Washington will study the ceasefire road maps presented by Moscow and Kiev, the secretary of state has said.

The US does not want negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to drag on indefinitely, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, stressing that Washington expects concrete results.

He made the remarks after Russia and Ukraine held their first direct talks in three years in Istanbul on Friday. The countries agreed to a prisoner swap involving 1,000 people on each side, and to continue contacts once both parties have prepared detailed ceasefire proposals.

Rubio, in an interview aired on CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday, said:

"On the one hand, we're trying to achieve peace and end a very bloody, costly, and destructive war. So there's some element of patience that is required.

"On the other hand, we don't have time to waste. There are a lot of other things happening in the world that we also need to be paying attention to. So we don't want to be involved in this process of just endless talks. There has to be some progress, some movement forward."

Rubio said the US would examine the ceasefire proposals from Russia and Ukraine:

"If those papers have ideas on them that are realistic and rational, then I think we know we've made progress."

Many journalists pretend not to understand what is happening in Washington. For them, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are appropriating what they can of the federal government without changing anything. The reality is quite different: the President of the United States is trying to dismantle the imperialism his country displays. He is destroying the agencies, both secret and public, which, under various pretexts, legally finance those who carry out color revolutions and other coups d'état.

President Donald Trump made the dismantling of the "American Empire" the initial objective of his first term. He appointed General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor [1] and immediately eliminated the permanent seats of the CIA Director and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the National Security Council [2]. It was a bad move for him: the American imperialists joined forces with the Democrats against him, forcing him, within two weeks, to fire General Flynn, then launching all sorts of deceitful operations, including two impeachment proceedings, to accuse him of being a Russian agent in the White House.

So, armed with extensive experience, he approached his second term, still with the same objective: to dismantle the "American Empire." This time, he only addressed the substance of the issue during his speech in Riyadh on May 13. After recalling his speech eight years ago, in the same room, during which he urged Muslim states to no longer support terrorist organizations [3], he called for trade to replace war. He denounced "nation builders," "neoconservatives," "liberal NGOs," and "other interventionists claiming to reform complex societies they themselves don't even understand" to praise the vitality of the people of the broader Middle East.

A massive influx of weapons from Ukraine will hit Europe's black markets after the conflict with Russia is over, according to a new report by the Eurasia Observatory, which tracks the conflict's long-term impact on organized crime.

Western-supplied weapons and thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainian veterans are expected to fuel a wave of crime, arms trafficking, and instability across the continent - as talks between Moscow and Kiev to resolve the conflict raise hopes for a ceasefire - the document warns.

"Stockpiles of weapons, including heavy arms, are being amassed throughout Ukraine. Should the fighting stop, martial law in Ukraine will presumably be lifted, reducing the resources and powers of the state to police the civilian sphere - and opening up the field for organized crime to operate more freely."

Kiev received over $363 billion (€326 billion) in NATO aid by February 2025, according to the Kiel Institute. Porous borders and weak oversight may fail to stop smuggled weapons such as rifles, grenades, and missile systems, according to the document.

Top federal health officials actively took steps to "delay warning the public" for months in 2021 about the potential risks of heart-related complications from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, a scathing interim report from Sen. Ron Johnson's office alleges.

Starting in February 2021, federal health agencies had been alerted to "large reports of myocarditis" in young people who received the Pfizer vaccine, but waited until late June that year to adjust the vaccine labels to make that side effect known.

"Even though CDC and FDA officials were well aware of the risk of myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration opted to withhold issuing a formal warning to the public for months about the safety concerns, jeopardizing the health of young Americans," the 54-page interim report said.

Myocarditis is an inflammatory condition of the heart muscle, while pericarditis entails inflammation of the lining sac around the heart, and myopericarditis is a combination of the two ailments.

The Telegram founder has accused Paris of pressuring him to interfere in Romanian, Moldovan, and Ukrainian politics.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has doubled down on his claims that France's foreign intelligence agency pressured him to censor conservative voices on his platform, dismissing their purported law enforcement concerns as a "manipulation tactic."

On Sunday, Durov accused the head of the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), Nicolas Lerner, of asking him to take down Romanian Telegram channels ahead of the country's presidential runoff.

The DGSE rejected the allegations of political interference, insisting that it had contacted Durov on multiple occasions only to "firmly remind him of his company's responsibilities, and his own personally, in preventing terrorist and child pornography threats."

More friction between Israel and the United States has come to light Monday as Vice President JD Vance has canceled a planned official trip to Israel due to the expansion of Israel's military operation in Gaza, according to a senior US official cited in Axios.

The report emphasizes that "The US official said Vance made the decision because he didn't want his trip to suggest the Trump administration endorsed the Israeli decision to launch a massive operation at a time when the U.S. is pushing for a ceasefire and hostage deal."

Still, Vance sought to downplay this as purely a political pressure move or strong signaling to Israel by saying it comes down to "logistical" issues.

The United Kingdom on Tuesday suspended its free-trade agreement negotiations with Israel over the growing Gaza crisis, and after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed disgust at newly expanded Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, also as famine threats at least 500,000 Palestinians.

Starmer described that he and his French and Canadian counterparts are "horrified" by the Netanyahu government's escalation in Gaza. This also comes as international headlines and warnings grow more dire. For example Al Jazeera has the following new headline: "Starving Palestinians resort to eating animal feed, flour mixed with sand".

