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Thursday briefing: Will Labour’s human rights overhaul curb or fuel the far right?

Good morning. Yesterday was Human Rights Day, set up in 1950 by the United Nations to celebrate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a statement of fundamental rights and freedoms in response to the horrors of the second world war. This historic, non-binding document laid the foundations for the European convention on human rights (ECHR), an international treaty signed by European states including the UK. Each country made a legal commitment to protect certain rights and freedoms to guard against a repeat of human rights atrocities and to help fulfil the promise of “never again”. But the convention and the European court, which adjudicates on breaches, have been denounced in the UK for years by critics on the right as an enemy to British sovereignty and, more recently, as a barrier to controlling borders. The court was once described as one of the UK’s “most maligned institutions”. This reached its peak on Wednesday as, at a crucial European summit, the UK joined some of Europe’s hard-right governments, including Hungary and Italy, in calling for human rights laws to be “constrained”, allowing Rwanda-style migration deals with third countries and more foreign criminals to be deported. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Rajeev Syal, the Guardian’s home affairs editor, about what is behind the UK’s calls for curbs on human rights laws, what has emerged from the summit and the likely impact. First, this morning’s headlines. Five big stories Venezuela | Venezuela’s Nobel-winning opposition leader María Corina Machado has made a dramatic appearance in front of cheering supporters on a hotel balcony in Oslo, Norway after slipping out by boat from hiding in her home country. It came as US forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, sending tensions soaring. Immigration and asylum | The UK has joined some of Europe’s hardline governments in calling for human rights laws to be “constrained” to allow Rwanda-style migration deals with third countries and more foreign criminals to be deported. Schools | Students could be sitting some of their GCSEs and A-levels on a laptop by the end of the decade, according to England’s qualifications watchdog. Europe | Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has responded to US claims that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” by saying it backs efforts for a nationalist revival on the continent. Books | Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55. In depth: ‘If they don’t go down this road, what’s the alternative?’ Before the summit in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Keir Starmer urged European leaders to “go further” in modernising the interpretation of the ECHR so that member states can protect their borders and see off the rise of the populist right across the continent. In a joint piece for the Guardian with Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Starmer said the current asylum framework was “created for another era” and that updating the interpretation of the convention was urgently required to confront the challenges of “irregular migration”. The prime minister’s comments followed the Labour government’s own announcement last month of the biggest shake-up to the asylum system in 40 years, when the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, warned that “dark forces are stirring up anger” over migration. She has argued that Labour must act to prevent the perceived overreach of human rights law or risk facing far worse if the hard right wins the next election.Under article 8 of the convention, the government said it wanted to stop asylum seekers using their rights to a family life to avoid deportation. The UK also wants to move on article 3, described by human rights experts as the “very core” of the convention, which states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” While people should never face torture, the government argued that the legal interpretation of the rule “has been expanded over time”, allowing people to block deportations on the basis of arguments such as the fact they could not receive proper mental health care in their own country. Starmer, who wrote his first article for the Guardian in 2009 in defence of human rights law, has said he believes there are genuine instances of the convention being interpreted too widely. There have been serious cases in recent years that have worried ministers, of child rapists permitted to stay in the UK because of the overcrowded nature of Brazilian prisons; or instances where healthcare systems not being deemed as advanced in other countries has prevented the deportation of criminals. *** What has the Council of Europe decided? On Wednesday afternoon, two separate statements emerged, in what was seen as signs of deep divisions across Europe over how to tackle irregular migration, and whether to continue to guarantee rights for refugees and economic migrants. The UK joined 27 of the 46 Council of Europe members in signing an unofficial statement that urges a new framework for the ECHR, which will narrow the definition of “inhuman and degrading treatment”. It calls for human rights laws to be “constrained” to allow Rwanda-style migration deals with third-party countries, and for more foreign criminals to be deported. It also argues that article 8 of the convention should be “adjusted” in relation to criminals, so that more weight is put on the nature and seriousness of the offence committed and less on a criminal’s ties with the host country. A formal declaration signed by 46 member states did not outline any problems with particular articles of the convention. France, Spain and Germany are among those countries that have declined to sign the unofficial statement. The Council of Europe secretary general, Alain Berset, told reporters that all 46 member states had “reaffirmed their deep and abiding commitment” to both the European convention on human rights and the European court of human rights. But he described the convention as something that needed to adapt. The agreement reached by all 46 members says the Council of Europe has agreed to look at how the ECHR is applied in the context of “contemporary challenges posed by irregular migration”. Work will begin on adopting the declaration in May 2026. *** What it means for the UK Rajeev is not sure exactly how many asylum cases will be affected by any changes to human rights laws, but he estimates that only a “very small proportion” of judgments could be involved. “I was told 420,000 people made applications under the convention over the last decade. That is 420,000 people who believe their human rights were violated. About 7,000 of those were related to migration rights.” Of those, Rajeev says, only 450 resulted in judgments “against the country”, where they are deemed to be at risk from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. “So we’re talking a very small proportion of actual judgments heard by the European court,” he thinks. But the argument that David Lammy, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, makes, Rajeev says, is that these cases have a “chilling effect” on the way human rights law operates in the UK because people think they can get away with more than they should. What they’re trying to do, by advocating changes to the way human rights law is interpreted, is force judges to tighten judgments on specific cases, he adds. *** Will this curb the far right? In Starmer’s piece for the Guardian, he wrote: “The best way of fighting against the forces of hate and division is to show that mainstream, progressive politics can fix this problem. “We are making this case across Europe, and momentum for change is building. More countries are now pursuing similar approaches – ensuring that protection is available for those refugees who need it, while making it connected to clear expectations of integration and contribution.” The “big question” remaining, says Rajeev, is whether Labour is confronting the rhetoric of the far right or pandering to it. “We don’t know, but the point is, the polls do show that there’s widespread anger regarding the state, the economy and the fact that there’s been a big influx of immigration over the last 20 years.” Such anger, he says, cannot be dismissed as only about racism, because much is about resources, public services, cuts and questions – questions like: why are we allowing more people in when we haven’t got enough housing or health facilities for the existing population? “All these are live debates that the government doesn’t have answers to, because the economy is in such a mess,” Rajeev says. “So you do have to ask, if they don’t go down this road, what’s the alternative? Is the alternative a Reform-led government?” One key difference for Labour: unlike the Tories and Reform UK, the party is committed to remaining within the ECHR. *** What are the dangers of curbing human rights laws? This week, the actors Michael Palin, Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley were among 21 well-known figures calling on Starmer to drop plans to weaken human rights law and instead “take a principled stand” for torture victims. A letter signed by the actors told the prime minister: “Any attempt at undermining universal protections is an affront to us all and a threat to the security of each and every one of us.” Human rights campaigners, Labour peers and some backbenchers have also called on ministers to resist making changes, saying it would open the door to countries abandoning some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Veronika Fikfak, a professor of international law at University College London, wrote that a change to article 3 “touches the very core” of the convention. “Prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment is an absolute right. It allows for no balancing. There is no margin of appreciation for states, nor any deference to them,” she wrote. As Rajeev says: “Many people believe that if once you start messing around with article 3, you leave the door open to unscrupulous regimes or governments to drive a coach and horses through either the obligation upon states not to send people back to torture, or to get away with torture.” What else we’ve been reading I enjoyed reading Jason Okundaye’s final dispatch for The Long Wave newsletter, where he visits Ghana for Accra Cultural Week and explores the historic area of Jamestown, which is inhabited by the Ga people. Sundus Abdi, newsletters team I am fascinated by early silent cinema, and Peter Bradshaw’s review of some recently restored Sherlock Holmes reels from the 1920s has me itching to see them. Martin We’ve heard of the 1%, but did you know that 0.001% control three times as much wealth as half of humanity? This visual breakdown of the 56,000 wealthiest people in the world was eye-opening. Sundus Miss Rosen spoke to David Corio for Huck magazine about his brilliant set of photographs at a dubplate studio during Jamaica’s 90s dancehall heyday. Martin Community choirs have changed lives and brought friendship, belonging and valuable memories. It was especially heartwarming to read that for Jill’s father, Bryon, choir kept him going while battling Parkinson’s: “It lifted his spirits to be part of a community again.” Sundus Sport Football | Goals from Nico O’Reilly and Erling Haaland helped Manchester City fight back to win 2-1 at Real Madrid and leave Xabi Alonso under huge pressure. Ice skating | Same-sex couples will be permitted to compete in ice dance in British events as of next season, including the national championships, British Ice Skating announced on Wednesday. Darts | Defending champion Luke Littler, a phenomenon and the indisputable titan of darts, heads to the World Championships with a sense of inevitability at the Alexandra Palace extravaganza. The front pages “Visitors to US could have to reveal five years of social media activity” says the Guardian this morning and the Metro quips that it will necessitate a “Defensive trawl for World Cup fans”. The i paper has “UK set to turn back clock on Brexit and rejoin EU’s student exchange scheme from January 2027” and the Express emotes “They cannot be trusted with Brexit!”. The Times runs with “Net zero plan to cost households £500 a year” while the Mirror announces a “£3.5bn war on homelessness” by the Labour government . “Fed cuts rates to lowest in three years as weak jobs market eclipses inflation” – that’s the top story in the Financial Times. The Daily Mail has “Stop Labour’s ‘grotesque’ puberty drug experiment on children”, citing Tory MP Claire Coutinho. The Telegraph runs with “Falklands arms ban must end, says Milei” – as in Falklands-era. Today in Focus Pete Hegseth unleashes his ‘warrior culture’ on the world Donald Trump’s secretary of war is facing allegations of war crimes and a blistering report into his handling of classified information. Joseph Gedeon reports Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Guardian readers have raised more than £100,000 in less than a week for this year’s charity appeal. The Hope appeal has partnered with five grassroots charities that promote compassion and social justice in some of the UK’s most economically deprived areas affected by division, distrust and racism. Editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said the appeal had been launched against a toxic backdrop of social division, far-right activism, the demonisation of migrants, and the re-emergence of “1970s-style racism”. She wrote that the charities “run food banks, jobs and skills initiatives, youth and sports clubs, drop-in centres, arts projects, neighbourhood festivals and refugee welcome initiatives. They help to build hope.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Martin Belam’s Thursday news quiz Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

‘It’s not going to be some miraculous recovery’: film charts healing of Ukrainian children rescued from Russia

Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father. Sasha grew up in Mariupol, the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The family became separated in April 2022 when the children’s father, Yvgeny Mezhevoy, was imprisoned in a Russian detention centre. After 45 days, he was released with no more explanation than with which he had been seized. He said that when he found out his children had been taken, “a bolt of rage shot through me”. Against the odds, with practical help and financial aid from a resourceful volunteer network, he recovered his three children and took them to the safety of Riga in Latvia. Some months later, Sasha and her father were among the main subjects of a documentary about Ukrainian stolen children. But rather than depicting the story of their harrowing deportation or arduous rescue, the film-makers focused on their experience at an animal therapy retreat in the Estonian forest. Sasha, who was seven during filming, spends her days at the retreat “interviewing” the women there in the hope that one will become her mother. Her real mother walked out on the family when Sasha was eight months old. Between therapy sessions, the children walk golden retrievers, ride ponies in the verdant forest and swim in the Baltic Sea. Therapists hope the natural respite will soothe their souls and help undo some of the trauma of their separation in Russian custody. The families in this film are unusual: only a minority of Ukraine’s stolen children have been reunited with their parents. Ukraine’s government has identified 19,546 children who have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The