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Ukraine war briefing: conflict could end if Russia economically or militarily ‘exhausted’, says Germany’s Merz

German chancellor Friedrich Merz has told the Munich Security Council Russia’s war against Ukraine will “only end when Russia is at least economically, potentially militarily, exhausted”. The German chancellor described the security gathering as a seismograph for the state of US-European relations. Merz said the Ukraine war “had forced Europe to return from a vacation from world history”. With Russia’s war against Ukraine entering its fifth year, the conflict was high on the agenda at the security conference. French president Emmanuel Macron said any peace settlement must protect Ukraine, preserve European security and disincentivize Russia from attempting another invasion, while not providing the rest of the world with a “calamitous example to follow”. He said it was a “huge strategic mistake” to urge Ukraine to accept it was defeated. “One day Russians will have to reckon with the enormity of the crime committed in their name, with the futility of the pretexts and the devastating, longer term effects on their country, but until that time comes, we will not lower the guard.” Several top European leaders were scheduled to meet at the conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday for talks about the conflict, the French presidency said. Macron said any peace deal between Ukraine and Russia had to involve Europe. “I want to be very clear: you can negotiate without the Europeans, if you prefer, but it will not bring a peace at the table.” A US official said secretary of state Marco Rubio was not attending those talks because of a packed schedule, but was “engaging on Russia-Ukraine in many of his meetings” in Munich. Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said he discussed ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, whose country is a close partner of Moscow. Wang told Sybiga Beijing was “willing to provide Ukraine with new humanitarian aid”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout. Meanwhile, diplomatic negotiations on Ukraine will take place in Geneva on Tuesday, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters. A US delegation including envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will participate in trilateral talks with representatives from Russia and Ukraine in the afternoon, the source said. Ukraine could hold elections if there was a two to three month ceasefire with Russia, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference Zelenskyy said he would be happy, in principle, to hold a poll “as quick as possible,” but said the war had to stop first, and Ukraine had to be given security guarantees. “If president Trump … pushes Putin [into a] ceasefire [that will last for] two, three months, we will do elections.” Zelenskyy also said Trump wanted to agree on a peace deal “all at once,” because he “like things in one big package,” like he did with his “one, big, beautiful bill”. But the Ukrainian president said the sequence of getting things agreed was important. Zelenskyy said Russia’s territorial demands were about Moscow’s ambitions to get Ukraine, bit by bit, a point he has emphasised to the US. He said compromises had already been made by Ukraine. “We made a lot of compromises. Putin and his friends, they are not in prison. This is the biggest compromise that the world made already.” He said Ukraine “can’t forget” how many people were killed during the war, but he said Kyiv was ready to end it at any time. Britain has said it would send another £540m worth of weapons to Ukraine, including spending £150m on buying US made interceptors, using a Nato-run funding scheme for the first time. The latest commitment came before a meeting of the 50 country Ukraine Contact Group, which coordinates international weapons supplies to Kyiv, immediately after the Nato defence ministers summit. Britain has not previously used Nato’s Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (Purl) before. It was devised last year as a mechanism for European countries to buy US weapons for Ukraine, after the US said it would no longer donate them. The remaining £390m will be spent on supplying 1,000 Lightweight Multirole Missiles (LMMs), which are manufactured in Belfast, to urgently bolster Ukraine’s air defences, which are struggling against nightly onslaughts of Russian attacks. A Ukrainian missile attack killed two people and injured five on Friday in the Russian city of Belgorod near the border, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Gladkov, speaking in a video posted on Telegram, said the men were members of crews restoring damaged heating and electricity networks in the city. Restoration work will resume on Saturday as it was too dangerous for crews to be operating at night, Gladkov said.

