ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine: Russia plans to annex much of eastern Ukraine later this month, a senior US official warned, and the Mariupol steel mill that is the city’s last stronghold of resistance came under renewed assault a day after the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.
Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the US believes the Kremlin also will recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said.
Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
Mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, Internet and cellphone service has been severed and a Russian school curriculum will soon be imposed, Carpenter said. Ukraine’s government says Russia has introduced its ruble as currency there.
More than 100 people — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left Mariupol’s rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the northwest. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress.
Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.
At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin has denied it.
The Russian bombardment of the sprawling plant by air, tank and ship resumed after the partial evacuation, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which is helping to defend the mill, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Orlov said high-level negotiations were underway among Ukraine, Russia and international organizations on evacuating more people.
The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would be rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the southern port city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-on evacuation routes.
Before the weekend evacuation, overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the plant along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders who have refused Russian demands they surrender.
As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Russian forces have pounded much of the city into rubble, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Some Mariupol residents left on their own, often in damaged private cars.
As sunset approached, Mariupol resident Yaroslav Dmytryshyn rattled up to a reception center in Zaporizhzhia in a car with a back seat full of youngsters and two signs taped to the back window: “Children” and “Little ones.”
“I can’t believe we survived,” he said, looking worn but in good spirits after two days on the road.
“There is no Mariupol whatsoever,” he said. “Someone needs to rebuild it, and it will take millions of tons of gold.” He said they lived just across the railroad tracks from the steel plant. “Ruined,” he said. “The factory is gone completely.”
Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the cease-fire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said she could see the steelworks from her window, when she dared to look.
“We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the steel plant were afraid to board buses, fearing they would be taken to Russia. He said the UN assured him they could go to areas his government controls.
Mariupol lies in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, and is key to Russia’s campaign in the east. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere.
More than 1 million people, including nearly 200,000 children, have been taken from Ukraine to Russia, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday, according to state-owned news agency TASS.
Defense Ministry official Mikhail Mizintsev said that number included 11,550 people, including 1,847 children, in the previous 24 hours, “without the participation of the Ukrainian authorities.”
Those civilians “were evacuated to the territory of the Russian Federation from the dangerous regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” and other parts of Ukraine, according to the report. No details were provided.
Zelensky said Monday that at least 220 Ukrainian children have been killed by the Russian army since the war began, and 1,570 educational institutions have been destroyed or damaged.
Failing to seize Kyiv, the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted his focus to the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Russia said it struck dozens of military targets in the region, including concentrations of troops and weapons and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, west of the Donbas.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow’s troops are firing indiscriminately, killing many civilians while making only slow progress.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea Coast, Maksym Marchenko, said on Telegram that a Russian missile strike Monday caused deaths and injuries. He gave no details. Zelensky said the attack destroyed a dormitory and killed a 14-year-old boy.
Ukraine said Russia also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odesa. The bridge was heavily damaged in previous Russian strikes, and its destruction would cut a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania.
However a satellite image captured by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed the bridge still standing as of noon Monday.
Another image, taken Monday, showed nearly 50 Russian military helicopters at Stary Oskol, a Russian base close to the Ukrainian border and some 175 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The helicopters were stationed on the tarmac, runway and grass of the otherwise civilian airport, with military equipment nearby.
In the war in Ukraine, Russia has been flying military attack helicopters low to the ground to try to avoid anti-aircraft missiles.
US official: Russia plans to annex parts of eastern Ukraine
https://arab.news/494tk
US official: Russia plans to annex parts of eastern Ukraine
- Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions
- At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists
Trump to hold call with Putin in push for Ukraine ceasefire
- Says he would also speak to Ukraine's President Zelensky and NATO officials
- Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to see an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will hold a phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday as part of his long-running effort to end the war set off by Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Trump had vowed during the US election campaign to halt the conflict within a day of taking office, but his diplomatic efforts have so far yielded little progress.
Delegations from Russia and Ukraine held direct negotiations in Istanbul last week for the first time in almost three years, but the talks ended without a commitment to a ceasefire.
