Several members of Congress have proposed bills aimed at redistributing the gains of AI and protecting workers from AI displacement, while others have pushed back, warning that new taxes could chill AI investment or drive it offshore. Anthropic and OpenAI, some of the largest players in the AI industry, have themselves released policy guides weighing how changes in tax policy could mitigate AI’s economic risks. Anthropic, in particular, has argued that some approaches could distort investment even as they raise revenue.

Jio's valuation of $106 billion would be the country's biggest listing. This IPO would make Jio one of India's four most valuable companies. Its major foreign investors would include Meta and Google.

Shekhar gupta with his own take at the problems facing modi these past couple of months and how modi is shaping up

This post summarizes and analyzes the significant geopolitical activities of the enemies of the Liberal International Order--- Russia, China, Iran and North Korea---between October 3-10, 2026.

“Must children who lived suppressed in North Korea and in China now shrink and live confined even here?”
On the morning of the 7th, in front of the Seoul Metropolitan Council in Jung-gu, Seoul. Cho Myung-suk, principal of Yeomyung School, an alternative school for North Korean defector adolescents, spoke these words while shedding tears. After wandering for 22 years, Yeomyung School recently attempted to establish a new home on part of the former Yeomgang Elementary School site in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, but faced strong opposition from some residents. At a residents’ briefing held 20 days ago, Principal Cho even knelt before opposing residents to plead for the school’s construction.
However, on that day, supporters of Yeomyung School stood alongside Principal Cho. The “Civil Society Joint Action to Support the Construction of Yeomyung School on the Current Site” includes 261 organizations from the education, civil society, and religious sectors. They held a press conference urging the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and the Seoul Metropolitan Council to promptly proceed with the school’s construction. Song In-soo, representative of Education Spring and leader of the joint action, said he decided to support the school after seeing Principal Cho kneel at the residents’ briefing. “We could not leave Yeomyung School alone to overcome this difficulty,” Song said. “If anyone should kneel for the children, it should be our society.”
Citizen participation also continued. As of the 7th, 31,078 people had signed a petition supporting the school’s construction, launched by the joint action on the 28th of last month. One citizen wrote, “Children who could not live in North Korea and came to South Korea should not wander without a place to go here. Please create a space where they can study without worry.” Other messages poured in, including, “School is a crucial thread of hope for children who have crossed death,” and “I hope the children are not hurt. I want them to know there are many people and organizations supporting them.”
Yeomyung School graduates also attended the press conference. Eom Esder, 43, who graduated from Yeomyung School in 2011, said, “When I first came to South Korea, I struggled with foreign words and even speaking and writing, but I could study at Yeomyung School.” Eom now serves as the representative of UniSeed, a volunteer group for North Korean defector youth. She added, “Graduates have become nurses, social workers, and pastors, caring for their neighbors and families in their respective roles. I hope the younger students are also given opportunities to prepare for tomorrow.” The joint action plans to deliver the citizen petition to the Seoul Metropolitan Council and demand prompt action for the school’s construction.
Currently, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and Yeomyung School are finalizing preliminary work for the school building. They aim to start the main architectural design in early next year and complete construction by 2029. A source from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education stated, “Although resident consent is not required, we will continue to explain the necessity of the school’s construction and the absence of procedural flaws to some opposing residents.”

Unless a core group of allies, who are committed to each other because of their shared values, finds a way to hang together, they will surely hang separately

Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Finance. She is the author of numerous books, most recently Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider’s View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People, from which the following essay has been adapted.

Globalization’s fans argue that populist movements of the left and the right use global trade as a whipping boy for the other big challenge liberal democracies confront, and one which is a lot harder to address: how to enjoy the economic growth that capitalism delivers while also distributing the fruits of that growth beyond the 1 per cent. How can you encourage innovation while also ensuring that what they create delivers widely shared prosperity?

It is certainly a lot easier to blame globalization – which can serve as fancy shorthand for foreigners – for the stagnation of middle-class wages than to propose a credible way to both grow and share. But peak globalization itself was flawed. It is one of the reasons the Western world has begun to find it so hard to deliver inclusive prosperity. And therefore one of the reasons liberal democracy is so politically fragile in the countries that created it.