Keir Starmer to call on UK and Europe to step up commitments to Nato

Keir Starmer will say the UK and Europe need to step up their commitments to Nato and avoid the risk of overdependence on the US for defence, as he sets out one of the main planks of his foreign policy vision on Saturday. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the prime minister will warn against the idea of the UK turning inwards on security, instead calling for a focus on what he will call the “sleeping giant” of shared European defence capabilities. The speech warns that voters will need to be primed to expect greater spending on defence, and to be told the reasons why, or face the “peddlers of easy answers” such as Reform UK and the Greens risking national security. Downing Street officials stress that Starmer’s call is not being made over fears that the US is no longer committed to Nato, and is more a response to demands from Washington that European nations commit more to defence. The speech will, however, be seen in the context of last year’s main US address to the conference in Germany, by Donald Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance. He used his speech to lambast European leaders for supposedly blocking free speech and being soft on migration, questioning whether such values were compatible with a US guarantee of mutual security. Trump has regularly questioned the value of Nato, including the claim in January that European nations “stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines” while supporting US troops in Afghanistan, comments that prompted a rare direct rebuke from Starmer. In extracts of the speech released in advance by No 10, Starmer said he was setting out “a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald US withdrawal, but answers the call for more burden-sharing in full, and remakes the ties that have served us so well”. In another pushback against the politics of Brexit, he condemned UK politicians who would rather avoid ties with Europe, after the Conservatives expressed scepticism about some defence-based links. “We are not the Britain of the Brexit years any more,” the speech says. “Because we know that, in dangerous times, we would not take control by turning inward – we would surrender it. And I won’t let that happen. “There is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history – and it is today’s reality too.” Calling for better cooperation on defence procurement, the speech says the UK should help create a new era for the continent. “As I see it – Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia’s, 10 times over,” Starmer will say. “We have huge defence capabilities. Yet, too often, all of this has added up to less than the sum of its parts. Across Europe, fragmented industrial planning and long, drawn out procurement mechanisms have led to gaps in some areas – and massive duplication in others.” Ministers must, he said, “level with the public and build consent for the decisions we will have to take to keep us all safe”. The PM will go on: “Because, if we don’t, the peddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right are ready. They will offer their solutions instead. It’s striking that the different ends of the spectrum share so much. Soft on Russia and weak on Nato – if not outright opposed. “The future they offer is one of division and then capitulation. The lamps would go out across Europe once again. But we will not let that happen.”

Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in effort to increase pressure on Iran

Donald Trump has ordered the world’s largest aircraft carrier to sail from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East in an effort to increase pressure on Iran amid discussions over curbing its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The USS Gerald R Ford and its supporting warships should take about three weeks to return to the region, where they will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, dramatically increasing the military firepower available to the US leader. On Tuesday, Trump said in an interview with Axios that he was “thinking” about sending a second carrier strike group to the Middle East, though at that point he said he believed Tehran was willing to strike a nuclear deal. The US and Iran held a round of indirect negotiations in Oman last week, and further discussions were expected to follow, but so far no date has been scheduled. Reports began circulating in US media on Thursday that the Ford was the carrier that had been nominated to set sail, a day after Trump met Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Washington to discuss the emerging negotiations with Iran. Iran has indicated it is willing to curb its nuclear enrichment programme in return for sanctions relief, but has rejected other demands. Israel wants Iran to limit its ballistic missile programme and cut support for Hezbollah and other proxy groups. Trump’s rhetoric about Iran has changed markedly over the past month. At first he appeared to suggest that he wanted to intervene – telling people protesting against the country’s regime that “help is coming”. But at the time the US had few military assets available. That changed with the arrival of the Lincoln carrier strike group, but by then the Iranian regime had largely regained control of the streets by killing thousands of people – possibly tens of thousands – in the most brutal crackdown in the country’s recent history. Meanwhile, the US president’s focus appeared to have moved to curbing Iran’s nuclear programme – already set back in a summer bombing campaign by Israeli and US air forces during last summer’s 12-day war. The Ford carrier strike group had been sent from the eastern Mediterranean at the end of October, and arrived in the Caribbean Sea in mid-November as Trump increased pressure on Venezeula’s former president Nicolás Maduro. It played a central role in the extraordinary seizure of Maduro by US forces in early January, and had remained in the Caribbean. However, sending the carrier and its allied warships back to the Middle East makes for an unusually long deployment: it left the US in June 2025 and has no obvious date of return. On Thursday Trump warned Iran that failure to reach a deal with his administration would be “very traumatic” and said he hoped that talks would conclude shortly. “I guess over the next month, something like that,” Trump said in response to a question about his timeline for striking a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme. “It should happen quickly. They should agree very quickly.” Then, on Friday, on a visit to the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen”. “For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.

