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‘A lot of fear’: the families bearing brunt of Sweden’s immigration crackdown

“Sweden did this for us,” said Sofiye*, making a supportive scooping up gesture with her hands. “And then, bam.” She dropped them to the ground. Sofiye, who has three children, arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008, and for much of that time she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country. The family lived in a flat in a Stockholm suburb and Sofiye worked for the municipality in the home help department. She learned Swedish and her children went through the Swedish school system. Her youngest son was born in Sweden and her 18-year-old son, Hamza, who is studying in college to be a technician, doesn’t know life anywhere else. Three years ago, however, after unsuccessfully seeking refugee status four times, Sofiye lost her right to work and is now living under the threat of a deportation order. For the last two years she and two of her children have been living in limbo in an asylum return centre in an industrial area near Stockholm’s Arlanda airport The situation is causing her so much anxiety that for the last two months she has lost her appetite and been vomiting with stress. As she spoke to the Guardian she held a plastic bag into which she regularly retched. “I cannot sleep. I sleep just one or two hours. I throw up. I am so stressed. I don’t want to speak to the children because here,” she said, pointing to her head, “is occupied. I don’t know physically, mentally what I should do.” The centre, one of a growing number of reception and return facilities aimed at housing an estimated 11,000 asylum seekers in the coming years, is part of Sweden’s increasingly hostile asylum and immigration policy. The centre-right government, which depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, says it wants to “redirect focus” away from receiving asylum seekers to instead becoming a “country for labour immigration”. The government recently celebrated data showing that Sweden had its lowest level of asylum seekers since 1985, claiming that lower numbers “create better conditions for successful integration”. Thousands of people like Sofiye – who have lived in Sweden for years and are well-established in society and the job market, with children who were born in Sweden – face deportation. Among the recent policy changes include asylum seekers being placed in reception centres instead of being provided with individual accommodation who are then offered “repatriation grants” to leave the country voluntarily. The government has also introduced stricter conditions for gaining citizenship and tightened family reunification rules. Applicants must prove their identity through an in-person visit and provide more documentation than was previously the case. Committing a crime can now result in losing the right to live in Sweden for anyone who is not a Swedish citizen. In 2025 a total of 440 people were subjected to criminal deportations, according to government figures. “If you do not want to become part of this community, you should not come to Sweden,” the government has stated. The hostile environment is a far cry from Sweden’s immigration policies of the past. In 2014, at the start of a period when the number of people arriving to Europe from countries in the Middle East rose sharply, the then prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, made a speech urging Swedes to “open your hearts” to newcomers. The direction of travel is unlikely to change even with a general election next year, say observers, as the main political parties, including the opposition centre-left Social Democrats (SD), have embraced similar hardline policies. “Many people that we meet say to us: ‘We came to Sweden believing this was a country that respected human rights: where are they?’” said Nannie Sköld, a counsellor at Stockholm Stadsmission’s Who Am I Tomorrow? project, which provides legal and psychosocial support to individuals and families with deportation orders. The latest government figures show that 8,312 people returned to their home countries in 2025, the highest number in a decade, while the number of asylum seekers decreased by 30% on the previous year. “We meet people who came to Sweden for work or to study, and people who don’t have grounds for asylum,” said Sköld. “We also meet people who are fleeing from the Taliban or they are LGBTQ from Uganda, and who then see that their request for international protection is denied.” One of the changes that was having a particularly damaging impact is the decision to abolish “track changes”, she said. The new rule, which came into force at short notice last April, prevents people who have had their asylum applications rejected from applying for a residence permit, even if they have worked in Sweden. It also prevents those who had already obtained a work permit from extending it. The decision is estimated to have put 4,700 people who were established in Swedish society at risk of deportation. Sköld added: “People [who] are well integrated and established in Sweden … are asking: ‘What else could I have done? … How could I possibly prove my worth if even doing everything that is supposedly correct isn’t enough and will never be enough?’” Life in the return centres is tough. The facility near Arlanda, which also houses new arrivals, is an “open” centre, meaning people can come and go. But getting around from there is logistically difficult and many people are getting by on a few kronor a day. It was a difficult place to be in for children, said Sköld, who said her team heard from LGBTQ asylum seekers that the shared spaces could feel unsafe. Many there suffer from poor mental health as a result of their precarious circumstances. “There is a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety,” she said. “People who have received a deportation order fear being deported any day.” Thamer and Faten are a married couple who came to Sweden from Iraq on work visas with their two sons, who are now 20 and 16. Their third son was born in Sweden in 2021. But they now face deportation after their asylum applications were denied and work visas expired. Thamer said that a criminal organisation has threatened to harm their children if they return to Iraq. “There are people who have lived in Sweden for 30 years but they don’t talk Swedish like me,” said Thamer, 52. “I write as well, not just speak. What do they want more than that? I am not a criminal.” Thamer said he was offered a job as a car mechanic but was unable to take it because his work visa had expired. “Sweden wants men and I have three. Can they not make use of them?” The Swedish migration agency said it was unable to comment on individual cases. It was “working to ensure that the [reception and return centres] are safe for everyone staying there, with particular consideration given to children and other vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQ persons”, a spokesperson said. *Those interviewed requested their surnames not be published as their cases are in process

‘Massive’ Russian strikes on Ukraine hit negotiation table as well as people, Kyiv says – as it happened

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Syrian and Kurdish forces agree to extend ceasefire as threat of war looms

The Syrian government and Kurdish forces agreed to extend a ceasefire on Saturday, according to Syrian diplomatic sources, temporarily staving off a looming war between the two sides in Syria’s northeast. Diplomatic sources told Agence France-Presse the ceasefire would be extended for “a period of up to one month at most,” citing the need to facilitate the transfer of suspected members of Islamic State from Syria to Iraq. The two sides had announced a temporary ceasefire earlier in the week, halting an offensive by the Syrian government which brought its army to the door of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The announcement quelled concerns the offensive would restart on Saturday and gave more space for diplomacy, but did not solve the root of the conflict between the two sides. Fighting over three contested neighbourhoods in Aleppo in early January led to a sweeping government offensive which saw the SDF lose the majority of its territory in the country in a matter of days. The ceasefire was meant to give time for the SDF to implement a 14-point plan with the Syrian government which would see the Kurdish militia disband and its soldiers integrate into the Syrian army. If the SDF did not implement the agreement, Damascus would resume its offensive and push toward the last strongholds of the SDF in Hasakeh, and the Kurdish-majority areas of Qamishli and Kobane. The two sides spent the ceasefire preparing for the eventuality of a full-scale war. SDF forces built up in Kurdish-majority areas while its leaders called for a general mobilisation among residents there, distributing weapons to those willing to take up arms. Syrian government soldiers and tanks streamed towards the front line, hoping to bring the northeast under the control of Damascus. “Soon we will be in Hasakeh and then Qamishli, god-willing,” a soldier said on Thursday while standing guard as logistics convoys moved towards the Hasakeh front. As soldiers waited on the battlefield, Syrians and regional powers were engaged in a bout of diplomacy to avoid resuming the war. The SDF leader, Mazloum Abdi, went to Iraqi Kurdistan for the second time, where he met with US envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who has been mediating talks between the SDF and Damascus. Abdi also spoke on the phone with the Syrian foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, which was followed by an agreement allowing the safe transfer of SDF fighters from a besieged prison in Syrian government-controlled territory. “Ideally, the transfer of Daesh [Islamic State] prisoners from Syria should take place. While this is happening, the existing non-conflict environment needs to be maintained,” said Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, on Friday, referring to