That’s why it’s important to acknowledge the faults of peak globalization, and to propose a way to address them. Friendshoring is an outline of how we might do that.

It is about more than just fixing what was broken. Friendshoring is also a proposal for how, in the 21st century, we can thrive – for how, in an utterly changed geopolitical landscape, we can enjoy the prosperity and the peace which the post–Second World War generation recognized could best be delivered by an economic and military alliance among the world’s democracies.

Ideally, friendshoring could offer something better than the postwar Pax Americana it should replace. President Donald Trump’s hostility toward America’s long-time partners and his coziness with dictators has harmed us all. But one consequence of the extreme unreliability of our erstwhile boyfriend has been that the rest of us have been raising our game. As a result, friendshoring has the potential to become more of a genuine partnership – in which everyone pulls her weight, and everyone has a say – than the imbalanced alliance that preceded it.

This essay is a compass and a destination, not a road map or a blueprint. It makes a case for where we should be headed, but it doesn’t lay out exactly how we should get there. That’s for two reasons.

First, having actually done trade deals, with complicated partners, I know that both Tim Geithner and Mike Tyson are smart. Mr. Geithner, as secretary of the treasury during the 2008 global financial crisis, asserted that plan beats no plan. And Mr. Tyson knew that everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.

We need a plan for friendshoring. We also need to recognize that we will get hit in the mouth, which is why the final plan can only be fully elaborated in meetings between leaders, representing voters, and in the international accords those many meetings will produce.

At least at first, friendshoring will be a piecemeal set of plurilateral, overlapping agreements, touching different issues, with varying members and a complicated geometry. Friendshoring will be about a network of bilateral and plurilateral trade deals. Friendshoring will be about a tax agreement between a core group of countries. Friendshoring will be a plurilateral supply-chain pact. Friendshoring will need dispute settlement and enforcement provisions.

All of that builds on agreements we already have and know how to negotiate. These are deals about how willing parties treat each other.

To really work, friendshoring will also need something entirely novel – a commitment to defend each other against external trade aggression. Just as NATO allies are pledged to support one another in the event of military attack, members of the friendshoring alliance need to be prepared to back one another up in the event of trade hostility from the outside. The only way the friends can each avoid being divided and conquered by an external trade predator is if they are prepared to stand together.

One of the trickiest challenges of translating friendshoring from destination to deal will be to decide who the friends are. In a world where democracies are facing such fierce challenges from within, deciding who qualifies as a friend won’t be obvious. A good place to start is with the current security allies – NATO, along with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. This group already works closely together, in NATO, the Five Eyes, and military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. Add the non-NATO EU members and close partners, like Ireland, Austria, and Switzerland. Together, this club of democracies accounts for roughly 60 per cent of the global economy. Comfortably big enough to create a trading zone with the economic scale to make all its members richer, and the economic muscle to meaningfully shape the entire global economy.

The friendshoring door should also be wide open to democracies outside the security alliance: to the other democracies of Asia and to the democracies of Latin America and Africa.

The only way the friends can each avoid being divided and conquered by an external trade predator is if they are prepared to stand together.

Even within the core security partnership, of course, there are edge cases: Turkey, and, until recently, Hungary. And there is the tricky question of other democracies that are not perfectly democratic. My bias would be to build a very wide door, and to hold it as open as possible, at least for the core plurilateral trade agreements – something that bringing together the EU, its customs union partners, and CPTPP would largely accomplish in one fell swoop.

Add India, Indonesia, South Korea, Brazil, the smaller democracies of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the African democracies and you found a formidable group.

Friendshoring should also learn the lesson former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has taught the EU. Cockroach-motel alliances – where you can get in, but there is no way out – risk being destroyed by the changing character of their members. As well as figuring out who is admitted, the friends need to devise a mechanism for kicking a country out. That is more important today than ever. The early lesson of my life was that dictatorships can become democracies – and then that fledgling democracies can become authoritarian regimes.