government-backed Bring Kids Back initiative estimates 1,898 have returned from deportation, forced transfers and occupied Ukraine. But researchers say the true scale of the removals is unclear as Russian authorities erase records and falsify identities. The international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. In September, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of a double crime against Ukraine’s children: “Russia first abducted them and deported them, and now it tries to steal everything they have inside – their culture, their character, their bond with family and their identity,” he said. The documentary, After the Rain, does not tell this political story. The British director Sarah McCarthy, who has Ukrainian heritage, said she wanted to “introduce as many people as I could to these children as children, not as a statistic, not as a political story, just as kids with all their mischief and fun and longing”. Veronika Vlasova, aged 14 in the film, is the other main subject. In one of the first sessions at the retreat, she is asked to draw herself and offers a blank, featureless face. She spent more than a year in Russia, where she experienced bullying, propaganda, interrogations and time on an isolation ward. She was released only after her mother, a Ukrainian military veteran, gave a speech to the UN security council in April 2023 denouncing her daughter’s captivity. At the retreat, Veronika deploys jokes and irony as a defence. Counsellors believe she is suffering from depression and encourage her to let her guard down. But the time is short. “It is two weeks. It’s not going to be some miraculous recovery from all of the things that have happened to her,” McCarthy said. “But that was never their intention.” The film, with its lingering shots of the Estonian wilderness, tells an emotional rather than political story. Neither the children’s bleak experiences in Russia nor the difficult and dangerous rescues by their families are deeply explored. McCarthy has a very practical explanation: “The material that I had in my drives that went through my lens was about Sasha and Veronika’s experience of that animal therapy retreat. And the challenge for me creatively was to capture the emotions that took place.” One scene in the film shows Sasha not long out of bed. The still sleepy girl asks one of the therapists: “Why don’t you want to become our mama?” It is a tender moment, as if both have forgotten that the camera is rolling. After the Rain has had months of official screenings and now distributors are seeking broadcast deals to find a wider audience. McCarthy said that during the shoot she and her crew lived through the same daily rhythm as everyone else. They ate together, swam together, talked when the cameras stopped rolling, meaning eventually “you just become part of the furniture at some point”. The children could stop the filming at any time, a power over the adults they relished. “They stopped us continuously, especially at the beginning,” McCarthy said, which was frustrating at first but “was definitely for the best, because it just shifts the power dynamic in a way that is better for everybody”.

I used to report from the West Bank. Twenty years after my last visit, I was shocked by how much worse it is today

In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.” Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now. I returned to the West Bank last month for the first time in 20 years. In the early 2000s, I had visited regularly as a correspondent for the Guardian, in support of Jerusalem-based colleagues covering the second intifada. The uprising was much more violent than the first, which ran from 1987 to 1993. The enduring image of the first is of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. The second was a full-scale confrontation, with Israel attacking Palestinian cities and towns with artillery, tanks, helicopters and jets while Palestinians fought back with rifles and explosives. Palestinians ambushed soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, making roads a risky venture, especially at night, and terrorised Israel by sending suicide bombers across its border to attack bus stops, cafes, hotels and anywhere else that was crowded. More than 3,000 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis were killed. I had not planned to write anything about my trip to the West Bank last month. But I changed my mind when I witnessed how much daily life for Palestinians had deteriorated, how dispirited they have become and how much control Israel and its settlers now exercise over the Palestinian population. I had expected conditions for Palestinians would be worse, but not this much worse. I had been invited to attend a conference at Birzeit University, on the outskirts of Ramallah, organised by Progressive International, a loose coalition of leftwing organisations and individuals worldwide founded in 2020 by, among others, the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and the US senator Bernie Sanders. The conference on the decolonisation of Palestine was organised jointly by Progressive International, the Palestinian thinktank Al-Shabaka and the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies at Birzeit. The university’s academics and students have had a long history of protest and clashes with Israeli forces, and the campus has been repeatedly raided by Israeli forces over the last two years. After the conference, a few attenders set off around the West Bank. I was curious as to why there had been no Palestinian uprising in the West Bank comparable to the second intifada, in support of their compatriots in Gaza. Curious, too, about how much support there was for Hamas in the West Bank, and whether anyone believed that an independent Palestinian state was something we might see in the next few decades. Their responses were varied and complex but consistent themes emerged. One was how demoralised they have become. The other was how far away the prospect of a sovereign independent Palestine now seemed. * * * Ramallah, the political, cultural and economic centre of the West Bank, looked cleaner, less chaotic and in places, more prosperous than the last time I was there, not that different from many European cities, with billboards advertising restaurants, speciality chocolate shops and the opening of new gyms. Young, fashion-conscious Palestinians sat chatting in cafes and bars; according to some of the older generation, they are generally less concerned about politics. But this air of normality and prosperity is doubly deceptive. First, Ramallah is not typical of the rest of the West Bank. And second, one of the reasons Ramallah appears so different and less chaotic is the absence of so many of the villagers from surrounding areas who used to line the sides of the city’s streets with their piles of fruit and vegetables. Faced with an expanding maze of Israeli checkpoints and gates that make a journey uncertain, many farmers no longer make the trip to Ramallah. The obstacles are a deterrent not only to farmers but to trade and business generally throughout the West Bank. At the end of the second intifada, there were, according to the UN, 376 checkpoints and barriers in the West Bank. Today there are an estimated 849, many of them erected in the last two years. Checkpoints and barriers are a topic of conversation among Palestinians in much the same way weather is in the UK. While an app that provides information supplied by bus drivers and other road users helps, it is no guarantee, as I found, that roads will be open. The occupation is colour-coded: red metal barriers are closed much of the time, and yellow ones are open more frequently. Yellow Israeli number plates grant access to roads denied to those driving with green Palestinian plates. Israeli