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Nigel Farage accused of ‘Maga stunts’ for saying he was denied access to Chagos Islands

Nigel Farage has been accused of “performing Maga stunts” after claiming the British government stopped him from travelling to the Chagos Islands on a humanitarian mission. The Reform UK leader said he had flown to the Maldives to join a delegation bringing aid to four Chagossians who are trying to establish a settlement on one of the archipelago’s islands to protest against Britain’s plans to transfer control of the territory to Mauritius. In a video posted on X on Saturday, Farage claimed the UK government had blocked his trip to the territory, which cannot be entered without a valid permit. Wearing a striped polo shirt and sunglasses around his neck, Farage said: “The British government are applying pressure on the president and the government of the Maldives to do everything within their power to stop me getting on that boat and going to the Chagos Islands. “Now if I was an Isis fighter crossing the Channel to Dover, they wouldn’t give a damn. No, they’d put me in a hotel, they’d give me three meals a day.” However, it is understood that the UK government was not given advance notice of Farage’s intention to travel to the islands and did not know he was in the Maldives prior to his comments on Saturday. Farage reportedly travelled by private jet to the Maldives where he spent just over a day before heading back to the UK for the Gorton and Denton byelection in Greater Manchester on Thursday. A Labour party source said: “Nigel Farage could have spent all weekend campaigning in the byelection in Manchester. Instead he flew 5,000 miles to the Maldives on a $60m private jet, had a moan at the British government, and flew straight back again. Twenty-three hours in the air to stand on a beach, while his candidate in Gorton and Denton has had to make do with the endorsement of Tommy Robinson instead.” Farage’s trip came after Donald Trump threw Britain’s Chagos Islands deal into fresh doubt. The US president has urged Keir Starmer not to “give away Diego Garcia”, the largest island on the archipelago, which is home to a joint UK-US military base. Government sources believe the US president soured on the deal because of the UK’s refusal to permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian reported last week. Up to 2,000 Chagossians were forcibly removed from the archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the military base. They were resettled mainly in Mauritius and Britain, with many wanting the right to return to their homeland. Farage said he had intended to travel to the archipelago’s Île du Coin, where the Chagossian campaigners arrived on Monday to establish a settlement. The former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace called Farage’s move a “cheap stunt” and accused him of “performing Maga stunts”, given the entry rules that apply to the entirety of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The UK Foreign Office website states: “The British Indian Ocean Territory is not a tourist destination. There are no commercial flights, access is restricted and you need a permit before you travel.” Wallace posted on X: “There are strict rules and permits about who can visit. Pub bores like Farage need to fill in a form! And the island base is full of serious people doing serious things.” Speaking to the Guardian, Wallace added: “Reform are treating us all for fools. These controls apply equally to all UK bases in Britain. MPs can’t just turn up at nuclear weapons facilities or special forces barracks.” Farage told the Daily Telegraph on Saturday he had received a phone call from a source in the Maldives government warning that the British authorities did not want him travelling to the Chagos Islands. In his two-and-a-half-minute video clip on X, Farage said: “Here I am, a member of parliament, leader of a political party that’s topping the polls. The British government, the high commissioner here, they’re doing everything they can. They’ve got search parties out trying to find me and they do not want me to leave this place.” A spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “Our primary concern at this point is to ensure the safe departure of a group of individuals from an island that is not fit for human habitation, and on which any health emergencies or extreme weather could pose a serious threat to life.” Reform UK has been approached for comment.

Mexican security forces reportedly kill drug cartel boss ‘El Mencho’