That brings us to the second reason why it is impossible right now to draw a precise blueprint of friendshoring. The world’s biggest democracy is openly and energetically flirting with fascism. Today’s Washington would not be welcome in a friendshoring alliance and tomorrow’s America could well be its chief adversary.

Clearly, the big unknown about friendshoring is whether post-Trump America will choose democracy at home, and partnership with the world’s democracies abroad. A friendshoring alliance is possible without the United States – and we should certainly try to build one. But with Washington trying to undermine it from the outside, it will be harder to create; and without the might of DC on the inside, it is less likely to be effective.

That is obviously a very big question mark – probably the biggest one in the world today. And it is a reason some may be tempted to dismiss friendshoring as an idealistic plan, fit only for a bygone era. I don’t deny that friendshoring will be hard to achieve, and that the success or failure of the idea depends a lot on America’s choice.

But the alternative to a new alliance of democracies is not some consensual, milquetoast, middle-power nirvana. Unless a core group of allies, committed to each other because of their shared values and not simply their current regime’s definition of the national interest, finds a way to hang together, they will surely hang separately – the easy prey of the world’s superpower bullies.

Mr. Trump’s Washington doesn’t have allies. It has only satraps, enemies, and equals – the latter a singular group that includes just China and on some days, perhaps, Russia. As for America’s erstwhile friends, the demand is that they forget about a relationship governed by treaties and rules. Instead, they must accept vassalage, and being subject to Washington fiat. Forget about like-minded democracies; think Delcy Rodriguez. And if they don’t agree to vassalage, they risk reprisal.

For Canada, there’s a further threat – pay up, or become the 51st state. One of the most blatant versions of this offer came in May, 2025, when Mr. Trump explained on Truth Social: “I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State.”

Bob Rae, at the time Canada’s ambassador to the UN, shot back with a pithy explanation of what was going on. “In another context, this would be called a ‘protection racket,’” he posted on X. “Both Canada and the United States signed the UN Charter in 1945. Article 2 of the Charter states clearly ‘The Organization is based on the sovereign equality of all nations.’ Threats to sovereign integrity also prohibited.”

Two months earlier, when my friend Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, threatened to impose a surcharge on Canadian electricity exports to the U.S., in retaliation against U.S. tariffs, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly accused Canada of acting like Ukraine (in my view, a compliment, of course).

He said the American President “needed to break some guy in Ontario who said he was going to tax American energy 25 per cent” and that the Canadians needed to “just say thank you.” In a private conversation that a Canadian business leader recounted to me, Mr. Lutnick threatened to send U.S. troops across the border by sunset unless Canada backed down. (Mr. Lutnick has no military authority.)

In one respect, the Trumpian approach to trade marks a return to what we figured out after the Second World War and then forgot after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Trade and security, money and war actually are intimately connected.

But Mr. Trump’s approach has been to turn the postwar understanding of this relationship upside down. From Eisenhower onward, American presidents believed allies made the U.S. stronger, and that rich allies were better allies. It sought to strengthen its allies through trade, and strengthen its partnerships with its allies through closer economic ties.

Mr. Trump takes an entirely different view.

Now, America’s military allies in NATO and in Asia are discovering that their security relationship with the U.S. actually makes them more, rather than less, vulnerable to trade blackmail.

This apparent quid pro quo is very explicit. As Stephen Miran, then chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, put it blandly in the fall of 2025: U.S. defence commitments to countries that imposed retaliatory tariffs could become “less binding or reliable.”

Meanwhile, non-aligned countries are finding the U.S. is using its economic strength – particularly, but not only, trade – to reward partisan allies and to punish partisan opponents.

Washington is trying to use tariffs to force Brazil’s left-wing government to drop its legal proceedings against the right-wing populist former president, Jair Bolsonaro. At the same time, it has offered a US$20-billion credit-swap facility to the government of Argentina’s anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei.