army incursions into the centre of Ramallah have become more common over the past two years. Israeli soldiers arrive in force, make arrests and leave. In a raid in August, they targeted currency exchanges, made five arrests and, according to Palestinians, left more than a dozen injured by live fire, rubber bullets or teargas. During a major incursion in 2002, Israel took over much of the city. Its tanks and bulldozers battered into the presidential compound, reducing much of it to ruins and besieging Yasser Arafat, then the Palestinian leader. The darkly lit, cramped rooms in which he was confined until close to his death in 2004 have been left intact, forming part of an Arafat mausoleum and museum. The remains of the compound are a symbol of defiance, from a time when Palestinians were united and there was a sense of hope. One of the biggest differences between the second intifada and the present day is that Arafat tacitly backed the uprising. His secular Fatah group fought alongside the Islamists – Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – and the leftwing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. By contrast, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected president in 2005, has resisted pressure over the past two years to launch a new uprising in the West Bank. Abbas’s decision is unpopular among Palestinians in the West Bank, according to polls and the Palestinians I spoke to. Among the few I found who supported Abbas’s decision was Maher Canawati, the mayor of Bethlehem, who, like Abbas and Arafat, is a member of Fatah. He said Abbas had faced lots of criticism. “People wanted him to say: ‘Let’s go fight.’” But the president’s caution had been vindicated, Canawati said. “People in the West Bank understood that this was not the time to do what they did in the first and second intifada. We do not want to give them an excuse to attack us. We are helpless. We are not at the same level as the Israelis,” Canawati said. “If we decided to go with an uprising, it would give them the green light to retaliate as they did in Gaza.” From the mayor’s office, it is possible to see the Church of the Nativity, where steps lead to a grotto celebrated by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus. In 2002, during the second intifada, Israeli forces held the church under siege for 39 days, firing at Palestinian militants holed up inside. Few tourists realise that close to the steps to the grotto, the bodies of the Palestinian dead had been left to rot. Not that there are that many tourists these days. Canawati, a Christian whose family has lived in Bethlehem since the 17th century and owns The Three Arches, one of the biggest suppliers in Palestine of biblical souvenirs, said tourism had dwindled to almost zero in the past two years. It is not just tourism that is suffering. The economy of the West Bank as a whole is dire. Per capita, income is down 20% and unemployment hovers around 33%. On top of this, while the population is suffering, the Palestinian Authority, nominally responsible for administration of the West Bank and run by Fatah, is synonymous with corruption, embezzlement, dodgy contracts and nepotism. Palestinians I spoke to were incensed by the way jobs were so often awarded not on merit but on family links, contacts, backhanders or political affiliation. It is not hard to find examples. While wandering around the centre of Tulkarm, in the north of the West Bank, a stall-holder called me over to chat. He said he had been a star student at university, gained a degree in law and proudly showed his membership card of the Palestinian bar association. So why was he working at a fruit and vegetable stall? He said he just did not have contacts inside the PA that would open the way to a legal career. Canawati acknowledged there was corruption but softened this admission by adding “like other countries”. Given the unpopularity of Abbas, the PA and Fatah, I asked Canawati how Hamas would fare if there was to be an election in the West Bank. Hamas would have “no chance”, he said, though almost everyone else I spoke predicted Hamas would win. In the absence of national legislative elections – there have been none since 2006 – student council elections at Birzeit University are viewed as a barometer of sorts. In the last election in 2023, before 7 October, an Islamist bloc affiliated to Hamas won 25 of the 51 seats while a Fatah-affiliated group took 20 and one affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took six. Raising the 7 October massacre, in which more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed and about 250 taken hostage, invariably provoked a strong reaction. Why, Palestinians would angrily ask, take 7 October as a starting point? Why not start with repeated Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that left thousands dead between 2005 and 2023? They viewed Hamas as part of the resistance and few that I met were prepared to criticise the attack. One of the exceptions was Omar Haramy, director of Sabeel, a centre for Palestinian liberation theology based in Jerusalem. In his view, Palestinian civil society’s failure to have a serious discussion about the massacre is a problem. As we spoke, he was standing near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem, close to Israel’s Kishle police station. Haramy, who said he had been held there and questioned many times, suggested that if Palestinians had put pressure on Hamas early on, maybe they would have released the children, women and elderly people who had been taken hostage. “Is this the values we want as Palestinians? To take babies as hostages? For God’s sake. This is not who we are.” He viewed the various factions and political parties as a burden in the push for liberation. “They are all complicit, with no elections, with no vision. It’s all sad and messed up.” * * * The most serious change since my last visit to the region is the expansion of Israeli settlements. There are 3.3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, including 435,000 in East Jerusalem. The number of Israeli settlers has jumped from 400,000 at the time of the second intifada to more than 700,000 now. But those figures do not convey the extent of the encroachment of the settlements, their suffocating impact, occupying more hilltops overlooking cities, towns and villages and even setting up in the middle of them, behind walls and barbed wire, often only yards from Palestinian homes, and protected by Israeli soldiers. During the second intifada, I interviewed the leader of a small settlement in the centre of Hebron, whose population was overwhelmingly Palestinian. When I asked him what he thought of Palestinians, he replied they were “animals”. When I told him I would quote him, he did not attempt to retract the statement. I have never been able to shake off the memory of that casual contempt. But it seems tame in comparison with what is happening today, as settlers, encouraged by extremists in the Israeli cabinet, harass Palestinians with increasing frequency and viciousness, rampaging through villages with impunity, intimidating Palestinians in an attempt to drive them out. About 10 miles from Hebron is the hillside village of Umm al-Khair, infamous as the scene of violent confrontations with settlers. Eid Siliman Hathaleen, a Palestinian Bedouin and community activist from the village, said the Bedouins had bought the land in 1952 but settlers and the Israeli army are conducting a sustained campaign against them. Palestinian homes have been demolished while settlers expand their presence. Seven new mobile homes appeared overnight in October in the middle of the village, while an Israeli order had come to demolish a further 14 Palestinian homes. The village, like the rest of the West Bank, is under constant surveillance from cameras, military