US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’

US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that the United States would end mediation unless Russia and Ukraine put forward “concrete proposals.” (AP/File)
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Updated 30 April 2025
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US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’

US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’
  • It remains unclear if Rubio is actually ready to turn the page or is seeking to pressure the two countries — especially Russia

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that the United States would end mediation unless Russia and Ukraine put forward “concrete proposals,” as US patience wanes on an early priority for Donald Trump.
The US president had vowed to end the war in his first 24 hours back in the White House but, as Trump celebrates 100 days in office, Rubio has suggested the administration could soon turn attention to other issues.
“We are now at a time where concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters, in what she said was a message from Rubio.
“If there is not progress, we will step back as mediators in this process.”
She said it would ultimately be up to Trump to decide whether to move ahead on diplomacy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed a three-day ceasefire around Moscow’s commemorations next week for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
But Putin has rebuffed a Ukrainian-backed US call for a 30-day ceasefire.
The United States wants “not a three-day moment so you can celebrate something else — a complete, durable ceasefire and an end to the conflict,” Bruce said.
It remains unclear if Rubio is actually ready to turn the page or is seeking to pressure the two countries — especially Russia, which believes it has an upper hand on the battlefield and in diplomacy since Trump’s outreach.
US diplomat James Kelley, addressing a UN Security Council session, said both sides would benefit from working off the “framework proposal” outlined by Washington.
Condemning Russian strikes on Ukraine, he said: “Right now, Russia has a great opportunity to achieve a durable peace.”
Trump, criticizing his predecessor Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine, reached out to Putin after taking office, easing him from the international isolation he has been in since he ordered the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Putin again last week met with Trump’s business friend Steve Witkoff, who has taken on the role of a globe-trotting envoy.
Trump in turn berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a February 28 White House meeting, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing the wartime leader of ingratitude for US weapons.
Ukraine quickly tried to make amends by backing US diplomatic efforts and pursuing a deal in which the United States would control much of the country’s mineral wealth.
But Zelensky has held firm against one part of the US framework — formal international recognition of Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea.
Trump has insisted that Ukraine has lost Crimea and Zelensky should give it up.
Speaking by videoconference to an event in Poland on Tuesday, Zelensky said: “We all want this war to end in a fair way — with no rewards for Putin, especially no land.”
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday that recognizing “Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea would invite additional aggression from Moscow and Beijing.”
“I have endeavored to give President Trump the space to negotiate a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, which is a goal we both share,” she said.
“However, President Trump and his team have fatally mismanaged these negotiations — offering concession after concession to Russia, throwing away our leverage and fracturing the united front with our allies that is critical to ending this war,” she said.
Ukraine on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of seven villages in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region which used to be remote from the frontlines but are now under threat as Russian forces close in.
Russia has been trying to break into the region from the neighboring Donetsk but has not succeeded, even after more than three years of grinding battles.
Last week a ballistic missile ripped into a residential area of Kyiv in one of the deadliest attacks on the capital since the invasion.
Trump, who has boasted of his rapport with Putin, wrote, “Vladimir, STOP,” on social media after the attack.


US aid kept many hungry Somali children alive. Now that money is disappearing

US aid kept many hungry Somali children alive. Now that money is disappearing
Updated 27 May 2025
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US aid kept many hungry Somali children alive. Now that money is disappearing

US aid kept many hungry Somali children alive. Now that money is disappearing
  • The US Agency for International Development once provided 65 percent of Somalia’s foreign aid