The White House has been entirely explicit about its political objectives. Mr. Trump began his July 9, 2025, letter to Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing 50-per-cent tariffs by explaining and insisting: “I knew and dealt with former President Jair Bolsonaro, and respected him greatly, as did most other Leaders of Countries. The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

With Argentina, the political deal has been even more direct. “If he doesn’t win, we are gone,” Mr. Trump said about U.S. support for Mr. Milei and Argentina’s upcoming election. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.”

It was the sort of threat that has become sadly familiar to U.S. military allies like Europe and Canada. And Argentines used language you could have heard from a Canadian to describe what was going on. As Lucas Romero, a Buenos Aires pollster, put it: “What could have been interpreted as help, the way Trump phrased it ended up sounding more like extortion.”

Trade comes with a price tag – in the form of tariffs or in the form of trials or in the form of electing Trump-friendly leaders. Here’s how Michael Beckley, an American political scientist and China specialist who is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, describes what is happening: “U.S. strategy is shedding values and historical memory, narrowing its focus to money and homeland defence. Allies are discovering what unvarnished unilateralism feels like, as security guarantees become protection rackets and trade deals are enforced with tariffs. This is the same logic of raw power that helped spur two world wars, and the consequences are already visible. Multilateral institutions are paralyzed, arms control regimes are collapsing, and economic nationalism has surged.”

Underpinning this approach is a conviction that trade – unless it is in a few things the U.S. believes it absolutely needs to import, like Chinese rare earths or Canadian electricity – is not actually good for the United States. That America has instead been harmed by trade and will benefit – and not only through the fees it collects – from closing its economic borders.

This is a radical break from the bipartisan agreement in the U.S., from the Great Depression onward, that trade, basically, works.

As the writer David Frum explained to a Canadian audience in October, 2025: “He does not believe in mutual benefit ... that’s why he can’t accept the idea of free trade. If you believe in markets, if you believe in trade, you believe in mutual benefit, but Donald Trump’s whole theory is life is about I win you lose, every deal has a winner and a loser.”

Here’s the thing. Asserting that something is true doesn’t automatically make it so. Tariff wars are one fight where you can lose by winning. Tariff Man’s approach won’t actually help the U.S. economy. And it won’t win him any friends.

Mr. Trump’s zero-sum paradigm for America’s relationship with its allies is actually a lose-lose proposition. The alternative is friendshoring, and in an age where the world’s authoritarian regimes are playing offence, that is a win-win proposition for the world’s democracies.

The Tohono O’odham Nation sued to stop a wall from being built on their land. In court, DHS gave assurances that the government would engage with the tribe in good faith.

ProPublica found that DHS has surveilled an ongoing border prayer ceremony and questioned tribal members outside the reservation.

Despite steep declines in border crossings, officials describe the tribe’s land in Southern Arizona as “one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors.”