vehicles and drones. While we chatted, Israeli soldiers arrived. An hour before, Israeli peace activists who had turned up in a show of solidarity with the villagers were moved after soldiers declared the location a closed military zone, Hathaleen said. The soldiers told us the place we were standing was now too designated a closed military zone. While Hathaleen and young soldiers argued about the military order, a senior figure in uniform, heavily armed and wearing a black balaclava and dark glasses joined us. Exasperated by the exchanges, he eventually said: “You have four minutes. Go. Goodbye.” Hathaleen, who said the soldiers had come at the request of settlers, filmed the confrontation on his phone, a potentially risky provocation – but one that ended peacefully. Hathaleen said his father, Siliman Hathleen, also a community activist fighting against demolitions, died after being hit by an Israeli police truck in 2022. His cousin, Awdah Hathaleen, a consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was shot dead in the village by a settler in July. In Palestinian villages south of Nablus, representatives of agricultural cooperatives and women’s organisations told us of attacks from settlers descending from the hilltops to beat them up, destroy property and spread a poisonous white powder that killed crops. In one village, farmers, coming up with ingenious ways to counter this, had started growing vegetables in barrels filled with uncontaminated soil. * * * Is it possible that anger with Israeli military incursions and settler attacks – not to mention the destruction of Gaza – will provoke large-scale retaliation, a third intifada, in the West Bank? The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in a poll in October, found 49% of Palestinians in the West Bank – and 30% in Gaza – still favoured armed struggle as the most effective way to achieve a Palestinian state. Abdaljawad Omar, assistant professor of philosophy at Birzeit, who goes under the pen name Abboud Hamayel, is sceptical about the possibility. He has written a forthcoming book about the Palestinian resistance. He does not advocate a return to violence but regretted the prevailing fatigue and paralysis, what he calls “emotional hollowing”. He said: “Anger has mutated into impotent resentment. Today stones are seldom thrown in the West Bank. This is something new … Resistance is slowly becoming a memory.” The hotbed of resistance in the second intifada was the refugee camps, many of which date back to 1948, when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what became the state of Israel. At the entrance to the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem there is an arch above which rests a huge key, symbolising the hope that one day its inhabitants might go back to Israel to reclaim their former homes. Around the walls of the camp are murals that range from a commemoration of Palestinian heroes, such as stone-throwing youths and guerilla fighter Leila Khaled, to an unflattering painting of US president Donald Trump. Rushing to prayers at midday one Friday, residents had little time to talk but were dismissive of the ceasefire in Gaza – “What ceasefire?” – and ridiculed Trump’s plan for a Gaza Riviera. The one-tonne metal key fixed above the arch and the murals celebrating resistance feel like symbols from a bygone age, an era that is slipping away, not least because the dream of the refugees of a return to their original homes in Israel is almost certainly never going to be fulfilled. I interviewed a father in another of the camps in Bethlehem during the second intifada who was adamant he, like the other residents, would not leave the camp other than to return to his original home. Does that diehard stubbornness still exist? A former resident of the camps expressed surprise on hearing that families who had been among the most intractable were considering for the first time leaving, ground down, in part, by unemployment, poverty and debt. The Israeli military is not waiting for them to leave. Earlier this year the IDF demolished large parts of the three of the camps that have been on the frontline of resistance, during the second intifada and since 2023, all three in the north of the West Bank. Israel described the three as “hubs of terror”: Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin. Palestinians said the Israeli military, through flyers and loudspeakers, warned the residents of Aida and other camps they, too, will be destroyed unless they behave. When the Israelis mounted an incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, they met fierce resistance. I interviewed an Israeli sergeant at the time, Israel Kaspi, a combat veteran who had seen service in the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and in Lebanon in 1982, who said the fighting in Jenin had been the most intense he had ever been involved in. The Palestinians had turned the refugee camp into a fortress, he said. Israel lost 23 soldiers as they fought from street to street, house to house, and room to room, amid booby-traps, explosives hidden in alleyways and in rubbish bins, dynamite sealed inside walls, and Palestinians firing from well-prepared positions. Earlier this year, when they attacked the camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams, the Israelis lost three soldiers but managed to empty the camps of a combined total of 30,000 residents, shattering close-knit communities and dispersing them to temporary accommodation elsewhere in the West Bank. An estimated 850 homes and other buildings were destroyed across the three camps. On a visit to the camps at Tulkarm and Nur Shams last month, I could see tracks of tanks or bulldozers in the muddy road but nothing inside, partly because it was dark but also because venturing further is dangerous. The Israeli military had warned that anyone trying to enter the camps would be shot. This was not an empty threat: three days later a cameraman, Fady Yasmeen, was shot during a protest near the entrance. I travelled to Tulkarm with Aseel Tork, who works for a not-for-profit organisation that runs community projects in rural areas, in particular for women and the young, the Bisan Centre for Research and Development. It was designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel in 2021, a move condemned by, among others, the United Nations office of the high commissioner of human rights. Tork told me that she believed a third intifada is impossible now. “When the first and second intifadas happened, the Palestinian community as a whole was looking out for one another. There were fewer divisions among us: ideologically, politically, geographically. Right now, we cannot – and have not – stood up for the people in Gaza the way we should have. If an intifada was going to happen, it would have happened after 7 and 8 October.” * * * At an event in Ramallah in November, titled Poetry after Gaza, a Kafka quote came up in conversation between a European and a Palestinian. I was to hear it again twice during the week from Palestinians in other settings. “Plenty of hope – for God, an infinite amount of hope – only not for us.” Where do Palestinians look for hope? Few answers are forthcoming. An overhaul of the Palestinian Authority? Elections are long overdue – but problematic from an international standpoint, given the level of professed support for Hamas. Is a two-state solution, an independent Palestine and Israel side by side, even viable, given how much land settlers now occupy in the West Bank? A one-state solution, with Israel as an enlarged apartheid state, in which Palestinians could fight for equal rights, backed by the international community, as in South Africa? One weary Palestinian writer, after declaring the two-state solution dead, said he would settle for a one-state solution if it just meant he