Kirill Dmitriev, a close Putin adviser, will focus on restoring economic ties between the US and Russia as the two sides attempt to forge a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement, according to sources with knowledge of the appointment.

Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sanctioned sovereign wealth fund, has been an outspoken Trump supporter from within Russia’s political elite, saying his US presidential election victory “shows that ordinary Americans are tired of the unprecedented lies, incompetence, and malice of the Biden administration.” He added that Trump’s win “opens up new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States.”

Born in Soviet-era Ukraine and educated at Harvard and Stanford in the US, Dmitriev worked as consultant at US consultancy firm McKinsey and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

The Kremlin’s inclusion of Dmitriev, indicates that a key focus of Russia’s negotiating strategy in likely to be on sanctions reduction, as well as on repairing battered economic ties with the West.

Dmitriev has been a prominent Russian contact point with both the first and current Trump administrations, consistently calling for closer US-Russian ties, and engaging in private back-channel talks with US officials.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dmitriev was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, which designated him a “close associate of Putin” and his family.

Fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have torched swathes of the country’s largest refugee camp, firing indiscriminately at civilians, according to open-source data and an eyewitness account.

At least seven people have been killed and 40 injured in the attacks which began on Tuesday, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which operates one of the last remaining healthcare facilities in Zamzam camp, which hosts nearly half a million displaced people suffering from famine. Approximately 50% of Zamzam’s central market was burned in the attacks, according to a new Yale HRL report.

Once a refuge for civilians fleeing violence in North Darfur’s capital city of al-Fasher and neighboring towns, Zamzam has been under fire since December 1, according to Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) which monitors the conflict, and MSF. Indiscriminate artillery fire has killed and injured dozens of residents since, the medical relief group says.

The RSF and its rival, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), have been locked in a brutal civil war since April of 2023. Since then, the RSF has been campaigning to capture al-Fasher —the last remaining SAF stronghold in the region — 15km north of Zamzam. However, this is the first time that RSF fighters appear to have entered the camp.

‘I saw people fleeing, and I was among them’

Footage verified from social media illustrates the RSF’s advance; videos show armed fighters wearing the RSF’s hallmark tan camouflage and insignia capturing a militia outpost on the edge of the camp.

Then, less than half a kilometer south, fighters appear closer to the camp, perched atop pickup trucks with mounted belt-fed machine guns. The camera pans across the ground, littered with bullet casings, and briefly shows a plume of dark black smoke which appears to emanate from Zamzam’s central market.

The eyewitness described how the fighters set several shops ablaze before he fled the camp in terror.

“I saw people fleeing, and I was among them—some in their private vehicles and others on foot for hundreds of meters. Several stray bullets flew over our heads, and a victim fell right in front of me,” he recounted.

Dozens of children, women, and elderly people were killed and injured in the attacks, according to a statement released by Zamzam camp administrators on Thursday. The statement calls on the United Nations to deploy an international protection mission after “the [RSF] resorted to the scorched land policy, brutally targeting Zamzam.”

Satellite imagery shared by Maxar Technologies and footage posted on social media by North Darfur’s governor show the aftermath of large-scale burning throughout Zamzam’s central marketplace. Among the ash, remnants of the stands, chairs, and tables piled with charred vegetables can be seen.

Heat signatures recorded by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System show that the fire ignited on Tuesday, causing damage that HRL says is “consistent with intentional razing” identified after nearby arson attacks perpetrated by the RSF.

“We categorically affirm that no violations have occurred, and our forces have never targeted civilians. Rather, our forces operated with military professionalism, swiftly defeating the armed elements, seizing their weapons stockpiles, forcing them to flee the camp, and thwarting their plan to use civilians as human shields.”

The attack, which unfolded over two days, was launched weeks after the RSF began targeting the camp with long-range artillery in early December, according to a Yale HRL report.

