A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.”

This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed.

They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.”

This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, the agreement concerned “energy and infrastructure.” These are two entirely different sets of ideas.

Russia says it will not attack Ukraine’s electricity grids and gas supplies, as it has mercilessly over the past years, to the extent that Ukraine’s winters have always been a dicey dance with icy families and reserve power sources. The White House, confusingly – in a disagreement, typo or translation nuance – has extended this truce to potentially every part of Ukraine that is considered infrastructure: bridges, perhaps key roads, or ports, or railways. It has created conditions that are almost impossible for Russia’s relentless pace of air assaults – which resumed, as they do every night, on Tuesday night – to adhere to.

Arguably, with summer close and the urgent need for Ukrainians to have heating reduced, Moscow ceasing energy infrastructure attacks is less of a concession. For Kyiv, however, the demand they stop hitting Russia’s energy infrastructure removes one of the most potent forms of attack Ukraine has. For months they have used long-range drones and missiles to strike Russia’s oil refineries and pipelines, causing serious damage to the Kremlin’s main fundraising tool: the export of its hydrocarbons, principally to China and India. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared amenable to the idea of a pause Tuesday, but said he still needed to know the “details.”

It is important to emphasize that Trump’s long-heralded call with Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded almost nothing bar the predictable fact that the Kremlin head feels he can outmaneuver his counterpart effortlessly. The swap of 175 prisoners and return of 23 seriously wounded Ukrainians is a minor arrangement, and smacks of something already in the works, given the frequency of similar past swaps and the fact it is due to happen as quickly as Wednesday.

Outside of this and the pause in attacks (whichever ones they agreed), Russia used this week-long delay and phone call to emphasize it wants all foreign aid and intelligence sharing halted as part of a deal and a series of “working groups” on Ukraine and Russia-US relations established. “Working groups” is a Russian diplomatic euphemism for fervid disinterest. Putin evidenced as much by apparently executing a pause in energy attacks immediately, but leaving all the stuff he didn’t want to do to another set of meetings at an undefined time. Putin seems set on returning to the idea that all aid to Ukraine be stopped, something which Trump has already done once, for about a week. It will return to their conversation again.

Some of these technical traps were laid by the basic nature of the initial Jeddah statement by the US and Ukraine. It was admirable but wildly simplistic to demand an immediate month-long stop to all hostilities in a three-year savage war. The proposal did not take into account how long such a step would take to enact with soldiers often cut off from their command, and made no mention of who would monitor adherence to it.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested “satellites” could provide all the surveillance needed. That is almost certainly true, but as an idea it assumes Moscow would be happy with the United States poring over its front-line positions in great detail and being the arbiter of who violated what. A cynic might say the Jeddah proposal was geared to pander to Trump’s simplistic, yet desirable, demand for immediate peace, but also allow Moscow’s customary and pedantic search for loopholes to get ensnared on its lack of technicalities. And Putin immediately sought to dangle the deal’s feet into these plentiful weeds.

Ultimately, the Kremlin did not seek to discuss “nuances” – the finer points, for example, of whether the OSCE or the UN would police the front line – but instead offered as few concessions as it could without providing Trump with a flat “no.”

But a flat “no” is what Trump has received. It is packaged as a “partial ceasefire,” but that is simply the first phase of Russia renewing its decade-long deceptive diplomacy. They have agreed to a pause in attacks that – largely from now on – will damage Moscow’s bank balance. Indeed, the initial and amateur confusion over what was agreed has opened a chasm in any future peace deal wide enough for Putin to drive another full-scale invasion through. Did both sides not set staffers aside after the call to prepare an identical readout of what was agreed?

The vaudeville theater of the past month should provide little comfort that the war is suddenly headed toward peace. Yes, the Trump administration has talked peace in a way that nobody has done so far in this war. But they have also managed to confirm, in short shrift, that Moscow looks for cracks of weakness and mercilessly drives a tank through them.

Trump felt he could either persuade, coax, or outsmart Putin. He has yet to do any of that. He has palpably lost in their first direct diplomatic face-off. For millions of Ukrainians his next choice defines their lives. Does he lose interest, apply pressure, or again provide concessions? It is a dizzying prospect.

His adversary is focused not on improved relations with Russia’s decades-long adversary, the United States, or with its current president, Donald Trump, but instead on victory in its most existential conflict since the Nazis.