would finally be able to move about freely. A global campaign began last month for the release of Marwan Barghouti, widely regarded as the figure likeliest to unify the Palestinians. Barghouti, accused by Israel of being the leader of Fatah militants in the West Bank during the second intifada, has been in an Israeli jail since 2002, convicted on five counts of murder, which he denies. The longstanding Palestinian hope is that he could emerge from there as a Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Although he is Fatah, he is popular among supporters of Hamas and the other factions. I interviewed Barghouti in Ramallah the year before he was captured and wrote then that I thought he could a future leader. He was impressive but did not have the warmth of Mandela and to me he seemed, maybe unfairly, to be more of a street fighter than a political visionary. But perhaps he has changed while in prison, as Mandela did. Barghouti has been held in solitary confinement since the 7 October attack and been beaten by prison guards four times, the last, in September this year, leaving him unconscious, according to his son Arab. Barghouti was on a list of prisoners Hamas submitted to Israel to be freed as part of the October ceasefire deal. Although Israel released others convicted of murder, it refused to release Barghouti. Its decision may reflect Israel’s preference for a weak, malleable Palestinian leader, Abbas, to a potentially more forceful figure. Basem Ezbidi, a leading political scientist and member of the Al-Shabaka thinktank, who was at university with Barghouti, cautioned against expecting a political saviour. “In times of despair, people tend to create myths in which a superhero comes to the rescue,” he said. “People see Marwan Barghouti in that way. But he is not a man who makes miracles. He may be cleaner than others but it is not enough to be clean: you have to have the political skills and the right vision.” With a shortage of options from within, many Palestinians see the international community as their best hope, believing a turning point has been reached because of worldwide outrage over the destruction of Gaza. At the Birzeit conference, Saleh Hijazi, a policy coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, said more pressure had to be put on Israel by ending military ties, enforcing arrest warrants against Israelis accused of war crimes, divestment from complicit companies and expelling Israel from international bodies such as the UN, Fifa and the Olympics. Action is already being taken at state level, as in Malaysia, which closed down ports to Israeli ships, and even in Europe, he said. “We can now begin to see our South Africa moment arrive. But more escalation of BDS is needed.” Such campaigns might work in the long run, as they did in South Africa. But in the short or medium term they will not change the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, caught between a Palestinian Authority that cannot protect them and Israel, with its military clampdown and its out-of-control settlers. While the body count in the West Bank was higher during the second intifada, life was absolutely worse now in every other way, said Budour Hassan, a legal researcher at Amnesty International. Hassan, who is from Nazareth, said: “Even back then there was hope, maybe. Now the people seem completely desperate. They feel completely abandoned.” For the past two years, Manger Square in Bethlehem has been deliberately left in darkness and silence at Christmas time in a show of solidarity with Gaza. On 6 December, the Bethlehem mayor relit the Christmas tree in front of thousands of Palestinians – Muslims as well as Christians – and a scattering of visitors from around the world. Canawati hoped the resumption of festivities will revive tourism. He viewed the relighting of the tree as a symbol of hope and resilience. “Those who lost hope, they have left,” Canawati told me. (Since 2023, an estimated 4,000 Palestinians have left Bethlehem for abroad.) “I will never leave, regardless of what is going to happen. I know there are many like me,” Canawati said. Describing himself as an optimist, he hoped the reaction to Gaza will push world leaders into supporting the Palestinian cause, and that negotiations initiated by Trump will lead to a peace deal and a sovereign Palestinian state. But he tempered this with dismay over extremists in the Israeli cabinet and among the settlers. Echoing the despair I found around the West Bank, the mayor said: “The extremists do not want a two-state solution or a one-state solution. The extremists do not want to give us our state or be part of their state. They want the land without the people. They just want us gone.” • Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

Sexually explicit letters about exiled Hong Kong activists sent to UK and Australian addresses

Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony. Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks. It is the first time that people on the Hong Kong police’s bounty list, wanted for national security offences, have been directly targeted with this kind of explicitly sexualised harassment, highlighting the heightened risks faced by female activists and their associates. At least half a dozen of Lau’s former neighbours in Maidenhead received letters showing fake, sexualised images of her. They were posted from Macau, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory near Hong Kong. The letters have five deepfaked images of Lau, with her face superimposed on women’s bodies either naked or in underwear. One image shows the fake Lau performing a sex act, which has been pixelated. The text on the letter states Lau’s name and supposed body measurements. It includes her former home address in full and states: “Welcome to visit me! You have the right to choose me, and I also have the right not to accept you. Just want the process to be gentle. We can become close friends in the future!” In Australia, Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong legislator, and his wife have been targeted with a fake poster advertising his wife’s services as a sex worker. The poster shows an old photograph of Hui and his wife under the headline “Hong Kong lonely housewife”. Underneath the picture there is a menu of sexual services with prices in Australian dollars. The poster also includes an address, which Hui said was not connected to him. The poster was emailed to his boss over the summer and posted to people in Adelaide at and around the address listed on the poster. Lau said she was “terrified” when she learned of the letters. “I am a woman, and they threaten me like this,” she said. Lau said the letters represented “an escalation of transnational repression” where AI or digital tools were used to specifically target women. Hui said he had “expected something like this to come”. His wife was “speechless”, he said. She is not a public figure and it is the first time she has been included in the harassment against her husband. Hui said he reported the poster to the police who said the IP address from which the email was sent could be traced to Hong Kong. A resident of the address in Adelaide listed on the poster about Hui said he had never heard of the exiled Hongkonger. He said his wife had been scared by the poster turning up in their letterbox. “How did they get our address? Why did they pick us? It just doesn’t make sense,” the resident said. He said a neighbour had asked him if his house had become a “knock shop”, slang for a brothel. The letters were reported to the police. A South Australia police spokesperson said they could not comment on individual cases. In March, Lau’s neighbours received “wanted” posters offering a reward of HK$1m (£96,000) for any member of the public who could provide information about her or take her to the Chinese