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US President Donald Trump has “changed the global conversation” on Ukraine, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said, three years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Sir Keir suggested Trump had “created an opportunity” to end the war, in a speech to an international summit on supporting Ukraine in Kyiv.

The prime minister also appeared to contradict President Trump by saying “Russia does not hold all the cards in this war”.

Sir Keir said the West “must increase the pressure even further” on Russia and announced the UK would impose a new round of sanctions on the country.

The prime minister said more sanctions could push President Vladimir Putin “to a point where he is ready not just to talk, but to make concessions”.

On Monday the UK government said it had imposed more than 100 new sanctions on those who continued to aid the invasion, including companies in China, which is the largest supplier of critical goods for Russia’s military.

Meanwhile, the Home Office has announced a move to widen travel sanctions for Kremlin-linked elites.

The government has described the announcement, which also includes measures against North Korean generals accused of sending troops to fight Ukraine in Russia, as the UK’s largest sanctions package since the early days of the invasion.

Sir Keir said the G7 “should be ready to take on more risk” and a larger role in sanctioning Russian’s oil giants, before speaking to leaders of the group of wealthy countries.

The speech comes ahead of Sir Keir’s meeting with President Trump at the White House on Thursday.

He is expected to discuss the importance of Ukraine’s independence, US security guarantees and European involvement in peace talks when he speaks to Trump.

It is a high-stakes visits as European leaders scramble to put forward their own proposals for ending the war and keeping Russia at bay.

President Trump has been pushing for a quick deal to end the war in Ukraine, and US and Russia have held initial talks, which excluded Ukraine and European countries.

Trump has said he believes Russia has “the cards” in any peace talks to end the war because its military has “taken a lot of territory”.

There have been diplomatic tensions since President Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections” last week.

Ukraine’s elections are suspended under martial law, which has been in place since Russia’s full-scale invasion was launched in February 2022.

The prime minister talked about extra sanctions as one way to “deliver an enduring peace” in Ukraine.

He said the other two ways were stepping up UK military support to Ukraine and bringing “our collective strength to the peace effort”.

“President Trump has changed the global conversation over the last few weeks,” Sir Keir said.

“And it has created an opportunity. Now, we must get the fundamentals right.”

He said Ukraine “must have a seat at the table” of peace talks and “a US backstop will be vital to deter Russia from another invasion”.

Sir Keir has spoken on the phone to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is meeting Trump in Washington on Monday.

In the phone call on Sunday, Sir Keir and Macron “compared notes” on how best to approach President Trump, government sources told the BBC.

British officials said the prime minister is keen for European military powers to present a co-ordinated pitch to the US president, and also discuss economic issues, including tariffs.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who will join Starmer on his trip to the White House, said the new sanctions “underscore the UK’s commitment to Ukraine”.

“Every military supply line disrupted, every rouble blocked, and every enabler of Putin’s aggression exposed is a step towards a just and lasting peace,” he told the House of Commons.

Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said her party backed the government giving Ukraine “everything they need” – including weapons, hardware, and diplomatic muscle – to “decide its own future.”

Patel pressed the government to exceed her party’s manifesto pledge of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030, and “lead” a charge for Nato nations to boost their military budgets.

Earlier, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged President Zelensky to secure Ukraine’s future by signing a minerals deal with the US.

Johnson said he believed Ukraine would sign a “promising” agreement to give the US access to valuable minerals, in return for security guarantees.

Zelensky had rejected a £400bn ($500bn) demand for mineral wealth, but over the weekend, US officials said they expected to sign a deal this week.

In a post on X on Monday, Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, said the Ukrainian and US teams were “in the final stages of negotiations regarding the minerals agreement”.

Speaking to the BBC, Johnson – a Zelensky ally who was prime minister when the invasion started – said claims by some Americans that Ukraine had provoked the war were “a complete inversion of the truth”.

He described Trump’s comments as “Orwellian”, and said he might as well have blamed the US for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War Two.

But Johnson said it was important to focus on a minerals deal, which he called “the great prize” and suggested could be signed this week.

He rejected suggestions the deal was a “rip-off” and said “what the Ukrainians get from this is a United States commitment under Donald Trump to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.

Additional reporting by Joe Pike, political correspondent

A French former surgeon accused of abusing hundreds of patients, most of them children, has told a court that he admits to having “committed despicable acts” and “understands and shares the suffering” caused to his alleged victims.