Both sides traded insults, with Ukraine accusing Moscow of sending a “dummy” delegation of low-ranking officials.
After the negotiations, Trump announced that he would speak by phone with the Russian president in a bid to end the “bloodbath” in Ukraine, which has destroyed large swathes of the country and displaced millions of people.
Trump also said he would speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO officials, expressing hope that a “ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war... will end.”
Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to see an end to the conflict, and has recently backed calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
So far, he has mainly focused on upping the pressure on Ukraine and abstained from criticizing Putin.
Both Moscow and Washington have previously stressed the need for a meeting on the conflict between Putin and Trump.
The US president has also argued that “nothing’s going to happen” on the conflict until he meets Putin face-to-face.
At the talks in Istanbul, which were also attended by US officials, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners each and trade ideas on a possible truce, but with no concrete commitment.
Ukraine’s top negotiator, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, said that the “next step” would be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
Russia said it had taken note of the request.
“We consider it possible, but only as a result of the work and upon achieving certain results in the form of an agreement between the two sides,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson said.
Ukraine’s western allies have since accused Putin of deliberately ignoring calls for a ceasefire and pushed for fresh sanctions against Russia.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy held a phone call with Trump on Sunday.
“Looking ahead to President Trump’s call with President Putin tomorrow, the leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“They also discussed the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and peace talks,” the spokesman said.
Zelensky also discussed possible sanctions with US Vice President JD Vance when they met after Pope Leo’s inaugural mass at the Vatican on Sunday.
“We discussed the talks in Istanbul, where the Russians sent a low-level delegation with no decision-making powers,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram following the meeting.
“We also touched on the need for sanctions against Russia, bilateral trade, defense cooperation, the situation on the battlefield and the future exchange of prisoners.”
A senior Ukrainian official from the president’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had also discussed preparations for Monday’s telephone conversation between Trump and Putin.
It was the first meeting between Zelensky and Vance since their heated White House exchange in February.
In the Oval Office, Vance publicly accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful” toward Trump, who told the Ukrainian leader he should be more grateful and that he had no “cards” to play in negotiations with Russia.
Ukraine on Sunday said that Russia had launched a record number of drones at the country overnight, targeting various regions, including the capital Kyiv, where a woman was killed.
Another man was killed in the southeastern Kherson region, where a railway station and private houses and cars were hit.
In an interview with Russian state TV published on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow’s aim was to “eliminate the causes that triggered this crisis, create the conditions for a lasting peace and guarantee Russia’s security,” without elaborating further.
Russia’s references to the “root causes” of the conflict typically refer to grievances with Kyiv and the West that Moscow has put forward as justification for launching the invasion in February 2022.
They include pledges to “de-Nazify” and demilitarise Ukraine, protect Russian speakers in the country’s east, push back against NATO expansion and stop Ukraine’s westward geopolitical drift.
However, Kyiv and the West say that Russia’s invasion is an imperial-style land grab.
Trump to carry out tariff threats if nations don’t negotiate in ‘good faith,’ US treasury chief warns
- Bessent: Notified countries likely to see April 2 rates return
- Says Trump administration was focused on its 18 most important trading relationships
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will impose tariffs at the rate he threatened last month on trading partners that do not negotiate in “good faith” on deals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in television interviews on Sunday.
He did not say what would constitute “good faith” negotiations or clarify the timing to announce any decisions to return a country to the various rates Trump initially imposed on April 2.
Trump has repeatedly reversed course since then, notably on April 9, when he lowered his tariff rates on most imported goods to 10 percent for 90 days to give negotiators time to hash out deals with other countries. He separately lowered the rate for Chinese goods to 30 percent. On Friday, he reiterated that his administration would send letters telling nations what their rates would be.
On Sunday, Bessent said the administration was focused on its 18 most important trading relationships and that the timing of any deals would also depend on whether countries were negotiating in good faith, with letters going out to those that did not.
“This means that they’re not negotiating in good faith. They are going to get a letter saying, ‘Here is the rate.’ So I would expect that everyone would come and negotiate in good faith,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
He added that those countries that are notified would likely see their rates return to the levels set on April 2.
