How did things get so bad, so fast?

Europe’s leaders and officials have been blindsided by a staggering collapse in American support for Ukraine in the past week. Many still cannot understand why US President Donald Trump has turned so furiously on Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, parroting the vitriolic disinformation usually heard from the Kremlin.

Leaders on the continent weren’t part of the Russia-US talks this week. They don’t know when the US will present a proposed peace deal to Kyiv, or make good on its threat to turn its back on the conflict. And they don’t know what will happen next.

“The way in which this was delivered – blow after blow after blow, within days – that was a real shock” for the continent, said Armida van Rij, a senior research fellow and head of the Europe Programme at London-based think tank Chatham House.

European politicians are working through their grief. A frantic summit in Paris sparked a raft of hawkish new ideas, aimed at framing the contours of an uncertain new reality.

But still, key capitals are adrift in their aims. A peacekeeping force, hiked defense spending and new military aid have all been put forward, but never in chorus. Europe’s scattershot intentions formed one half of a stunning split-screen this week; on the other side were the US and Russia, suddenly chummy, tossing Ukrainian demands and territories off the negotiating table.

The emergence of a leader might help, some experts say: A figurehead who can corral Europe behind a universal intention, building a bridge between Kyiv and Washington. Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron are the most obvious candidates, and both will visit DC next week, trips that have taken on outsized importance.

But Europe is not known for its unity on defense, and every major leader has electoral or economic headaches at home. Plus, there is the thorny issue of when, and how hard, to push back on Trump; governments know that rupturing that relationship might play into Moscow’s hands.

Boots on the ground

Europe expected Trump to be less interested in Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty than the previous Biden administration, but it wasn’t primed for a break-up so sudden, unequivocal and bitter.

The sight of a sitting US president blaming an adversary’s invasion on its besieged ally was staggering, and drew unified condemnation from European leaders. On an emotional level, as well as a practical one, Europe has been shellshocked.

But it should not have been. For months, Trump and his inner circle had demurred and speculated over the start and hypothetical end of the war in Ukraine, and displayed an indifference to Kyiv’s sovereignty that signaled a jarring shift in policy was coming.

From the moment of Trump’s election victory, van Rij said, “European heads of government should have been getting together … to figure out what the European plan was going to be. But that hasn’t really happened.” Instead, it waited until now to act with real urgency.

Two futures exist: one with a peace deal, and one without. But either would likely require European leadership; Trump’s administration has made clear its priorities lie in the Indo-Pacific and on its own borders.

UK Prime Minister Starmer made the first significant move to jostle European governments behind a common goal, announcing this week a marked shift in policy: Britain would be ready to put boots on the ground to keep an agreed peace in Ukraine.

Western officials said Wednesday that such a force would likely number fewer than 30,000 troops, and would focus on “reassurance,” securing key Ukrainian infrastructure and working to instill confidence in the state.

The officials said the effort is being led by Britain and France. Paris first mooted putting boots on the ground last year but was roundly rebuffed by Europe. But Starmer has made clear that an American “backstop” would be key; the officials said such a backstop would likely be focused around air power, and be controlled from a NATO country like Poland or Romania.

Starmer and Macron will be expected to pitch Trump on those plans in Washington next week.

But there are many unanswered questions – if NATO soldiers are attacked by Russian on Ukraine’s non-NATO soil, for example, what level of response would it draw?

And Starmer, who oversees a creaking military that has reduced in size since wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, would need buy-in from Europe, too. “The British Army is suffering from the cumulative effects of 40 years of decline,” Drummond said.

A painful split

Putting boots on the ground is not a universally popular idea. Importantly, Poland – which boasts NATO’s largest military in Europe and is a significant player in Ukraine – is reluctant, fearing it would make its own borders more vulnerable.

Should an informal, smaller European leadership group take shape, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will likely expect to be involved. He will come to the table with uncomfortable truths for larger nations like Britain, France and Germany about the amount they are putting towards defense.

And Germany is in line for a particularly harsh dressing down. An inconveniently timed election on Sunday could result in weeks of haggling over its next government. The probably incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, used last week’s Munich Security Conference to set out a hawkish position on Ukraine.

But German military spending stands around a paltry 1.5%; Merz says it needs to be raised, but has avoided firm commitments. Russia’s war has already limited Germany’s voice in Europe on defense issues – Berlin spent decades forging closer economic ties with Moscow, despite Poland’s protestations – and Merz will struggle to regain it.