These are not two similar perspectives to the deal. The art of one is more applied than the other.

A member of a small South African research team at a remote Antarctic base has accused a colleague of assault and pleaded for intervention, officials have said.

A “response plan to engage the individuals involved” was “immediately activated,” officials from South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), which supervises the base, said in a statement – but added that they had no plans to bring any of the team back home.

The DFFE said it received complaints of alleged assault involving two members of the overwintering team of nine on February 27 and was further investigating an allegation of sexual harassment. The department did not mention the names of those involved.

The intervention was revealed after a report from South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper detailed an email from the team that accused the man of attacking its leader and pleaded for help.

“His behavior has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing,” the author wrote in the email, according to the Sunday Times, adding: “I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.”

South Africa is the only African nation that operates a research station in Antarctica, the world’s coldest continent, where it established a scientific base in 1960. Its Antarctic station known as SANAE IV typically houses a team of scientists for 13 months, the DFFE said, adding that the current group was dispatched on February 1.

“The Department confirms that there were no incidents that required any of the nine overwintering team members to be brought back to Cape Town,” its statement said about the assault allegations. “If such incidents occurred, the management team of the Department would have replaced such an overwintering team member with immediate effect.”

This is not the first case of assault involving a South African expedition team. In 2017, at a research base in the remote Marion Island, a research team member was reported to have “vandalized another colleague’s laptop with an axe because of a love triangle they were involved in,” according to a South African parliamentary monitoring group.

The DPPE explained that members of its research missions are evaluated ahead of expeditions “to ensure they are able to cope with the isolation and can work and live with others in the confined space of the bases.”

However, it added, “it is not uncommon that once individuals arrive at the extremely remote areas where the scientific bases are located, an initial adjustment to the environment is required.”

A French politician has called on the US to give the Statue of Liberty back after suggesting that some Americans “have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants.”

Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who represents the small left-wing party Place Publique, made the comments at a rally on Sunday.

“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” said Glucksmann. “It was our gift to you. But apparently you despise her.”

The statue was a gift of friendship to America from France. Inaugurated in 1886, it represents Libertas, the Roman liberty goddess, bearing a torch in her right hand and a tablet in her left hand with the date of the US Declaration of Independence.

Broken shackles lie underneath the statue’s drapery, to symbolize the end of all types of servitude and oppression.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back at Glucksmann.

“My advice to that unnamed low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now, so they should be very grateful to our great country,” she said.

Glucksmann then responded in a series of posts on X and Instagram.

He emphasized that his gratitude to the US “heroes” that fought against the Nazis in WWII is “eternal,” before making a contrast with US President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to negotiate a settlement between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Trump’s public spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin. It helped the resistance and didn’t attack Zelensky,” he wrote.

“It is precisely because I am petrified by Trumps (sic) betrayal that I said yesterday in a rally that we could symbolically take back the Statue of Liberty if your government despised everything it symbolizes in your eyes, ours, and those of the world,” said Glucksmann.

“No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone,” he said.

“And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe.”

Glucksmann is co-president of the Place Publique party, which currently holds three seats in the European Parliament, as well as one in the French parliament and another in the country’s senate.

Despite his party’s small size, Glucksmann has received an increasing amount of attention in the French media, including an in-depth interview in political magazine Le Nouvel Obs published March 5, in which he underlined the importance that European powers step up their defense spending amid a reorienting of US policy priorities.

It has also been rumored that Glucksmann is planning to run for president in elections scheduled for early 2027.

Keeping hope alive wasn’t easy. His morale dwindled along with his food supply. It reached a point where he thought he didn’t want to live anymore.

“I even got a knife three times. Three times I got the knife because I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said. “But I told myself: Calm down, Gatón. You can do it. You can do it.”

He said he had packed enough supplies to last him a month. And after those first 30 days at sea, he was ready to head back to land. But that’s when his boat’s motor stopped running. He tried many times to get it to work again, but to no avail.

From there, he knew he had to ration the few scraps of food and water he had left, hoping it would last him long enough for someone to find him. But after another month or so, his rations ran out. So, he turned to drastic measures.

“After January and February, that’s when I started eating roaches and birds, various kinds of fish that happened to jump into the boat.”