the US-facilitated transfer of more than 7,000 suspected IS members and fighters from Syria to Iraq. Dispute between the two sides still remain even with the ceasefire extension. The 14-point plan would bring an end to the autonomous Syrian Kurdish project, and Kurdish leaders seemed to struggle to come to terms with their losses over the last two weeks, which has left them with little leverage. The SDF went from controlling nearly a third of the country, including its oil fields, breadbasket, and key infrastructure, to controlling just a few cities in two weeks. The deal on the table would turn the Kurdish force, which not so long ago boasted of commanding a force 100,000 strong, into essentially a municipality overseeing a local police force running a few Kurdish cities in the northeast of the country. Abdi, long known as a pragmatic figure among the SDF, has signalled he would be willing to implement the deal. However, he is struggling to gain consensus within the SDF. If Abdi is unable to unify the SDF and implement the agreement with the government, then the alternative would be war. Damascus has made it clear it would no longer tolerate non-state armed groups and is determined to unify the country under its flag, either through negotiations or through force. The US, which has backed the Kurdish force for the past decade, has made its support for Damascus, with Barrack saying the role of the SDF as the anti-IS force in Syria has now been filled by the Syrian government. The US military has already began transferring IS prisoners from Kurdish territories to prevent any escapes ahead of a renewed war with Damascus. Once IS prisoners are secured, there will be little strategic interests left for a US military presence in northeast Syria. Even if Damascus has the military advantage and regional backing, it is still hoping to prevent a war. Its offensive so far has had relatively few casualties, as the SDF has opted to withdraw from some Arab-majority areas like Raqqa and Deir el-Zour rather than directly confront the Syrian government. Fighting in Kurdish-majority areas will likely be more bloody. There is fear and unrest among Kurdish civilians of the Syrian government fighters, after government-backed massacres in Druze-majority Suweida province and in the Alawite-majority Syrian coast last year. Many residents in Kurdish-majority areas have armed themselves amid the threat of war. Kurdish forces have dug in, having prepared for this fight for years, creating a vast subterranean tunnel network to facilitate guerrilla fighting against a better armed force. Damascus is aware that even if they win the war, they could drive away the Kurds, push the SDF underground and create a PKK-style insurgency in Syria for years to come.

‘I wish I had the power to ease his suffering’: Gaza’s cancer patients trapped by war and blockade

When the Gaza war began, Ismail Abu Naji was just 18 months old, his small body covered in swollen, bleeding lesions. Months earlier, doctors had diagnosed him with a rare blood cancer, one that, if untreated, is often a death sentence. In the weeks before the war, Ismail’s family had arranged for him to be transferred to Al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem, a charitable institution for Palestinians, for specialised care. But the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack that triggered the conflict meant Ismail could not leave the territory. He is now one of thousands of cancer patients in Gaza who the UN says require medical evacuation for urgent treatment. The Guardian has spoken to dozens of Palestinian cancer patients trapped in Gaza, where doctors say cancer-related deaths have tripled since the war began, as Israel continues to hinder patients from leaving and restricts the entry of chemotherapy drugs. While some patients have left, they are far outnumbered by those deemed in medical need who have not. The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) says evacuation routes to third countries have become “near impossible” to operate, especially since the closure of the Rafah crossing in May 2024, and that Israel is failing to meet its obligation to provide medical care to populations under its control. The crossing between Gaza and Egypt is due to open for traffic next week, the Palestinian technocratic committee leader, Ali Shaath, said on Thursday, although Israel did not immediately confirm that would be the case. With even basic painkillers having become unattainable under the blockade, there is little else Ismail’s mother, Aya Mohammed Abu Hani, who is living in a tent in a school, can do but try to ease his pain, gently dabbing the wounds with a cloth soaked in salt water. “Ismail’s life before the war was already difficult, and it has become even harsher since. He cannot sleep due to severe pain, high fever and cries constantly,” she told the Guardian. “We were displaced many times from one place to another, which worsened his condition. I could not even provide him with enough clothing. Before the war, hospitals were able