The RSF claims that the camp is a “military base, housing weapons and ammunition depots as well as operations command rooms,” in the context of the paramilitary group’s wider offensive to capture al-Fasher — the last remaining bastion for government forces in North Darfur, according to Liam Karr, Africa team lead at the Institute for the Study of War. But these attacks on Zamzam extend “beyond military objectives into ethnic cleansing and genocide,” Karr says.

Last month, former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the RSF of committing genocide in Sudan, and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.

The RSF called the Biden Administration’s sanctions “regrettable and unjust” in a statement posted to Telegram, claiming that they were “politically motivated and… without an independent and thorough investigation.”

In the midst of a raging malnutrition crisis

Zamzam has long been at the epicenter of the malnutrition crisis in Sudan. Last August, the World Food Program declared that the camp had been pushed into famine.

One mother, holding her crying two-year-old child, explained the challenge of finding fresh water: “When we need water, we need to pay. And we don’t have money, so we ask Allah to sustain us,” she says.

About 34% of children living in Zamzam camp suffer from acute malnutrition—more than twice the emergency threshold—according to an MSF survey conducted in the fall.

Since the famine declaration, malnutrition has persisted and spread to two additional camps in North Darfur and the Western Nuba Mountains and is predicted to reach five additional localities in the state before May.

Faced with continuing security threats, he says, “it’s simply too dangerous” to operate in certain areas of North Darfur. It is immediately unclear how this recent spate of violence will affect the malnutrition crisis in Zamzam.

“As the camp is surrounded [by RSF fighters], there is no possibility for the population to flee or for humanitarian aid to enter,” MSF’s Project Coordinator in North Darfur Marion Ramstein predicts. “People are left with nothing.”

Mounira Elsamra, Eyad Kourdi, and Thomas Bordeaux contributed to this report.

The Prince and Princess of Wales have publicly marked Valentine’s Day by sharing a sweetly romantic photograph of themselves.

In the photo, posted on their official social media channels Friday, William and Kate can be seen sitting on a blanket on grass, surrounded by trees.

They are holding hands and are both dressed in blue.

Kate appears to be laughing as William is turned toward her, kissing her cheek.

They captioned the image with a red heart emoji.

The photo appears to be a still from a video Kate shared in September to announce that she had completed her chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

Catherine Middleton met Prince William in 2001 at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, where they were both studying art history.

The following year, they shared living quarters, along with a few other students.

They were “very close friends” for about a year, according to Kate, before their relationship turned romantic.

It wasn’t always straightforward, though, and they briefly called it quits in March 2007.

The couple got engaged while on a trip to Kenya in October 2010, and tied the knot at Westminster Abbey in London on April 29, 2011.

They have three children together: Prince George, born in 2013, Princess Charlotte, born in 2015, and Prince Louis, born in 2018.

Last month, on Kate’s birthday, William praised “the most incredible wife and mother,” and commended her for the “remarkable” strength she has shown “over the last year” while undergoing treatment for cancer.

It felt like a speech, if delivered on X.com, laden surely with community notes.

US Vice President JD Vance, taking the stage in Munich, to eviscerate totalitarianism in Europe. But not in Moscow, especially after its savage invasion of Ukraine. Instead, in Ukraine’s allies in the European Union. The “enemy within”, as he called it, in Europe, is jailing opponents, and afraid of its own voters.

For the vast majority of the audience, both in Munich – and the rest of Europe – this is the tweet where the reader comments take a conspiratorial, Red-Bull-mother’s-basement-barefoot-at-3-a.m. turn, and you tune out. But while Munich had been hoping to hear greater detail on the Trump administrations publicly morphing peace plan for Ukraine, they were battered with a bizarre, post-truth litany of culture-war complaints and a bid to sow serious doubt about electoral integrity across Europe.

First up was the suggestion Romania’s recently annulled presidential vote was somehow a bid to deny voters their choice. To be clear, Romania annulled only the first round of a presidential vote last year in which a far-right pro-Russian candidate very narrowly won a place in a second-round spin-off, because courts agreed with evidence from Romania’s intelligence agencies that there had been significant interference from Russia. Vance was objecting to the rule of law in Romania, and pro-Russian sentiment and electoral interference being tackled.

