World Briefing: March 19, 2025
Hours before the call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I told the BBC’s Karin Giannone that if the U.S. leader wishes to be true to form as one who routinely governs by press conference, he should livestream the entire phone call. On a more serious note I said that what we could be witnessing is the slow dismemberment of Ukraine. It seems decisions are being made without Ukraine at the table on how to reward Russia for eleven years of war.
Vladimir Putin rejected Donald Trump’s proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine after a “frank” phone call on Tuesday between the two presidents. Instead, the Russian leader agreed to a 30-day pause in attacks on energy plants and infrastructure and to hold further talks on stopping hostilities in the Black Sea. Putin also demanded that Ukraine not rearm or mobilise during the partial truce and called for a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence support to Kyiv. France and Germany vowed on Tuesday night to continue supplying weapons to Kyiv, raising doubts over whether a deal on Putin’s terms can hold. Downing Street has not yet addressed whether Britain will follow suit. Volodymyr Zelensky said that the phone call showed the Kremlin was “not ready” to end the war and that its ultimate aim in talks on halting the conflict was to “weaken” his country - Telegraph
Ukraine reported Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure just hours after the Russian leader agreed to a partial ceasefire. Over the Kyiv region, 45 Russians drones attacked overnight, officials said. Regional authorities in Sumy in said that Russia’s drone attacks damaged two hospitals there, forcing the evacuation of patients and hospital staff. Russia also carried out a drone attack on the electricity system powering the railways in Ukraine's central Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrzaliznytsya said. Parts of the railway have been left without electricity, but railway traffic has not been affected, it says.
Matthew Shoemaker, a former U.S. intelligence officer and national security specialist, warned that Trump risks playing into Putin’s hands by allowing Russia to deploy the “classic Cold War-era Soviet tactics” of slow-walking the talks. “During the Cold War, American leaders often resisted being drawn into such drawn-out processes, recognizing that they served as stalling mechanisms for the Soviets to regroup or exploit leverage,” Shoemaker told POLITICO. “Trump risks falling into this historical trap, as Putin’s delays could allow Russia to strengthen its position militarily and politically while eroding U.S. credibility and unity with allies.”
Fresh talks will begin in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Fox News after their call. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security adviser Mike Waltz would again lead the American delegation, he said, adding "the devil is in the details". He didn't specify whether Ukrainian or Russian delegations would be at the talks - BBC
The U.S. State Department has ended funding for the tracking of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and American officials or contractors might have deleted a database with information on them, according to a letter that U.S. lawmakers plan to send to Secretary of State Rubio on Wednesday. The work on the abducted children by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab was frozen when President Trump signed an executive order in late January halting almost all foreign aid spending. The congressional letter, organized by Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, said “the foreign aid freeze has jeopardized, and may ultimately eliminate, our informational support of Ukraine on this front.” The State Department and the Yale center “had been preserving evidence of abducted children from Ukraine it had identified, to be shared with Europol and the government of Ukraine to secure their return,” the letter said, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. Europol is the main law enforcement agency of the European Union. “We have reason to believe that the data from the repository has been permanently deleted,” it said. “If true, this would have devastating consequences. Can you please update us as to the status of the data from the evidence repository?” A person familiar with the work of the Yale Center said the details in the letter were accurate. Ukrainian officials say Russia has abducted 20,000 children from Ukraine. Yale researchers said in earlier reports they have tracked 30,000 children to sites outside of Ukraine. They have put information into the database on 6,000 children taken to Russia and more than 2,400 to Belarus. The database has detailed information on 314 kidnapped children in Russia: their names and photographs, and dossiers of 20 to 30 pages on each child - NYT
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland agreed to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, an international treaty banning anti-personnel mines, in response to growing concerns over Russia's growing military threat to its bordering NATO member states. It comes shortly after defence ministers of the Baltic states and Poland unanimously recommended withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention. In a joint statement released on Tuesday, the defence ministers said they "believe that in the current security environment it is paramount to provide our defence forces flexibility and freedom of choice to potentially use new weapons systems and solutions to bolster the defence of the alliance’s vulnerable eastern flank." - Euronews
““Putin is playing a game here and I’m sure that the American president won’t be able to sit and watch for much longer” ”
At least 14 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli attacks on southern Gaza’s Khan Younis and Rafah, Al Jazeera correspondents report. UN chief Antonio Guterres says he is “outraged by the Israeli air strikes in Gaza”, joining a chorus of international condemnation as more than 400 Palestinians have been killed, including many women and children. Meanwhile, Taher al-Nono, a Hamas official, says the group has not shut the door on negotiations despite the renewed Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. “Hamas has not closed the door on negotiations but we insist there is no need for new agreements,” he told the AFP news agency on the phone from Cairo, also calling for Israel to be forced to implement the ceasefire. Separately, President Donald Trump hosted the UAE's national security adviser at the White House early Tuesday morning, according to a statement on Truth Social.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on March 18 said it has sued the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to block their attempt to terminate the Prague-based outlet’s federal grant. The complaint argues that denying the funds that Congress has appropriated for RFE/RL violates federal laws and the US Constitution, which gives Congress exclusive authority over federal spending. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. “This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said. “We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our demise by despots around the world is premature,” he added. Word of the suit comes as European Union politicians said they are continuing their push into possible support for RFE/RL after the US government moved to cut the broadcaster's funding amid concerns its closure would be a blow to pro-democracy media.
Turkish police on Wednesday arrested Istanbul’s mayor — a popular opposition leader and key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — and several other prominent figures as part of investigations into alleged corruption and terror links. It was a dramatic escalation in an ongoing government crackdown on the opposition and dissenting voices in Turkey. The state-run Anadolu Agency said prosecutors issued detention warrants for the mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and some 100 other people. Authorities also closed several roads around Istanbul and banned demonstrations in the city for four days in an apparent effort to prevent protests following the arrest. Private NTV television reported that two Istanbul district mayors were among those detained. Critics say the crackdown follows significant losses by Erdogan’s ruling party in local elections last year amid growing calls for early national elections - AP
The United States could lose its democracy status as Trump has escalated an authoritarian turn in last few days, says a global watchdog. "If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data," said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden's University of Gothenburg. "If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months." His project includes 31 million data points for 202 countries, compiled by 4,200 scholars and other contributors, measuring 600 different attributes of democracy. The number of autocracies (91) has just surpassed democracies (88) on this list for the first time in two decades, and nearly three-quarters of humans now live in an autocracy — where one person has unconstrained power — the highest rate in five decades - CBC News
Early on Friday, Elon Musk shared a post written by an X user about the actions of three 20th century dictators — then quickly deleted it after it sparked a backlash. The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public sector workers did. Mr. Musk shared the post without any other comment. He removed it soon after users on X criticized the post, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have widely chronicled that millions of people died under Stalin, that millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust, and that millions of Chinese were displaced or killed during Mao’s cultural revolution.
