embarrassing, chilling and confusing.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also tore into Vance and Trump for their handling of the Zelenskyy meeting, starting with Vance’s insistence that Zelenskyy thank Trump personally for US aid. “JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time – ‘You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you!’” said Meyers.“For the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times, directly to the American people, in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump,” he added.Meyers went on to note: “Diplomacy is good, we should try to achieve a ceasefire to stop the killing and bring peace, but it is possible – in fact, it’s necessary – to do that while also remaining clear-eyed about who the aggressor is. Who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place.“But Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of that,” he continued. “All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest. That’s why he’s doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their superyachts.”Meyers also blasted Democrats for their feckless response, referring to comments from Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, that “we’ll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration.”“What is wrong with all of you?” Meyers fumed. “You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration? Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox. And guess what? Neither of us is getting what we fucking want!“Seriously, Democrats, show some spine,” he added. “Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job?”Jon StewartAnd on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mulled an offer by Elon Musk to appear for an interview on the show, as long as it was unedited. “After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It’s unedited,’” Stewart said. “So sure, we’d be delighted.”Stewart added that he would “sweeten the pot” and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wanted their conversation to last. “The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever,” he said.Musk later appeared to renege on his offer, posting on X that “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem” and not “bipartisan”.“The guy who custom-made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270m to elect thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart laughed. “I’m really not sure what he thinks bipartisan means, but it’s generally not ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party.’ That’s not bipartisan, that’s just the same shit.“Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about Doge,” he continued. “I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.“But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit.” More

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      Why this is no time for Zelenskyy to grovel to Trump | Paul Taylor

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      For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this is no time to grovel.After last Friday’s ambush in the Oval Office – where the Ukrainian president, who has led his country in resistance to three years of brutal Russian aggression, was beaten up in public by Donald Trump and JD Vance – some European leaders, including Keir Starmer and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, rushed to urge him to mend fences with Washington. It was bad advice – and Zelenskyy should ignore it. In any case he doesn’t have much choice.The US president and his team have since made it clear that they want his scalp as part of their plan to rush through a ceasefire deal with Moscow that would leave Ukraine partitioned, without US or Nato security guarantees, but with US companies pouring in to exploit its strategic minerals. In the mafia style that he wields so convincingly, Trump unleashed his attack dogs to call for Zelenskyy’s removal, and declared “this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing”. Then he pulled the plug on US military assistance to Kyiv in an attempt to force Ukraine to its knees and impose Vladimir Putin’s terms for an end to the fighting.It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration isn’t interested in mending fences with Zelenskyy, so he would merely court more humiliation without gaining extra arms supplies or security guarantees if he went crawling to his tormentors now. The man who refused to surrender to Putin’s invasion should not yield now to Trump’s ultimatums and extortion.He would do better to pressure his European supporters to deliver fast on their promises, while dangling the same reward of access to Ukrainian rare earths if they do so. This could become part of a package for an accelerated EU accession process for Kyiv.If Trump goes further, as he may well do, and cuts off the US intelligence feed to Ukraine and access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications, European countries must step in fast to help Kyiv using the EU’s government satellite network to avoid being totally blinded. The US should beware of taking such steps, which would signal to allies around the world that neither its security partnership nor its tech companies can be relied on for dependable service in a crisis.The White House train wreck happened so fast that some European leaders are still struggling to catch up with the significance of the event. That’s understandable, since it upended their mental universe, in which the transatlantic bond was always the bedrock of European security, enabling them to live in prosperity for decades without spending too much on defence because they were under a protective US shield.Within hours of the Oval Office bust-up, Rutte said it was “important that President Zelenskyy finds a way to restore his relationship with the American president and with the senior American leadership team”. You can’t blame him for trying to hold together the alliance that pays his wages and that has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years. But Rutte is in denial about the new reality in Washington. It will take time to adjust, but we don’t have that time.Likewise, Starmer’s call for bridge-building and mending relationships with the US, even as he declared Britain’s full support for Ukraine, was an exercise in mental gymnastics at a time when the Trump administration has decided to throw Kyiv under the bus in the quest for a new bonanza in relations with Russia. The UK’s security is so intertwined with the US, including the closest of intelligence-sharing relationships and reliance on US components and targeting software for its nuclear deterrent, that no British leader ever wants to face the nightmare choice between loyalty to Ukraine’s just cause and the so-called special relationship with Washington.It’s now up to the Europeans, including the UK, to show they are willing to go on supporting Ukraine practically, by emptying their ammunition stocks to keep Kyiv supplied and ramping up industrial production to deliver a steady flow of shells. They must remove remaining self-imposed restrictions on allowing Ukraine to use medium-range missiles to strike Russian bases and supply lines. And they must draw up practical plans for a security force to support Ukraine after a ceasefire with the assumption of little or no US support, despite Starmer’s plea for a US backstop.Zelenskyy cuts both a heroic and a tragic figure. He embodied Ukrainian resistance to tyranny when Russia struck, he has been a brave war leader under fire, yet now he increasingly looks like a martyr, to be torn asunder between a vengeful Putin and an unscrupulous Trump.But Zelenskyy and Ukraine can still emerge from this war as the successful defenders of their own and Europe’s freedom, provided European countries now back him to the hilt. Even if they cannot recover every inch of stolen territory, Ukrainians should fight on under Zelenskyy’s leadership and with European support for a fairer peace.

      Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Yes, Trump is a hypocrite. But is pointing that out an effective attack? | Jan-Werner Mueller

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      Historians and psychologists will study when exactly the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy started to descend into political disaster. A plausible contender for an answer is the – in itself trivial – moment when Brian Glenn, representative of the far-right outlet Real America’s Voice (newly admitted to the press pool) asked the Ukrainian president why he was not wearing a suit.That framing – the wartime president was somehow “disrespecting” America – was then picked up in the vile attack on Zelenskyy by JD Vance and repeated by a chorus of sycophants in the Republican party (including Glenn’s girlfriend Marjorie Taylor Greene). Critics immediately pointed out the hypocrisy: if Elon Musk can appear in a T-shirt and a baseball cap at a cabinet meeting, what is wrong with someone wearing fatigues? That gotcha might provide momentary psychological satisfaction – but it’s important to understand why the charges of hypocrisy achieve little with the Maga-world and why, as a matter of political psychology, something different is needed.According to a much-repeated maxim from a 17th-century French moralist, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. According to this logic, hypocrisy actually contributes to moral standards being upheld, as no one wants to be seen flaunting them openly. Wearing a suit is obviously not an important “norm” – part of the problem with the whole debate about aspiring authoritarians breaking norms and crashing through guardrails has been that those diagnosing violations of norms have not always distinguished between different kinds of norms. They have also not made it clear why some norms matter for democracy much more than others (Trump was criticized for breaking the “norm” of having a pet in the White House).The larger issue, though, is that charges of hypocrisy do not land if the supposed hypocrite is not committed to any kind of consistency in the first place. They can simply assert that that the inconsistency happens to be justified: Musk de facto presiding over the cabinet meeting is OK because, hey, he’s a genius who can see more clearly than the rest of us why stopping cancer research and making hurricanes more deadly are actually making America greater in the long run. Zelenskyy, by contrast, is a Democrat in disguise who just does “propaganda”, according to Vance.An even better option for seeming hypocrites is to assert their superiority over those making the charge: Viktor Orbán is frequently accused of having betrayed his original liberal convictions; after all, he had been financed by George Soros to spend time at Oxford, his political party had a liberal, even outright anti-clerical, and pro-European program – before Orbán transformed himself into a cheerleader for the international far right. The response easily available to the authoritarian prime minister is that he has actually learnt something over the course of his career – to wit, that liberalism doesn’t work in his country – whereas the liberal critics, contrary to their self-image as sophisticated thinkers, cling to dogmas. Vance has kept pulling the same trick: he has learnt to stop worrying about Trump being Hitler and simply come to love the good felon, always emphasizing that he was able to see something in Trump that lesser mortals fail to get.A final reason why the accusation of hypocrisy is hardly a knock-down argument – and the one most applicable to Maga – is that those always ready to lie can hardly be caught out by claims about inconsistency. It is now clear that the Trump campaign was based on deceptions – starting with strident denials of any association with the Project 2025 Christian nationalists-cum-authoritarians. By the same token, Trump’s nominees were not exactly truthful in their confirmation hearings; and the entire Republican party is now evidently lying about their intended spending cuts.Pointing out the inconsistencies between what Maga Republicans – it’s not clear at this point whether there are any others – say one day and do the next will not be seen as a cause for moral introspection; rather, the inconsistency is proof of Maga’s power. What observers call performative lying is part of authoritarianism – think of Vladimir Putin lying to his interlocutor’s’ face, smiling, knowing that they know that he is lying, but cannot do anything about it.What about broader audiences? Do they not care about hypocrisy? True, some might; but, given the self-enclosed rightwing media ecosphere which has been created in the United States over decades – and the attention deficit of the public more broadly, to put it bluntly – it is unlikely that finer points about inconsistencies will get much of a hearing.The challenge is to devise rhetoric – and powerful gestures – that do not rely on complicated comparisons but stress how Trump and Musk are sabotaging the country. Democrats might simply boycott the Trump address to Congress next week and instead hold rallies and town halls establishing meaningful connections with citizens who Republicans are now refusing to listen to – and, yes, on those occasions, also slip in a point about hypocrisy: that the party that blathers about “giving power to the people” is afraid of any contact with the people.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and is a Guardian US columnist More