embassy. Neighbours of Tony Chung, a young Hong Kong activist who was granted asylum in the UK this year, received similar letters about him. In Australia, similar letters were sent about Kevin Yam, an Australian-Hongkonger lawyer who is subject to a Hong Kong arrest warrant for his pro-democracy activism, and about Hui. But this is the first time anyone wanted by the Hong Kong authorities has been targeted with sexually explicit material. One of the people who received the letter in Maidenhead said it showed “graphic images of her sexual acts … basically offering services”. “It’s obviously unfortunate for the person who it’s targeted at,” said the resident, who asked to remain anonymous. They had also received the previous letter offering a reward for Lau’s whereabouts. Lau moved house after the bounty reward letters were sent in March. She said the experiences made her feel uneasy in public. “If I ever go out, I try to wear a cap or a face mask to avoid being recognised,” she said. “The psychological burden is heavy.” Lau has previously criticised Thames Valley police for their handling of the original letters sent in March, after they asked her to sign an agreement requesting that she “cease any activity that is likely to put you at risk”. The latest letters have also been referred to the police. Lau said she had been told there was a slim chance of finding out who was responsible for them. Joshua Reynolds, the MP for Maidenhead, said the letters were an act of transnational repression “without question” and called on the government to take decisive action, including imposing sanctions on officials involved in raising bounties on activists living in Britain. “It’s the point now where it’s Beijing’s efforts to intimidate and to threaten pro-democracy Hongkongers,” Reynolds said. “It’s utterly grotesque what they’re doing, and now is the point where the government can’t stick their head in the sand when it comes to the safety of Hongkongers in our country.” It is not clear who sent the sexually explicit letters. The Chinese embassy previously said the bounty letters were faked. Responding to the latest letters about Lau, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London reiterated their previous comments. “000[who] fled overseas seeking to destabilise Hong Kong,” the spokesperson said. “It is legitimate and reasonable to pursue wanted fugitives. Rather than cheating and sadfishing, those anti-China rioters who fled overseas should surrender themselves to the police as soon as possible.” The Chinese embassy in Canberra did not respond to a request for comment. Thames Valley police said: “We are investigating reports of a malicious communications offence. The malicious communications are believed to be digitally altered images. We are engaging with the victim and, at this time, no arrests have been made.” A UK government spokesperson said: “The safety and security of Hongkongers in the United Kingdom is of the utmost importance. We encourage anyone to report concerns to the police.”

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv’s SBU cripples shadow fleet tanker in Black Sea

Ukrainian sea drones on Wednesday hit and disabled a tanker involved in trading Russian oil as it sailed through Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, a Ukrainian official said. The attack is the third sea drone strike in two weeks on vessels part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” of unregulated and often western-sanctioned ships helping Moscow export oil to fund the war. The Dashan tanker was sailing at maximum speed with its transponders off when powerful explosions hit its stern, inflicting critical damage, the official at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said. The strike on the Dashan, which is under EU and British sanctions and is sailing without a known flag registry, was also confirmed by three maritime security sources. “The SBU continues to take active measures to reduce petrodollar revenues to the Russian budget,” said the official. Leaders of the “coalition of the willing” group of nations will hold a video call on Thursday as the chaotic American efforts to push through a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine reach a crunch moment, Shaun Walker writes from Kyiv. It comes after the White House attempted to foist upon Ukraine a Moscow-favoured proposal that included giving up even more Ukrainian territory to Russia than the invaders currently illegally occupy. Ukraine on Wednesday said it had sent an updated proposal to Washington that “takes into account Ukraine’s vision – it is a further proposal for adequate solutions to problematic issues … We are not disclosing the details pending the reaction of the American side.” “We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words,” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday after a phone call with the “coalition of the willing” leaders Keir Starmer of Britain, Emmanuel Macron of France and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. “I think we had some little disputes about people, and we’re going to see how it turns out. And we said, ‘before we go to a meeting, we want to know some things,’” Trump added. “They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe, and we’ll make a determination depending on what they come back with. We don’t want to be wasting time.” Voldodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, spoke further about Ukrainian elections, saying he had discussed with parliament the legal and other issues involved. “If partners, including our key partner in Washington, speak so much and so specifically about elections in Ukraine, about elections under martial law, then we must provide legal Ukrainian answers to every question and every doubt,” he said. “It is not easy, but pressure on this issue is definitely not what we need.” There is no proof of Russian allegations that western arms sent to Ukraine are being illicitly diverted on a large scale to criminal groups, two NGOs said in a study on Wednesday. The Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey and Ukrainian Center for Security Studies said that while firearms seizures by Ukrainian authorities had increased, “Ukrainian authorities have shown a strong commitment to addressing this issue” – and Russia’s invading forces were driving illicit arms flows in Ukraine by establishing arms caches and losing or abandoning their weapons on the battlefield. “Western hand grenades, shoulder-fired rockets, and portable missiles comprise only a small percentage of all seized weapons.” The war in Ukraine is endangering pregnant women, and maternal mortality has risen sharply, the United Nations Population Fund has warned. The maternal mortality rate among pregnant women jumped by approximately 37% from 2023 to 2024. The war was putting “more women at risk of dying and more pregnancies ending in life-threatening complications” said Florence Bauer, the agency’s director for eastern Europe. “These are not abstract statistics – they are people and families living under unbearable stress and reflect a health system under attack.” On Capitol Hill, the US House of Representatives passed a $900bn defence policy bill on Wednesday that includes $400m for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine. Despite Trump’s capricious attitude to Ukraine and European allies, lawmakers included several provisions meant to keep up US support for countering Russian aggression. The bill would need to pass the Senate, where it could be amended, and then also would have to receive the president’s signature. It requires the Pentagon to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless Nato allies are consulted and there is a determination that a withdrawal is in US interests. About 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil.