Asked when any trade deals could be announced, Bessent separately told CNN’s “State of the Union” program: “Again, it will depend on whether they’re negotiating in good faith.”
“My other sense is that we will do a lot of regional deals -this is the rate for Central America. This is the rate for this part of Africa,” he added.
Trump’s ongoing trade wars have severely disrupted global trade flows and roiled financial markets as investors grapple with what Bessent has called the Republican president’s “strategic uncertainty,” in his drive to reshape economic relationships in the US’ favor
Companies of all sizes have been whipsawed by Trump’s swift imposition of tariffs and sudden reversals as they seek to manage supply chains, production, staffing and prices. Congress is also grappling with the tariffs as it weighs revenues and tax cuts in its spending bill.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, last week said it would have to start raising prices later in May due to the high costs of tariffs, prompting Trump to slam the company for blaming the increases on his trade policies.
“Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING,” Trump posted online on Saturday.
Bessent said he had spoken to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon on Saturday and that the company would absorb some tariffs. Representatives for the retailer declined to comment.
“Walmart is, in fact, going to ... eat some of the tariffs,” Bessent told NBC. “I didn’t apply any pressure.”
Britain poised to reset trade and defense ties with EU
- Starmer taking a political risk with closer EU ties
- Deal likely to cover defense, trade, fish
LONDON Britain is poised to agree the most significant reset of ties with the European Union since Brexit on Monday, seeking closer collaboration on trade and defense to help grow the economy and boost security on the continent.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who backed remaining in the EU, has made a bet that securing tangible benefits for Britons will outweigh any talk of “Brexit betrayal” from critics like Reform UK leader Nigel Farage when he agrees closer EU alignment at a summit in London.
Starmer will argue that the world has changed since Britain left the bloc in 2020, and at the heart of the new reset will be a defense and security pact that could pave the way for British defense companies to take part in a 150 billion euros ($167 billion) program to rearm Europe.
The reset follows US President Donald Trump’s upending of the post-war global order and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which have forced governments around the world to rethink ties on trade, defense and security. Britain struck a full trade deal with India earlier this month and secured some tariff relief from the United States. The EU has also accelerated efforts to forge trade deals with the likes of India and deepen partnerships with countries including Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore.
Negotiations between the two sides continued into Sunday evening, before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa were due in London on Monday morning. One EU diplomat cautioned that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” From the issues up for discussion, Britain is hoping to drastically reduce the border checks and paperwork slowing down UK and EU food and agricultural exports, while access to faster e-gates for UK travelers at EU airports would be hugely popular.
In return, Britain is expected to agree to a limited youth mobility scheme and could participate in the Erasmus+ student exchange program. France also wants a long-term deal on fishing rights, one of the most emotive issues during Brexit.
Limited room for maneuver
Britain’s vote to leave the EU in a historic referendum in 2016 revealed a country that was badly divided over everything from migration and sovereignty of power to culture and trade.
It helped trigger one of the most tumultuous periods in British political history, with five prime ministers holding office before Starmer arrived last July, and poisoned relations with Brussels.
Polls show a majority of Britons now regret the vote although they do not want to rejoin. Farage, who campaigned for Brexit for decades, leads opinion polls in Britain, giving Starmer limited room for maneuver.
But the prime minister and French President Emmanuel Macron have struck up a solid relationship over their support for Ukraine, and Starmer was not tainted with the Brexit rows that went before, helping to improve sentiment.
‘Break the taboo’
The economic benefit will be limited by Starmer’s promise to not rejoin the EU’s single market or customs union, but he has instead sought to negotiate better market access in some areas — a difficult task when the EU opposes so-called “cherry picking” of EU benefits without the obligations of membership.
Removing red tape on food trade will require Britain to accept EU oversight on standards, but Starmer is likely to argue that it is worth it to help lower the cost of food, and grow the sluggish economy.
Agreeing a longer-term fishing rights deal will also be opposed by Farage, while the opposition Conservative Party labelled Monday’s event as the “surrender summit.”