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      JD Vance says US economic interests in Ukraine the best way to guarantee its security

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      US vice-president JD Vance said that the best way to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion is to guarantee the US has a financial interest in Ukraine’s future.“If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine,” Vance said in the interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity which aired Monday night.“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he said.The interview aired the same day the White House reportedly announced it was pausing military aid to Ukraine and days after US President Donald Trump clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.“What is the actual plan here? You can’t just fund the war forever. The American people won’t stand for that,” Vance said. This interview was recorded in advance, so it is unclear whether Vance was aware that the US would have paused aid by the time it aired.Vance and Hannity spoke about Friday’s contentious meeting, which Vance said he tried to diffuse. He said that the doors were still open for negotiations.“There was a lack of respect. There was a certain sense of entitlement,” Vance said about Zelenskyy. “They showed a clear unwillingness to discuss the peaceful settlement that President Trump has tried to bring to this situation.”Before Friday’s meeting, a minerals deal was meant to establish a joint fund between the US and Ukraine that would receive revenues from the mining of rare earth metals and other precious minerals in Ukraine, as well as some oil and gas revenues.Later in Monday’s interview, Vance doubled down on his criticism on European leaders over
free speech and democracy. The vice-president claimed that the Biden administration promoted censorship.“These ideas are going to destroy western civilization,” Vance said. “They’re going to destroy Europe, and they would destroy the United States of America if we allowed them to fester.”He went on to repeat anti-immigrant rhetoric, claiming mass migration poses a major threat to Europe. By the end of the interview, the conversation had turned to anti-trans topics, just days after Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. More

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      What Trump did during week 6: Gaza AI video and Zelenskyy meeting meltdown

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      During his sixth week back in office, Donald Trump and the vice-president, JD Vance, hosted Ukrainian president for what devolved into a shocking and explosive meeting.Trump accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of “gambling with world war three” while Vance berated the Ukrainian president in a storm of accusations and falsehoods about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Elsewhere in the Trump administration, Elon Musk again demanded that federal workers send an email detailing their recent accomplishments.Here’s what else happened last week.2 March 2025Day 42The fallout continued from Trump and Zelenskyy’s disastrous Oval Office meeting, as the Ukrainian leader sought to recalibrate and insisted a minerals deal was ready to be signed during a diplomatic visit to London. While Europe rallies behind Ukraine, Trump’s Republican allies, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said Zelenskyy may have to resign, a suggestion Senator Bernie Sanders called “horrific”. The Democratic senator Chris Murphy said Trump’s White House had in effect become “an arm of the Kremlin”.Also on Sunday:

      The health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, urged Americans to get the MMR vaccine in response to a growing measles epidemic in Texas, days after Kennedy, who has long sowed skepticism with his endorsement of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, downplayed the situation as “not unusual”.
      1 March 2025Day 41A federal judge in Washington blocked Trump from ousting the leader of a federal watchdog agency, ruling that the effort to terminate the official without cause was “unlawful”. The decision by the US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington allows Hampton Dellinger to remain the head of the office of special counsel, which protects federal whistleblowers. In her ruling, Jackson wrote that upholding the president’s ability to fire Dellinger would give him “a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will”. The case is likely to be decided by the supreme court. View image in fullscreenAlso on Saturday: 

      Musk renewed his demand that every federal employee send an email detailing their recent accomplishments, a week after the original demand sparked chaos and confusion across the government workforce.

      Trump signed an executive order establishing English as the official language of the US.

      Supporters of Ukraine protested against the Trump administration across the US, including a Vermont ski resort where Vance was vacationing with his family.
      28 February 2025Day 40In an explosive Oval Office meeting, Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, assailed and berated Zelenskyy in a storm of accusations and falsehoods about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tense exchange ended with Zelenskyy leaving the White House early, without signing a controversial minerals deal that was seen as key to unlocking US security guarantees for European peacekeepers in Ukraine. During the exchange, which played out publicly on live TV, Trump said Zelenskyy was “gambling with world war three” and told the Ukrainian president to come back “when he is ready for peace”. Hours later, Zelenskyy sought to de-escalate the situation in an interview on Fox News, but Trump appeared unmoved as he departed Washington for his Mar-a-Lago resort. View image in fullscreenAlso on Friday: 

      European leaders and Democrats rallied around Zelenskyy, voicing continued support for Ukraine, while Trump’s Republican allies demand the Ukrainian leader apologize.

      The White House said that classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago in 2022 had been returned to Trump.

      The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump had “asked Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to depart the White House” after their contentious exchange in the Oval Office. 

      The Democratic party sued Trump over a recent executive order it says violates federal election law by giving him too much power over the independent federal election commission.
      27 February 2025Day 39Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, arrived at the White House bearing a letter from King Charles as he quietly appealed to Trump not to abandon Ukraine as the US president searches for a speedy end to Russia’s brutal invasion of the country. In remarks, Starmer praised Trump for “changing the conversation” and making peace possible in Ukraine while Trump denied calling Zelenskyy a dictator, despite having done so, and suggested Vladimir Putin could be trusted. En route to Washington, Starmer pledged to raise the country’s defense spending, a commitment seen as a way to persuade Trump to provide a “backstop” for European security in Ukraine. And in a major relief for the British premier, Trump indicated that he would not slap harsh tariffs on the UK. View image in fullscreenAlso on Thursday: 

      A federal judge found that the mass firings of probationary employees as part of the Trump administration’s government downsizing effort were likely unlawful.

      The ruling came on the same day that the Trump administration moved to terminate hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce.

      Senate Democrats publicly – and some Republicans privately – raised concerns over the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid and cuts to USAid. 
      26 February 2025Day 38Donald Trump used the first full cabinet meeting of his second term to heap praise on Elon Musk and his billionaire ally’s mission to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. Though not a member of Trump’s cabinet, Musk attended and took center stage as the secretaries sat mostly silently for the hourlong meeting. The tech mogul defended Doge’s actions, which have stoked confusion and backlash, but conceded that the team would make mistakes, citing a decision to cancel an Ebola prevention effort that was “quickly” reinstated. During the summit, Trump also threatened to slap 25% tariffs on the European Union and announced that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would visit the White House to sign a minerals deal with the US.View image in fullscreenAlso on Wednesday: 

      A new White House memo instructed federal agencies to submit plans for “a significant reduction” in their staff by 13 March, potentially setting the stage to shrink the government workforce by tens of thousands more in the coming weeks. A top Senate Democrat warned that Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as Zelenskyy and Ukraine.

      A Pentagon memo filed in court on Wednesday said transgender service members would be separated from the US military unless they receive an exemption.

      The supreme court handed the president his first victory, granting the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court’s deadline for the government to resume nearly $2bn in foreign aid payments.
      25 February 2025Day 37In a dramatic vote, House Republicans unified behind a budget blueprint, taking a major step toward advancing Donald Trump’s “big BEAUTIFUL” tax cut and immigration agenda. But vulnerable Republicans face a brewing backlash over the plan, which would almost certainly require significant reductions to social safety net programs that serve the poor. House Democrats plan to hammer Republicans over their support for the measure and the potential cuts to Medicaid required to pay for it as they plot a return to power in next year’s midterms. But Trump’s fiscal plan is far from guaranteed: Republican negotiators from both the House and Senate must now reconcile their competing budget blueprints to move forward.Also on Tuesday: 

      The White House said it would pick which media outlets are allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, drawing sharp condemnation from the White House Correspondents’ Association, which warned: “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

      The Trump administration announced that immigrants in the US without authorization could face fines and prison time if they fail to submit their personal data to a government registry while the president floated the creation of a “gold card” visa that would give wealthy foreigners a pathway to citizenship for a $5m fee.
      24 February 2025Day 36The US office of personnel management told agency officials that federal workers were not required to respond to billionaire Elon Musk’s demand that they defend their recent accomplishments or risk being fired, even as Donald Trump indicated support for the ultimatum. The email sparked widespread chaos and confusion amid ongoing turmoil Musk’s Doge has inflicted on the federal workforce. After government departments gave their employees differing instructions as to whether they should respond to the message, OPM, which manages the federal workforce, announced that compliance with the email was voluntary and that failing to do so by midnight would not be considered a resignation, as Musk had warned.Also on Monday: 

      France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, warned Donald Trump against a “surrender” of Ukraine during a visit to the White House, as the US president said Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end the conflict. (The Kremlin has pushed back on this.)

      Earlier in the day, the US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against an EU-Ukrainian resolution condemning Russia on the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion, another sign of Trump’s sharp turn toward Putin.  
      The Guardian is tracking the presidency’s first 100 days. Find days 1-35 in our full guide. More

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      Trump has utterly changed the rules of engagement. World leaders must learn this – and quickly | Simon Tisdall

      by

      It’s not only about Donald Trump. It’s not just about saving Ukraine, or defeating Russia, or how to boost Europe’s security, or what to do about an America gone rogue. It’s about a world turned upside down – a dark, fretful, more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, trust is fungible, principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. It’s an ugly, disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals and brazen lies. It’s been coming for a while; the US president is its noisy harbinger.Take the issues one at a time. Trump is a toxic symptom of the wider malaise. For sure, he is an extraordinarily malign, unfeeling and irresponsible man. He cares nothing for the people he leads, seeing them merely as an audience for his vulgar showmanship. His undeserved humiliation of Ukraine’s valiant leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was, he crowed, “great television”. As president, Trump wields enormous power and influence. But Potus is not omnipotent. America’s vanquished Democrats are slowly finding their voice. Connecticut senator Chris Murphy shows how it should be done. Don’t bite your lip. Don’t play by rules Trump ignores. When Trump tried to blame diversity hiring policies for January’s deadly Potomac midair collision, Murphy hit back fiercely.“Everybody in this country should be outraged that Donald Trump is standing up on that podium and lying to you – deliberately lying to you,” Murphy fumed. Trump was at it again when he mugged Zelenskyy last week. But it is not passing unchallenged. Street protests in Britain and the US followed. A campaign gathers pace to block Trump’s planned UK state visit. Opinion polls show growing opposition.It seems strange to talk about “resistance”, as if a Nazi-style wartime occupation is under way. Yet resisting Trump is what our leaders must do. The world’s most admired democracy is held hostage by a far-right clique of thugs and chancers. Its leader calls himself “king” and talks of a presidency for life. Elon Musk and Steve Bannon raise stiff-armed salutes. European neofascists drool adulation from afar.Trump’s minions attack or subvert the agencies of government, the judiciary and free press, terrorising and intimidating those whose loyalty they impugn. Their propagandists, so-called tech barons, have a reach Joseph Goebbels would envy. And just like Vladimir Putin, Russia’s dictator, JD Vance, Trump’s loudmouth hitman, fights a regressive, anti-democratic culture war for “Christian values” and a narrow, bigoted orthodoxy.Ukraine, despite Trump’s betrayal, remains the epitome of resistance. The Ukrainian people are fighting for freedom, sovereignty and democratic self-determination. The issue is simple. Since the US cannot any longer be relied upon, Europe’s leaders know what they must do: supply more and better weapons for Kyiv, such as Taurus missiles; provide more humanitarian aid and finance, obtained by seizing $300bn in frozen Russian funds; and collectively raise their defence spending. From leaders such as Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, we need less polite subservience and more honest defiance.To be effective, European leaders need to put concerted pressure on the US government to provide credible, long-term security guarantees for Ukraine and a backstop for any force that the UK and Europe deploy to monitor the ceasefire. It’s reasonable to expect the US to support a European peace initiative. If it does not, an open rupture with Washington should not be dodged. Equally, they need to put more pressure on Russia, too, to halt its daily slaughter and bombing in Ukraine’s cities. Putin could stop this war today – after all, he alone started it. The fact he refuses to do so is proof, if it were needed, of Zelenskyy’s contention that he cannot be trusted in anything he says. He must be squeezed further.Right now, the opposite is happening. Military analysts warn that a gleeful Kremlin, encouraged by western discord, may step up its offensive in the east and try to capitalise on Ukraine’s demoralisation, perhaps even reinstating Putin’s original plan to seize the whole country. To deter such scenarios, EU leaders, meeting again in Brussels on Thursday after their London weekend talks, must finally bury their differences and draw a line.Starmer says that he and Macron are now developing a plan. Good. The leading European Nato powers should demand an immediate halt to all fighting in Ukraine and Kursk. They should launch a peace process inclusive of all interested parties, without preconditions or prior concessions. If Putin balks, they must withdraw their diplomats, close borders with Russia, move to interdict its exports, mobilise their armed forces – and set a deadline for providing defensive air cover for all unoccupied Ukrainian territory. Russia must be reminded that the west has teeth, too – and will, if forced, resist Putin’s unlawful aggression with everything it has got. Enough of Trump’s scaremongering nonsense about a third world war. Putin is a mass murderer, not a mad murderer. He’s also a coward.Given Trump’s treachery and threats to cut military aid, only a strong, united Europe stands a chance of preventing Ukraine’s defeat on the battlefield. Were Ukraine forced to capitulate to a Kremlin deal and lose its sovereignty, it would set a disastrous precedent for free people everywhere, from Taiwan and Tibet to Moldova, Estonia, Panama and Greenland.Marco Rubio, Trump’s obsequious secretary of state, spoke revealingly last month about his vision of a 21st-century world dominated by the US, Russia and China, and divided into 19th-century geopolitical spheres of influence. It was necessary to rebuild US relations with Moscow, Rubio argued, to maintain this imperious tripartite balance of power. This is the partitioned future that awaits if Trump’s surrender strategy prevails and he and Putin carve up Ukraine.Such a global catastrophe was foretold. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a nightmare world divvied up between three great empires or superstates, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, which deliberately stoke unceasing hostilities. Their shared characteristics: totalitarianism, mass surveillance, repression, immorality, gross inhumanity. Sound familiar? Annalena Baerbock, foreign minister of Germany, a country that knows much about fascism, past and present, recently said that a “new era of wickedness has begun”. Ukrainians, under occupation, are only too familiar with the evil that has descended upon their heads. This is the violent, lawless dystopia towards which the Americans in the Oval Office are leading us. Unless they are stopped. Unless we fight. Unless Europe resists.

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More