MOGADISHU, Somalia: The cries of distressed children filled the ward for the severely malnourished. Among the patients was 1-year-old Maka’il Mohamed. Doctors pressed his chest in a desperate attempt to support his breathing.
His father brought him too late to a hospital in Somalia ‘s capital, Mogadishu. The victim of complications related to malnutrition, the boy did not survive.
“Are you certain? Did he really die?” the father, Mohamed Ma’ow, asked a doctor, shocked.
The death earlier this month at Banadir Hospital captured the agony of a growing number of Somalis who are unable to feed their children — and that of health workers who are seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in US support disappear under the Trump administration.
The US Agency for International Development once provided 65 percent of Somalia’s foreign aid, according to Dr. Abdiqani Sheikh Omar, the former director general of the Ministry of Health and now a government adviser.
Now USAID is being dismantled. And in Somalia, dozens of centers treating the hungry are closing. They have been crucial in a country described as having one of the world’s most fragile health systems as it wrestles with decades of insecurity.
Save the Children, the largest non-governmental provider of health and nutrition services to children in Somalia, said the lives of 55,000 children will be at risk by June as it closes 121 nutrition centers it can no longer fund.
Aid cuts mean that 11 percent more children are expected to be severely malnourished than in the previous year, Save the Children said.
Somalia has long faced food insecurity because of climate shocks like drought. But aid groups and Somalis alike now fear a catastrophe.
Former Somali Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalin told state-run TV last month that USAID had provided $1 billion in funding for Somalia in fiscal year 2023, with a similar amount expected for 2024.
Much of that funding is now gone.
A US State Department spokesperson in a statement to the AP said “several lifesaving USAID humanitarian assistance programs are active in Somalia, including programs that provide food and nutrition assistance to children,” and they were working to make sure the programs continue when such aid transitions to the State Department on July 1.
The problem, aid workers say, is the US hasn’t made clear what programs are lifesaving, or whether whatever funding is left will continue after July 1.
The aid group CARE has warned that 4.6 million people in Somalia are projected to face severe hunger by June, an uptick of hundreds of thousands of people from forecasts before the aid cuts.
The effects are felt in rural areas and in Mogadishu, where over 800,000 displaced people shelter. Camps for them are ubiquitous in the city’s suburbs, but many of their centers for feeding the hungry are now closing.
Some people still go to the closed centers and hope that help will come.
Mogadishu residents said they suffer, too.
Ma’ow, the bereaved father, is a tailor. He said he had been unable recently to provide three meals a day for his family of six. His wife had no breast milk for Maka’il, whose malnutrition deteriorated between multiple trips to the hospital.
Doctors confirmed that malnutrition was the primary factor in Maka’il’s decline.
The nutrition center at Banadir Hospital where Ma’ow family had been receiving food assistance is run by Alight Africa, a local partner for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, and one that has lost funding.
The funding cuts have left UNICEF’s partners unable to provide lifesaving support, including therapeutic supplies and supplemental nutrition at a time when 15 percent of Somali children are acutely malnourished, said Simon Karanja, a regional UNICEF official.
One Alight Africa worker, Abdullahi Hassan, confirmed that the group had to close all their nutrition centers in several districts of Mogadishu. One nutrition project supervisor for the group, Said Abdullahi Hassan, said closures have caused, “tragically, the deaths of some children.”
Without the food assistance they had taken for granted, many Somalis are seeing their children waste away.
More than 500 malnourished children were admitted to the center for malnourished children at Banadir Hospital between April and May, according to Dr. Mohamed Jama, head of the nutrition center.
He said such increases in patients usually occur during major crises like drought or famine but called the current situation unprecedented.
“The funding gap has impacted not only the malnourished but also health staff, whose salaries have been cut,” he said.
Fadumo Ali Adawe, a mother of five who lives in one of the camps, said she urgently needed help for her 3-year-old daughter, malnourished now for nine months. The nearby nutrition center she frequented is now closed.
“We are unsure of what to do next,” she said.
Inside that center, empty food packages were strewn about — and USAID posters still hung on the walls.


US lawmaker says denied access to man deported to El Salvador

US lawmaker says denied access to man deported to El Salvador
Updated 27 May 2025
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US lawmaker says denied access to man deported to El Salvador

US lawmaker says denied access to man deported to El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR: US lawmaker Glenn Ivey said Monday that authorities in El Salvador had prevented him from visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man deported from the United States by the Trump administration due to an administrative error.
US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises by launching a sweeping crackdown on migrants to the United States since coming to power in January.
Rights groups have alleged that Trump’s government is committing rights abuses and denying undocumented migrants due process, claims that courts have, in part, upheld in cases that are ongoing.
Abrego Garcia’s case is one of the most prominent to have come to light. US authorities admit that he was deported to a notorious El Salvadoran prison for violent criminals due to an error, but have refused to comply with court orders to return him to the United States.
Ivey is the sixth US Democratic lawmaker to visit El Salvador in an effort to secure the return of Abrego Garcia, 29, who is being held in a penal facility in Santa Ana, 70 kilometers  from the Salvadoran capital, after being deported in March.
“We were not able to meet with Kilmar, for sure,” Ivey told a press conference in San Salvador. “We went out to the Santa Ana prison today and got there, and we spoke to the people at the gate. They wouldn’t open the gate and let us in.”
Ivey said he was told to obtain a permit for a visit, but he had already spoken to senior officials in order to arrange the meeting.
He said he had spoken to Salvadoran Ambassador to the United States Milena Mayorga and that he intended to speak to Abrego Garcia “to make sure that he’s okay, to discuss his legal rights and the like.”
The US lawmaker said he had met leaders of human rights groups, but was unable to meet officials from the government of President Nayib Bukele, a key Trump ally who has also refused to facilitate returning Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Chris Newman, an attorney for Abrego Garcia’s family, said this was his third visit to El Salvador to try and secure the release of his client.
“We want access to Mr. Abrego Garcia so he can receive legal services,” he said.
El Salvador has received 288 migrants deported from the United States, including 252 Venezuelans, who are being held in a maximum security prison.
The Trump administration says — without proof — that Abrego Garcia is a violent criminal who is a member of the MS-13 gang, which has been declared a “terrorist” organization by Washington.
Trump’s government has used an obscure wartime law to summarily deport alleged gang members, a process some US courts have halted and that one, in Texas, has deemed “unlawful.”
 


