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Is British politics immune to US-style rightwing Christianity? We’re about to find out | Lamorna Ash

Earlier this year, not long after Tommy Robinson embraced evangelical Christianity while in prison, the then Conservative MP Danny Kruger spoke in parliament about the need for a restoration of Britain through the “recovery of a Christian politics”. Less than two months later, Kruger joined Reform, and shortly after that, James Orr, a vociferously conservative theologian who has been described as JD Vance’s “English philosopher king”, was appointed as one of Reform’s senior advisers. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, now frequently invokes the need for a return to “Judeo-Christian” values. The British right is increasingly invoking the Christian tradition: the question is what it hopes to gain from doing so. Until recently, there were no obvious British analogues to political figures on the US right such as Vance, the Catholic-convert for whom religion plays a foundational political role. With Orr and Kruger, both of whom converted to conservative evangelical Christianity as adults and attend church regularly, we have some contenders. Kruger has said he is in agreement with Vance that to solve the “plight of the west” there needs to be a “substantial revival” of “governance and culture”; he believes this can be achieved through a return to Christianity. Those further to the right prefer their Christianity more pugilistic and watered-down. Robinson has clearly recognised the political value of the Christian faith: there was an abundance of Christian symbolism at the “unite the kingdom” far-right march that he organised in London this September. Pastors on stage gave speeches and led worship songs, aping the style of the evangelical mass politics of the US Christian right. Robinson’s newfound faith mirrors an important development that is taking place among European far-right groups, which are shifting emphasis in their political messaging from ethnicity to religion. (Rikki Doolan, a British evangelical pastor who was the witness to Robinson’s conversion at HMP Woodhill, has suggested that Robinson first grasped the political value that Christianity could have for his movement while attending far-right rallies in Poland.) In its most nationalist guise, this new racism views Christianity as synonymous with whiteness (it matters not that Christianity originated in the Middle East). Other religions, but especially Islam, can be repurposed as existential threats, making religion into a zero-sum game: you are either for Christianity, or you are working to destroy it. Viewed through this lens, Robinson can remake his anti-Islam politics into a defence of Christianity. Kruger, meanwhile, can argue that Islam is moving “into the space from which Christianity has been ejected”, offering a religious gloss to more generalised fears about immigration diluting an imagined ideal of Britishness. Much of this thinking involves simplifying both Christianity and Islam, two enormously complex, heterodox religions. In order to pit entire civilisations against one another, the influential scholar Edward Said wrote, one is required to refashion civilisations into what they are not: “sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history”. The homogenous form of Christianity that Robinson subscribes to is a reaction to what he perceives Islam to be – representative of all that is evil, while Christianity represents all that which is good. Powerful backers and strategists on the US Christian right increasingly see Britain as fertile ground for its movement. Since 2020, the US legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending in Britain, and increased the size of its UK-based team fourfold. ADF is known for providing legal counsel on high-profile culture war cases in the US. It was an architect of the overturning of Roe v Wade, regularly represents clients who oppose gay and transgender rights – and is now exporting its methods to the UK. In recent years, a number of conservative Christians in the UK have been taken to court for illegally praying in abortion clinic “buffer zones”, which protect those visiting or working at abortion clinics from harassment. On multiple occasions, these Christians have been offered legal support by ADF’s UK branch. This is part of its “long-term strategy to shift public opinion around abortion”, the New York Times reported. By calling such cases “free speech issues” – an incendiary topic in Britain’s so-called culture wars – the ADF thinks it can push religious arguments against abortion on to the national stage. This might seem like a pointless exercise: according to recent surveys, the vast majority of British people believe abortions should be legal. But, public opinion is never static. Farage has started calling the UK’s 24-week abortion limit “utterly ludicrous”. This summer a survey found that less than half of men aged 16-34 believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 82% of men aged 55-77 – a generational vulnerability that could be exploited. The issue has always been a particularly useful cause for the right: in the US in the 1970s, the New Right movement – combining conservative hardliners and conservative Catholics – realised abortion could be tied to various perceived social ills, such as women’s liberation and the civil rights movement. Their target was not only to limit abortions, but to use abortion as a means of unifying disparate camps on the right and legitimising other socially conservative policies. ADF UK is doing more than just providing British Christians with legal counsel. Its lobbying has secured Farage a seat at the high table on several occasions: thanks to its interventions, in September he was able to give a nearly three-hour public appearance before the House judiciary committee in Washington DC describing the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK. ADF also trains student groups in Britain, hosting seminars on topics such as “the right to freedom of speech on campus”. Its members make appearances on broadcast media and write pieces for the rightwing press. This striking project to empower conservative Christianity in Britain should serve as a reminder of the fragility of Britain’s largely secular politics. It is also a reminder that anti-trans, anti-queer and Islamophobic positions do not spring from nowhere. Public consensus can be manipulated by discreet networks with distinct agendas and multimillion dollar budgets. It’s impossible to say which political figures currently embracing Christianity are doing so in earnest: at root, faith is a deeply private experience, generating a wide variety of conclusions about the world and our moral duties to one another. In October, Neville Watson, the only black branch chair of Reform UK, defected to the Christian People’s Alliance, a small independent party. Shocked by the strong presence of Islamophobia at the “unite the kingdom” rally, he declared that those present were advancing “an ideology that is not Christian”. Watson was brought up a socially conservative evangelical Christian: “I’m coming from a very strong, Christian, love thy neighbour sort of perspective,” he said at the time. This is the first indication of a struggle for the meaning of Christianity among the hard-right. It could have significant implications for the movement’s future. Lamorna Ash is the author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion

Alexis Tsipras says Yanis Varoufakis was ‘unsuitable’ as Greek finance minister during debt crisis

Yanis Varoufakis, the firebrand economist who rose to fame at the height of Greece’s debt drama, was not only egotistical but ultimately more interested in testing out his game theories on the nation than winning its battle to keep afloat. So writes the former prime minister Alexis Tsipras in his newly released memoir, Ithaki, as the once radical leftwing leader, sparing no punches, seeks, 10 years later, to put the record straight. “He was, in reality, more of a celebrity and less of an economist,” recalled the 51-year-old, who described handpicking the maverick as his finance minister because of his international reputation and “extremely attractive” skills as a public orator. “I wanted to send the message of hard negotiation, but I underestimated the human factor. Very quickly, Varoufakis turned from being an asset into a negative protagonist. Not only could our potential allies not stand him, neither could his own colleagues.” In a chronicle of events that has been quick to send ripples through Greece, Tsipras, who appears bent on staging a political comeback two years after renouncing the leadership of the Syriza party, said it was clear the Greek Australian academic had a personal agenda that included promoting his books. Negotiations to stave off bankruptcy were “not just a way of achieving a better deal for the country. They were an experiment, an historic opportunity to prove the truth of his economic theories,” Tsipras wrote. During rollercoaster talks that pitted the two men against Germany’s late economic tsar, Wolfgang Schauble and other fiscal hawks, Greece came perilously close to exiting the eurozone. At stake was not only the country’s future but the punishing austerity policies demanded in return for rescue loans from international creditors that Tsipras and his Syriza government had vowed to cancel. Efforts to find funds elsewhere, including a desperate plea to the Kremlin to buy Greek government bonds, fell on stony ground, with even Putin making clear that Athens should find accommodation with its EU partners. Helping the indebted country would be tantamount to throwing money in the trash-can, the Russian leader is reputed to have told his Greek counterpart in Moscow. “I wanted an honourable agreement within the eurozone,” Tsipras wrote, “but we also didn’t hide the fact that we wanted radical change in Europe, that we wanted to stop the imposition of the economic absurdity of neoliberalism not only in Greece but from one end of the continent to the other.” In July 2015, to the shock of Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, the excoriating bailout terms were put to popular referendum, a move that threw the EU into further existential crisis. Although the vote was won resoundingly by those who opposed austerity, Tsipras had little option but to reject its outcome and negotiate a bailout package with foreign lenders that proved to be even harsher, even if he argued the vote also served the purpose of staving off national humiliation. His intention, he insisted, had never been for Greece to leave the eurozone. Varoufakis, who prior to the referendum had jousted heatedly with colleagues in eurogroup meetings, subsequently resigned, although the two politicians attempted, at least publicly, to maintain friendly relations. But in the book, named after the island where in 2018 Tsipras declared Greece’s exit from the decade-long crisis, it is his erstwhile ally, who now heads the leftist MeRA 25 party, that he most takes issue with. In what will go down as one of the greatest character assassinations in modern Greek memory, the former premier claimed it had been Varoufakis’s confrontational style that left him increasingly isolated among peers, put Greece at risk and helped hawks, led by Schauble, who were clearly pushing for Grexit. “Varoufakis had proved himself to be unsuitable for an agreement that required complex and delicate handling,” he claimed, adding he had begun to doubt his finance minister quite early on. “He was the face of negotiation, the man who attracted publicity, who graced the covers of magazines the world over … he gave the impression he was enjoying his new role.” When Varoufakis outlined a contingency plan that included establishing a parallel currency and distributing vouchers to pensioners – as a way of strong-arming creditors to meet Greek demands – Tsipras said he realised it was game over, and asked Varoufakis: “Are you serious?” Ahead of the book’s long-awaited launch, the politician had declared it was time for his voice to be heard. And in a tome that recounts the behind-the-scenes meeting that led to his controversial decision to form a coalition with a populist rightwinger, to the groundbreaking deal to end the long-running dispute over the then-called Macedonia’s name, he does not disappoint. But it is a retelling of history that has been met with fury and stunned disbelief. And in the case of Varoufakis, who has since won international acclaim as a bestselling author, deafening silence.