Joel Le Scouarnec is accused of assaulting or raping 299 patients, the vast majority under 15 years old, between 1989 and 2014, mostly in Brittany.

“I am perfectly aware that these wounds are indelible, beyond repair,” Le Scouarnec said, in a halting but clear voice.

The white-haired 74-year-old, who wore glasses and a black zip-up sweater over a grey shirt, was addressing the court in Vannes, north-west France, on the first day of the largest child abuse trial in French history.

Warning: This story contains distressing details

“I can’t go back, but I owe it to [the victims] and their relatives to admit my actions and the consequences they had and that they undoubtedly will continue to have throughout their lives,” Le Scouarnec told the court.

Throughout the day – which was mainly devoted to technical proceedings – he had looked attentive but had no particular reaction when two visibly nervous men in their 30s took the stand to identify themselves as his victims.

The youngest of Le Scouarnec’s alleged victims was aged one and the oldest 70.

Police were able to identify them thanks to meticulously-compiled diaries in which Le Scouarnec is alleged to have logged assaults he carried out on his young patients over more than 25 years.

He has already been imprisoned since 2017 for abusing four children, of which he was found guilty in 2020.

Many of the plaintiffs were allegedly abused while they were under anaesthesia or recovering from surgeries in hospitals across northern France – meaning a number of them had no recollection of the abuse they are said to have sustained, and had to be told by police that their names appeared in Le Scouarnec’s diaries.

“Everything in this terrible story is out of the ordinary… it wasn’t the victims that approached the investigators but the investigators that alerted the victims,” public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger said in court.

“Many of them had no memory… several would have rather gone on not knowing. But silence had reigned for too long.”

Many other people, who do remember being allegedly abused, have said the impact of the events has followed them their whole lives, in many cases resulting in serious psychological trauma.

Mauricette Vinet, the grandmother of a patient of Le Scouarnec who killed himself some years ago, told the BBC her grandson Mathis had been “killed” by Le Scouarnec’s alleged abuse.

“If he hadn’t happened Mathis would still be here,” she said.

Defence lawyer Maxime Tissier told the trial on Monday that Le Scouarnec admitted to the “vast majority” of the charges against him and that his client would soon “explain himself” with regard to the accusations.

“He is a defendant who has made himself entirely available to the court… despite his age,” Mr Tissier said.

Le Scouarmec added in court that during his police examinations he did his best to “admit to the events which constituted rape and those that, in my view, did not”.

Dozens of lawyers were also present in court, but the hundreds of alleged victims they represent were sat in a separate overflow room due to their sheer number. Several psychologists and emotional support dogs will be on hand throughout the course of the trial.

Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, read out a graphic and gruelling summary of the charges against Le Scouarnec, as well as excerpts from his interrogations in 2020, in which the former surgeon initially denied that his diaries reflected real-life abuse and were merely retellings of his “fantasies”.

But Ms Buresi said several elements – including the level of detail and choice of words used by Le Scouarnec – indicated that the diaries were most likely truthful.

In his short statement to the court on Monday, the former surgeon referred to his writings as “very violent”.

An hour before proceedings kicked off a few dozen protesters staged a rally outside the courtroom, carrying letters spelling out the phrase “Stop the code of silence”, while another sign read “Who knew?”

Victims and child advocacy groups have said “systemic failures” allowed Le Scouarnec to continue working with children.

In 2005, the FBI warned the French authorities that he had been accessing child abuse websites, but this just resulted in a suspended sentence and he faced no consequences in the workplace.

Later, when Le Scouarnec was working in the hospital of Quimperlé, he allegedly made sexually-charged comments about a young patient of his, raising the suspicions of a colleague who alerted the regional medical association and made them aware of the suspended sentence.

The members of the association were summoned and all but one doctor – who abstained – voted that Le Scouarnec had not violated the medical code of ethics. The BBC has approached the regional medical association for comment

The association is now pressing charges against Le Scouarnec for “bringing the medical profession into disrepute,” the body’s secretary Didier Robin said on Monday.

His statement elicited a swift rebuttal from lawyer Frédéric Benoist, who represents a child protection advocacy group La Voix de L’Enfant (The Child’s Voice) and has previously told the BBC that Le Scouarnec was able to commit his deeds due to “a huge degree of dysfunction” among medical professionals.

Mr Benoist said it was “morally indecent and legally questionable” that the medical association was allowed to be listed as a plaintiff. “It is unacceptable that [the association] is sat alongside the victims,” he said.

Monday’s session closed early – something that is unlikely to happen again over the course of the trial, which will run on a tight schedule and is due to end in June.

At the request of the plaintiffs, some sessions will be held behind closed doors – but big portions of it will be open to journalists and members of the public.

Le Scouarnec’s ex-wife and his siblings will be heard in court on Tuesday.

Asked why she was attending proceedings that will undoubtedly include sordid and graphic details of abuse, one woman queuing to enter the overflow room told the BBC she wanted to see “this doctor, this Mr Everyman”.

“I want to see what human nature can be capable of, because all of this – it’s just beyond me,” she said.

Kyiv and Washington are close to signing a deal over US access to Ukraine’s mineral deposits, a Ukrainian minister says.

Olga Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, said on X that “negotiations have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalised”.

She added that “we are committed to completing this swiftly to proceed with its signature”.

Ukraine has been facing growing pressure from the US administration to sign the deal, which has ended up in the centre of the growing rift between the US and Ukrainian presidents.

Zelensky first included the offer of an agreement on minerals in the so-called “victory plan” that he presented to Trump last September.

The idea was to offer the then presidential candidate a tangible reason for the US to continue supporting Ukraine.

On Monday former UK prime minister Boris Johnson told the BBC in Kyiv that such a deal was “the great prize” because it would secure “a United States commitment under Donald Trump to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.

Kyiv estimates that about 5% of the world’s “critical raw materials” are in Ukraine. This includes some 19 million tonnes of proven reserves of graphite, which the Ukrainian Geological Survey state agency says makes the nation “one of the top five leading countries” for the supply of the mineral.

Graphite is used to make batteries for electric vehicles.

Ukraine also has a third of all European lithium deposits, the key component in current batteries. And prior to the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s global share of titanium production, a lightweight metal used in the construction of everything from aeroplanes to power stations, was 7%.

Further, Ukraine has significant deposits of rare earth metals. These are a group of 17 elements that are used to produce weapons, wind turbines, electronics and other products vital in the modern world.

Some of the mineral deposits, however, have been seized by Russia. According to Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economy minister, resources worth $350bn (£277bn) remain in occupied territories today.

In 2022, SecDev, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Canada, conducted an evaluation, which established that Russia had occupied 63% of Ukrainian coal mines, and half of its manganese, caesium, tantalum and rare earth deposits.

Dr Robert Muggah, principal of SecDev, says that such minerals add a “strategic and economic dimension” in Russia’s continued aggression. By seizing them, he says, Moscow denies access revenue for Ukraine, expands its own resource base and influences global supply chains.

Critical minerals “are the foundation of the 21st Century economy”, Dr Muggah explained. They are key to renewable energy, military applications and industrial infrastructure and play “a growing strategic role in geopolitics and geoeconomics”, he said.

Additionally, the US is keen on a deal for Ukraine’s mineral resources because it wants to reduce dependency on China, which controls 75% of rare earth deposits in the world, according to the Geological Investment Group.

In December China banned the export of some rare earth minerals to the US, having previously limited mineral exports to the US the previous year.

On Monday, ahead of a visit with French President Emmanuel Macron, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told US news outlet NewsNation that the deal was “about growing the pie economically and binding the US and Ukraine together for the future”.

Prior to Stefanishyna’s assertion that a deal was close, there appeared to be several sticking points.

Last Wednesday, Zelensky rejected US demands for a reported 50% share of its rare earth minerals – which Trump said would reflect the amount of aid the US had provided to Ukraine during its war with Russia.

“I can’t sell our state,” he said.

The provisions of a second draft of the deal on Sunday appeared to be even tougher than in the first document.

Instead of 50/50 revenue split, the revised draft suggested the US wanted full control, Zelensky told journalists at the press conference on Sunday.

Trump said earlier this month that the US military and economic aid to Ukraine amounts to about $500bn (£396bn), and he wants the US to have access to Ukrainian minerals of that value.

However, Zelensky has said that the American assistance so far totals around $100bn (£79bn). Kyiv has also insisted that the aid they have received until now was a grant and not a credit, and so Ukraine has no obligation to return anything.

Zelenzky is also said to want any deal to include security guarantees.

On Monday former UK prime minister Boris Johnson called an agreement for US access to Ukraine’s minerals “the great prize”.

He rejected suggestions the deal was a “rip-off” and said “what the Ukrainians get from this is a United States commitment under Donald Trump to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.

Some commentators have described the US offer as “colonial” but Kyiv is interested in joint exploration of its resources.

Developing these mineral resources is extremely difficult and expensive, according to Iryna Suprun, chief executive of the Geological Investment Group, a mining advisory firm based in Ukraine.

She argued that if they can attract American investors to develop their natural resources, it will be highly beneficial for the country’s economy.

“We will get technologies that our mining industry lacks so much,” Ms Suprun explained. “We will get capital. That means more jobs, tax payments. We’ll receive revenue from the development of mineral deposits.”

Friedrich Merz’s conservatives have won, but Germany’s 2025 election has thrown up some important and fascinating stories that reveal a country in flux.

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has doubled its support in just four years to 20.8%, and has spread out from its support base in the east to become the second biggest political force in parliament.

Meanwhile, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD had its worst performance in decades, only securing 16.4% of the vote.

Here are five key takeaways.

Look at an election results map of Germany, and you could almost have travelled back in time to the Cold War, when an iron curtain divided communist East Germany from the west.

In the east it’s a swathe of AfD light blue, apart from pockets like Berlin and half of Leipzig. In the west the vast majority has turned conservative black, especially in Bavaria where Merz’s conservative sister party, the CSU, dominates the landscape.

But the AfD is spreading in the west too, and political loyalty to the old mainstream parties has gone.

For one in five Germans it has become normalised. “They’re just normal people,” said one young man of immigrant origin in Duisburg, a city in western Germany’s old industrial heartland.

Even though it came second, the AfD is blocked from being part of the next government because of a “firewall” – or Brandmauer – operated by Germany’s main parties, who do not co-operate with any party seen as extremist since the end of World War Two.

The AfD’s leader Alice Weidel insists it is a libertarian, conservative movement, not racist. Its big increase in public support has coincided with a series of deadly attacks in the past nine months, all allegedly by immigrants.

The AfD has embraced a highly controversial policy called “remigration”, which it defines as deporting migrants who have committed crimes. But the term can also refer to the mass deportation of migrants and their descendants.

In May 2024 a German court rejected an AfD appeal against a ruling classifying it as a suspected far-right extremist organisation. Judges found that the AfD had “positions that disparage the democratic order and are incompatible with the principle of democracy”.

In three German states in the east – Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony – domestic intelligence has designated the AfD as right-wing extremist.

A leading AfD figure in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted of using a banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” – everything for Germany. Alice Weidel supporters have chanted her name during the election campaign, using the phrase “Alice für Deutschland”.

Not since 1987 has turnout been as high as 82.5% in a German election, and that was three years before reunification of east and west.

Four years ago it was 76.6%.

Put simply, more than four in every five of Germany’s 59.2 million voters turned out.

It reflects just how energised Germans have been by this election, which comes at a pivotal moment for their country. There were nine TV debates in the final stretch of the campaign, but that reflected the broad interest of the audience.

The three-party government of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz fell apart at the end of last year, and within 24 hours of Sunday’s election, all three leaders have said they’re leaving the front line of politics.

The leader of the economic liberals, the FDP, was first. Christian Lindner has led his party for 11 years. But it failed to get any MPs elected and Lindner has said he’s leaving politics after 25 years.

It was Lindner’s refusal to compromise on debt rules that first brought the government down, and then sent his party into the wilderness.

Although Scholz will remain as chancellor until the next government is formed, he won’t be taking part in coalition talks and will be leaving frontline politics.

Greens Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck is also leaving frontline politics after his party fell below 12% in the election.

Until a few weeks ago, the Left party looked doomed when one of its leading lights, Sahra Wagenknecht, went off and founded her own, more populist, party with eight other MPs.

Wagenknecht’s popularity soared for a while as head of her BSW party, but ultimately fell just below the 5% threshold for getting into parliament.

The story was very different for the Left (Die Linke), which came back from the dead with an inspired social medial campaign.

Heidi Reichinnek, Die Linke’s co-chair, went viral after she gave a speech enthusiastically defending the firewall against the AfD.

She now has 580,000 followers on TikTok and her post has attracted seven million views.

Her party secured just under 9% of the vote.

Die Linke’s viral videos helped secure a quarter of the 18-24 vote, and the AfD were not far behind with 21%, according to surveys by ARD TV.

Alice Weidel was the biggest hit on social media during the election, even bigger than Heidi Reichinnek. She has attracted more than 935,000 followers on TikTok.

For the over-35s, it was the Christian Democrats who won out, and more men than women.