One of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers – the Mexican cartel boss known as “El Mencho” – has reportedly been killed by his country’s security forces. The drug lord, whose real name is Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, was killed on Sunday in the western state of Jalisco, Mexican newspapers reported, citing government sources. The 59-year-old gangster was the leader of a group that in recent years has become Mexico’s most powerful and notorious criminal organisation: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. While less internationally famous than the Sinaloa cartel of the now imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Jalisco group is a household name in Mexico where it is infamous for its displays of ultraviolence and its big, military-style arsenal. The US had offered a $15m (£11m) reward for the capture of the drug boss accused of smuggling huge quantities of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine across its southern border. In a sign of El Mencho’s huge influence across Mexico, as well as other parts of Latin America, his killing sparked an immediate outbreak of disorder across the region he ruled. Media reports said that on Sunday lunchtime “narco” roadblocks made from burning cars, buses and trucks could be seen across at least five Mexican states: Jalisco, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Michoacán and Tamaulipas. Video footage showed huge clouds of smoke rising into the skies above Puerto Vallarta, a major tourist city on Mexico’s west coast famed for its spectacular Pacific Ocean beaches. There were scenes of chaos in Jalisco’s capital, Guadalajara – one of the 2026 World Cup host cities – as panicked passengers sprinted for cover, apparently fearing reprisal attacks from El Mencho’s fighters. Armed men were seen torching vehicles in the heart of the city. Jalisco’s state governor, Pablo Lemus Navarro, urged its 8 million citizens to stay at home “until the situation is brought back under control”. Lemus said public transport services were being suspended and said locals should not travel on the state’s roads because of the “violent events” that had spread to at least five parts of the country. The US embassy in Mexico City also issued a security alert, urging US citizens to “shelter in place” in affected regions as a result of “ongoing security operations and related road blockages and criminal activity”. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, offered no immediate confirmation of El Mencho’s killing, telling reporters they would soon be briefed by her security council. It was not immediately clear where or how the narco-boss had been killed but reports suggested he had died during an operation in Tapalpa, a town about 80 miles south-west of Guadalajara. Footage published in one regional newspaper, El Occidental, showed scenes of what appeared to be heavy fighting. More details soon …

We need to promote Gramsci’s famous saying about the optimism of the will | Letter

Your article (‘The time of monsters’: everyone is quoting Gramsci – but what did he actually say, 14 February) rightly points to Antonio Gramsci’s actual thoughts on the morbid symptoms that appear as one world order disappears. But we also need to promote his other famous saying about “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”: the need to acknowledge the dire situation we face, while never losing hope that resistance can overcome evil. This is all the more important since the mainstream media overload us with reporting on “bad” news that creates a sense of hopelessness, while reporting very little on the resistance to it – resistance that is far more widespread than most people get to know, and which would generate a sense of hope. One of my hopes is that the Guardian does more to report the latter. Prof Helen Colley Manchester • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

France to summon US ambassador over comments on far-right activist’s death

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has said he will summon Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France, over comments related to the killing of the French far-right activist Quentin Deranque. Deranque was beaten to death in Lyon last week during a fight with allegedly hard-left activists. The US embassy in France and the US state department’s bureau of counter-terrorism said they were monitoring the case, writing on X that “violent radical leftism is on the rise” and should be treated as a public safety threat. Deranque’s death has put France on edge, stoking tensions between left and right ahead of the 2027 presidential vote. It has also drawn international attention. Donald Trump’s administration denounced what it called “terrorism” in France on Friday, prompting pushback from Paris. “We reject any use of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,” Barrot told Le Monde, France Inter and France Info. “We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.” The foreign ministry did not announce when the ambassador, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, would be summoned. Deranque, 23, died of head injuries after clashes on the sidelines of a 12 February demonstration against a politician from the leftwing France Unbowed party in Lyon. His death has been called “France’s Charlie Kirk moment”, referring to the killing last year of the US far-right commentator. More than 3,000 people marched in Lyon on Saturday in tribute to Deranque, with authorities deploying heavy security for fear of further clashes. The US state department’s under secretary for public diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, said on Friday that Deranque’s killing showed “why we treat political violence – terrorism – so harshly”. “Once you decide to kill people for their opinions instead of persuade them, you’ve opted out of civilisation,” she wrote on X. The state department’s bureau of counter-terrorism separately posted: “Violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety” – a post shared in French by the US embassy account. Deranque’s killing has also caused a diplomatic feud between France and Italy, whose rightwing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has warm ties with Trump. She called the death “a wound for all of Europe”, prompting the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to criticise her for speaking about French domestic affairs. Macron called for calm on Saturday during the Lyon march. Six men suspected of involvement in Deranque’s death have been charged over the killing, and a parliamentary assistant to a radical leftwing MP has been charged with complicity. Barrot said he had other topics to discuss with Kushner during the summons, including US decisions to impose sanctions on Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, and Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the international criminal court. He said they had been targeted by “unjustified and unjustifiable” measures, that he described as attacks on EU autonomy and the independence of the international justice system. Kushner was also summoned in August last year over a letter to Macron alleging the French state did not do enough to combat antisemitism. Foreign ministry officials met one of his representatives because he did not attend the summons personally. France’s Tribune de Dimanche newspaper reported that Macron had written to Trump asking him to lift the sanctions against Breton and Guillou. Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