Canada: ‘Inconvenient Indian’ author Thomas King says he is not Indigenous

A prominent Canadian-American author, who has long claimed Indigenous ancestry and whose work exposed “the hard truths of the injustices of the Indigenous peoples of North America”, has learned from a genealogist that he has no Cherokee ancestry. In an essay titled “A most inconvenient Indian” published on Monday for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Thomas King said he had learned of rumours circulating in recent years within both the arts and Indigenous communities that questioned his Cherokee heritage. In mid-November, he met with members of the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (Taaf), a group based in the state of North Carolina that exposes perpetrators of Indigenous identity fraud. King says this group was the main source of the rumours. The genealogist working with Taaf told King she found no evidence of Cherokee ancestry on either side of his family lineage. King says he accepts the findings. “It’s been a couple of weeks since that video call, and I’m still reeling. At 82, I feel as though I’ve been ripped in half, a one-legged man in a two-legged story,” he wrote. “Not the Indian I had in mind. Not an Indian at all.” King, a California-born academic, writer and activist, has lived in Canada since 1980, when he took a job in Alberta teaching Indigenous studies at the University of Lethbridge. He rose to prominence with work that Canada’s governor general said displayed “formidable wit to explore the social, economic and political dimensions of the modern Aboriginal experience”. King has long said he grew up hearing a story that his father, Robert King, was not his biological father. Instead, Thomas King’s grandfather was Elvin Hunt, a man believed to have Cherokee ancestry. But the genealogist working with Taaf found no evidence of Cherokee ancestry on either side of King’s family lineage. King won the 2014 RBC Taylor prize for non-fiction for his book The Inconvenient Indian and in 2020 won the Stephen Leacock memorial medal for humour for his work Indians on Vacation. That same year, he was promoted to companion of the Order of Canada, commended for his “prolific and groundbreaking work [which] continues to enrich our country’s culture, and has changed our perception of Canadian history”. In an interview with the Globe and Mail published on Monday, King said he intended to return the National Aboriginal Achievement award, which he received in 2003. “The rest of my awards are based on my writing, not my ethnicity,” he said. King is the latest prominent figure whose claims to Indigenous ancestry have been disproven. Recently, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation claimed folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in Massachusetts to white parents, not to Cree parents as she had long claimed. King says he never intentionally misled people, instead genuinely believing he had Cherokee ancestry. “Taaf suggested that I might want to offer up an apology for my life, but an apology assumes a crime, an offence, a misdeed,” he wrote in his essay. “And I don’t think that’s appropriate. Throughout my career – activist, academic, administrator, writer – I’ve conducted myself in the belief that I was mixed-blood Cherokee.” But he wrote that after seeing the evidence, if he chose to withhold that information “then an accusation of fraud would have merit”.

Ukraine war briefing: Russia launches strikes on Kyiv, setting buildings ablaze

Russia launched a wave of attacks on Ukraine’s capital early on Tuesday, striking Kyiv residential buildings and energy infrastructure, according to video footage and local authorities. Two people were killed and six others wounded, the State Emergency Service (SES) said. A high-rise residential building was hit in a district on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration. Pictures posted on unofficial Telegram channels showed apartments on fire on upper floors. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said another high-rise building was being evacuated after being hit in the city centre’s Pechersk district. He also reported disruptions to Kyiv’s power and water supplies. The SES said 18 people had been rescued, including three children, and it was continuing to work at the sites of “hits and debris falls”. Ukrainian airstrikes killed one person and wounded three others in the Russian port city of Taganrog, the mayor said early Tuesday. “As a result of the massive overnight airstrike on our city, two apartment buildings, a private home, the Mechanical College building, two industrial enterprises, and Kindergarten No. 7 were damaged,” mayor Svetlana Kambulova posted to Telegram. Ukraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” to end the war, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned on Monday that no deal could be reached quickly. Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week, sources indicated, amid a flurry of calls between Kyiv and Washington. Luke Harding, Jon Henley and Pjotr Sauer also report that Ukraine is pressing for Europe to be involved in the talks. The White House has pushed back against criticism – including from within the Republican party – that Donald Trump is favouring Russia in the efforts to end the war in Ukraine. “The idea that the United States of America is not engaging with both sides equally in this war to bring it to an end is a complete and total fallacy,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday. The US president was “hopeful and optimistic” that a plan could be worked out to end the war, she said. The US-Russia peace proposal leaked to the media last week has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray. Pjotr Sauer writes in this analysis that the plan has creating precisely the conditions Vladimir Putin has long sought: a negotiating table sharply tilted in the Russian president’s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally hanging over its head. A heating and power plant in Russia’s Moscow region has resumed operations after shutting down due to a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone strike, regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Monday. The attack on Sunday on the facility in Shatura, a town of about 33,000, sparked a major blaze and cut heating for residents as night temperatures hovered around freezing. It marked one of Kyiv’s most significant strikes to date on a power station deep inside Russia. A Lithuanian court convicted a Ukrainian national on Monday of carrying out an arson attack last year on an Ikea store in the Baltic country’s capital, Vilnius, which authorities have accused Russian military intelligence of being behind. The Vilnius regional court convicted the man of charges including a terrorist act and illegal possession of explosives and sentenced him to three years and four months in prison. The man, who was a minor at the time of the May 2024 attack, had pleaded guilty. Ikea was allegedly targeted because the company withdrew from Russia and because of Sweden’s aid to Ukraine.