It is really not clear who he was referring to when he said his European allies were censoring their opponents, or “putting them in jail – whether that’s the leader of the opposition, or a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news.” It sounded like Eastern Germany in the 1950s – a world geographically just a few hundred kilometers to the north, where these Soviet-era horrors are still living memories.

Vance said, “Old entrenched interests” were “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation.” To be clear, many in the room would have hailed from the brutal occupation of the former Soviet Union. They didn’t need to be lectured on how authoritarianism spouts falsehood to excuse the poor and cruel governance of the minority.

Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, quickly replied Vance’s words were “unacceptable.” He opposed “the impression that Vice President Vance has created that minorities are being suppressed or silenced in our democracy. We know not only against whom we are defending our country, but also for what.”

Vance then launched into a wide-ranging diatribe about freedom of speech being shackled in Europe. He cited a case of a man arrested for praying silently near an abortion clinic in the UK. New laws in Britain mean political activity is prohibited within 150 meters of abortion clinics to prevent women being harassed when seeking medical help – not quite the same thing. Abortion is less of a hot button issue in Europe than in the United States, and happens with much less controversy.

Vance’s complaints struck at the heart of a key difference in the role of free speech in Europe and the United States, a much fresher democracy. In Europe, free speech is paramount and enshrined in law, but so is responsibility for the safety of citizens. Some European legal systems suggest this means you cannot falsely shout there is a “fire” in a crowded theater and escape punishment if the resulting stampede causes injury simply because you had the right to shout “fire.” In the United States, the First Amendment means you can shout whatever you want. In the smartphone and post-9-11 era, Europe has prohibited some extremist activity online. It is still illegal to advocate for the Nazis in Germany, and it should not be controversial or mysterious why. The wildly rebellious press across Europe are a vibrant sign of its free speech. And the fringe parties Vance objected to being absent in Munich are growing in their popularity. Nobody is really being shut down.

Vance had clearly long prepared this tirade as a starting gun for the second Trump administration’s bid to refuel populism across Europe. The continent he spoke to is a little wiser now, after Trump’s first term with some populist experiments already ending in electoral disaster – like in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party has been ejected from power.

Vance spoke to a room acutely aware of the threat far-right populism poses to mainstream and moderate ideology, and the challenges of immigration that have swept across Europe that Vance railed against with barely veiled xenophobia.

But the real figure looming large across the room he feverishly addressed was Kremlin head Vladimir Putin. The sins the audience and Europe were accused of are, in reality, occurring in Russia. Putin was not mentioned. Ukraine was only mentioned fleetingly. The bad guys were the United States’ own allies. And the real threat to western democracy was itself.

It should not take an extensive grasp of history to know it is ugly to talk this way in Munich. Europe has been here before. As George Orwell said as the dust of the last big land war settled in 1949, the “final most essential command” of the Party was to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” Vance asked for that, and made it sound like a virtue.

At first whiff, it sounds repulsive: sniff the essence of an ancient corpse.

But researchers who indulged their curiosity in the name of science found that well-preserved Egyptian mummies actually smell pretty good.

“In films and books, terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” said Cecilia Bembibre, director of research at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage. “We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.”

“Woody,” “spicy” and “sweet” were the leading descriptions from what sounded more like a wine tasting than a mummy sniffing exercise. Floral notes were also detected, which could be from pine and juniper resins used in embalming.

The study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Chemical Society used both chemical analysis and a panel of human sniffers to evaluate the odors from nine mummies as old as 5,000 years that had been either in storage or on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The researchers wanted to systematically study the smell of mummies because it has long been a subject of fascination for the public and researchers alike, said Bembibre, one of the report’s authors. Archeologists, historians, conservators and even fiction writers have devoted pages of their work to the subject — for good reason.

Scent was an important consideration in the mummification process that used oils, waxes and balms to preserve the body and its spirit for the afterlife. The practice was largely reserved for pharaohs and nobility and pleasant smells were associated with purity and deities while bad odors were signs of corruption and decay.