to offer antibiotics and painkillers. But now, they can’t even provide a single painkiller.” Israeli airstrikes on hospitals have reduced the Palestinian healthcare system to ruins. In March 2025, Israel destroyed Gaza’s only specialised cancer treatment hospital, the territory’s sole provider of oncology care. Since then, doctors have been pushed into makeshift clinics, operating with almost no resources, including the tools needed for diagnosis. “As for cancer diagnosis, we have reached an extremely critical stage,” said Dr Saleh Sheikh al-Eid, a specialist physician in haematology and oncology at Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis. “Basic diagnostic tools, such as biopsy needles, are unavailable. Patients come to us with obvious cancerous masses, yet we lack the means to take samples and examine them. As a result, we have lost many patients without even being able to properly diagnose or treat them.” Despite recent ceasefire agreements intended to facilitate the entry of aid, essential medical supplies remain restricted. “We receive repeated warnings from the pharmacy that essential chemotherapy drugs are close to running out,” al-Eid says. “The resources available to us do not exceed 5% of those available in hospitals in the West Bank, and in many cases they are almost nonexistent.” Living with a cancer diagnosis and the uncertainty of survival is, in itself, a traumatic experience. Going through such an ordeal while trapped in a war zone, cut off from essential medication and under constant Israeli bombardment, can be unbearable. While airstrikes have slowed since the US-brokered ceasefire in October, they have not stopped. Israeli forces have killed at least 466 Palestinians in the last three months. All the while, friends and family members of cancer patients have died during the bombardments. The pain of losing her granddaughter, killed in an Israeli bombardment, accompanies Fathiya Abu Frieh, 65, every day. Abu Frieh, who has been living in a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah since the start of the war, was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year. “A short while ago, I lost consciousness because I had nothing to eat for breakfast,’’ she says. ‘‘The treatment I am currently receiving is nothing more than an anaesthetic injection – just enough to keep me alive.” Islam Al-Naour, a 40-year-old with testicular cancer, is living displaced in Gaza City. “Due to my weakened immune system, even minor illnesses had a severe impact on my health. “Life became difficult even for a healthy person, so imagine what it is like for a cancer patient like me, forced to carry water, set up tents, and secure them during harsh weather conditions.” Before the war, hundreds of Palestinian cancer patients had been authorised to receive medical care outside Gaza because of the territory’s inadequate facilities. Dozens of patients who had been in Jerusalem for chemotherapy were then left in a state of limbo, as Israeli authorities threatened to send them back to Gaza. In March 2024, the Guardian visited the Augusta Victoria hospital in Jerusalem where at least five children from Gaza were receiving cancer treatment. Today, all those children are dead. The World Health Organization says about 10,700 Palestinians have been evacuated to 30 countries for specialised care since October 2023, nearly a quarter of them cancer patients. But according to UN figures, there are more than 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza requiring treatment outside the territory. Aid agencies say Israel continues to obstruct their evacuation, in breach of obligations that Israel’s high court has previously recognised. According to health officials in Gaza, there are about 4,000 people with official referrals for treatment to third countries who are unable to cross the border. The WHO says 900 people, including children and cancer patients, have already died while waiting for evacuation. PHRI and partner organisations filed a petition in November to the Israeli high court of justice, demanding the immediate reinstatement of medical evacuations for critically ill patients from Gaza to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “Since the closure of Rafah crossing in May 2024, evacuation routes to third countries have become nearly impossible to operate,” the NGO said. “Under the Israeli and international law, and according to the high court of justice, Israel is legally obligated to ensure access to medical care for populations under its effective control. Current restrictions on patient movement violate this duty to protect the health and prevent avoidable death, given its full control over the movement of patients out of Gaza. “This is not a political or security decision – it is a basic obligation to save human life.” Cogat, the Israeli agency charged with the administration of Gaza, denies restricting medical evacuations from Gaza. “Whenever a country submits a request to evacuate a patient, regardless of the patient’s underlying medical condition, the request is examined and approved subject to security screening,” it said, adding that “dozens and even hundreds of residents have been evacuated each week”. On 12 January, for the first time since the outbreak of the war, and thanks to a prolonged legal battle by the Israeli human rights organisation Gisha, Dr Nour El-Din Abu Ajwa, 48, a Palestinian cancer patient, was allowed to leave Gaza to receive critical medical treatment at a hospital in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. The Guardian reached Abu Ajwa over the phone, who said he learned in the second month of the war that he had colon cancer, as well as liver and lung cancer. ‘‘Two years ago, I lost my son, who suffered from a spinal cord cancer,” he said. ‘‘I left my wife and children in Gaza. I don’t know if I am going to go back or not. I fought very hard through the Israeli court to get permission to receive treatment in Jerusalem or the West Bank. I was denied the permit five times, but at the end, the Israeli judge was fair to me and he insisted that I should be allowed to travel and to receive treatment in the West Bank. “I hope I will be the first of thousands of cancer patients in Gaza who will be allowed to travel and receive proper treatment. I hope I am the one who opened the door for many to be treated as a human being.” Until the last moment, the Israeli state sought to prevent Abu Ajwa’s evacuation, submitting a last-minute request to delay the implementation of the judge’s decision while he was already en route to the West Bank; a request the court rejected. “The attempt to delay implementation of the court’s judgment illustrates the state’s insistence on maintaining a sweeping and unlawful policy at the expense of the most vulnerable,’’ Gisha states. ‘‘This case,” Gisha adds, “constitutes, in practice, an initial and important crack in this cruel policy, which must be abolished immediately.” Inside one of the hundreds of tents at al-Shati Martyrs school, as cold weather and a storm rage outside, Ismail’s mother prepares another saline compress to treat Ismail’s lesions, while trying to distract him from the pain by handing him a notebook and coloured pencils. “As a mother, it is unbearable to see my young child suffer without being able to help,” she says. “I wish I had the power to ease his suffering,” she adds, “to give him the right to live without pain.”

Ryan Wedding’s journey from Olympic snowboarder to alleged cocaine kingpin

To compete at the highest levels of snowboarding, racers must master carving, edging and balance at speeds stretching the limits of imagination. They can fluently read the nuances of snow and fine-tune their bodies to cross the finish line faster than anyone else. The Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding had these skills – but also the quality that catapults amateurs to an elite level: a highly competitive instinct to succeed that can at times manifest in a desire to crush fellow competitors. Those traits were perhaps not as useful as he would have hoped when he competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The course was icy, he misjudged turns and in the end, he failed to reach the podium. But the latter quality – the fierce and relentless desire for success – apparently served him in his rapid rise to leader of a notorious drug trafficking ring which, according to US authorities, raked in $1bn in cocaine sales each year. Wedding allegedly ordered the deaths of those standing in his way. On Friday, top US law enforcement officials announced Wedding had been taken into custody, capping the Canadian’s arc, from prodigious young athlete to a drug boss allegedly nicknamed “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy”. His story has unfolded like the plot of an airport bookstore thriller, with allegations of a witness murder, a corrupt lawyer and shipments of cocaine moving undetected over national borders. But while the core of the story is true, analysts suggest US authorities may have exaggerated the scale of Wedding’s enterprise, creating a kingpin who has now been seized with fanfare just as the Trump administration demands the Mexican government do more against drug trafficking. By all accounts, Wedding’s early years in the northern Ontario city of Thunder Bay, could not have been further from a life of flashy cars, drug cartel alliances and an international manhunt. His grandparents owned the Mount Baldy ski resort, a modest hill that laid the groundwork for the skills needed to compete as a snowboarder at world-class venues. After the disappointing result at the 2002 Olympics, the trajectory of Wedding’s life shifted dramatically. A profile in Toronto Life said he worked as a bouncer at a club, and aggressively worked out at the gym to build his physique. He dabbled in flipping properties, acquired a small collection of expensive vehicles and began dressing in fashions popularized by gang members who frequented the clubs where Wedding worked. In 2006, he was named in a search warrant investigating a marijuana-growing operation in British