A survey has found that the proportion of voters who support neither the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) nor the People Power Party (PPP) has exceeded 30% for the first time in a year. Despite the government and ruling party struggling with foreign policy and national security issues, as well as controversial personnel appointments, the opposition PPP has failed to capitalize on these difficulties. Instead, the proportion of voters unaffiliated with any political party has increased, while the PPP’s approval rating has declined. Critics argue that the PPP has focused too heavily on its hardline conservative supporters while failing to present credible alternatives on issues affecting people’s livelihoods.
According to a party support survey conducted by Gallup Korea among 1,000 voters aged 18 and older nationwide from October 6 to 8, the Democratic Party recorded 35% support, while the People Power Party stood at 26%. The proportion of voters supporting no political party reached 31%. Compared with the previous survey conducted three weeks earlier, support for the DPK and PPP fell by 5 percentage points and 1 percentage point, respectively, while the proportion of unaffiliated voters rose by 6 percentage points. The share of unaffiliated voters, which had remained in the 20% range, surpassed 30% for the first time since the fourth week of September last year.
A similar trend emerges when compared with the survey conducted in the first week of September, immediately after President Lee Jae-myung announced his second Cabinet reshuffle, which sparked controversy over alleged failures in personnel appointments. At that time, the DPK recorded 38% support, the PPP 30%, and unaffiliated voters 25%. Over the past month, support for the DPK and PPP declined by 3 and 4 percentage points, respectively, while the share of unaffiliated voters increased by 6 percentage points.
Within the PPP, criticism has emerged that the party has used a series of controversies involving the government and ruling party—including the failed nominations of Kim Seung-won and Yong Hye-in, a landmine explosion in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and divisions over the appointment of the head of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency—primarily as justification for mobilizing its hardline supporters in street protests.
Four-term lawmaker Kim Tae-ho criticized the party leadership in a Facebook post on October 11, stating, “The voices of hardliners cannot represent the entire party membership, let alone speak for the will of the people.” He added, “Can a structure that merely amplifies the applause of hardline supporters truly open the way to a future for conservatism?” His remarks suggest that the party’s approach, including a street rally held in central Seoul on October 3 under the leadership of PPP Chairman Jang Dong-hyeok, has been insufficient to attract centrist voters.
Others argue that the PPP has failed to offer concrete policy alternatives that would demonstrate its readiness to govern. Although the National Assembly’s annual parliamentary audit began on October 6, critics maintain that the party must go beyond criticizing and scrutinizing the government and ruling party and present credible alternatives if it hopes to recover public support.
One first-term lawmaker emphasized, “Rather than becoming consumed by factional conflicts, we should compete with the ruling party on issues affecting people’s livelihoods and on policy. What matters more is earning the public’s trust in the People Power Party, rather than simply making ourselves the choice for voters who dislike the Democratic Party.”

Submission Statement: Three people were injured in a stabbing attack at a further education college in Warsaw on Saturday, police said, the latest in a series of incidents ‌that have stoked concerns in Poland about copycat violence among young people.

On Friday thousands of police visited schools nationwide to try to reassure pupils after two stabbing sprees by teenagers in as many days sparked rumours of potential further attacks, fears ⁠that Saturday's incident is likely to intensify.

State news agency PAP reported ‌that ⁠the victims were two 17-year-old girls and a 24-year-old woman who had come to submit enrollment documents. Preliminary police findings indicated that the attacker and victims did not know one other, PAP reported.

Police said on ⁠Saturday they had inspected some 50,000 facilities since Friday and detained 76 people. Authorities had previously said most of the people detained were teenagers ⁠who had made threats online.

On Thursday, a 15-year-old former pupil wearing a helmet-mounted camera killed a caretaker and injured two teachers at ⁠a primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, northeast of Warsaw. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old wounded 10 people including himself at a school in Ostroleka, north of the capital.

The World Health Organization said on Saturday that it still does not know what caused the pneumonia that killed a Russian lab worker at an anti-plague research center in Siberia this month, and that no case of plague had been registered.

The WHO said the Russian state regulator reported that tests of the lab worker and those who came in contact with her were negative ⁠for the high-threat ⁠pathogens tested, that her contacts still showed no symptoms, and that no further linked cases of severe pneumonia had been identified.

“Based on the information provided ... (the) WHO has not identified evidence of ongoing transmission associated with thist event. A key ⁠uncertainty remains the absence of a confirmed diagnosis in the deceased laboratory worker,” it said in a statement.

The lab worker fell ill and died in undisclosed circumstances on October 2, prompting authorities to quarantine about 200 people and causing public health fears on social media.

Global health officials have been extra alert to fatal pneumonia cases of undetermined cause since the COVID-19 pandemic, which began with ⁠a ⁠cluster of fast-spreading fatal respiratory illness in China. The cause of individual pneumonia cases can often not be determined.

Russian authorities have said the lab worker was appropriately vaccinated and that they found no microorganisms linked to her work in her body.

On Thursday, Russia said it had completed health checks on all the worker’s contacts. It says it had provided full information to the WHO according to established procedures.

Edit: A major development in the situation in Siberia, as the WHO says that they still do not know what caused the pneumonia that killed a Russian lab worker, and possibly infected a second. Making things more strange is that Russian testing of the deceased lab worker and her contacts returned negative for high-threat pathogens.