Macron swipes at Trump tariffs and Greenland threats; Zelenskyy has strong words for Russia – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! I will be back tomorrow morning to bring you the speeches of several key leaders, including the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio (10:36), Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the UK’s Keir Starmer, who are all set to take to the Munich Security Conference’s stage tomorrow. Here is your summary of the first day: The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told Donald Trump that “in the era of great power rivalry, even the US will not be powerful enough to go alone” (14:21) in a wide-ranging speech rebuking some of the US criticism of Europe and calling for a new, reinvented transatlantic partnership (14:19, 14:24, 14:42) as he warned the old world order “no longer exists” (14:02). Merz also disclosed he had held initial talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, over the possibility of joining France’s nuclear umbrella, as part of his broader call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy (14:07, 14:15). Macron later picked up that theme, revealing his talks with Merz and few other European leaders and trailing a further speech on this in the coming weeks (19:38, 19:58). The French president also mounted a passionate, optimistic defence of Europe’s place in the world (19:18), dismissing US criticisms (19:18, 19:43, 20:20) and urging it to “reorganise our architecture of security” on the continent, including a long-term position on Russia (19:33). Elsewhere, Numerous European leaders reiterated their support for Ukraine and questioned Russia’s commitment to reaching a peace deal (11:01, 14:30, 16:15, 20:35). The Danish and Greenlandic prime ministers held “constructive” talks with the US secretary of state Marco Rubio amid continued US interest in acquiring Greenland (19:14). US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California governor Gavin Newsom criticised Trump policies as the two Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2028 sought to outline an alternative US vision of transatlantic and foreign policies (16:58, 18:22). And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Two Britons among three dead after avalanche in French Alps

Two Britons are among three skiers to have been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps. The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, off-piste skiing in Val d’Isère, in south-east France. A French national, who was skiing alone, was also killed. Albertville prosecutor Benoît Bachelet said the ski instructor, who avoided injury, tested negative after taking blood and drug tests. He added that another British person had sustained minor injuries. A manslaughter investigation was launched by the Albertville public prosecutor’s office and will be carried out by CRS Alpes mountain rescue police. France’s national weather service had issued a red alert for avalanche risk for the area on Thursday. In the Italian Alps, avalanches recently claimed the lives of 11 people in the space of seven days as a result of exceptionally unstable snow conditions. Those killed included a 70-year-old hiker, who was found dead last Sunday in the Veneto region of the country, which is hosting the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. Italy’s rescue service said the risk of avalanches was present across most of the Alpine range from west to east. With fresh snow accumulating on older and unstable layers, even the movement of a single skier can trigger an avalanche, the rescue service said in a statement to Reuters.