Columbia, but was never charged. Four years later, however, Wedding was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine after attempting to buy the drug from a US government agent and was sentenced to four years in prison. Incarceration meant that he missed the chance to compete for a hometown crowd when Vancouver hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics. But prosecutors say he used the time to forge key relationships with drug dealers, expanding his network and developing trusted contacts that would, in years to come, give him immense reach. The scope of his alleged network was laid bare in January when Jonathan Acebedo-García, a Canadian citizen, was killed at a popular restaurant in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city. According to CBC News, Acebedo-García met Wedding in a Texas prison, and began working with him after both were released. He became a trusted ally – until he began working as an FBI informant. Wedding would later call him “the rat” and a “snitch”. Prosecutors say that Wedding displayed his capacity for revenge when he used a Canadian blog called The Dirty Newz to track down Acebedo-García and his wife. Authorities allege the website’s owner agreed to not post about Wedding. Instead, he allegedly accepted money to post a photograph of Acebedo-García, which he did on 5 November 2024 with the caption: “This guy single handedly 🐀 out one of the strongest underworld networks that this 🌍 has seen Good chance he’ll never be found again.” The site Dirty Newz has since been seized by US authorities. Nearly three months after that post, gunmen located Acebedo-García, who had been living in Medellín for a year. They followed him to the upscale neighbourhood of El Poblado. There, at 2.30pm on 31 January, he ordered food at Mi Arepa, a popular restaurant chain specializing in the traditional cornbreads. While he was eating, a gunman entered the establishment and shot Acebedo-García five times in the back of the head, killing him instantly, before fleeing on a motorcycle. Wedding is believed to have sent a “bejewelled necklace” to one man involved in the killing, and circulated a photo of Acebedo-García’s body to his associates to serve as a warning for disloyalty. The brazen, daylight murder in Medellín is the latest in a string of contract killings which prosecutors have linked to Wedding. In 2023, gunmen attacked a rental home in Caledon, Ontario, believing they were targeting rival criminals who had stolen a drug shipment. Instead, they killed Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, who had arrived in Canada four months earlier. Their daughter Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, was shot 13 times and left critically injured. The next year, 39-year-old Mohammed Zafar was shot dead while sitting in his car in the driveway of his Brampton, Ontario, home over what police say were drug debts. On 5 December, Ontario’s law society suspended the licence of a lawyer who the FBI says advised Wedding to have a key witness murdered. Deepak Balwant Paradkar, a lawyer based in the Toronto suburbs, used the social media name @Cocaine_lawyer and cultivated a reputation for helping high-profile drug dealers evade charges. “[Paradkar] told [Wedding], ‘If you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed,’” said Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney for the central district of California. “That lawyer is now in custody, and he’ll be extradited and brought to justice here in the United States.” Paradkar has been released on bail pending extradition proceedings and has said that he intends to fight the charges. For years, Wedding evaded capture by hiding in Mexico, allegedly under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel. In November, the reward for information leading to his arrest was upped to $15m – a bounty that put him on a level with the most powerful cartel bosses in Mexico. “Make no mistake about it, Ryan Wedding is the modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar,” said the FBI director, Kash Patel. “He is the modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzmán.” But security experts in Mexico were sceptical about the comparisons of Wedding to figures like El Chapo, who co-founded and led the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s most powerful criminal organisations, until he was extradited to the US in 2017. “There’s no indication [Wedding] controls territory, nor that he’s at the head of an armed militia, nor that he’s a major player politically,” said Stephen Woodman, a security analyst in Guadalajara, Mexico. And though US authorities claim Wedding’s enterprise was trafficking 60 tonnes of cocaine a year, this figure does not appear in the indictment, which only mentions specific cases of a few hundred kilos being moved at a time. “I’d say this is a very performative [US] administration that likes to put faces on the issue of international drug trafficking,” said Woodman. “And you can expect films and documentaries to be made about this guy.”