Friedrich Merz’s conservatives have won Germany’s election, well ahead of rival parties but short of the 30% vote-share they had expected.

“Let’s celebrate tonight and in the morning, we’ll get to work,” he told cheering supporters. His immediate priority is to try to form a government with the third-placed Social Democrats of Olaf Scholz.

Even before the result was clear, Merz said his top priority was unity in Europe, so that “step by step, we can really achieve independence from the US”.

The other big winner in Sunday’s vote was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who are celebrating a record second-place result of 20.8%.

The AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, did a victory lap of her supporters, but even her party had hoped for a greater result and the mood at AfD HQ was subdued.

Merz, 69, has never held a ministerial job, but he has promised if he becomes the next German chancellor to show leadership in Europe and beef up support for Ukraine.

Most Germans have been shocked by President Donald Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine and Europe and Friedrich Merz said the US leader had shown “the Americans are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”.

Trump has labelled Ukraine’s leader a “dictator” and two of his leading figures have openly backed the AfD in the run-up to the vote. Vice-President JD Vance was accused of meddling in the vote during a visit to Munich, while billionaire Elon Musk has made repeated remarks on his X platform.

Friedrich Merz’s first priority will be to try to form a coalition made up of his Christian Democrats (and their Bavarian sister party, the CSU) and Scholz’s centre left, despite the Social Democrats’ worst-ever showing of 16.4%.

Merz’s CDU party leadership will meet on Monday and so will the Social Democrat SPD’s, separately, but Scholz will not take part in the talks.

Merz is keen to form a government by Easter. It could be possible, because between the two parties, they have 328 seats, a majority of 12 in the 630-seat parliament.

But it was not until the early hours of Monday that that became clear.

After the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition late last year, Merz had asked the electorate for a strong mandate to form a clear-cut coalition with one other party.

In the event, he secured enough seats only because two of the smaller parties failed to get into parliament.

A two-party coalition would enable him to solve as many of Germany’s problems as he could in four years, he said, from a stagnant economy to closing its borders to irregular migrants.

German voters had other ideas. They came out in big numbers, with a 83% turnout not seen since before reunification in 1990.

Merz’s Christian Democrats had been looking for more than the 28.6% of the vote they and their Bavarian sister party received.

His most likely partner was always going to be the Social Democrats – known in Germany as a GroKo, or grand coalition.

But Germany’s electorate has fractured, and the two big beasts of its post-war politics can no longer be sure of success.

The AfD under Alice Weidel enjoyed a 10-point increase in support on four years ago, their support boosted by anger over high prices and a series of deadly attacks in German cities.

Three took place during the election campaign.

Weidel also benefited from a successful TikTok campaign that drew in big numbers of young voters.

As results came in during the early hours of Monday, it became clear the AfD was far ahead of the other parties in the east, with a projected 34%, according to a survey for public broadcaster ZDF.

“Germans have voted for change,” said Weidel. She said Friedrich Merz’s attempt to forge a coalition would ultimately end in failure: “We’ll have fresh elections – I don’t think we’ll have to wait another four years.”

But just as the election map turned light blue in the east, much of the rest of Germany turned black – the colour of the CDU.

And Merz dismissed the rise of the AfD out of hand. “The party only exists because there have been problems that haven’t been solved. They’re happy if these problems get worse and worse.”

“We need to solve the problems… then that party, the AfD, will disappear.”

Merz was equally withering towards the new Trump administration.

President Trump did welcome Merz’s victory. He said it was proof that Germans were, like Americans, tired of “the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration”.

If it was an overture, Merz did not take it as one. He told a round-table TV discussion on Sunday night that the interventions from Washington had been “no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow”.

Last week, Trump appeared to accuse Kyiv of starting the war which Russia unleashed on its neighbour exactly three years ago.

Merz’s victory was quickly welcomed by leaders across much of Europe. France’s Emmanuel Macron spoke of uniting at a time of uncertainty to “face the major challenges of the world and our continent”, while the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer sought to “enhance our joint security and deliver growth for both our countries”.

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats continue to rely on older voters for their success, while voters aged 18-24 appear to be far more interested in both the AfD and another party, the Left, which surged in the polls in recent weeks.

Not long ago, the Left was heading out of the parliament, with poll numbers well below the 5% threshold.

But a series of TikTok videos showing co-leader Heidi Reichinnek giving fiery speeches in parliament went viral and they ended up close to 9%, and a quarter of the younger vote, according to an ARD survey.