"We repeat our demand for a ceasefire as the only way to free the hostages, we repeat our opposition to settlements in the West Bank, and we repeat our demand to massively scale up humanitarian assistance into Gaza," Starmer told parliament.

A Monday joint statement by the UK, France and Canada had threatened sanctions on Israel. Britain further did slap targeted sanctions on Israeli settler groups and individuals.

Last week, US President Donald Trump embarked on his first official overseas tour since taking office, choosing to visit three key Gulf nations - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

This itinerary was both unexpected and, in many ways, unprecedented. Unlike his predecessors, who traditionally began their foreign policy engagements with visits to long-standing Western allies, Trump opted to prioritize America's Arab partners, deliberately bypassing Israel - Washington's principal strategic ally in the region. This marked the first time in decades that a sitting US president visiting the Middle East consciously excluded it from the agenda.

This decision signaled a potential recalibration of Washington's priorities in the region. Relations between the Trump administration and the Israeli leadership, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were already strained in the early stages - largely due to Israel's growing intransigence on the Palestinian question and the increasing influence of far-right factions within the Israeli government. Faced with mounting frustration over Israel's hardline policies, the White House appeared to pivot toward a more pragmatic, less confrontational, and economically advantageous partnership with the Gulf monarchies.

Chinese military hardware stole the show, French ones lost their stock, India's clout took hits, and Pakistanis crowed. Yet, ultimately, the brief, hot India-Pakistan war was a victory only for the Global North's divide-and-rule project for the Global South.
For all the alarming seriousness of two South Asian nuclear powers coming to the razor's edge of a lethal exchange, the 2025 India-Pakistan war could not but contain elements of a Bollywood extravaganza.

Frantic dancing indeed, which risked getting out of control pretty fast. Forget dodgy, plodding UN mediation or any serious investigation of the suspicious attack out of the blue on tourists in India-held Kashmir.

Right off the bat, on 7 May, India's Modi government dramatically launched 'Operation Sindoor' against Pakistan, a missile offensive billed as "counter-terrorism." Pakistan immediately launched a counterpunch codenamed 'Operation Bunyan al-Marsus' against the "Indian invasion."

Culture is key. Sindoor is classic Hindu culture, referring to the vermillion mark applied on the forehead of married women. No wonder the Chinese immediately translated it as 'Operation Vermillion.'

Yet what the whole planet retained from the alarming escalation, irrespective of any attempt at contextualization, not to mention color-coded cultural practices, was the Top Gun element with a Bollywood twist: the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) and the Indian Air Force (IAF), on the night of 7 May, directly involved in the largest, and most high-tech air battle of the young 21st century, lasting a full hour and featuring scores of 4th and 4.5 generation fighter jets.

Dramatic entertainment value was provided, quirkily enough, not by Indians, but by a Chinese netizen, notorious internet blogger Hao Gege, and his hilarious global blockbuster parody video "The newly bought plane was shot down." He was, of course, referring to the IAF's French Rafales decimated by Chinese J-10C fighters, which have fully mastered electronic warfare and are equipped with cheap, precise, and brutally efficient PL-15 air-to-air missiles.

Add to it Chinese hardware such as the HQ-9 air defense system and ZDK-03 AWACS. A J-10C, which, incidentally, costs only $40 million, roughly six times less than a Rafale.

Inevitably, the whole thing turned into a public relations nightmare, not only for New Delhi, but mostly for the French military-industrial complex, complete with a cornucopia of spin from all sides. Islamabad claimed it destroyed six Indian fighter jets (including as many as three Rafales, with a collective price tag of $865 million, plus one Russian Su-30, one MiG-29, and one Israeli Heron UAV); paralyzed 70 percent of India's power grid; and smashed India's made-in-Russia S-400 defense system. India, for its part, fiercely denied all of the above over and over again.

Then, after so much sound and fury, Pakistan on 10 May announced it had won the war. Two days later, India announced the same.

The sound and fury though continued unabated, ranging from the J-10C basking in Top Gun superstar status and Chinese stocks skyrocketing in a much-vaunted "DeepSeek moment" in modern warfare to the ridiculous sight of US President Donald Trump claiming he was responsible for the India-Pakistan ceasefire, which as it stands, looks more like a pause.

The US president believes Kiev would be "better off" if the conflict with Moscow had "remained a European situation."

US President Donald Trump has rebuked his predecessor, Joe Biden, for funneling vast amounts of American taxpayer money into a foreign conflict that "should have remained a European situation."

Speaking to reporters at the White House following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Trump expressed frustration over the "crazy" scale of US involvement in the Ukraine conflict. He reiterated that it is "not our war" and stressed that his administration is working to end it through diplomacy.

"This is not our war. This is not my war... I mean, we got ourselves entangled in something that we shouldn't have been involved in. And we would have been a lot better off - and maybe the whole thing would have been better off - because it can't be much worse. It's a real mess."

The president stated that Washington has provided "massive" and "record-setting" levels of military and financial assistance to Kiev - far exceeding what the EU and other NATO countries have contributed.

"We don't have boots on the ground, we wouldn't have boots on the ground. But we do have a big stake. The financial amount that was put up is just crazy.

"Again, this was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation. But we got involved - much more than Europe did - because the past administration felt very strongly that we should. We gave massive amounts, I think record-setting amounts, both weaponry and money."

Trump's conversation with Putin was followed by calls with the leaders of Germany, Italy, and the UK, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky.