TALKS begin in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday between the US and Ukraine following last week’s vituperative exchange between Trump and Zelensky.
This is a second chance for Zelensky to reach an accommodation with his country’s main patron and the source of much of the military hardware, munitions and electronic intelligence which has enabled his embattled and largely conscript army to keep the Russian army occupied for three years.
It is clear that Zelensky missed the point of the meeting, whether on the basis of his own understanding, or perhaps with his expectations inflated by Keir Starmer’s blowhard bid to recruit a European army.
While 69 per cent of Ukrainians want negotiated peace, Western leaders are cynically prolonging the war for their own strategic and economic goals, to the immense detriment of Ukraine and Europe, write BOB ORAM and MAGGIE SIMPSON
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES
As Britain marks 80 years since defeating fascism, it finds itself in a proxy war against Russia over Ukraine — DANIEL POWELL examines Churchill’s secret plan to attack our Soviet allies in 1945 and traces how Nato expansion, a Western-backed coup and neo-nazi activism contributed to todays' devastating conflict