US ‘not powerful enough to go it alone’, Merz tells Munich conference

The US acting alone has reached the limits of its power and may already have lost its role as global leader, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, warned Donald Trump at the opening of the Munich Security Conference. Merz also disclosed he had held initial talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, over the possibility of joining France’s nuclear umbrella, underlining his call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy. In a speech on Friday designed to set a firm yet conciliatory tone about the future of the transatlantic partnership, Merz argued the old order had ended and in this new age of superpowers even the US was reaching the limits of going it alone. Referring to those that warned the international rules-based order was about to be destroyed, Merz said: “I fear we must put it even more bluntly. This order, however imperfect it was even at its best, no longer exists in that form.” Switching to English to ram home his message, Merz said: “In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone. Dear friends, being a part of Nato is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It is also the United States’ competitive advantage.” “So let’s repair and revive transatlantic trust together,” he added. The German chancellor’s speech opened the annual gathering of top global security figures including many European leaders and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. At last year’s conference, held a few weeks into Trump’s second term, the US vice-president, JD Vance, stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy and freedom of speech on the continent – a moment that set the tone for the last year. A series of statements and moves from the Trump administration targeting allies has followed, including Trump’s threat last month to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a move to secure US control of Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a Nato ally. Merz drew most applause from an audience brimming with hostility toward US unilateralism when he directly criticised the current American administration, saying: “The culture war of the Maga movement is not ours. Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech is directed against human dignity and the basic law. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. We stand by climate agreements and the World Health Organization.” “In the age of great powers, our freedom is no longer a given. It is threatened,” he said, adding that “firmness and willpower will be needed to assert this freedom”. Challenging Trump’s unilateral style, Merz added: “Autocracies may have followers, democracies have partners and allies.” At the same time, he said Europe must cast off its excessive dependence on the US, emphasising: “We won’t do that by writing off Nato.” He also urged the US president to recognise it was still possible to exhaust Russia economically and militarily, to the point where it was willing to come to the negotiating table over Ukraine. With Germany one of the European countries doing the most to boost its own defence spending, Merz clearly felt in a strong enough position to insist the US needed to do more to listen to European concerns about its security and the legitimacy of a sustained European pillar of Nato. Describing the Munich conference as a seismograph for the state of US-European relations, he said the Ukraine war “had forced Europe to return from a vacation from world history. Together we have entered an era that is once again marked by power and big-power politics.” These big powers, Merz said, “make their own rules. It is fast, harsh and often unpredictable. These powers exploit natural resources, technologies and supply chains using them as bargaining tools.” Merz was speaking as the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches and one year after Vance used his speech in the same hall to criticise Europeans for not taking enough control of their own defence arrangements and ignoring the demands of their electorates. Merz responded by saying it was crucial for the continent to change its mindset and fully exploit the “enormous” military, political, economic and technological potential of a “sovereign Europe”. Germany was striving for “partnership-based leadership” in Europe but retained no “hegemonic fantasies”. Merz said he had begun talks with Macron about a European nuclear deterrent. This, he said, must be firmly integrated into Nato’s nuclear arsenal and would not result in some parts of Europe being more defended than others. The chancellor stated that Germany was not abandoning Nato but wanted to establish a “strong, self-sustaining pillar” within the alliance. In his speech Macron insisted Europe must be at the table to negotiate a new arms control settlement with Russia covering ballistic missiles, deep strike capacity, defence technology and nuclear weapons. The French president said previous arms control treaties such as the now defunct INF Treaty were negotiated only by the US and this could not be repeated if Europe was to be taken seriously as a geopolitical power. He said initial talks about new European security architecture had already been held with the UK and Germany, but it was now time to broaden the consultations across Europe. Macron warned a Ukrainian peace settlement required applying extra pressure, but even if an agreement was reached Europe faced the challenge of how to “coexist with an unreconstructed aggressive Russia on our borders” that has “a bloated army and a defence industry on a sugar high”. Calling for a transparent independent European channel of communication with Russia, he said the post second world war security architecture had been “totally designed and framed during the cold war times” and needed a new articulation. Addressing the criticisms directed at Europe last year by Vance, Macron said “Europe has been vilified … as a repressive continent where speech is not free and where alternative facts cannot claim the same right of citizenship as truth itself – that outdated and cumbersome concept.”

Ebo Taylor obituary

Ebo Taylor, who has died aged 90, was one of the great innovators of west African music, a Ghanaian guitarist, arranger and singer-songwriter who never received the fame he deserved outside Africa until late in life, by when he had become a much-sampled cult hero. It was only in 2010, when he was 74, that he released Love and Death, his first solo album to be given an international distribution. Recorded with members of the Berlin-based Afrobeat academy, it included new versions of songs from earlier in his career that until now had been heard only on imports or compilations. And it showed how – like his far more celebrated Nigerian friend Fela Kuti – he had fused African and western styles to create a style of his own. Playing at Rich Mix in London four years later, he gave a rousing reminder of why he had been rightly treated as a star back home in Ghana for six decades. His starting point was Ghana’s best-known musical style, highlife, but this was now mixed with echoes of Fela’s Afrobeat, along with funk and jazz. Wearing a black hat and a colourful suit, and backed by a seven-piece band with two brass players, he switched from praise songs to Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, to Afrobeat, jazz-influenced guitar solos, and the remarkable title track of his 2010 album. Managing to blend highlife and Shakespeare, he intoned: “Brothers and sisters, lend me your ears, listen to my story of love and death … on our wedding day she gave me a kiss, it was the kiss of death.” From this dramatic opening he eased off into a jazz-funk workout and then lyrics sung in Ghanaian Fante. Later in the set he provided a solo treatment of an old Ghanaian song from the era of palm wine music, Yaa Amponsah, and left the stage as his band provided a rap version of one of his best-known songs, Heaven. It was an inspired fusion of the old and new. Despite his age, Taylor still had the ability to reach new audiences. He toured widely in Europe, his career boosted by another well-received album, Appia Kwa Bridge in 2012, followed by Yen Ara in 2018, along with re-releases of his earlier work. His final album, Ebo Taylor JID022 (2025), was a collaboration with the Los Angeles-based team of Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad for their label Jazz is Dead. The duo had brought Taylor to the US in 2022. Despite his style having changed owing to a stroke in 2018 – his voice had become more rasping, and he could no longer play the guitar – his performances were well received by American audiences. Many who had never heard Taylor playing live in his prime were introduced to his music when it was sampled by leading American R&B and hip-hop artists: Usher sampled Heaven for the song She Don’t Know, featuring Ludicris (2010), while Black Eyed Peas sampled Odofo Nyi Akyiri Biara for Ring the Alarm (2018). Born Delroy Taylor in the city of Cape Coast, in what was then the British colony of Gold Coast, he was the son of Samuel, a schoolteacher and church organist, and Sarah (nee Abraham), a trader and baker. While at Jubilee basic school he was encouraged by his father to play the piano, but he switched to guitar while at St Augustine’s College. Highlife was the dominant musical style in Ghana after independence in 1957, and Taylor played with the leading highlife bands of the era, the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band, and became known for his guitar work, songwriting and brass arrangements. In 1962 he moved to London “to learn intermediate and advanced forms of harmony” at the Eric Gilder School of Music in Soho, with his fees paid by the new Ghana government. He studied European classical composers, including Dvořák and Mozart, but was increasingly fascinated by jazz. He became friends with Kuti, then studying at Trinity College of Music, and they spent hours at Taylor’s flat in Willesden listening to jazz and analysing its structure. Discussions with Kuti led Taylor to start mixing highlife with jazz and funk, a fusion he explored with the London-based Black Star Highlife Band. The band included other Ghanaian music students, including his fellow former Stargazers Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio – later to find success with Osibisa. After returning to Ghana in 1965, Taylor put his new musical knowledge and ideas into practice. As a band-leader, arranger and producer he worked with several bands, including Uhuru Yenzu, the Apagya Show Band, and the Pelikans, and became a central figure at Essiebons Records, working with musicians including the singer-songwriter Pat Thomas and guitarist CK Mann. Among his solo albums was Ebo Taylor (1977), which included the original version of Heaven, and Twer Nyame (1978). The original version of Love and Death appeared on Conflict Nkrui!, recorded with Uhuru Yenzu in 1980. By 2001 he was concentrating on teaching highlife and jazz guitar at the University of Ghana. But with the growing popularity of African styles in the world music era he began to develop a cult following in the west, helped by the inclusion of his Heaven on the Soundway compilation Ghana Soundz (2002). Affectionately know as Uncle Ebo, Taylor settled in Saltpond, near Cape Coast. He collaborated with several of his children. In 2009 he formed the Bonze Konkoma Band, which included three of his sons, Ebo Jr, Henry and William. Henry and another son, Delroy, later played with him in the Saltpond City Band, and in his final years he played with Henry, William and Delroy in his Family Band. Ebo Jr died in 2022. Taylor is survived by his wife, Elina (nee Okwan), whom he married in 1973, and by 15 children. • Ebo (Delroy) Taylor, guitarist, singer-songwriter, bandleader and producer, born 6 January 1936; died 7 February 2026

NGOs sound alarm as foreign families flee camp holding suspected IS members

Most of the foreign families of suspected Islamic State fighters have left al-Hawl camp since the Syrian government took control of the facility, prompting security and humanitarian concerns over their whereabouts. About 6,000 women and children from 42 different countries were previously held in the foreigners’ annexe of al-Hawl camp in north-east Syria, which housed some of the most radical former members of the extremist group. The foreigners’ annexe was separate from the part of the camp that contained about 20,000 Syrians and Iraqis. All of those held in the camp are arbitrarily detained as they have not been tried or charged for their alleged involvement in IS, and many of the residents are young children. On Friday, humanitarian groups said the foreigners’ annexe had been emptied almost entirely of its former residents and that most of the families left for Idlib. They said foreign women and children had been gradually leaving the foreigners’ annexe since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) abandoned the facility to the advancing Syrian government forces on 20 January. “All of the foreign women have escaped in this period,” said Jihan Hanan, who directed the al-Hawl camp until its takeover by Damascus last month. “Every day, cars would come and take them at night and take them to Idlib. It wasn’t done in an organised way.” The escape of IS-linked individuals from al-Hawl and other detention facilities was a long-running concern for the international community, which warned that a mass-exodus could help IS reconstitute itself across Syria and Iraq. The US military had transferred about 3,000 IS detainees to prisons in Iraq over the past month and was expected to finish the transfer of about 4,000 more over the coming days, which could facilitate the exit of US military forces from Syria. It was unclear how exactly the families left al-Hawl, whether they were let out or they escaped. A camp resident of central Asian descent told the Guardian that she was able to escape by “crawling through the fence” and that she was now in Idlib. An NGO worker said they were aware of at least one case where a woman who escaped the camp crossed into Turkey and suggested others may have done the same, but cautioned that the lack of oversight made it impossible to know where residents ended up. The Syrian government has been approached for comment. It has previously blamed escapes on the SDF, which it said abandoned the facility without coordinating with Damascus. Beatrice Eriksson, a spokesperson for the rights organisation Repatriate the Children, said: “The past two weeks, children and mothers have been moved or released in a highly chaotic context, without clarity on who is responsible or what protection measures are in place.” During two visits to the camp in the week after its handover to Syrian government forces, the Guardian saw cut fences and frequent escape attempts by residents of the foreigners’ annexe. Fighters of central Asian descent were taking women from the annexe into their cars, with their destination unknown, while others clamoured at the outer walls of the camps, arguing with guards to let their relatives out. Of the dozen or so women the Guardian spoke to in the camp, almost all expressed their desire to be released to Idlib, where they said relatives were waiting for them. Security guards and fighters expressed sympathy for the detainees, saying their continued detention was an injustice. Outside the camp’s gates, security officers from the interior ministry guarded the gates. Some took off running as their walkie-talkies squawked: “They escaped, they escaped!” Their supervising officer laughed as the men ran, joking that if it were up to him, he would just open the gates. It was unclear where the families who left the camp would go next. Some women told humanitarian workers they believed they would be repatriated – something that would require the consent of the home government. Eriksson said the disorganised nature of the release left women and children vulnerable to trafficking or recruitment to violent extremist groups and urged states to intervene to repatriate their citizens. She added: “Ending arbitrary detention is necessary, but the immediate priority must be to identify and protect these children and families, and to move them through safe, dignified processes involving international cooperation – not to leave them to navigate a conflict zone on their own.” Many states have refused to take back their nationals, despite the pleas of Kurdish forces who guarded the camp and humanitarian groups who said detention conditions were substandard and unlawful. “We’ve lost everything, all those years that we’ve been working on this issue,” said Hanan. She shared a video of a camp resident standing in her ransacked office, with the man vowing to find and kill her, referring to her by name and calling her a “pig”. “I know this man. I tried to get him released from the camp, but the security agencies said he was a risk. Now that he’s out, I and all the humanitarian workers are in danger,” Hanan said.