China’s Xi Jinping raises future of Taiwan in call with Donald Trump

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told Donald Trump that Beijing’s claims to Taiwan remain unchanged, in a phone call that came amid rising tensions over the self-governing island. Xi told Trump on Monday that Taiwan’s return to China was an “integral part of the postwar international order” forged in the joint US-China fight against “fascism and militarism”, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to annex it, by force if necessary. Taiwan’s democratically elected government strongly rejects China’s stance. The ministry said the call touched on other issues, including Ukraine, with Xi also stressing the need to build on a fragile trade truce between China and the US. But Taiwan featured prominently. China is embroiled in a weeks-long diplomatic row with key US ally Japan over the island that has seen a dip in Chinese tourism to Japan, a ban on Japanese seafood and the cancellation of joint cultural events. The bitter dispute between Tokyo and Beijing was triggered after Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, suggested this month that Tokyo could intervene militarily in any attack on Taiwan. On Tuesday, Takaichi said she also had a call with Trump and discussed his conversation with Xi, as well as US-Japan relations. She and Trump “held a wide-ranging exchange of views on strengthening the Japan-US alliance and the challenges and issues facing the Indo-Pacific region”, she told reporters, without elaborating. She said Trump had proposed the call. The US does not officially recognise Taiwan’s claim to statehood but Washington remains the island’s most important partner and arms supplier. Trump did not mention Taiwan in his post on Truth Social about his call with Xi. Instead, he praised “extremely strong” US-China relations. According to China’s foreign ministry, Trump told Xi during their discussion that the US “understands how important the Taiwan question is to China.” In response, Taiwan premier Cho Jung-tai said on Tuesday that a “return” to China is not an option for the island’s 23 million people. “We must once again emphasise that the Republic of China, Taiwan, is a fully sovereign and independent country,” Cho told reporters outside parliament, referring to the island’s formal name. “For the 23 million people of our nation, ‘return’ is not an option - this is very clear,” he added. The US president’s statement also confirmed that he will visit China in April and that Xi will come to Washington later in 2026. Beijing said nothing about the state visits. Their call came after the pair met in late October for the first time since 2019, engaging in closely watched trade talks between the world’s top two economies. The Washington-Beijing trade war, which encompasses everything from rare earths to soya beans and port fees, has rocked markets and slowed supply chains for months. A tentative deal reached in October’s meeting in South Korea saw Beijing agree to suspend for one year certain export restrictions on critical minerals. China is hugely dominant in the mining and processing of rare earths, which are essential for sophisticated electronic components across a range of industries including auto, electronics and defence. Meanwhile, the US said it would cut back tariffs on Chinese products, and Beijing would buy at least 12m metric tons of American soya beans by the end of this year, and 25m metric tons in 2026. Xi told Trump on Monday that their two countries should “keep up the momentum”, according to the foreign ministry. He added that the “successful” meeting in South Korea “recalibrated the course of the giant ship of China-US relations and provided more momentum for it to sail forward steadily”. Since the meeting, China-US ties have “generally maintained a steady and positive trajectory, and this is welcomed by the two countries and the broader international community”, Xi said. Trump struck a similarly optimistic tone in his statement. “This call was a follow-up to our highly successful meeting in South Korea, three weeks ago. Since then, there has been significant progress on both sides in keeping our agreements current and accurate. Now we can set our sights on the big picture,” he said. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said Washington hoped to finalise a deal with Beijing for securing supplies of rare earths by the Thanksgiving holiday, which falls on Thursday. The two leaders also discussed the war in Ukraine – an issue high on Trump’s agenda as he pushes for an end to the war. China has positioned itself as a neutral party and, in Monday’s call, Xi reiterated his backing to end the nearly four-year conflict. With Agence France-Presse

What is the Muslim Brotherhood – explained in 30 seconds

The Muslim Brotherhood is a pan-Islamist organisation that was founded in Egypt in 1928 as an Islamic political movement to counter the spread of secular and nationalist ideas. It swiftly spread through Muslim countries, becoming a major player but often operating in secret. Its founder, Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, believed that reviving Islamic principles in society could enable the Muslim world to resist Western colonialism. The Muslim Brotherhood is now outlawed as a terrorist group in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More recently, Jordan banned it in April 2025. It is popular in Jordan, and had continued to operate there even though the country’s top court in 2020 ruled to dissolve the group. Authorities have turned a blind eye to its activities in the past. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned since 2013, after the overthrow of its leader and then-president Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in a military coup led by then military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi has led Egypt since then, forging a key alliance with Washington in the process. In May 2025, president Emmanuel Macron of France ordered his government to draw up proposals to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the spread of political Islam in that country. In November, the US president, Donald Trump, began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organisations and specially-designated global terrorists, a move would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.