He said he had to hunt those birds in the middle of the night. Around 1 or 2 a.m. they would rest on top of his boat and fall asleep. Once they did, he got a club, snuck up behind them and “pop.”

“I didn’t want to do it but I didn’t have a choice. It was my life.”

At one point, he even had to hunt a turtle – not for its meat but for its blood since he didn’t have anything else to drink.

Not long after that, a hopeful sign finally arrived.

He was about to fall asleep inside his boat. But just 30 minutes later, he heard a loud voice screaming his nickname: “Gatón!”

It was a rescue worker on a helicopter.

“That’s when I said (to God): You did it! You did it!”

The people on board the helicopter gestured to him that another boat would arrive soon to take him home.

After about an hour, as night fell, he finally saw the lights of the boat. He was going home.

“It was something sensational,” he said.

After those excruciating 95 days, he now says he has a newfound appreciation for life.

“I will tell my story worldwide, so the world knows that God is everything in this life, that we put our hand on our chest and fill ourselves with love, give love. That is what we need here on Earth.”

A new anti-LGBTQ+ law banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition software to identify those attending the festivities was passed in Hungary on Tuesday, leading to a large demonstration on the streets of Budapest.

Several thousand protesters chanting anti-government slogans gathered after the vote outside Hungary’s parliament. They later staged a blockade of the Margaret Bridge over the Danube, blocking traffic and disregarding police instructions to leave the area.

The move by Hungarian lawmakers is part of a crackdown on the country’s LGBTQ+ community by the nationalist-populist party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

The measure, which is reminiscent of similar restrictions against sexual minorities in Russia, was passed in a 136-27 vote. The law, supported by Orbán’s Fidesz party and their minority coalition partner the Christian Democrats, was pushed through parliament in an accelerated procedure after being submitted on Monday.

Opposing legislators led a vivid protest in the legislature involving rainbow-colored smoke bombs.

At the protest outside parliament, Evgeny Belyakov, a Russian citizen who immigrated to Hungary after facing repression in Russia, said the legislation went at the heart of people’s rights to peacefully assemble.

“It’s quite terrifying to be honest, because we had the same in Russia. It was building up step by step, and I feel like this is what is going on here,” he said. “I just only hope that there will be more resistance like this in Hungary, because in Russia we didn’t resist on time and now it’s too late.”

What does the law say?

The bill amends Hungary’s law on assembly to make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18.

Attending a prohibited event will carry fines up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state must forward to “child protection,” according to the text of the law. Authorities may use facial recognition tools to identify individuals attending a prohibited event.

In a statement on Monday after lawmakers first submitted the bill, Budapest Pride organizers said the aim of the law was to “scapegoat” the LGBTQ+ community in order to silence voices critical of Orbán’s government.

“This is not child protection, this is fascism,” wrote the organizers of the event, which attracts thousands each year and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Following the law’s passage Tuesday, Budapest Pride spokesperson Jojó Majercsik told The Associated Press that despite Orbán’s yearslong effort to stigmatize LGBTQ+ people, the organization had received an outpouring of support since the Hungarian leader hinted in February that his government would take steps to ban the event.

“Many, many people have been mobilized,” Majercsik said. “It’s a new thing, compared to the attacks of the last years, that we’ve received many messages and comments from people saying, ‘Until now I haven’t gone to Pride, I didn’t care about it, but this year I’ll be there and I’ll bring my family.’”

Government crackdown

The new legislation is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by Orbán, whose government has passed other laws that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.

In 2022, the European Union’s executive commission filed a case with the EU’s highest court against Hungary’s 2021 child protection law. The European Commission argued that the law “discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Hungary’s “child protection” law — aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors, including in television, films, advertisements and literature — also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”

Booksellers in Hungary have faced hefty fines for failing to wrap books that contain LGBTQ+ themes in closed packaging. Critics have argued Orbán’s campaign amounts to an attempt to cut LGBTQ+ visibility, and that by tying it to child protection, it falsely conflates homosexuality with pedophilia.

Hungary’s government argues that its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”

Is Orbán trying to distract the electorate?

Hungary’s methods resemble tactics by Putin, who in December 2022 expanded Russia’s ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities.

Orbán, in power since 2010, faces an unprecedented challenge from a rising opposition party as Hungary’s economy struggles to emerge from an inflation and cost of living crisis and an election approaches in 2026.