In any case, a glaring possibility exists that a peace deal, agreed by the US and Russia, is rejected by Zelensky, or that Putin doesn’t agree to peacekeepers. Europe’s support would then become essential, if Ukraine is to keep up a difficult war without an end date.

That means more than words; Europe will need to fill a gap in military aid too.

Western officials said this week that Kyiv likely has received enough military supplies to last until the summer.

“Biden got a lot of kit in before the inauguration. Kit is still going in” one said. But losing American contributions would be a big blow: the official said there is a “difference in quality” between America’s supplies and Europe’s.

Sorting through the pieces of the break-up of a decades-long security relationship with America would be painful and complicated work. But Europe has realized this week that it may be necessary.

On a wet evening in Suhl, in the former East Germany, a smattering of youthful faces were among hundreds lining up to hear from an unlikely idol – Björn Höcke, one of the most controversial figures in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Höcke, a former history teacher, has been found guilty of using Nazi terminology in a speech and has faced criticism for his views even within the AfD, seen as a pariah by Germany’s mainstream parties.

This mattered little though at the non-descript hall tucked away in a deserted shopping center in Suhl. When asked about his popularity among young people and if he is a good role model, he was clear in his answer.

Höcke is capable of pulling a big crowd, he is lauded in these parts. The AfD’s victory in the state in elections last year made it the first party to win any sort of election since the Nazi era.

Yet the trend of young voters choosing the AfD for their politics is a phenomenon that is a rising across Germany.

Polls for the upcoming election on Sunday, and the AfD’s success in regional elections last year, show the party has transformed from regional to national force.

If European election results last year – which saw an 18% increase in 16–34-year-olds voting for the AfD – are a barometer, the rise nationally among the same group could form a significant part of the AfD’s likely climb into second place.

The AfD in Thuringia is designated an extremist organization by German domestic intelligence and Höcke is its leader.

But many of the young people we spoke to didn’t attempt to hide their admiration for Höcke, with some saying they came specifically to listen to him.

Dante Reidel, a 26-year-old student, standing next to a stall selling the German far-right magazine “Compact,” said he is also a designated extremist.

For Reidel, Höcke is an idol, “it’s also about the personalities… who embody certain values. And what I really appreciate about Höcke is that he is honest… and he speaks plainly.”

He details some of his ideology and what he views as important to him. In particular the veneration of nationalistic, expansionist and militaristic periods of history.

“Prussian virtues, things like diligence, discipline. These are things that are important, including the cardinal virtues from antiquity,” he said.

The Young Alternatives are also nationally designated as extremists. It is part of the reason that they recently voted to disband and reform more formally under central AfD control. Engelhardt says the designation is a conspiracy against them and that they have no extremists in their ranks.

When asked about why so many young people are voting for the AfD, he repeats the now-common AfD refrain.

“Migration is the mother of all crises. We have a lot of illegal immigrants in this country… who are not behaving. And I think that many of the problems we have today… are also caused by migration, by uncontrolled mass immigration,” Engelhardt says.

The same week, a car driven by an Afghan migrant tore through a peaceful protest in central Munich. A 36-year-old woman and a 2-year-old died from their injuries.

It marked the third attack in as many months. An Afghan migrant killed two in a Aschaffenburg knife attack in January, and a car-ramming at a Christmas market in Magdeburg killed six last year.

The spate of attacks has catapulted the issue of migration to the fore.

The AfD’s response has been to call for “remigration”: The mass return of migrants.

The term has Nazi connotations. Engelhardt called it a “scientific term” and says the deportation of people is not what they are calling for but rather, they want a tighter migration policy more generally.

Regardless of the designations, connections to extremist individuals and reforming of his political association, Engelhardt remains certain that Germany’s future lies in the hands of the young.

He said “something has changed” in young German voters.

“The fact many young people want to vote for the AfD means that we also have a future.”

A train collided with a herd of elephants in Sri Lanka on Wednesday night, killing at least six of them, according to Sri Lanka Police.

No passengers were injured, but wildlife veterinary officers are treating a female elephant and an injured calf in the city of Giritale, Sri Lanka’s state-owned Daily News reported Thursday.

The Meenagaya train hit the herd at the 140 km mark between Minneriya and Galoya railway stations at around 11:30 pm Wednesday, Daily News reports.

“According to a statement released by the Department of Wildlife Conservation, Railway Department officials, police, and wildlife officers swiftly coordinated efforts at the scene. Further investigations into the incident are underway to determine the circumstances surrounding the collision,” Daily News reports.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Sri Lankan elephants are the largest and the darkest of the Asian elephants. Their herd size ranges from 12-20 individuals and the oldest female typically leads the herd.

