Russian invasion

Negotiations
Starmer and Macron to travel to Washington next week

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Washington DC next week, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said, according to Reuters.

It was already known that Starmer would be traveling to the US to meet with Trump. Macron is expected to arrive in the US early next week

It is not yet clear whether Starmer and Macron will meet the US president together or separately.

Zelensky: Constructive meeting with US important

After Donald Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator, the Ukrainian president says it is important that tomorrow's meeting with Trump's Ukrainian envoy Keith Kellogg is constructive, Reuters reports.

- We stand firmly on our own two feet. I count on unity and courage from Ukraine, unity from Europe and pragmatism from the United States, he says in his nightly video update.

Trump has been fueling the anger of Ukraine and the EU for the past 24 hours by falsely saying that Ukraine started the war in 2022 and that Zelensky is a dictator who refuses to hold elections.

Due to Ukraine's martial law, elections were not held last year as planned. On the other hand, the Russian election results have been rejected by independent experts for decades.

Ukrainian minister: No one can force us to give up

Just minutes after Trump attacked Zelensky and called him a dictator, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha writes that no one can force Ukraine to give up.

"We will defend our right to exist," he writes on X.

Donald Trump's claim is "deeply unreasonable," says Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, according to VG.

- He is a popularly elected president, says the prime minister.

Ukrainians elected Zelensky as president in 2019. Due to martial law imposed when Russia invaded, there was no election in 2024.

Voices on the Ukraine war
Expert: The box is blown – the EU needs to think again

The EU must gather strength to cover up if US support for Ukraine fails, says Charlotta Rodhe, deputy director of the Center for East European Studies at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, to SvD.

The newspaper writes that there are frozen Russian assets that the EU could use, and that after the latest developments, it is no longer enough to just think outside the box.

– Because the box has already been blown. What we need to do now goes beyond anything we ever thought possible. This is an existential moment.