Without sampling the mummies themselves, which would be invasive, researchers from UCL and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia were able to measure whether aromas were coming from the archaeological item, pesticides or other products used to conserve the remains, or from deterioration due to mold, bacteria or microorganisms.

“We were quite worried that we might find notes or hints of decaying bodies, which wasn’t the case,” said Matija Strlič, a chemistry professor at the University of Ljubljana. “We were specifically worried that there might be indications of microbial degradation, but that was not the case, which means that the environment in this museum, is actually quite good in terms of preservation.”

Using technical instruments to measure and quantify air molecules emitted from sarcophagi to determine the state of preservation without touching the mummies was like the Holy Grail, Strlič said.

“It tells us potentially what social class a mummy was from and and therefore reveals a lot of information about the mummified body that is relevant not just to conservators, but to curators and archeologists as well,” he said. “We believe that this approach is potentially of huge interest to other types of museum collections.”

Barbara Huber, a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany who was not involved in the study, said the findings provide crucial data on compounds that could preserve or degrade mummified remains. The information could be used to better protect the ancient bodies for future generations.

“However, the research also underscores a key challenge: the smells detected today are not necessarily those from the time of mummification,” Huber said. “Over thousands of years, evaporation, oxidation, and even storage conditions have significantly altered the original scent profile.”

Huber authored a study two years ago that analyzed residue from a jar that had contained mummified organs of a noblewoman to identify embalming ingredients, their origins and what they revealed about trade routes. She then worked with a perfumer to create an interpretation of the embalming scent, known as “Scent of Eternity,” for an exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark.

Researchers of the current study hope to do something similar, using their findings to develop “smellscapes” to artificially recreate the scents they detected and enhance the experience for future museumgoers.

“Museums have been called white cubes, where you are prompted to read, to see, to approach everything from a distance with your eyes,” Bembibre said. “Observing the mummified bodies through a glass case reduces the experience because we don’t get to smell them. We don’t get to know about the mummification process in an experiential way, which is one of the ways that we understand and engage with the world.”

Two years ago, two days of protests were enough to force Georgia’s government into an embarrassing U-turn. It had tried to introduce a “foreign agents” bill – which critics likened to legislation passed by President Vladimir Putin to stifle dissent in Russia – but backed down after fierce demonstrations sparked by the bill’s first reading.

“We fought it off like hell, used every instrument at our disposal,” recalls Ana Tavazde, one of tens of thousands who demonstrated against the bill, which would have forced media and other organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence” or be fined.

But the protesters’ victory was short-lived. The government revived the bill last year – and this time would not back down. The parliament approved it in May, despite huge opposition on the streets.

After the ruling Georgian Dream party – which declared victory anew after a disputed election in October – delayed the country’s long-awaited European Union membership bid until 2028, Tavazde was one of thousands of Georgians to take to the streets once again. The government invested in water cannons, according to local media reports, and started making mass arrests.

Since then, Georgia’s government has shown little sign of shifting its course, which many in the former Soviet country feel is taking the country back into the Kremlin’s orbit. And with the protest movement now approaching its third month, it is not clear what can break the stalemate.

Multiple opposition politicians have been publicly beaten, some in broad daylight. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested, of whom more than 300 allege suffering beatings, torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of law enforcement, according to Amnesty International. The police’s presence at rallies has been bolstered by masked men, who do not wear uniforms displaying their department and rank.

Extreme measures

“Today, almost a year later, you would say this has become a really nasty authoritarian regime.”

Pro-Western Salome Zourabichvili, who described the elections as “rigged” and called on Georgians to protest in October, was replaced as president by far-right former soccer star Mikheil Kavelashvili in mid-December. The government imposed further restrictions on freedom of assembly at the end of the year.

At the start of February, it proposed more extreme measures that would increase detention periods and fines for certain offenses, such as disorderly conduct or disobeying law enforcement officers, and limit the areas in which protests can be held, local outlet OC Media reported.

On February 5, the party announced it would be introducing unspecified laws targeted at the media and civil society and expelled 49 opposition MPs from Parliament. Three Georgian Dream MPs resigned, supposedly to form a new “healthy opposition ” – with the approval of the ruling party’s parliamentary speaker. On the same day, the prime minister called for “a sort of Nuremburg trial” to investigate the rule of UNM, the opposition party which governed from 2003 to 2012. The Georgian government has been approached for comment, but did not respond.

Journalist Mzia Amaglobeli is facing up to seven years in prison if convicted of assaulting a police officer. The founder of two independent publications, Batumelebi and Netgazeti, she was detained after allegedly slapping a police officer at a protest last month. The European Parliament has claimed Amaglobeli was “unlawfully arrested” and that the charges against her are “politically motivated.”

Soon after her detention, Amaglobeli started a hunger strike, which she has now been on for 34 days, to demand her release. When asked on February 4 how Amaglobeli’s hunger strike could end, Georgian Dream’s chairman said: “Hunger usually leads to death.”

The International Federation of Journalists has urged the Georgian government to “release Amaglobeli immediately and to stop its crackdown on journalists and independent media.”

Staying on the winning side

For many in this ex-Soviet country, the idea of pivoting towards Russia – which invaded in 2008 and continues to occupy 20% of Georgia’s territory – is unthinkable. Over 80% support EU membership, according to polls, and every party’s campaign platform for the October election included the pursuit of EU membership. Campaign posters for Georgian Dream even merged its logo with the gold stars of the EU flag.

So why has the government turned away from such a popular policy?

“I think he just kind of assumes that Moscow is going to win this war,” Mitchell added, referring to Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s founder and honorary chairman.

“And he’s going to stay on the winning side.”

Bidzina Ivanishvili made his fortune in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in Russia in the 1990s and is estimated by Bloomberg to be worth $7.7 billion – a quarter of Georgia’s GDP in 2023. Protesters, some of whom have donned masks of his face at protests, see him as pushing Moscow’s agenda in this ex-Soviet country despite no longer holding any elected position.

Chugoshvili was one of several Georgian Dream politicians who resigned in 2019 after the parliament did not pass an amendment which would have made the electoral system fully proportional. “It was obvious that (Georgian Dream) was becoming obsessed with control,” said Chugoshvili, who co-founded Egeria Solutions, an NGO which has worked on European integration projects, after leaving the party.

“Georgian Dream and Bidzina plan to stay in power for ever. And they cannot do this while integrating into the EU and NATO.”

“Some local outlets are totally funded by USAID or affiliated organisations,” said Ostiller.

“They have no back-up, no savings. They will close, and if funding returns, reopening them will be far more difficult.”

Culture war rhetoric

In a country where the conservative Georgian Orthodox Church exerts massive influence, Ivanishvili has also leaned into “culture war” politics, observers say.

The results of last year’s elections, in which Georgian Dream claimed to receive about 54% of the vote, have been widely disputed; however, the party undoubtedly still has some support.

“It’s probably got a solid 35 to 45%,” Mitchell estimated. “They’re popular enough that they still have a base.”

But for a younger generation, who have only known Georgia as committed to EU and NATO membership and Russia as a threat, the anti-Western rhetoric doesn’t seem to land, and the government’s moves towards authoritarianism don’t seem to inspire fear. Protests are continuing into their third month.

Since protests broke out on November 28, Keren Esebua has been on the streets almost every night in Zugdidi – a city located just 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Abkhazia, a breakaway Georgian region occupied by Russia since 2008.

“I lost my home in Sukhumi, in Abkhazia, in 1993. And I was here in Zugdidi, blocking the way for Russian troops in 2008 when I was 19.

“I’m not giving Russia any kind of opportunity to swallow up Georgia again.”

The split screen is horrifying. On one side, a White House whose policy is in turns strident, revisionist, and then – it seems, sometimes – in urgent need of clarification. On the other, Ukraine, where President Volodymyr Zelensky is outside, looking in, on peace talks, while hundreds die daily on frontlines where Moscow is winning, and children are frequently pulled from the rubble of Russian airstrikes.