Russia launches ‘brutal’ attack on Ukraine as peace talks continue

Russia launched a major drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for a second day of tripartite peace talks. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure. “Cynically, Putin ordered a brutal massive missile strike against Ukraine right while delegations are meeting in Abu Dhabi to advance the America-led peace process. His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table. “This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (U.S. President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X. Despite the the latest wave of attacks, the talks in Abu Dhabi resumed on Saturday morning. With Kyiv and other cities in the midst of widespread outages of heat, water and power after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials in the capital said one person had been killed and at least 15 injured in strikes that continued until morning. Engineers in Kyiv face the huge task of reconnecting apartment buildings to heating. They said 6,000 of the city’s apartment blocks were without heat on Saturday morning, 4,000 more than in previous days, including many that had recently been reconnected. Initial estimates suggested that at least 1.2 million consumers were without power across the country, including 800,000 in Kyiv. The Ukrainian air force said Russia had used 396 drones and missiles in the attacks, and officials warned that up to 80% of the country faced emergency power cuts in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The Russian strikes, which took place in the middle of the first tripartite talks of the war, come in tandem with Moscow continuing to insist it must control the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, underlining doubts that it is serious about peace. Speaking in the aftermath of the strikes, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said agreements on air defence made with the US president, Donald Trump, in Davos this week must be “fully implemented”. Zelenskyy and Trump met at the World Economic Forum on Thursday and discussed air defence support for Ukraine, but neither leader specified afterwards what had been agreed. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said: “Currently, one person is known to have died and four to have been wounded,” he wrote in a social media post, adding that three of the injured had been admitted to hospital. Fires broke out in several buildings hit by drone debris while heat and water services in parts of the capital were interrupted, he said. The strikes come amid a worsening mid-winter energy crisis focused on the capital, where many have been left without heat and power for a prolonged period. Klitschko said on Friday that about 1,940 residential buildings in Kyiv were without heating after renewed attacks, adding “and this may not be the most difficult moment yet”. His office said about 600,000 residents had fled the city temporarily during the January power crisis that has left entire blocks across the city in darkness. The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the buildings damaged. Kyiv has already endured two mass overnight attacks this year that have knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Emergency workers were still engaged in restoring services to residents, with overnight temperatures dropping to -13C (9F). In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30km (18 miles) from the Russian border, the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said 25 drones had hit several districts over two and a half hours, with at least 14 people injured. Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones had struck a dormitory for displaced people, a hospital and a maternity hospital. The first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the US-backed proposal also began on Friday. Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said the discussions had focused “on the parameters for ending Russia’s war and the further logic of the negotiation process”. An initial US draft drew heavy criticism in Kyiv and western Europe for sticking too closely to Moscow’s line, while later iterations prompted pushback from Russia for floating the idea of European peacekeepers. Both sides say the fate of territory in the eastern Donbas region is one of the main sticking points in the search for a settlement to a war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and decimated parts of Ukraine.