Tamás Dombos, a project coordinator at Hungarian LGBTQ+ rights group Háttér Society, said that Orbán’s assault on minorities was a tactic to distract voters from more important issues facing the country. He said allowing the use of facial recognition software at prohibited demonstrations could be used against other protests the government chooses to deem unlawful.

“It’s a very common strategy of authoritarian governments not to talk about the real issues that people are affected by: the inflation, the economy, the terrible condition of education and health care,” Dombos said.

Orbán, he continued, “has been here with us for 15 years lying into people’s faces, letting the country rot basically, and then coming up with these hate campaigns.”

The Peruvian government declared a state of emergency on Monday in the provinces of Lima and Callao to stem a rise in crime, in a move that follows the killing of a popular musician over the weekend.

President Dina Boluarte also floated the possibility of extending the use of the death penalty in Peru to address the country’s security problems.

The declaration and Boluarte’s statements came after Paul Hambert Flores García, singer of the cumbia group Armonia 10, was shot dead while traveling with his bandmates in their bus.

Peru’s Interior Ministry said Sunday that police are treating the shooting as a deliberate attack.

On Sunday, the Ministry of the Interior said it had deployed several units of the Peruvian National Police to identify and capture those responsible for the shooting, which they have classified as a deliberate attack.

“To these damned murderers, I say that I am seriously considering the death penalty,” Boluarte said Monday at an event to mark the start of the 2025 school year.

It was the latest instance in which the president has publicly thrown her support behind extending the use of the death penalty. Previously she did so in December 2024, following the murder of a girl.

Peru’s death penalty is currently used only for crimes of treason in cases of war and terrorism, according to the Constitution. If it were to be extended to include other crimes, Peru’s Constitution and the Penal Code would need to be reformed. To move forward with that, Peru would also have to disassociate itself from the international Pact of San José, which establishes limits on the death penalty.

Furthermore, the president would need to secure the necessary votes from legislators, which she has been unable to obtain for some of her other initiatives.

Following Boluarte’s statements, the Council of Ministers declared a state of emergency in Lima and Callao for 30 days, authorizing the deployment of Peru’s Armed Forces to support the National Police.

Peru is experiencing a serious security crisis. Several public schools reported days ago that they were being extorted by criminals, prompting them to propose virtual classes, according to state television station TV Perú.

In September 2024, transportation unions, which also reported being extorted by criminals, carried out a workers strike as a warning to the Boluarte government and marched toward Congress. At that time, a state of emergency was also declared in several parts of the country.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in parts of a western Indian city on Tuesday, a day after sectarian clashes were sparked by Hindu nationalist groups who want to demolish the tomb of a 17th-century Muslim Mughal ruler.

Clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Maharashtra state’s Nagpur city broke out on Monday during a protest led by Hindu nationalist groups demanding the demolition of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a Muslim Mughal ruler who has been dead for more than 300 years.

Lawmaker Chandrashekhar Bawankule said at least 34 police personnel and five other people were injured and several houses and vehicles were damaged during the violence. Senior police office Ravinder Singal said at least 50 people have been arrested so far.

Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra’s top elected official, said the violence began after “rumors were spread that things containing religious content were burnt” by the protesters, referring to the Quran.

Aurangzeb’s tomb is in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar city, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Nagpur. The city was earlier called Aurangabad, after the Mughal ruler.

Aurangzeb is a loathed figure among India’s Hindu nationalists, who accuse him of persecuting Hindus during his rule in the 17th century, even though some historians say such stories are exaggerated.

As tensions between Hindus and Muslims have mounted under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, scorn for Aurangzeb has grown. Modi has made references to Aurangzeb in the past, accusing him of persecuting Hindus.

Such remarks have led to anxieties among the country’s significant Muslim minority who in recent years have been at the receiving end of violence from Hindu nationalists, emboldened by a prime minister who has mostly stayed mum on such attacks since he was first elected in 2014.

Tensions over the Mughal ruler have intensified in India after the release of Bollywood movie “Chhaava,” an action film based on a Hindu warrior who fought against Aurangzeb. The film has been lambasted by some movie critics for feeding into a divisive narrative that risks exacerbating religious rifts in the country.