As Ukraine’s brutal war nears its third year, the two visions risk becoming irreconcilable.

The White House’s contradictory positions will be partly to blame here. We have seen a startling week in which the US Secretary of Defence Peter Hegseth said Ukraine could not join NATO or get its pre-2014 borders back. He either broadcast a key plank of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s secret peace deal inadvertently or gave away a key part of Ukraine’s diplomatic negotiating hand to the shock of Europe.

Ukraine’s allies may have all known that, in reality, it would not join NATO soon, or get its borders back to when the east and Crimea were in its hands, but had kept that as a concession to make to Russia during, not before, negotiations.

It keeps coming.

US Vice President JD Vance told the Wall Street Journal, apparently, the US might send troops to Ukraine, in extremis – that it would use “tools of leverage” both military and economic. Did he really unveil the polar opposite of Hegseth’s comments in Brussels that no American soldiers would go to Ukraine? Why did he not mention Russia at all, when addressing European allies in Munich about largely fictional totalitarianism in western democracies? Also, did Trump misspeak when he said there would be “high-level people” from Russia, Ukraine, and the US in Munich for a key security conference – or did he mean Saudi Arabia?

Moscow and Kyiv didn’t seem to think anyone of that level is going to Munich for those kind of talks. Or are there secret talks happening that Trump cannot keep quiet?

During this short period of whiplash, by the worst battlefield estimates, up to 5,000 troops have been killed or injured on the frontlines in Ukraine. Romania and Moldova have complained of Russian drones interfering in their airspace. At least 13 civilians have died and 72 been injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine. A Russian drone has been fired at Chernobyl nuclear plant, Ukraine said Friday.

A war is happening – and Russia is winning it, at huge cost for Ukraine – while the White House seems to work out what it really thinks in public.

Behind these vacillating positions on NATO membership, Ukraine’s borders and and US troops in Ukraine, lies the darker truth that we simply do not know what Trump and Putin have spoken about, in what Trump has said was more than one call since he came to the White House.

Firstly, it is important to reflect on the precedent here: Trump has swept away three years of isolation of the Kremlin from the West without concessions. He got Marc Fogel released – in exchange, it seems, for Alexander Vinnik, accused of running a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange, gifting Moscow a moment of staggeringly warm rehabilitation for an American television audience. But there have been no concessions so far, in public, from Russia to Ukraine.

Instead, we had the bizarre revisionism of Trump suggesting Russia invaded because Ukraine was about to join NATO.

To repeat, three exhausting years in, Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked in 2022 out of some strategic sense of concern it needed to project strength along its borders, and mistakenly thinking the invasion would take a matter of weeks, and be welcomed with open arms.

Ukraine wanted warmer relations with the European Union and dreamed of perhaps joining NATO one day, but in the same way Zelensky probably dreamed one day as a young boy of joining the Beatles. Neither was going to happen any time soon.

The revisionist notion that Russia acted to stop Ukraine’s NATO membership is a Kremlin talking point. And it is clear now Trump has spent more time talking to Putin than Zelensky. He even suggested that Zelensky’s time in office might soon end, as he needs to eventually hold elections, and his poll numbers are “not particularly great, to put it mildly”.

It’s hard to understate the impact of the world’s most powerful man suggesting a wartime commander lacks a current mandate and might soon need to step aside. Perhaps this is part of the private plan – it is certainly what Putin wants, as elections would undoubtedly be a mess and produce a mandate that was questioned. It is, above all, potentially catastrophic to Ukrainian morale – soldiers must agree to continue to risk their lives for a president whose key financial backer considers a lame duck.

This is where the two split screens collide.

Trump’s world is one where off-the-cuff statements can be massaged, and his telegenic cabinet overturn the paradigms of global security hourly, without major consequence. Their echo chamber just reassuringly feeds back the corrected version of policy. On the other side of the screen, Ukrainians die, lose territory, see apartment blocks reduced to rubble, consider desertion, and watch the backbone of their western support dissolve.