Ukraine makes significant changes to US ‘peace plan’, sources say

Ukraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” to end the conflict, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned on Monday that no deal could be reached quickly. Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week, sources indicated, amid a flurry of calls between Kyiv and Washington. Ukraine is pressing for Europe to be involved in the talks. The original 28-point US-Russian plan was drawn up last month by Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, and Trump’s representative Steve Witkoff. It calls on Ukraine to withdraw from cities it controls in the eastern Donbas region, limit the size of its army, and not join Nato. During negotiations on Sunday in Switzerland – led by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak – the plan was substantially revised. It now includes only 19 points. Kyiv and its European partners say the existing frontline has to be the starting point for territorial discussions. On Monday, Zelenskyy said: “As of now, after Geneva, there are fewer points, no longer 28, and many correct elements have been incorporated into this framework,” adding that sensitive issues were to be discussed with Trump. They say there can be no recognition of land seized by Russia militarily, and that Kyiv should make its own decisions on whether to join the EU and Nato – something the Kremlin wants to veto or impose conditions on. Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told the Financial Times such issues had been “placed in brackets” for Trump and Zelenskyy to decide upon later. Rubio hailed Sunday’s talks as “very very positive”. Writing on Truth Social on Monday, Trump, who days earlier had accused Ukraine’s leadership of having “zero gratitude”, also struck a positive tone. “Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” he wrote. Ukraine’s delegation briefed Zelenskyy about the talks on Monday after returning to Kyiv from Geneva. They described the latest version of the plan as more realistic. Separately, Zelenskyy spoke to the US vice-president, JD Vance, and urged him to involve European countries in the process. Vance reportedly agreed. But in the clearest sign yet the original 28-point plan – widely seen as favourable to Moscow – still falls short of several key Kremlin demands, Putin’s top foreign policy aide on Monday said Moscow would seek to “rework” parts of it. “We were given some sort of draft … which will require further reworking,” said Yuri Ushakov, adding that “many provisions” of the plan appeared acceptable to Russia, but others would “require the most detailed discussions and review between the parties”. Underscoring the Kremlin’s hardline stance, Ushakov said Moscow would reject a European counter-proposal from the weekend, which, according to a copy seen by Reuters, changes the meaning and significance of key points concerning Nato membership and territory. “The European plan, at first glance … is completely unconstructive and does not work for us,” he said. As negotiators scrambled to revise a framework, Ukraine and Russia counted casualties on Tuesday morning after trading deadly overnight strikes. Russia’s acting governor of Rostov region said at least three people were killed by Ukrainian strikes. Authorities in Kyiv said at least one person was killed and seven wounded in the capital, after a barrage of missiles and drones targeted the country’s energy sector. The UK and EU were blind-sided last week when the original plan was leaked to US media. The army secretary, Dan Driscoll – Vance’s friend and university classmate – was sent to Kyiv with a military delegation to brief Zelenskyy on its contents. Since then, European governments have sought to revise the document, which appears to have originally been written in Russian. EU leaders attending an EU-Africa summit in Angola welcomed a degree of progress, but said far more work remained to be done and insisted Europe must be fully involved and Russia must be present if talks were to advance substantively. The European Council president, António Costa, praised “a new momentum”, saying after talks on the sidelines of the summit that while issues remained, “the direction is positive”. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, also called the “refined peace framework” agreed in Switzerland “a solid basis for moving forward”, but added: “Work remains to be done.” Von der Leyen said the core principles the EU would always insist on were that “Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty must be respected – only Ukraine, as a sovereign country, can make decisions regarding its armed forces”. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said both Europe and Russia must be fully involved. “The next step must be: Russia must come to the table,” Merz said, while Europeans must be able to give their consent to “issues that affect European interests and sovereignty”. Talks would be a “long-lasting process” and Merz said he did not expect a breakthrough this week. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the talks were delicate because “nobody wants to put off the Americans and President Trump from having the US on our side in this process”. Tusk also stressed that any peace settlement needed to “strengthen, not weaken, our security” and must not “favour the aggressor”. Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said Russia “must be forced to the negotiating table” to see “aggression … never pays”. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said there was more work to do but progress was being made. A group of countries supporting Ukraine – the coalition of the willing – would discuss the issue in a video call on Tuesday, he said. The chairs of the parliamentary foreign affairs committees of 20 European countries, including France, Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK, issued a rare joint statement saying just and lasting peace would not be achieved by “yielding to the aggressor” but must be “grounded in international law and fully respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty”. On Monday, the White House pushed back against criticism, including from within the Republican party, that Trump is favouring Russia. “The idea that the US is not engaging with both sides equally in this war to bring it to an end is a complete and total fallacy,” the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters. Zelenskyy is at his most vulnerable since the start of the war, after a corruption scandal led to two of his ministers being dismissed while Russia makes battlefield gains.

