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Russia/Ukraine
The body of Pope Francis in the coffin exposed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City on April 24, 2025. The funeral will be celebrated on Saturday in St. Peter's Square.
While the Catholic world prepares for the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday – the service begins at 10 a.m. local time, 4 a.m. ET – certain high-profile attendees may also have other things on their mind. Several world leaders will be on hand to pay their respects to the pontiff, but they could also find themselves involved in bilateral talks.
Who’s on the list? Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will effectively be the host at the Vatican, which lies just next to Rome. Many of her fellow Western leaders will attend, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and US President Donald Trump. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who leads the most Catholic country in Asia, will also attend.
South American representation. Argentine President Javier Milei – a former adversary of Francis, his fellow countryman – and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plan to cross the Atlantic for the funeral, too.
Glaring omission. Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t attend the funeral, the Kremlin confirmed.
Side hustle. Trump appears to be the principal object of interest for other world leaders. Zelensky has already said that he’d like to speak to the US president at the Vatican, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could meet the American president for the first time since he returned to office, if Meloni gets her way. They won’t have much time, though: Trump plans to spend less than 24 hours in Rome.
A Ukrainian rescue worker sits atop the rubble of a destroyed residential building during rescue operations, following a Russian missile strike on a residential apartment building block in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 24, 2025.
At least 12 people were killed and 90 others injured in a large-scale Russian assault on Kyiv early Thursday, prompting Donald Trump to post on Truth Social: “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!”
This strike was among the most lethal of the conflict and marked the worst attack on the Ukrainian capital since July, when Russian missiles hit a children’s hospital. Reports suggest that Thursday’s assault involved missiles provided by North Korea.
The attack occurred just hours after Trump and his senior advisers urged Ukrainian officials to accept a US-backed peace proposal that would effectively legitimize Russian control over all occupied Ukrainian territory.
Despite pushing for a resolution, with his Truth Social post concluding“Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE,” the Trump administration has recently indicated they might pull out of peace negotiations if progress isn’t made soon. While this could just be a threat to force Ukraine to the negotiating table, a round of high-level peace talks originally planned for London on Wednesday was postponed, primarily due to the US opting not to attend.
A search and rescue operation is underway in the Sviatoshynskyi district after a massive overnight missile and drone attack by Russian troops, Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 24, 2025. At least eight people were killed in the strike, and 77 people sustained injuries.
It’s all Big Smoke and no fire in London, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pulled out of Russia-Ukraine peace talks with a coalition of European leaders that were scheduled to take place in the British capital on Wednesday. The decision came right as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rebuffed the Americans’ peace plan that involved formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who also canceled plans to be in London, is instead headed to Moscow for his fourth round of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Breaking overnight. Russia pounded Kyiv overnight with missiles and drone strikes, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more. It was the heaviest attack on the Ukrainian capital since July. Zelensky was in South Africa when the bombs hit, but he will cut short the trip and return home early.
The Americans pile on the pressure. Rubio warned last week that the US will “move on” from peace talks if a deal wasn’t eminently “doable.” Vice President JD Vance echoed this sentiment on Wednesday. President Donald Trump pushed the Ukrainians to accept the peace deal on Wednesday, while claiming that Russia was on the verge of accepting it.
Would the terms be enough for Russia? It’s unclear, but Putin reportedly offered to pause fighting on Tuesday in an apparent effort to reach a peace deal. On the other hand, the Russian leader’s past comments suggest he wants more.
“Putin last year said he also expects Ukraine to give up control over the parts of the claimed regions that Russia does not yet control,” said Alex Brideau, Russia director at Eurasia Group. “It may also demand new elections, on the assumption that it would lead a government that is friendlier to Russia.”
“Whether that’s realistic,” Brideau added, “Putin appears unwilling to deviate much from these demands.”
Trump’s 4D checkers, China’s opportunity, climate hopes, and more: Your questions, answered
Welcome to another edition of my mailbag, where I attempt to make sense of our increasingly chaotic world, one reader question at a time. If you have a burning question for me before I go back to full-length columns, ask it here and I’ll answer as many as I can in next week’s newsletter.