Former Bolivian president Luis Arce reportedly detained by police

Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday. His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police. The police have not commented on the alleged detention, but the vice-president, Edmand Lara, posted a video on social media congratulating a specialist police unit “for having apprehended Luis Arce, in compliance with a resolution issued by a prosecutorial authority”. Arce served as Bolivia’s president until last November, when he handed over the sash to the centre-right former senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, who won the runoff in an election that ended nearly 20 years of dominance by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas). Lara added: “We said that Luis Arce would be the first to go to prison, and we are delivering. Everyone who has stolen from this country will return every last cent and be held to account.” The vice-president is a former police officer who became famous on TikTok for making alleged corruption accusations. The state broadcaster Bolivia TV posted that Arce was “giving a statement before” the police “while staff from the office of the ombudsman accompany him”. It noted the involvement of the Special Force to Fight Crime’s department for the investigation of illicit gains. Outside the headquarters of the FELCC in the capital, La Paz, where the former president had supposedly been taken, Tejada told journalists she was trying to enter the building to obtain more information. She said Arce “was alone” in the Sopocachi neighbourhood of La Paz, when he was allegedly “put into a minibus with blacked-out windows” and taken to the FELCC. “I’m arriving now to find out … No, there was no notification of any kind, and I’m coming to see under what procedures they brought him here,” she added. Tejada said she learned from “unofficial sources” that the reason for the detention “would be the Indigenous fund case”, referring to a government fund intended to channel part of hydrocarbon tax revenues into development projects for Indigenous peoples. During the early years of the administration of the former president Evo Morales, under whom Arce served as finance minister, Bolivia experienced astonishing growth, lifting thousands out of poverty – particularly many Indigenous and rural communities – thanks to a natural gas boom. The “Indigenous fund” was shut down in 2015 after a corruption scandal involving the alleged misappropriation of resources. Investigations were revived after Paz Pereira took office – the president established at least 10 commissions to audit and investigate Mas administrations, one of them focused on the “Indigenous fund”. Last Friday, the former Mas deputy Lidia Patty was also arrested by the FELCC. She is accused of having received, in her personal account, funds for the execution of projects that were never carried out. Local media reported that, in the request for Arce’s detention, the public prosecutor Miguel Ángel Cardozo alleged that when Arce was economy minister he had “violated existing regulations by authorising the transfer of public funds into personal accounts”.

Ukraine war: Trump criticises European leaders on eve of crunch coalition meeting

Leaders of the “coalition of the willing” group of nations will hold a video call about the Ukraine war on Thursday as Donald Trump voiced impatience with European allies and put US involvement in further talks in doubt, saying they risked “wasting time”. Amid chaotic American efforts to push through a peace deal, the US president said on Wednesday night: “We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words”, when asked about an earlier phone call with British prime minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz The US president added that the Europeans wanted to hold fresh talks this weekend but warned that they risked “wasting time”. “I think we had some little disputes about people, and we’re going to see how it turns out. And we said, before we go to a meeting, we want to know some things,” Trump said. “They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe, and we’ll make a determination depending on what they come back with. We don’t want to be wasting time”. A British readout of the call said that all leaders agreed it was a “critical moment” and “intensive work on the peace plan is continuing and will continue in the coming days.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will be on Thursday’s call, along with Starmer, Macron and Merz, who had a meeting in Downing Street on Monday. They will be joined by numerous other leaders of nations supporting Ukraine. Zelenskyy, was expected to hand over a revised version of a peace plan to US negotiators on Wednesday before the call with leaders and officials from about 30 countries. “This week may bring news for all of us,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “We believe that peace has no alternative, and the key questions are how to compel Russia to stop the killings and what specifically will deter Russia from a third invasion. The European leaders have also been working to draw up security guarantees for Ukraine in the event a peace deal is struck, though it is far from clear any western nations are willing to offer meaningful guarantees against further Russian aggression in the event of a peace deal. Trump has vacillated between appearing supportive and dismissive of Ukraine since taking office at the beginning of this year, but his recent peace drive on terms that seem beneficial to Russia, combined with a new US national security strategy that attacks European nations, has worried allies. In a repeat of previous cycles of Trump-led peace efforts, Zelenskyy has mobilised European leaders to come to his assistance when under pressure from the US president. Trump claimed earlier in the week that Zelenskyy had not even read his draft peace plan. “Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy is fine with it,” said Trump. Numerous Russian officials have praised the Trump team’s peace efforts, and Vladimir Putin welcomed the White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for five hours of talks in the Kremlin last week. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Trump was the only western leader with “an understanding of the reasons that made war in Ukraine inevitable”. But sceptics say there is little sign that Russia is ready to sign a peace deal, even on the terms proposed by the White House, which include Kyiv giving up control of the entire Donbas region. Putin has instead said repeatedly that Moscow wants a “comprehensive settlement” to the conflict. At home, Zelenskyy is under pressure on several fronts, after a corruption scandal led him to fire his powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, his closest confidant since the start of the full-scale war. On Tuesday, Trump piled further pressure on, claiming Ukraine ought to hold elections and suggesting Zelenskyy, whose official term ended in May 2024, might not win them. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump told Politico. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy any more.” There has been a consensus in Ukrainian politics that holding a wartime election, which is illegal under martial law, would only play into Russia’s hands, and even staunch critics of Zelenskyy have not called for a vote. But clearly feeling pressured by statements from Trump and others in his orbit, Zelenskyy said on Tuesday evening he was “ready for elections”. He said he would ask the US to supply proposals on how to hold a vote safely and request that MPs prepare legislation to allow an election. “I am asking … the United States to help me, possibly together with European colleagues, to ensure security for the elections, and then in the next 60 to 90 days Ukraine will be ready to hold the elections. I personally have the will and readiness for this,” Zelenskyy said. On the frontline, Russia continued its assaults on the city of Pokrovsk and nearby Myrnohrad on Wednesday. The Ukrainian military said Russia was using “armoured vehicles, cars and motorcycles” to storm the northern part of Pokrovsk from the morning. Russia has already claimed control of the whole city but Kyiv says it holds the northern part. On Tuesday, Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces now controlled 30% of nearby Myrnohrad and that Putin had ordered them to complete the takeover of the town. A Ukrainian military source who had just returned from Myrnohrad confirmed that street battles are going on in the town. “It’s absolute hell,” said the source.