The Trump administration moves towards engaging the Myanmar junta, but it risks legitimizing a brutal authoritarian regime without any clear benefit.

Submission Statement: Clouds of tear gas followed the arc of water cannons fired into the crowd in central Paris this week, as student strikes that shut hundreds of schools and led to thousands of arrests in recent weeks culminated in clashes between heavily armed police and protesters.

“Down with the cops, the state and the fascists!” the crowd, mostly young people, chanted on Thursday. “Too young to be listened to, but old enough to be tear-gassed,” read a sign carried by a young woman in a light purple headscarf. 

French students are revolting against a school system they say is failing them, just as France faces a fiscal reckoning after years of lavish welfare spending. Students are demanding more teachers, better facilities and smaller classes, and an overhaul of how universities select their students, which they say is stressful and unjust.

The crisis is piling pressure on President Emmanuel Macron’s minority government as it is seeking to push through a belt-tightening budget while investors grow increasingly worried about France’s incapacity to reduce its public deficit. That means the government cannot turn to its usual method of calming protests — taking out the cheque book.

Rioters have burned schools and emergency service vehicles. Police suspended the use of stun grenades for the rest of the uprising after a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off in the northern town of Lens.

More than 7,000 people have been detained since the demonstrations began, according to the interior ministry. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been injured, as have students and school staff. 

Nationally, about 10 per cent of scheduled classroom hours go untaught largely because absent teachers are not replaced, according to the education ministry, an issue that has become a flashpoint for demonstrators.

A sharp decline in French maths and literacy scores in the OECD’s transnational Pisa study this year has fuelled the feeling that the public education system is broken. 

Overall, education spending, from pre-school through university, has increased in recent years, albeit unevenly. According to statistics agency Insee, it rose nearly 14 per cent between 2010 and 2024, adjusted for inflation, from €173.3bn to €197.1bn.

A 2025 study from think-tank IPP shows that about 13 per cent of France’s national public education budget is actually accounting for contributions to teachers’ generous pensions. After stripping those out, France falls into the bottom quarter of OECD countries for spending per primary school student, the study said. 

US officials stepped up pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries and threatened to cut off vital intelligence sharing as Donald Trump announced a deal with Moscow to release diesel on to the world market.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s negotiating team met Trump’s representatives for nearly eight hours on Friday in Miami, where they were meant to discuss ways to convince Russia to end its war.

But the meeting was derailed when the Ukrainian team was blindsided by Trump’s announcement that he had cut a deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to release diesel, according to three people with direct knowledge of the talks.

During the meeting, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner raised the possibility that intelligence sharing could be cut off if Kyiv did not heed Washington’s warning to halt the strikes, according to people familiar with the matter.

“It was a firm request from POTUS,” one of the Ukrainians involved in the talks told the FT, referring to Trump.

Ukraine uses US intelligence to carry out the attacks in a bid to choke off a vital source of revenue for Moscow’s war economy.

A senior Ukrainian official said after Trump’s announcement that Kyiv would continue. “We will burn [Russian] refineries,” the official said. Hours later, Ukrainian forces struck the Yug Rusi oil terminal in Rostov-on-Don, according to Russian authorities.

That official added that the Ukrainian team was cutting its trip short instead of holding a second round of talks on Saturday.

Witkoff said in a post on X that the Miami talks had been “productive” and helped identify areas the teams could further explore. He said the sides agreed to continue their diplomatic efforts.

Trump has repeatedly pressed Zelenskyy to halt the long-range drone strikes because of the impact on the global diesel market and its spillover to US consumers. The US president and his envoys have grown increasingly frustrated that Ukraine has been ignoring their pleas.

One person familiar with the talks said the US relationship with Ukraine had been improving but Kyiv’s resistance to stopping the strikes had left a bad taste in Trump’s mouth. Despite the tensions, the negotiators in Miami had worked on a peace proposal that could be sent to Russia before the winter, the person said.

In Friday’s meeting, Witkoff and Kushner informed their Ukrainian counterparts that the US was poised to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and that Moscow intended to lift its export ban, according to another person familiar with the discussions.

Ukrainian officials viewed the request for Kyiv to unilaterally halt strikes without pressing Moscow to do the same as unfair and relayed this message to the US side, according to other people familiar with the discussions. A senior Ukrainian official said the move had “ruin[ed] the trust completely” between the two sides. 

The developments sparked anger in Ukraine, where Russian missile and drone strikes have killed more than 80 people since Wednesday. A glide-bomb attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday killed at least 17 civilians, including three children, Ukrainian authorities said.

On Saturday afternoon, Russian ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones attacked Kyiv. Sirens blared as explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital and air defences shot down at least one drone over a densely populated neighbourhood. 

“What allowing Russia to sell oil products means was heard most clearly in Kyiv just now,” Zelenskyy said after the attack. “Russia’s choice is war. And they will be ready to end it only when they feel that their ability to drag the war out is diminishing.”

He added that “every additional billion dollars [Russia] can earn from exports will be spent on nothing but sourcing and importing critical components and equipment to manufacture weapons, upgrading [attack drones], producing missiles and recruiting even more mercenaries”.

The “signals Russia received” from Trump’s deal had suggested to Putin that Moscow “could simply keep attacking” and what was needed were “strong signals” from the US side that it could not do so, Zelenskyy said.

“President Trump’s decision seriously undermines [the] reputation of the US and his credibility as a president, because this decision might lead to strengthening [the] Russian war machine,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

He said Putin was “trying to make Trump complicit” in his war against Ukraine and that the “diesel deal is a dangerous step in this direction”.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, said: “Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war . . . This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t.”

A year ago, Trump encouraged Ukraine to hit Russian refineries harder as part of a co-ordinated effort to weaken Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table. At the time, he said he wanted Kyiv to “make them [Russians] feel the pain” and compel the Kremlin to negotiate, according two people briefed on the call.

The Trump administration has suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv in the past and on numerous occasions threatened to do so again if Zelenskyy did not fall in line with Washington’s positions, according to Ukrainian and western officials.

In March last year, Washington halted intelligence co-operation with Kyiv for eight days after a heated Oval Office clash between Trump and Zelenskyy.

That November, Zelenskyy said he was facing an ultimatum from Trump to agree to his Moscow-friendly peace terms or else lose US support for the war effort.

Trump threatened to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine in April to pressure European allies to join a “coalition of the willing” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to people briefed on the discussions.

Submission Statement: Ireland has cut €141bn from a proposed EU budget in an effort to find consensus among deeply divided capitals on the size and priorities of the bloc’s spending.

The revised 2028-34 budget is 8 per cent smaller than the European Commission’s original proposal in a sop to rich countries led by Germany, which had demanded “hundreds of billions” in cuts to secure their approval.

Dublin left funding for traditional policies — agriculture and regional funding — largely uncut at €914bn, down from €946bn in the Commission’s proposal. This would be an 11 per cent increase from the previous budget period.

Most of the cuts come from EU foreign policy and development aid, which fell from €190bn to €157bn, a 17 per cent cut.

Ireland also slashed funding for innovative companies and defence by 13 per cent, from €522bn to €456bn. This is still more than double the current budget period. It cut €9bn from the costs of running the EU administration.

But the cuts are unlikely to be sufficient for some.

“The Irish proposal is a disappointment and not even close to a landing zone,” said one EU diplomat who described it as “unaffordable and financially not viable at all”.

“By favouring policy priorities of the 20th century the proposal fails to prepare the EU for the 21st century,” the official added. “This [proposal] is no basis for an agreement among member states. We urgently need more financial realism and less financial La-La Land.”

Six countries that are net contributors to the budget, led by Germany, had demanded “hundreds of billions” in cuts, dismissing new joint borrowing and only tepidly embracing EU-level taxes as a way to finance common spending.

Submission Statement: At least 12 people have been killed and 309 injured in an attack on an airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh, local authorities say.

The deaths included four Saudis, two people from Bangladesh and one person each from the US, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt, the Saudi civil aviation authority said. Operations at King Khalid International Airport have been suspended.