Here is a summary of today's events:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “not ready” to sign a deal that would give the United States preferential access to his country’s rare earth minerals, a Ukrainian source told AFP.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump demanded Kyiv supply the US with rare earth resources – critical elements used in electronics – in exchange for military aid. That request was, this week, followed up by the White House national security adviser telling Zelenskyy to “tone done” his complaints about the US and “sign that deal”.
Russian forces have captured the village of Novolyubivka in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, the RIA state news agency reported on Saturday, citing the Russian defence ministry.
A second meeting between representatives of Russia and the United States is planned for the next two weeks, the RIA state news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
The US envoy to Ukraine, Gen Keith Kellogg, has praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”.
Some 62% of Britons believe Ukraine should be allowed into Nato, according to new polling.
President Donald Trump is moving with light speed and brute force to break the existing order and reshape America at home and abroad. He likes the ring of calling himself king.
No one can absorb it all, AP reports. By the time you try to process one big thing - he covets Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal and the Gaza Strip; he turns away from historic alliances and Ukraine; fires many thousands of federal workers, then brings some right back; raises doubts whether he will obey laws he doesn’t like; orders an about-face in the missions of department after department; declares there are only two genders; announces heavy tariffs, suspends them, then imposes some - three more big things have happened.
Trump’s core supporters are thrilled. Those who don’t like him watch in horror. The nation is far from any consensus on what makes America great and what may make it sink.
Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service told AP: “We’re essentially playing Russian roulette and they just added a bunch more bullets to the chamber.”
Or is it instead a “controlled burn,” as Kevin Roberts, an architect of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, puts it? “A controlled burn destroys the dangerous deadwood so that the whole forest can flourish,” he asserts.