Blackwater founder Erik Prince has joined the drone-warfare fray in Ukraine, SEC filings reveal

After multiple sources previously told the Guardian that Erik Prince – Maga ally and founder of the now defunct mercenary company Blackwater – was looking to work with Ukraine’s invaluable drone sector, recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents confirm he now is. Swarmer, which bills itself as a battle-tested Ukrainian startup specializing in autonomous drone software, filed for an initial public offering and has recruited Prince to help sell the company as non-executive chair. “Swarmer is a software-first defense technology company focused on collaborative autonomy and intelligent swarming, originating from the cauldron of modern combat in Ukraine,” said Prince in a letter to prospective stockholders in the filing, released earlier this month. “Since April 2024, Swarmer’s platform has been deployed in Ukraine with more than 100,000 real-world missions in active combat environments, informing the software and machine-learning models that feed into it.” Defense industry hawks have eyed the battlefield intelligence the Ukrainian military has accrued in over four years of combat with Russia. The war has caused close to 2m casualties, but global military elites, like Prince, are also seeing glimpses of what a future war between world powers might look like and what products the US or its geopolitical rival China will need to buy. Drones, which now account for roughly 70% of all combat casualties in Ukraine, are top of the list. On its website, Swarmer lauds endorsements from the newly installed Ukrainian defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who is aggressively lobbying the US and other Nato allies to buy into his country’s weapons industry. Swarmer products, powered by artificial intelligence, are on the cutting edge of the future of war, with software enabling pilots to control drone swarms. Swarmer mentions the potential profits in drone warfare in the same filing, noting to investors that “defense forces, including the US Department of Defense [and] Nato allies”, see “autonomous drone operations” as “requiring immediate investment”. In a July announcement on the grounds of the Pentagon, the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, declared that the US was “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance” in a memorandum calling for the mass production, purchase and adoption of all unmanned vehicle platforms. “Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine,” he said. Prince has made drones a central focus of his recent business. Last year he was involved in a controversial drone assassination program in Haiti, while recent reporting puts his mercenaries in the employ of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as drone operators. “Erik is trying to network with companies here, for Congo,” said an executive at a multinational defense contractor with business in Ukraine. “He poached some operators who served here too.” Through a spokesperson, Prince declined to comment on his work in Ukraine and about recruiting drone operators from there to serve in the DRC. Swarmer did not respond to a request for comment regarding its relationship with Prince. In the fall, Swarmer, which advertises several “mission templates” for drones ranging from surveillance to something it calls a “Killbox”, secured millions in investment. Prince and a legion of Silicon Valley executives, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have descended on Kyiv in recent years looking to score government contracts and access to both the software powering combat drones and the Ukrainian operators pioneering their flight. But even as a frontman, Prince comes to Swarmer as a highly controversial figure who is also a known associate of Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Steve Bannon. Blackwater – Prince’s former company that made millions in contracts with the Pentagon and the CIA – has become synonymous with the corruption and failures of the war in Iraq. A 2007 massacre in Baghdad at the hands of some of Prince’s mercenaries led to prison sentences, congressional inquiries and the company changing its name. Prince eventually resigned as the CEO in 2009, but hung around the defense contracting world and pursued ventures in China, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, South Sudan and Ukraine, where in 2020 he pitched Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a multibillion-dollar private army to help settle what was a frozen war in the eastern Donbas region. In September, multiple sources described to the Guardian how Prince was making several trips to Kyiv, courting Ukrainian drone makers who might be eager to sell him into their business – Swarmer fitting the profile of the type of company with which he was looking to do business. “I guess he finally found the company to invest in, in Ukraine,” said a former American special forces soldier with experience in Ukraine and knowledge of the defense companies operating there. Swarmer has featured in western media since its founding in 2023, along with several other Ukrainian tech companies emerging from the flurry of Pentagon and Nato weapons transfers to Ukraine and the rush to continue resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion by any means necessary. Mostly outgunned against the Kremlin’s vast arsenal and coffers, Ukraine has turned to drones and homegrown solutions as asymmetric equalizers. Recent remarks by Zelenskyy puts Swarmer among hundreds of other Ukrainian drone companies that are now active in the country. “As of today, we have 450 companies producing drones, 40 to 50 of which are top-tier,” said Zelenskyy in a recent speech. “Everyone wants to invest, so 2026 will be a year of investment in our technologies, primarily in drones.”