Let’s dive in (with questions lightly edited for clarity).
Is the US currently a kleptocracy?
The United States is the most structurally kleptocratic of any advanced industrial democracy, with public policy increasingly captured by monied special interests and the rules of the marketplace determined by the highest bidder. The wealthiest Americans not only can fund political campaigns but also buy favorable regulatory and legal treatment and lobby for policies that perpetuate their economic interests. This system is two-tiered alright, but it doesn’t see red and blue – only green.
President Donald Trump is a beneficiary and an accelerant of this disease, but it long predates him. Which is why Trump faced so little pushback from the business world both times he was elected. After all, a system where the connected can buy their preferred policy outcomes is a system much of the private sector is both used to and comfortable with.
Has Trump done to brand USA what Musk did to Tesla?
He’s working on it. The long-term damage to America’s reputational capital has been incalculable (though it hasn’t been as great as the >50% in value Tesla has lost since its mid-December peak). Sometimes you have a personal relationship and someone does something that can’t be unseen. That’s what has happened particularly with Canadians and Europeans of late. I think that damage is permanent. And we are not even 100 days in …
How do other nations view America in light of Trump’s aggressive tariffs, threats, and general disdain for allies?
They all see the United States as the principal driver of geopolitical uncertainty. In the near term, most countries – especially smaller, poorer ones – will look to cut trade deals with Trump relatively quickly because the alternative, direct confrontation with the world’s sole superpower, is too costly to bear. We’re seeing that already with the Japanese, the South Koreans, and many other delegations coming to Washington to try to do everything they can to secure at least functional relations with the US.
At the same time, every country recognizes the longer-term need to hedge away and “de-risk” from the United States as much and as fast as possible to reduce their exposure to Trump-driven disruption. Even those that manage to come away with deals know the president could change his mind. After spending the last decade focusing on the dangers of having too much exposure to Beijing’s opaque, arbitrary, and personalistic decision-making, policymakers, businesses, and investors all over the world now suddenly see de-risking from the US as the more urgent priority. That’s an extraordinary shift when you stop to think about it.
Granted, de-risking from the US is a tall order given America’s asymmetric power advantages and the global embeddedness of so many of the things it provides – defense, advanced technologies, finance – that are hard to substitute (read: to break free from). But many US allies see no choice but to start seriously looking for alternatives. We’re already seeing the European Union and Latin America speed up their conversations to fast-track approval of the EU-Mercosur trade deal. Trump-aligned India is likewise moving to improve its trade relations with the EU, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others. Canada is trying to engage much more closely with the Europeans. Even Vietnam, which has long harbored deep mistrust of China, signed 45 new economic cooperation agreements with Beijing days after Trump trade czar Peter Navarro rebuffed its offer to lower its tariffs on US goods to zero.
Can China capitalize on Trump’s global trade war to peel off US allies?
Xi Jinping just wrapped up a Southeast Asian charm offensive to try to do exactly that. For the first time since the Vietnam War, most Vietnamese are now more well-disposed toward China than the US. That’s not true everywhere (e.g., the Philippines is still about 80% pro-American), but the trend line is clear. China sees the moment as a historic opportunity to move economically closer to many countries and portray itself as a champion of globalization and a force for stability.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean America’s loss will be China’s gain everywhere. The Europeans don’t suddenly trust the Chinese more just because they now trust the Americans less. They still have big issues with Chinese dumping, overcapacity exports (especially in the auto industry), data surveillance, and other beggar-thy-neighbor practices that have not gone away. Europe’s de-risking will be less about tilting to China and more about strengthening its own capabilities and hedging with pretty much everybody else. Plus, as I mentioned above, while Trump has worked hard to alienate US allies, America remains the only game in town for most Western countries in many strategic sectors and critical networks. Going cold turkey is unthinkable.