One trade expert who has advised politicians in both London and Brussels said the government needed to “break the taboo” on accepting EU rules, and doing so to help farmers and small businesses was smart.
Trade experts also said Britain benefited from the greater focus on defense, making the deal look more reciprocal, and said improved ties made sense in a more volatile world.
When “trade disruption is so visible and considerable” anything that reduced trade friction with a country’s biggest trading partner made sense, said Allie Renison, a former UK government trade official at consultancy SEC Newgate.
Ruling party tops Portugal polls marked by far-right surge
- Near complete official results showed PM Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance (AD) captured 32.7 percent of the vote
- AD gets 89 of parliament's 230 seats, which is short of the 116 seats required for a ruling majority
LISBON: Portugal’s incumbent center-right party won the most seats in the country’s third general election in three years on Sunday but again fell short of a parliamentary majority, while support for the far-right Chega rose.
The outcome threatens to extend political instability in the NATO and European Union member state as the bloc faces growing global trade tensions and works to strengthen its defenses.
Near complete official results showed that Prime Minister Luis Montenegro’s Democratic Alliance (AD) captured 32.7 percent of the vote in Sunday’s poll with the Socialist Party (PS) and Chega virtually tied in second place.
That would boost the AD’s seat tally in the 230-seat parliament to 89, short of the 116 seats required for a ruling majority.
The Socialists had 23.4 percent, their worst result in decades, trailed closely by Chega (“Enough“) with 22.6 percent wich would give each party 58 seats.
Even with the backing of upstart business-friendly party Liberal Initiative (IL) which won nine seats, the AD would still need the support of Chega to reach a majority to pass legislation.
But Montenegro, 52, a lawyer by profession, has refused any alliance with Chega, saying it is “unreliable” and “not suited to governing.”
“It is not clear that there will be increased governability following these results,” University of Lisbon political scientist Marina Costa Lobo told AFP, calling Chega “the big winner of the night.”
Support for Chega has grown in every general election since the party was founded in 2019 by Andre Ventura, a former trainee priest who later became a television football commentator.
It won 1.3 percent of the vote in a general election in 2019, the year it was founded, giving it a seat in parliament — the first time a far-right party had won representation in Portugal’s parliament since a coup in 1974 toppled a decades-long rightist dictatorship.
Chega became the third-largest force in parliament in the next general election in 2022 and quadrupled its parliamentary seats last year to 50, cementing its place in Portugal’s political landscape.
Like other far-right parties that have gained ground across Europe, Chega has tapped into hostility to immigration and concerns over crime.
There are still four seats left to be assigned representing Portuguese who live abroad, but those results will not be known for days.
Sunday’s election was triggered after Montenegro lost a parliamentary vote of confidence in March after less than a year in power.
He called for the vote following allegations of conflicts of interest related to his family’s consultancy business, which has several clients holding government contracts.
Montenegro denied any wrongdoing, saying he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the firm.
The AD formed a minority government after the last election. It passed a budget that raises pensions and public sector wages, and slashes income taxes for young people, because the PS abstained in key votes in parliament.
But relations between the two main parties soured after the confidence vote, and it is unclear if a weakened PS will be willing to allow the center-right to govern this time around.
Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, a 48-year-old economist, had accused Montenegro of engineering the election “to avoid explaining himself” about the firm’s activities to a parliamentary enquiry.
After the results were announced, he said he would call an internal party election to pick a new leader.
Montenegro has criticized the immigration policies of the previous Socialist government, accusing it of leaving Portugal in “bedlam.”
Under the Socialist Party, Portugal became one of Europe’s most open countries for immigrants.
Between 2017 and 2024, the number of foreigners living in Portugal quadrupled, reaching about 15 percent of the total population.
Montenegro has since toughened immigration policy, and during the campaign his government announced the expulsion of some 18,000 irregular migrants, leading critics to accuse it of pandering to far-right voters.