Greenland says ‘no, thanks’ to Trump’s US hospital boat

Greenland has said it does not need medical assistance from other countries, after Donald Trump said he was sending a hospital ship to the autonomous Danish territory he wants to acquire. The US president said he would dispatch the vessel in a social media post on Saturday, claiming that Greenlanders were not getting the healthcare they needed. “Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It’s on the way!!!” he added. His offer, however, was politely rejected by Nuuk. “That will be ‘no thanks’ from us,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the Greenlandic prime minister, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. “President Trump’s idea to send a US hospital ship here to Greenland has been duly noted. But we have a public health system where care is free for citizens,” he said. Trump has said repeatedly that the US needs to acquire Greenland for national security reasons, and appointed Landry as US special envoy to the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island in December. In Greenland, as in Denmark, access to healthcare is free at the point of use and funded by the taxpayer. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, responded to Trump’s social post by defending her country’s system. Writing on Facebook, Frederiksen said she was “happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health for all. Where it’s not insurances and wealth that determine whether you get proper treatment.” She added that Greenland had “the same approach” as Denmark. Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defence minister, also rejected Trump’s claim that people in Greenland were being denied medical treatment. “The Greenlandic population receives the healthcare it needs,” he told the Danish broadcaster DR. “They receive it either in Greenland, or, if they require specialised treatment, they receive it in Denmark. So it’s not as if there’s a need for a special healthcare initiative in Greenland.” Lund Poulsen added: “Trump is constantly tweeting about Greenland. So this is undoubtedly an expression of the new normal that has taken hold in international politics.” There are six hospitals in Greenland serving a population of fewer than 60,000 people. In early February, the territory’s government signed an agreement with Copenhagen to improve Greenlandic patients’ access to treatment in hospitals in Denmark. Earlier on Saturday, Denmark’s military coastguard said it had evacuated a crew member of a US submarine off the coast of Greenland after the sailor requested urgent medical attention. The Danish Joint Arctic Command said on its Facebook page the crew member had been retrieved by helicopter about 7 nautical miles off the coast of Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, and transferred to a hospital in the city. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump’s repeatedly expressed desire to control Greenland has put the US relationship with Denmark and its other Nato allies under significant strain. Last week, King Frederik of Denmark paid his second visit to Greenland in the space of 12 months in an attempt to demonstrate unity with the territory in the face of Trump’s overtures. The US president backed down on earlier threats to seize Greenland unilaterally after striking a “framework” deal in January with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, to ensure greater US influence. However, Frederiksen and the Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said at the Munich security conference this month they feared the US was still interested in taking control of the island. Frederiksen said pressure from the US was “unacceptable” and “outrageous”, while Nielsen said his country had never before felt threatened in such a way. Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report.