If everyone thinks tariffs are a bad idea even for the American economy, why is Trump persisting? Do you see a way the US can win on this?
As much as I’d like to believe so, I just can't see any way the US comes out ahead on this. Myself and others have written extensively about why the tariffs (and the massive ongoing uncertainty surrounding US policy) are an economic lose-lose, not only for America’s trade partners but for American consumers and businesses, and not just in the short term but also in the long run. Rather than boost domestic manufacturing, they will accelerate the country’s deindustrialization. And if the administration had really intended to use the tariffs as a cudgel to forge a united front against China (as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others have claimed), it wouldn’t have slapped punishing duties on friendly countries already inclined to join this alliance before asking for their help. I’m afraid there’s no “4D chess” strategy or master plan.
It’d be one thing if the Trump team were only picking this one fight. But it’s going to be much harder to convince the world not to hedge away from the United States when at the same time as they’re hitting everyone with tariffs, they’re also picking all sorts of fights on other fronts. They are directly and indirectly threatening other countries’ sovereignty and territoriality, whether it’s Greenland and Denmark, Panama, Canada, or Ukraine. They are exporting algorithms and disinformation that undermine democracies around the world. They are destroying the transatlantic alliance. They are aligning with Russia over longstanding allies at the United Nations and the G7. They are driving away foreign tourists and international students. And they’re picking fights domestically, trying to weaken checks and balances, undermine the rule of law, and erode state capacity in ways that will make the US a worse place to live, invest, and do business.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but this policy set looks hands down like the most extraordinary geopolitical own goal I’ve ever witnessed.
Is it possible that Trump is purposely upsetting the economy in an effort to lower interest rates, reduce the US government’s debt servicing costs, and shrink the federal deficit?
Nope. That’s another one of those 4D chess stories flying around, and it’s nonsense. It’s true that a tariff-and-uncertainty-induced US recession can make existing US government debt (and mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, etc.) cheaper to refinance by bringing down long-term interest rates. But if long rates decline because the real economy has deteriorated to the point where the Fed has to cut short-term rates to boost aggregate demand, the money saved on debt interest payments probably will be offset by the lower tax revenue collected and the higher unemployment benefits paid out during the recession. The overall deficit will likely be higher than if said recession hadn’t been engineered in the first place – destroying trillions in economic value and hurting millions of real Americans in the process.
And all this assumes that long rates will in fact go down when the US enters a tariff-and-uncertainty-induced recession, which financial markets are currently telling us is not guaranteed in light of growing inflation and default risks. Thus far, Trump’s stagflationary policy mix and erratic policymaking style have made the world’s safe-haven assets relatively less attractive, prompted investors to sell US bonds, and caused long rates to rise rather than fall.
Will Trump succeed in brokering a ceasefire in Ukraine like he promised on the campaign trail?
Only if he’s willing to effectively use both carrots and sticks on Russia and Ukraine alike. So far he hasn’t, deploying mostly sticks (suspending military aid and intelligence sharing) to force the Ukrainians to come to terms and principally only carrots (the promise of sanctions nonenforcement and relief, and even full normalization of relations) to get the Russians to back off their maximalist demands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week the administration is giving the talks “a matter of days” to make progress or else they’ll walk away from the peace effort altogether. The problem is that Vladimir Putin continues to be uninterested in a durable ceasefire, at least not unless the so-called “root causes” of the conflict are addressed through a permanent settlement. He started this war to change the facts on the ground and is convinced he still has what it takes to win it. What’s more, he’s betting that if he can keep slow rolling the peace talks and convince Trump that it was Kyiv’s intransigence that tanked them, Russia could plausibly get a US rapprochement while it continues to wage war against a Ukraine deprived of US assistance. I’m not a betting man, but at this point, it’s a reasonable wager for Putin to make.
What do you expect from incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz?
Less capacity to spend and lead than many people hope, despite having managed to pass a historic fiscal package through the Bundestag lifting the country’s “debt brake” for defense spending and creating a 500 billion euro special fund for infrastructure investments. The incoming coalition is serious but relatively unpopular and divided, facing a stronger-than-ever far-right Alternative for Germany leading the opposition in the new parliament.