Elephants are a popular tourist attraction and hold symbolic, cultural and economic importance for Sri Lanka, WFF states. But co-existing with humans continues to be an issue as their forest habitats are cleared for human infrastructure and agriculture.

Similar incidents have happened before. The Associated Press reported that in October at least two elephants were killed when a train carrying thousands of gallons of fuel hit a herd in northwest Sri Lanka in the town of Minneriya, about 200 km from the capital, Colombo.

Minneriya National Park is home to the world’s largest known gathering of Asian elephants and draws many tourists, according to the park’s website.

The train driver told the Associated Press in October that the herd of nearly 20 elephants suddenly tried to cross over the railway track.

“There was about 10 meters (32 feet) between us. So, we couldn’t do anything. We pressed the breaks to their maximum capacity, but there was nothing much we could do. At least four elephants were knocked down.” drive N.W. Jayalath told the Associated Press.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she’ll propose reforms to the country’s constitution aiming to reinforce the nation’s sovereignty, after the US designated several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations – a move that could potentially lay the groundwork for direct US strikes inside Mexican territory.

“The people of Mexico, under no circumstances will accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is harmful to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the nation,” Sheinbaum said Thursday during her daily press conference.

The measures would apply to the entire Mexican territory including “land, water, sea or airspace,” she added.

Sheinbaum and other senior Mexican officials have previously emphasized concerns over sovereignty following revelations that US spy plane flights are also occurring near the border, albeit in international airspace and over US territory. Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla said last week that he had not been given a heads up on the spy plane flights.

Sheinbaum is now proposing reforms to constitutional articles 39 and 40, which focus on Mexico’s independence and sovereignty.

The proposed reforms include Mexico prohibiting any “intervention for investigations and prosecutions without the express authorization and collaboration of the Mexican state within the framework of the applicable laws.”

Sheinbaum also said that the US decision to designate certain criminal groups in Mexico as terrorist organizations was not undertaken in consultation with her government.

“What we want to make clear with this designation is that we do not negotiate sovereignty, this can’t be an opportunity by the United States to invade our sovereignty,” the president said.

“They can call (cartels) whatever they decide, but with Mexico it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination, no interference and even less invasion.”

Separately, Sheinbaum said she is also proposing another reform to target “any national or foreigner involved in the illicit manufacture, distribution, disposal, transfer and internment of weapons into the national territory.”

US-made guns have long been identified as an important source of firepower for criminal groups across Latin America and the Caribbean. Mexico has claimed in the past that “almost all” weapons recovered from crime scenes – 70% to 90% – were trafficked from the US into Mexico.

Israel says it has identified two of the dead bodies returned by Hamas on Thursday as Ariel and Kfir Bibas – but tests show another body that was expected to be that of their mother Shiri is not hers – and does not match any other Israeli hostage.

The Israeli military said forensic evidence and intelligence suggested the boys were murdered.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Arab leaders are set to meet in Saudi Arabia on Friday for the first time to formulate a response to US President Donald Trump’s plan for the US to take ownership of Gaza, expel its Palestinian population and turn it into a Middle Eastern “Riviera.”

The meeting – including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf Arab nations – will take place ahead of a larger Arab summit on March 4, Saudi Arabia said. A meeting of Islamic countries is expected to follow, according to the Egyptian foreign ministry.

Originally announced by Egypt in early February as an “emergency summit,” the gathering will take place five weeks after Trump first floated his plan, showing the struggle among Arab states to craft a unified stance.

Conflicting details have emerged about the Arab plan.

A report published in Egypt’s state-run Al Ahram Weekly said Cairo was proposing a 10-to-20-year plan to rebuild Gaza with Gulf Arab funding, while excluding Hamas from governing the enclave and allowing its 2.1 million Palestinian residents to remain.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Wednesday claimed that his country could fully rebuild Gaza in three years to a state that is “better than it was before,” without saying how he plans to achieve that. If a permanent ceasefire is reached in Gaza in the coming months, that would mean the vision could be completed before the end of Trump’s presidential term.

Most assessments suggest that a complete reconstruction of the enclave would take much longer.

The World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations said in a joint statement Tuesday that, according to their estimates, a return of essential services alone, including health, education, as well as the clearing of rubble, would take three years. The full rebuilding of the devastated enclave would need 10 years and cost more than $50 billion, with housing alone estimated to cost $15 billion. The Egyptian prime minister said that his country’s plan takes those assessments into consideration.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government and real estate developers in the country have been eyeing a role in the rebuilding process, which could come with contracts worth billions of dollars.

“We have experience, and we have applied it (before) in Egypt,” Madbouly said in a news conference in Egypt’s new administrative capital. “The capability to rebuild the (Gaza) Strip and executing it in way that will make it better than it was before the destruction – truly three years is an acceptable timeline to do this.”

Trump said on Wednesday that he had not yet seen the Egyptian plan.

‘Long and complex journey’

Despite urgency from Arab countries to present Trump with a convincing counterproposal, rebuilding Gaza is a “long and complex” journey, the World Bank, EU and UN said.

It will likely need to address governance and finance with international backing –contentious issues that could be difficult to resolve.

Any reconstruction effort would be futile if a fragile ceasefire in Gaza fails, plunging the territory back to war.

A source familiar with the reconstruction plans said that funding could include public and private donations, likely from the EU and Gulf Arab countries, adding that there could be an international donor conference for Gaza in April.

The plan could also fall through if Israel, which controlled Gaza’s border long before Hamas’ October 2023 attack, refuses to cooperate. So far, it has backed Trump’s plan to de-populate Gaza, and its defense ministry this week announced plans to launch a “Directorate for the Voluntary Departure of Gaza Residents” to facilitate, it says, Gazans who wish to emigrate.

Hamas and Israel reached an agreement last month for the first phase of a truce that could culminate in permanent ceasefire. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday that talks will start on a potential second phase of the truce – two weeks after they were due to begin.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority said on Thursday it was prepared to govern Gaza after the war, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected. The PA isn’t expected to participate in the Saudi meeting on Friday.

Hamas has sent conflicting messages on what role it sees for itself in Gaza after the war. Over the weekend, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan sent a defiant message, saying during an interview in Qatar that the group would decide for itself who will govern Gaza. But this week, Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson, said the group is not “clinging to power.”

Egypt’s state-backed Al Qahera News reported Saturday that Egypt is working to form a temporary committee to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza.

Meanwhile, Qatar said that Palestinians should decide who governs them in the future.

The UAE is one of the few Arab nations that has expressed willingness to consider a role in postwar Gaza at the invitation of a reformed Palestinian Authority and with a commitment from Israel for a future Palestinian state. It has rejected Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians.

But Hamas has warned that it will treat anyone that takes Israel’s place in Gaza as it treats Israel, calling on regional states not to become “agents” for Israel.

Airlines have been contacted by Australia’s air traffic control agency warning them of reports of live fire off the country’s east coast where a Chinese navy task group has been operating, the agency and Australian officials said.

A People’s Liberation Army Navy frigate, cruiser and replenishment vessel last week entered Australia’s maritime approaches, and travelled down Australia’s east coast this week, monitored by the navies and air forces of Australia and New Zealand.

“The Civil Aviation Authority and Airservices Australia are aware of reports of live firing in international waters,” air traffic control agency Airservices Australia said in a statement on Friday.

“As a precaution, we have advised airlines with flights planned in the area,” it added.
Qantas and its low-cost arm Jetstar are monitoring the airspace and have temporarily adjusted some flights across the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the live fire involved the Chinese task group and it was an evolving situation.

“It is, as I understand it, operating in international waters,” she said in an ABC television interview on Friday.

“We will be discussing this with the Chinese, and we already have at officials level, in relation to the notice given and the transparency, that has been provided in relation to these exercises, particularly the live fire exercises.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported China had notified Australian authorities on Friday they would hold an exercise off the coast of New South Wales state.

Defense Minister Richard Marles did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A “window for peace is opening” in Ukraine, China’s top diplomat told a meeting of G20 foreign ministers on Thursday, as the Trump administration ramps up its push to end the war in close coordination with Russia.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the gathering in South Africa, the first high-level talks between the two close partners since US President Donald Trump upended America’s stance on the conflict this month with a sweeping pivot toward Moscow.

That’s seen top Trump officials hold bilateral talks with Moscow over Kyiv’s head and launch a barrage of criticism against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with a senior American official warning on Thursday that the US is losing patience with Kyiv.

The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, which was not attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came as the breakneck diplomacy has left Europe and China on the sidelines and raised questions about a shifting balance of power in a fraught geopolitical landscape.

China “supports all efforts dedicated to peace, including the recent consensus reached between the US and Russia,” Wang told counterparts at the gathering in Johannesburg.

A “window for peace is opening” on the war, he added.

The war and US relations were among subjects discussed between the top Chinese diplomat and Lavrov on the meeting sidelines, a Russian readout said. The two sides – which have tightened their relations during the war – also praised their growing cooperation.

On Ukraine, both countries appeared to agree that it was necessary to address the conflict’s “root causes” – an apparent veiled reference to NATO – with Russia’s readout attributing this sentiment to Wang and China’s attributing this to Lavrov.

Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago in an uninterrupted onslaught that has killed tens of thousands and displaced about 10 million people. The invasion has also laid waste to Ukrainian cities and drawn allegations of war crimes by Moscow’s forces, which are entrenched in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Even though Russia invaded its neighbor, Beijing and Moscow have blamed NATO expansion as the cause of the conflict – part of their broader shared opposition to the US system of alliances they see as positioned against their interests.

Lavrov earlier this week praised Trump for being what he described as “the first Western leader” to acknowledge publicly that the “cause of the Ukrainian conflict was the efforts … to expand NATO.”

Russia has long claimed that expansion of the US-led defense alliance put its security under threat, necessitating its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That claim has been dismissed by Western leaders as a bogus justification for launching its war.

The sharp shift in US positioning on the conflict was underscored Thursday as Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz described the US president’s “frustration” with Zelensky following a meeting between the Ukrainian leader and the US’ Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog in Kyiv.

“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with President Zelensky — the fact that — that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered,” Waltz told a news briefing in Washington, referencing an economic deal that the Trump administration has so far been unsuccessful in convincing Kyiv to accept.

“I think he eventually will get to that point, and I hope so very quickly,” Waltz said, echoing comments he made before the Kellogg-Zelensky meeting, urging the Ukrainian leader to “sign the deal.”

Trump-Zelensky rift

Waltz’s comments came amid what has been a deepening rift between Trump and Zelensky that has cast more uncertainty over how Ukraine’s interests would be represented in future talks on ending the war.

Trump ramped up his long-standing criticism of Ukraine’s leader in recent days, parroting Kremlin rhetoric that wrongly accuses Kyiv of starting the war with Russia and questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy to lead since he suspended an election due to the invasion.

After Zelensky hit back, accusing the US president of being in a “disinformation space,” Trump escalated the fight on Wednesday, calling Zelensky “a Dictator without elections” in a scathing post on his platform Truth Social.

Following talks Thursday with envoy Kellogg, Zelensky appeared keen to stress Ukraine’s interest in maintaining strong US relations.

“General Kellogg’s meeting is one that restores hope, and we need strong agreements with America, agreements that will really work,” Zelensky said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people.

“Economy and security must always go hand in hand, and the details of the agreements matter: the better the details, the better the result.”

Kellogg and Zelensky’s team had discussed Ukraine’s prisoners of war, and “the need for a reliable and clear system of security guarantees so that the war does not return,” the Ukrainian president added.

The meeting followed a sit down earlier this month between Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.

In his comments Thursday, national security adviser Waltz defended Washington’s “shuttle diplomacy” approach to speak with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts separately.

A plane carrying more than 170 Venezuelan migrants who were held in Guantanamo Bay after being deported from the US arrived in Venezuela on Thursday.

The 177 were initially flown to Honduras for transfer to Venezuela, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The flight appeared to have nearly emptied out the naval base of migrants sent there as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on migration.

Questions have swirled over the legality of sending migrants to the base on Cuba – notorious for holding prisoners of the US-led “war on terror.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has alleged that Venezuelan migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay have ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, a criminal network that started in a Venezuelan prison.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement that it had requested the repatriation of Venezuelan nationals who were “unjustly taken to the Guantanamo naval base.”

President Nicholas Maduro said the group that arrived Thursday “are not criminals, they are not bad people, they were people who emigrated as a result of the [US] sanctions… in Venezuela we welcome them as a productive force, with a loving embrace.”

Senior Trump officials have said that Guantanamo Bay is reserved for the “worst of the worst,” but new court filings reveal that not all those who are being sent to the facility are considered to pose a “high threat.”

According to newly filed court declarations, 127 were considered high threat and being held in the base’s maximum-security prison, while 51 were low-to-medium threat and are being held at a migrant operations center. All were from Venezuela.

On Wednesday a group of Venezuelans shielded from deportation under a form of humanitarian relief filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to revoke those protections.

Earlier this month, the DHS ended what’s known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in a string of moves to strip temporary protections for certain migrants.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided not to grant an extension of TPS, reversing a decision made by Biden’s DHS and leaving some 600,000 people in limbo.

Protections for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans are set to expire in April, opening them up for deportation. Around 250,000 Venezuelans are expected to lose them in September.