‘I’m going to fight’: freed Venezuelan activist on life after Maduro’s downfall

Jesús Armas was asleep inside Venezuela’s most infamous political prison at the start of January when a thunderous explosion and a blackout announced the start of a new era. The activist remembers roars of excitement rippling through the jail’s cells as befuddled guards scurried around “like something really big was happening”. Prisoners began to belt out Venezuela’s national anthem, a stirring battle cry against tyranny: “Glory to the brave people! … Down with the chains! … Death to oppression!” Armas and his fellow inmates had no idea what had caused the pre-dawn commotion on 3 January, although some suspected it was connected to the United States. Only three days later, during a rare family visit, did the 39-year-old learn that Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, had been captured during a nocturnal assault ordered by Donald Trump. “In that moment I realised … we had a real opportunity to have a transition to democracy,” Armas said last week after being allowed to leave the El Helicoide prison after 14 months – one of more than 440 political prisoners freed after Maduro’s demise. Four days after his release, Armas was still trying to comprehend the most startling twist in Venezuela’s turbulent recent history and how it might shape the country’s future. “It’s weird,” he said, while preparing to head to the latest pro-democracy protest since Maduro’s downfall. “We are not totally in a transition, but I think we are a few steps in that direction.” Just two months earlier, at the denouement of Maduro’s increasingly despotic rule, such displays of public defiance were inconceivable and would probably have been crushed by security forces. In 2024, more than 2,400 people – including Armas, who was abducted and tortured by men with machine guns – were imprisoned as Venezuela’s dictator tried to silence claims he had stolen the presidential election. But since Maduro’s removal the mood has shifted, with one recent poll showing a surge in optimism among Venezuelans after years of repression, privation and despair. Last week, Armas was one of thousands of mostly young demonstrators who gathered in cities across Venezuela to demand a full transition to democracy and the complete emptying of political jails. “I have the right to be in the streets and that’s why I’m here,” said María Fernández, 21, who joined a rally on the palm-dotted campus of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Agustín González, a 20-year-old law student, said he was marching because he wanted neither “imperialist tutelage nor continued authoritarianism” for his homeland. The fact that Venezuela’s return to democracy was not fully sealed by Maduro’s toppling is explained by the fact that his vice-president, a UCV alumna called Delcy Rodríguez, took the reins immediately after his departure. Trump officials concluded that leaving Venezuela in Rodríguez’s hands, rather than installing the Nobel-winning opposition leader, María Corina Machado, was the best way to avoid violence – and secure access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves – after its surgical strike on Maduro’s military base. “Delcy has done a very, very good job and the relationship is strong. The oil is coming out and a lot of money is being made,” Trump said on Friday after his energy secretary, Chris Wright, flew to Caracas – the most senior US official to do so in years. Six weeks after Maduro’s abduction, Rodríguez remains in power – as do many of his regime’s key figures, including the interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, and the defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López. Last week, in a rare interview with NBC News, Rodríguez insisted free and fair elections would “absolutely” be held – but declined to say when. Her brother, the national assembly chief, Jorge Rodríguez, dashed hopes a vote might be held in the “immediate” future. Armas understands better than most the bewildering disconnect between the unquestionable changes brought about by Maduro’s overthrow and the simultaneous maintenance of Venezuela’s undemocratic status quo. On 8 February, he remembers El Helicoide’s director approaching him with news that his prison nightmare was over: “Jesús, come with me … you’re getting out.” A few hours later intelligence agents were driving Armas to his family home to see his 90-year-old father, who he feared might die while he was incarcerated. “He didn’t say anything. He just cried,” the opposition leader recalled of their first hug in months. Soon after, Armas was cruising through Caracas’s streets in a convoy of motorbikes alongside colleagues including Juan Pablo Guanipa, a well-known opposition politician who had also just been released. “It was amazing … People were screaming [with] excitement,” he said. The elation was shortlived. As night fell, a group of armed heavies grabbed Guanipa and disappeared with him before he reappeared under house arrest, wearing an ankle tag. “I was in shock,” said Armas, who immediately grasped the limits of Venezuela’s incipient political thaw. “I thought: ‘OK, if this is happening to Juan Pablo, it’s going to happen to me too.’” Armas suspected senior officials had been spooked by the outpouring of emotion prompted by Guanipa’s release and feared demands for democracy might spiral out of control if a ceiling was not set. “They must be worried this could grow as people lose their fear … that this could be like a snowball that will grow and grow and grow,” said the activist, who returned to Caracas to continue his political struggle in 2021 after a spell studying at the University of Bristol as a recipient of the UK’s Chevening scholarship and living in London. Armas believed regime efforts to thwart a South American glasnost by targeting figures such as Guanipa, who was released on Thursday after the national assembly approved a limited amnesty law, might slow the march towards democracy, but would not halt it. “Right now my role is to lead the reorganisation of the opposition movement in Caracas and to try to be the voice of the political prisoners,” he said. “I’m going to fight until every political prisoner is free … And I will try to fight until we have a transition to democracy.”