This political weakness, combined with the sheer scale of the challenges it faces, will water down the government’s ambitions. Germany is undergoing a severe, decade-long economic crisis. Merz will be under considerable pressure to jumpstart growth quickly amid global trade wars and under tight budget conditions. Just a few weeks ago, he was well-disposed to take on a European leadership role. Now that talk is no longer cheap, his constraints and risk tolerance will change. And if the Germans won’t step up, who in Europe can?
Is climate action possible in a disintegrating world? Have the odds of avoiding catastrophic climate change worsened in the past three months?
I’m more optimistic here. We’ve already broken the back of the most catastrophic climate change scenarios. Economic self-interest – not ideology or idealism – is driving the clean energy revolution as technological innovation and steep learning curves have dramatically reduced the price tag of clean power technologies, making them the cheapest and most profitable option in a lot of markets regardless of politics. Deep-red Texas and Florida lead the US in solar and wind power deployment. China is set to hit its emissions peak several years ahead of schedule. Europe sees renewables as an energy security imperative. Emerging markets from India to Indonesia and Pakistan are eager to develop using cheaper and cleaner domestic energy sources than high-volatility, dirty imported fuels.
I don’t want to be glib. The planet is still heating up faster than we’d like, and the present state of geopolitics – from Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” to the G-Zero vacuum of global climate leadership – will slow the pace of decarbonization. With every fraction of a degree of warming causing bigger and more frequent disasters, lower growth, and more deaths, that’s not good news. But for every environmental regulation repealed, clean energy policy revoked, fossil fuel project approved, and international commitment abandoned, there’s another, much more structural force pulling even harder in the opposite direction. As my colleagues and I put it in Eurasia Group’s 2025 Top Risks report, the global energy transition “has reached escape velocity.”
Would you ride Moose like a jockey if given the opportunity?
I’d train him with a well-disposed toddler first. That would be must-see television. Any volunteers?
The White House is seen from a nearby building rooftop in Washington, D.C. on May 4, 2023.
During the 2024 election campaign, US President Donald Trump made a plethora of ambitious promises to the American electorate and pledged to make them come true fast. He even suggested he’d be a dictator for a day to get them done. As he approaches the 100-day mark of his second presidency, GZERO assesses the extent to which he’s achieved his goals.
1. The swath of tax cuts – not yet
Wherever he went on the campaign trail, Trump seemed to make another promise about cutting taxes. He promised a crowd in Las Vegas that he’d end taxes on tips, told the Economic Club of Detroit in October that he’d make car loans tax deductible, and vowed to Wall Street leaders that he’d slash the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. Trump hasn’t yet achieved these goals, as only Congress can change the tax laws. Republicans on Capitol Hill are moving forward with the budget reconciliation process to amend these laws, but it’s not yet clear if the final bill will include all the specific tax cuts that Trump pledged.
2. The largest deportation effort in history – far from it
So much for this one. Despite all the furor over the deportation of alleged gang members to a Salvadoran prison, Trump can’t even seem to match former President Joe Biden’s deportation numbers: The current administration removed fewer migrants in February than its predecessor did 12 months earlier. That’s not to say the president’s rhetoric hasn’t had an impact: Border crossings have plunged since he returned to office.
3. Pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters – achieved on Day 1
This one didn’t take long: On his first day back in office, Trump absolved everyone involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, either by pardon, commutation, or case dismissal. The move appeared to surprise Vice President JD Vance, who said a week before the inauguration that those who committed violence would not receive clemency – the president duly overruled his second-in-command. Trump may not be finished yet, either, as he explores offering compensation for the pardoned rioters.