Sumy region governor says Russian forces have captured four villages

Sumy region governor says Russian forces have captured four villages
Updated 27 May 2025
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Sumy region governor says Russian forces have captured four villages

Sumy region governor says Russian forces have captured four villages

May 26 : The governor of Ukraine’s Sumy region on the Russian border said on Monday that Russian forces had captured four villages as part of an attempt to create a “buffer zone” on Ukrainian territory.
Oleh Hryhorov, writing on Facebook, listed four villages in the region that he said were now held by Russian forces. He said their residents had long been evacuated.
“The enemy is continuing attempts to advance with the aim of setting up a so-called ‘buffer zone,’” he wrote.
Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier on Monday listed two villages, other than those announced by Hryhorov, that it said had come under Russian control.


30 killed in central Nigeria attacks: local govt official

30 killed in central Nigeria attacks: local govt official
Updated 27 May 2025
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30 killed in central Nigeria attacks: local govt official

30 killed in central Nigeria attacks: local govt official
  • The attacks occurred in three villages between Friday and Sunday

JOS, Nigeria : More than 30 people have been killed in separate attacks in recent days in central Nigeria, a local government official said Monday, the latest raids in a region where herders and farmers often clash over land access.
The attacks occurred in three villages between Friday and Sunday, chairman of the Gwer West local government area of Benue state, Ormin Torsar Victor, told AFP.
“No less than 20 people were killed at Aondana village on Sunday,” he told AFP over the phone, adding that more than 10 others died in another village.
A resident of Aondona, Ruthie Dan Sam, told AFP that “20 people were killed here in Aondona.”
“Children of less than two are being killed. The worst sight is a baby macheted on its mouth,” she said.
She added that other people had been killed in neighboring villages, but she had no figures.
Victor said he and other locals had buried five people, including a father and two of his sons killed in the village of Tewa Biana “very close to a military base.”
Benue State Police spokesperson Anene Sewuese Catherine confirmed two attacks in the area but said her office had received “no report of 20 people” killed.
She said one raid resulted in the death of a policeman who had “repelled an attack” and that “three dead bodies were discovered.”
Motive for the violence was not clear, but Victor blamed the “coordinated attacks” on Fulani cattle herders.
Muslim ethnic Fulani nomadic herders have long clashed with settled farmers, many of whom are Christian, in Benue over access to land and resources.
The attacks in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt often take on a religious or ethnic dimension.
Benue has been one of the states hit hardest by such violence between nomadic herders and farmers who blame herdsmen for destroying farmland with their cattle grazing.


Brazilian leader Lula hospitalized with inner ear ailment, then released

Brazilian leader Lula hospitalized with inner ear ailment, then released
Updated 27 May 2025
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Brazilian leader Lula hospitalized with inner ear ailment, then released

Brazilian leader Lula hospitalized with inner ear ailment, then released
  • The health scare adds to Lula’s recent medical worries, which are also part of his allies’ concerns ahead of his likely bid for reelection next year

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was diagnosed with labyrinthitis Monday after suffering from vertigo, hospital officials said. The 79-year-old leftist leader has already returned to the country’s presidential residence, where he is resting.
The Sirio-Libanes Hospital said in a statement that Lula underwent imaging and blood tests, and its results came within normal limits. Labyrinthitis is an inflammation of the labyrinth in the inner ear, which is responsible for hearing and balance.
The health scare adds to Lula’s recent medical worries, which are also part of his allies’ concerns ahead of his likely bid for reelection next year.
The most serious is a fall he had in the bathroom of the presidential residence in Brasília on Oct. 19. Almost two months later, he was transferred to São Paulo for surgery after suffering headaches caused by new a bleeding in his head. He was discharged Dec. 15.