Nauru president floats returning NZYQ refugees to home countries

Nauru may seek to return refugees from the NZYQ cohort to their home countries, the Nauruan president has said in a new translation of a February interview that has been the subject of months-long controversy. David Adeang’s interview erroneously claimed those being sent to Nauru were not refugees and said Nauru may seek to return them to their countries of origin where possible. Guardian Australia has confirmed members of the NZYQ group have had refugee protection claims recognised by Australia. It is understood some of the men already transferred to Nauru are among those who are refugees. The Guardian has previously reported a partial transcript, which was corroborated by the full transcript read into Hansard by senators David Pocock and David Shoebridge late on Monday. The translation read into Hansard was not the Australian government’s document, but an independently sourced and verified translation obtained by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). The Australian government has consistently resisted disclosure of its translation of the interview, including winning a non-publication order over its document in the federal court. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Responding to a Senate order to produce the official translation, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, wrote that its publication would “prejudice Australia’s international relations … and our broader standing in the Pacific”. At least five members of the NZYQ cohort have been forcibly removed to Nauru and are being held at a regional processing centre on the Pacific island. Australian is legally obliged to protect refugees under the refugees convention, and cannot return them to their home country where they face a “well-founded fear of being persecuted”. Even if that return is made through a third country – such as Nauru – it is unlawful, known in international law as “chain refoulement”. Nauru is also a party to the convention. Adeang granted the interview in February, speaking in Nauruan to a government staff member, and explaining the new agreement Nauru had signed with Australia to accept members of the NZYQ cohort. The deal will see Australia pay Nauru up to $2.5bn over three decades. Adeang said those removed to Nauru by Australia would stay on the island for 30 years. “Unless of course, we, your government, find a way for them to move around, for example; they get to go home,” he said, according to the ASRC translation released on Monday. “The problem now is, Australia cannot return them home, these people are what you would refer to as stateless. “Their homelands do not want them and they do not have a way to go home. And if over time we find a way to return them home then of course they will not reach the 30 years, but the visa we are providing them to start is 30 years.” The Guardian understands none of the men sent to Nauru under the new agreement so far are stateless. Adeang repeatedly said – incorrectly – that members of the NZYQ cohort were not refugees. “To clarify, these people are not refugees. They are regular people but their background or their history is that they have been to jail. “These days, they are free to roam around Australia and while they are no longer under penalties but they are not of that place and despite Australia’s preference to send them home, they are unable to.” The NZYQ cohort is a group of 354 non-citizens released from indefinite immigration detention in Australia after a high court ruling in late 2023. Their visas had been cancelled on “character grounds”, most as a result of a criminal conviction. Most have completed a jail term but cannot be returned to their home countries because they face persecution there. Some have lived in Australia for decades and have Australian-citizen partners and children. Shoebridge told the Senate Adeang’s claim that the NZYQ cohort were not refugees was “plainly wrong”. “Did the government tell them that? Did … our government mislead the Nauruan government? Do they adhere to what the Nauruan president said about these people not being refugees? None of them refugees? “And they’re probably also embarrassed by the fact that President Adeang has made it very clear he wants these people to return from the country they came from. We know that they have fled from persecution by and large.” Ogy Simic, head of advocacy at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said on Monday night the Australian government’s secrecy around its offshore program was “deeply alarming”. He said the secrecy and cover-ups eroded public trust, and abuse and corruption thrived in the opacity of the offshore regime. “The transcript reveals for the first time that Nauru plans to send people back to their countries of origin ‘if they find a way’, even though these are people Australia has not removed to their country of origin because they are refugees. This means the Australian government has effectively outsourced refoulement – paying another country to do what Australia legally cannot.” He said the Adeang interview – the release of which was resisted by the government – exposed a dangerous loophole. “Australia claims to be upholding international law while quietly paying for people to be returned to danger via third-party deals.” The legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, said the government had tried to hide “nearly every detail” of its agreement with Nauru. “Now we learn that the Nauruan government may not have any intention of holding up its end of this lamentable deal.” She said the forced removals to Nauru must be stopped, because the government could not guarantee people’s safety. “Our government is tearing people away from their lives, families and communities in Australia and exiling them to a place where they are clearly not welcome. Our government has known all along that it might be sending people to their deaths – through denial of the medical care they need to survive, or by forcing them back to the countries they fled as refugees.” The Guardian has sought comment from the Department of Home Affairs and the Nauruan government.