Polish centrist’s narrow presidential lead leaves pro-EU path in balance
- Centrist and liberal left parties score lower than expected
- Far-right voters to play crucial role in second round
WARSAW: Polish liberals performed worse than expected in a presidential election on Sunday, an exit poll showed, as Rafal Trzaskowski from ruling centrists Civic Coalition (KO) scraped to victory setting up a close fight for Warsaw’s pro-European path.
Trzaskowski placed first with 30.8 percent of the vote, ahead of Karol Nawrocki, the candidate backed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, who had 29.1 percent, according to an Ipsos exit poll. The gap was much narrower than the 4-7 percentage points seen in opinion polls before the vote.
If confirmed, the result would mean that Trzaskowski and Nawrocki will go head-to-head in a runoff vote on June 1 to determine whether Poland sticks firmly on the pro-European track set by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk or moves closer to nationalist admirers of US President Donald Trump.
“We are going for victory. I said that it would be close and it is close,” Trzaskowski told supporters. “There is a lot, a lot, of work ahead of us and we need determination.”
Nawrocki also told supporters he was confident of victory in the second round and called on the far-right to get behind him and “save Poland.”
“We have to win these elections so that there is no monopoly of power of one political group, so that there is no monolithic power in Poland,” he said.
An Opinia24 poll for private broadcaster TVN published after the first round gave Trzaskowski 46 percent in the run-off and Nawrocki 44 percent, with 10 percent of voters either undecided or refusing to say.
Far-right candidates Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun scored almost 22 percent combined, a historically high score.
Braun, who in 2023 used a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles in the country’s parliament, an incident that caused international outrage, won 6.2 percent of the vote according to the exit poll.
Mentzen stopped short of immediately endorsing Nawrocki.
“Voters... are not sacks of potatoes, they are not thrown from one place to another,” he said. “Each of our voters is a conscious, intelligent person and will make their own decision.”
Stanley Bill, Professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge, said the combined strong showing of nationalist and far-right parties meant the results were “a disappointment for the Trzaskowski camp and put wind in the sails of Nawrocki.”
“I would add to this that the results are a significant blow to Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition,” Bill added. “Candidates representing parties that won 53.7 percent of the vote in the 2023 parliamentary elections won only 44.9 percent of the vote this evening.”
Turnout was 66.8 percent according to the exit poll.
The vote in Poland took place on the same day as a presidential run-off vote in Romania, in which centrist Bucharest mayor, Nicusor Dan, appeared on course to defeat Euroskeptic hard-right lawmaker George Simion.
Presidential veto
In Poland, the president has the power to veto laws. A Trzaskowski victory in the second round would enable Tusk’s government to implement an agenda that includes rolling back judicial reforms introduced by PiS that critics say undermined the independence of the courts.
However, if Nawrocki wins, the impasse that has existed since Tusk became prime minister in 2023 would be set to continue. Until now, PiS-ally President Andrzej Duda has stymied Tusk’s efforts.
If the exit poll is confirmed, the other candidates in the first round, including Mentzen from the far-right Confederation Party, Parliament Speaker Szymon Holownia of the center-right Poland 2050 and Magdalena Biejat from the Left, will be eliminated.
Two updated polls that take into account partial official results will be published later in the evening and early on Monday morning.
Role in Europe
Trzaskowski has pledged to cement Poland’s role as a major player at the heart of European policymaking and work with the government to roll back PiS’s judicial changes.
Nawrocki’s campaign was rocked by allegations, which he denies, that he deceived an elderly man into selling him a flat in return for a promise of care he did not provide. But Trump showed support by meeting Nawrocki in the White House.
Nawrocki casts the election as a chance to stop Tusk achieving unchecked power and push back against liberal values represented by Trzaskowski, who as Warsaw mayor was a patron of LGBT marches and took down Christian crosses from public buildings.
Unlike some other euroskeptics in central Europe, Nawrocki supports military aid to help Ukraine fend off Russia. However, he has tapped into anti-Ukrainian sentiment among some Poles weary of an influx of refugees from their neighbor.
He has said Polish citizens should get priority in public services and criticized Kyiv’s attitude to exhumations of the remains of Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two.