4. Ending the Russia-Ukraine war – not even close
A huge talking point for Trump and the Republican Party was that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would never have happened under his watch. Moving a step further, the president pledged to end the war within 24 hours of returning to the White House. If the former “Apprentice” star really believed his own words, he’s now had a dose of reality, as the end of the war remains firmly out of sight. The Trump administration seems fed up and is now on the verge of abandoning the negotiations.
5. His pledge to “cut the fat out of our government” – yes, and then some
Tariffs aside, the defining story of Trump’s first 100 days has been his extraordinary cuts to the federal workforce. From effectively disbanding the US Agency for International Development and initiating the end of the Education Department to being on track to remove a third of the Internal Revenue Service staff, the president and his billionaire advisor, Elon Musk, have taken a chainsaw to the federal government. To this end, Trump’s longtime plan to “drain the swamp” is finally coming to fruition, pending certain lawsuits.
Military chaplain conducts Easter service for Ukrainian service members of the "Khartia" 13th Operational Brigade, near a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine on April 20, 2025.
An Easter ceasefire declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have collapsed, with both Russia and Ukraine accusing each other of violations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted to X Sunday afternoon that as of 8 p.m. local time, the Russian army had violated the ceasefire over 2,000 times. Conversely, Russia claimed Ukraine breached the ceasefire by launching hundreds of drone attacks. The 30-hour pause, which began Saturday at 6 p.m., followed intense fighting in the region of Kursk, as well as a 277-person prisoner swap earlier that day.
Could peace talks collapse as well? On Friday, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed growing impatience with the pace of negotiations. After Rubio warned that the US might abandon the process within days if no progress is made, Trump remarked that if “for some reason” one of the countries made negotiations very difficult, “We’re just going to say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass.”
Administration officials are reportedly frustrated by Zelensky’s accusation that US envoy Steve Witkoff was “spreading Russian narratives” as well as Russia’s foot-dragging in negotiations. A US official said the parties would meet again in London this week. It is unclear what would happen if the US were to walk away, with Zelensky warning in a “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month that if Putin’s advance is not contained, the conflict “could escalate into a world war.”U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) speaks to the media during a visit to El Salvador to advocate for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man deported without due process by the Trump administration and sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), in San Salvador, El Salvador, on April 16, 2025.
1: On Wednesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) flew to El Salvador to advocate for the release of Kilmar Abgrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongfully deported to a brutal high-security prison there. Van Hollen, who met with the Salvadoran vice president, is the only US lawmaker to make the trip. The Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration should “facilitate” Garcia’s return to the United States, but US President Donald Trump has shown no willingness to do so. (Does that mean the United States is facing a constitutional crisis? Here’s what Ian Bremmer has to say).
4: Four Russian journalists were convicted of extremism and jailed in a closed-door trial in Moscow for associating with the Anti-Corruption Fund — a group founded by the late opposition leader and political activist Alexei Navalny. The individuals pleaded not guilty, arguing they were merely doing their jobs as independent journalists.
-0.2: Before Washington unveiled sweeping tariffs that rocked the global economy, the World Trade Organization forecasted global goods trade to grow by 2.7% in 2025. The updated forecast shows a decrease of 0.2%, a swing of 2.9 percentage points. WTO director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also warned that trade between the US and China could plunge by 81-91%, due to the superpowers’ trade war.
5th: California, the fifth-largest economy in the world, sued the Trump administration over the “emergency” rule that allowed the executive branch to impose tariffs — a power constitutionally reserved for Congress, the Golden State alleges.
7: The European Union has designated seven countries—Kosovo, Colombia, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh, and India — as“safe” places for migrants to return, a decision that will result in the denial of asylum applications for citizens from those countries. The move comes amid growing anti-immigrant pressure from far-right parties across the continent.
15: Peru’s former president Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia have been found guilty of money laundering and each sentenced to 15 years in prison. The couple was convicted of accepting nearly $3 million in illegal campaign funds from construction giant Odebrecht and hundreds of thousands of dollars from the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. Humala was taken into custody, whereas Heredia sought asylum at the Brazilian embassy in Lima and was granted safe passage to Brazil.