‘Repatriate the gold’: German economists advise withdrawal from US vaults

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump. Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York. Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s federal bank, the Bundesbank, called for the gold to be brought home, saying it was too “risky” for it to be kept in the US under the current administration. “Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” he told the financial newspaper Handelsblatt. “In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.” Stefan Kornelius, the spokesperson for Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, said recently that withdrawal of the gold reserves was not currently under consideration. But Mönch is only the latest in a string of economists and financial experts to argue that such a move would be in keeping with the greater strategic independence that Europe’s largest economy has been seeking from the US in recent months. Michael Jäger, the head of the European Taxpayers Association (TAE) as well as the Association of German Taxpayers, has also said Berlin should make its move, arguing that the US’s stated desire to seize Greenland should concentrate minds. “Trump is unpredictable and he does everything to generate revenue. That’s why our gold is no longer safe in the Fed’s vaults,” Jäger told the Rheinische Post. “What happens if the Greenland provocation continues? … The risk is increasing that the German Bundesbank will no longer be able to access its gold. Therefore, it should repatriate its reserves.” Jäger said he had written last year to the Bundesbank and the finance ministry, urging them to “bring our gold home”. Until recently the gold issue has been the preserve mainly of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has repeatedly urged the return of the gold for patriotic reasons. But it has increasingly crept into the mainstream discourse. Katharina Beck, the finance spokesperson for the opposition Greens in the Bundestag, has also spoken out in favour of relocating the gold bars, calling them an “important anchor of stability and trust”, which “must not become pawns in geopolitical disputes”. However, Clemens Fuest, the president of the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) and one of the country’s most prominent economists, warned against such a move, saying it could lead to unintended consequences and would “only pour oil on the fire of the current situation”, he told the Rheinische Post. Germany’s total gold reserves are worth almost €450bn. Just over half are held at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt am Main, 37% in the vaults of the US Federal Reserve in New York and 12% at the Bank of England in London, the global centre of gold trading. The Bundesbank says it regularly undertakes an audit of the supplies of gold it holds in storage. Speaking last October at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) autumn meetings in Washington DC, the Bundesbank president, Joachim Nagel, assured attenders there was “no cause for concern” over the German gold held at the US Federal Reserve. Frauke Heiligenstadt, the parliamentary group spokesperson on financial policy for the Social Democrats, junior partners in the government, said that while she understood concerns about the gold reserves, there was no need for panic. “Germany’s gold reserves are well diversified,” she said. Because half of them are located in Frankfurt, “our ability to act is guaranteed”. Having gold in New York made sense, she added, because “Germany, Europe and the US are closely linked in terms of financial policy”. But, amid Trump’s hardening rhetoric towards his western partners, an increasing number of Merz’s Christian Democrats have been speaking out in favour of relocation. “Due to the Trump administration, the US is no longer a reliable partner,” Ulrike Neyer, a professor of economics at the University of Düsseldorf, told the Rheinische Post.

Pentagon to reduce its role in deterrence of North Korea

The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, a Pentagon policy document released on Friday said, in a move likely to raise concern in Seoul. South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defence against North Korea’s military threat and Seoul has raised its defence budget by 7.5% for this year. “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” said the National Defense Strategy, a document that guides the Pentagon’s policies. “This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula,” the document added. In recent years, some US officials have signalled a desire to make US forces in South Korea more flexible to operate outside the Korean peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as defending Taiwan and checking China’s growing military reach. South Korea has resisted the idea of shifting the role of US troops, but has worked to grow its defence capabilities in the past 20 years, to take on a wartime command of the combined US-South Korean forces. South Korea has 450,000 troops. The shift is part of what Washington has called “alliance modernisation” under the Trump administration. South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has himself pushed for greater defence autonomy, criticising in September what he called “the submissive mindset that self-reliant defence is impossible without foreign troops”. In a statement on Saturday, South Korea’s defence ministry said US Forces in Korea remained central to the alliance and would continue to deter North Korean aggression. The Pentagon document makes no mention of denuclearising the Korean peninsula, the second major strategy paper to omit the language. The Biden administration in 2022 explicitly stated “complete and verifiable denuclearisation” as a goal, suggesting Washington may be shifting towards managing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal rather than seeking its elimination. The wide-ranging document, which each new administration publishes, said the Pentagon’s priority was defending the homeland. In the Indo-Pacific region, the document said, the Pentagon was focused on ensuring China could not dominate the US or its allies. “This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle. Rather, a decent peace, on terms favourable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under, is possible,” the document said, without mentioning Taiwan by name in the roughly 25-page document. China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the island. Taiwan rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only the people of Taiwan can decide their future. With Reuters