This is all a symphony of chaos to the Kremlin. They know what their objectives are, which, simply put, amount to whatever they can get. And that is a lot when the key adversary they actually fear, the United States, is so publicly unsure what it wants, why it wants it, and what its red lines are.

Peace talks have started, but the sands are not just shifting for Ukraine, they risk becoming quicksand.

Three Israeli hostages have been freed from Gaza under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas after a dispute this week threatened to derail the deal.

American-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen, Russian-Israeli Alexandre Troufanov and Argentinian-Israeli Iair Horn were released in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, around 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) in the sixth such exchange under the truce. They were seen exiting vehicles surrounded by militants, who ushered the hostages on stage, where the captives addressed the crowd.

The men appeared to be in better health than the three hostages released the previous week, whose condition drew condemnation from Israeli officials.

The three were given what appeared to be bags carrying memorabilia. Horn was seen carrying what appeared to be small hourglasses and Troufanov appeared to face some difficulty climbing down the stairs.

In Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, the atmosphere was expectant and calm as people holding posters watched the releases live. In Kibbutz Nir Oz, where all the three hostages were taken, families gathered to watch the release. Sagui-Dekel Hen’s family crowded around the television to watch the moment.

Israel is expected to release 369 Palestinian prisoners later Saturday, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said Friday, 333 of whom were arrested in Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It will be the largest number of Palestinian prisoners released during the exchanges so far.

A crowd of armed militants gathered in Gaza ahead of the release, which took place close to the house of slain former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, killed by Israel in October. Images showed masked fighters carrying weapons and gathering around a stage with flags and images depicting Sinwar and other militant leaders.

“No migration except to Jerusalem,” read a banner festooning the stage, in an apparent rebuke to US President Donald Trump and his plans for a mass displacement of Palestinians from the enclave.

Earlier this week, Hamas said was postponing today’s releases after accusing Israel of violating its commitments to the ceasefire agreement. Amid the dispute, Trump urged Israel to cancel its deal with Hamas and “let all hell break out”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office thanked Trump for his “clear and unequivocal” statement, following the hostages’ release Saturday, saying it helped push Hamas to back down and free the hostages.

In a statement following the latest releases, Hamas said that the only way those still held captive would be freed was “through negotiations and by adhering to the requirements of the ceasefire agreement.”

All three men released on Saturday were kidnapped from the kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7 attack, and had been held captive for almost 500 days.

They are now back on Israeli soil, the Israeli military said. They are currently undergoing an initial medical assessment at a reception center in southern Israel, according to the military.

Troufanov was 27 years old when he was kidnapped by Palestinian Al-Quds Brigades, a militant group allied with Islamic Jihad, along with his grandmother, Irena Tati, his mother Lena Troufanov and girlfriend Sapir Cohen, who were all released in a previous deal. His father Vitaly was killed during the attack.

Dekel-Chen was 35 years old when he was kidnapped by Hamas while trying to defend the kibbutz from attackers. His wife Avital was pregnant with their third child during the attack, and gave birth to Dekel-Chen’s daughter while he was in captivity. She turned one in December.

Horn, now 46, was also captured by Hamas with his brother Eitan, who remains in captivity.

The Gazan militants have now released a total of 19 Israeli hostages as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, of a total of 33 promised at staggered intervals during this stage. Eight of those 33 are dead, according to the Israeli government.

Despite Saturday’s releases, uncertainty looms over the future of the wider agreement. Negotiations on extending the ceasefire – which expires on March 1 – are in doubt.

As well as taking hostages, Palestinian militants killed more than 1,200 people during the October 7 attack. Israeli bombardment of Gaza since has killed more than 48,000 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, reduced much of the enclave to rubble, and led to a humanitarian catastrophe for surviving residents.

The war has spilled over into the wider region, putting Israel in conflict with key Hamas backer Iran, as well as Tehran proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.