While there have long been tensions between India’s majority Hindu community and Muslims, rights groups say that attacks against minorities have become more brazen under Modi. They also accuse Modi of discriminatory policies towards the country’s Muslims.

Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party denies this.

Hindu extremists have also targeted Muslim places of worship across the country and laid claim to several famous mosques, arguing they are built on the ruins of prominent temples. Many such cases are pending in courts.

Last year, Modi delivered on a longstanding demand from Hindu nationalists — and millions of Hindus — when he opened a controversial temple on the site of a razed mosque in northern India’s Ayodhya city. The 16th-century Babri mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu mobs who believe Ram, one of Hinduism’s most revered deity, was born at the exact spot.

The US energy department put South Korea on a watchlist because visitors to its laboratories mishandled sensitive information, Joseph Yun, the acting US ambassador, said on Tuesday.

The designation, which relegated the US ally to the lowest tier of a list that includes China, Iran, Israel, Russia, Taiwan, and North Korea, sparked controversy and debate in Seoul, which said it had not been notified by Washington.

“South Korea was put on this list because there was some mishandling of sensitive information,” Yun said in remarks to the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.

He did not elaborate on the issue, but said more than 2,000 South Korean students, researchers, and government officials visited US labs last year.

The designation was limited to the department’s facilities, Yun added, and did not have wider implications for cooperation between the allies.

“It is not a big deal,” he added. “There were some incidents because there were so many South Koreans going there.”

This week the US energy department confirmed it had designated South Korea a “sensitive” country in January, but did not explain why.

Vice ministers in Seoul were set on Tuesday to brief acting President Choi Sang-mok on their response, while Industry Minister Ahn Duk-geun is expected to ask for South Korea to be dropped from the list when he visits the United States this week, government sources have said.

In a report last year, the US energy department said it had fired a contractor who tried to board a flight to South Korea with “proprietary nuclear reactor design software” owned by the Idaho National Laboratory.

That individual, who was being investigated by US law enforcement, had been in contact with an unnamed foreign government, the report said, without identifying the country.

It was not immediately clear if that case contributed to the designation. Officials in the energy department and state department were not immediately available for comment.

The US decision to add South Korea to the list was taken by the previous Biden administration, a spokesperson for the US Department of Energy (DOE) has said.

It came as South Korean officials increasingly raised the prospect of some day pursuing their own nuclear weapons, and in the aftermath of a shock martial law declaration in December that threw the country’s leadership into crisis.

On Monday, however, Seoul’s foreign ministry said the DOE decision was understood to have stemmed from “security-related matters” linked to a research center, and not South Korea’s foreign policy.

The DOE spokesperson said the designation, due to take effect in April, set no new restrictions but mandates internal reviews before cooperation or visits to listed countries.

Meanwhile, Yun called on South Korea to help reduce the US trade deficit with Seoul, which has more than doubled since the first Trump administration. “To the new administration in Washington, that is troubling,” he said.

South Korea needs to scrap barriers in the agriculture, digital and service sectors, he added.

Turkish authorities have ordered the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with around 100 other people, prosecutors said on Wednesday, according to state-run news agency Anadolu Agency.

The order comes just days before the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is scheduled to hold a primary election, where Imamoglu was expected to be chosen as its presidential candidate.

“I am saddened to say, a handful of people who are trying to steal the will of the people, have sent the dear police, the security forces implicating them in this wrongful doing,” Imamoglu said in a video posted to X on Wednesday.

“Hundreds of police officers have been sent to the door my house — the house of the 16 million people of Istanbul.”

The move to detain the mayor of Turkey’s largest city, a key political battleground, comes after Istanbul University said on Tuesday it had annulled Imamoglu’s degree over irregularities, dealing a blow to the opposition days before it was set to pick him as its presidential candidate in the next election.

Without a university degree, Imamoglu of the main opposition CHP, cannot stand as a candidate for president.

Imamoglu said the university’s decision was illegal and outside its jurisdiction, and that he would launch a legal challenge “The decision of the Istanbul University Board of Directors is UNLAWFUL” he said. “The days when those who made this decision will be held accountable before history and justice are near.”

Imamoglu was elected mayor of Turkey’s largest and most populous city in 2019. The next presidential vote is scheduled for 2028, but early elections are likely.

This is a developing story and will be updated.