Suspended Labour MP Mike Amesbury has been jailed for 10 weeks after he admitted punching a man to the ground in his Cheshire constituency.

Amesbury, 55, who represents Runcorn and Helsby as an independent MP, pleaded guilty to assaulting 45-year-old Paul Fellows after video footage emerged showing the confrontation.

He had his Labour whip removed after the incident in Frodsham, Cheshire, which happened in the early hours of 26 October.

Sitting at Chester Magistrates’ Court, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram said a pre-sentence report showed Amesbury’s actions were the result of a “anger and loss of emotional control”.

Amesbury was taken down to the cells immediately and an application for bail pending an appeal was refused.

Addressing the MP before handing down the jail term, the magistrate said: “I have to say that I have seen a single punch to the head cause fatal injuries, but note the limited injuries in this case.

“I note that you, Mr Amesbury, continued to punch Mr Fellows when he was on the ground and continued to shout at Mr Fellows. I consider this more culpable.

“You continued to attack when he was on the ground and it may have continued further had a bystander not intervened,” the magistrate said.

“You continued to rant, your position ought to be as a role model to others.”

Passing sentence, the magistrate said the immediate custodial sentence was “necessary both as a punishment and a deterrent”.

He said he accepted the incident was one incident “in an otherwise unblemished career”.

“You have spent your life in public service and served in high office”, he told Amesbury.

But the magistrate said he was of “the view that unprovoked drunken behaviour is too serious to be dealt with unpaid work”.

Mr Ikram said he had also considered how the MP was “unlikely to re-offend”.

But he said: “You were only stopped from going further by members of the public.”

Richard Derby, representing Amesbury, asked the magistrate: “Is that an immediate sentence?”

Mr Ikram nodded and replied: “Yes,” before leaving the courtroom.

Amesbury was then joined in the dock by two security guards who took him down to the cells.

Mr Derby requested the judge come back into court as he wished to make an application for bail for Amesbury, pending an appeal against his sentence.

Mr Ikram returned to court, sat down, paused briefly, and said: “Application refused.”

Amesbury was also ordered to pay £200 compensation to the victim, costs of £85 and a surcharge of £154.

Following sentencing, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party took swift action following Mike Amesbury’s completely unacceptable actions and he is no longer a Labour MP or a member of the Labour Party.

“It is right that Mr Amesbury pleaded guilty and has now been sentenced.

“Local residents in the Runcorn and Helsby constituency deserved better and we look forward to them getting the representation they deserve in the future with a new Labour MP.”

The jail sentence means voters in Amesbury’s constituency can remove the independent MP from his seat with a recall petition.

This can be called if a sitting MP is convicted of an offence that leads to jail time, or even a suspended sentence.

More than 10% of voters must sign the petition in his Runcorn and Helsby constituency for a by-election to be triggered.

A recall petition would also be triggered if the House of Commons decided to suspend him for 10 sitting days or more.

Reform UK party chairman Zia Yusuf called for Amesbury to stand down so a by-election could be held.

He said: “The great people of Runcorn deserve far better than waiting six weeks for a recall petition to take place.”

A further application for bail is expected to be heard at the crown court later this week.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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“In the next 50 years, you will not find one Israeli leader that will propose to you what I propose to you now.

“Sign it! Sign it and let’s change history!”

It was 2008. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was imploring the Palestinian leader to accept a deal he believed could have brought peace to the Middle East.

It was a two-state solution – a prospect which seems impossible today.

If implemented, it would have created a Palestinian state on more than 94% of the occupied West Bank.

The map Olmert had drawn up now has an almost mythical status. Various interpretations have appeared over the years, but he has never revealed it to the media.

Until now.

In Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, the latest series from documentary filmmaker Norma Percy available on iPlayer from Monday, Olmert reveals the map he says he showed to Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting in Jerusalem on 16 September 2008.

“This is the first time that I expose this map to the media,” he tells the filmmakers.

It shows, in detail, the territory which Olmert proposed to annexe to Israel – 4.9% of the West Bank.

That would have included major Jewish settlement blocs – just like previous proposals dating back to the late 1990s.

In return, the prime minister said Israel would give up an equal amount of Israeli territory, along the edges of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The two Palestinian territories would be connected via a tunnel or highway – again, something that had been discussed before.

In the film, Olmert recalls the Palestinian leader’s response.

“He said: ‘Prime minister, this is very serious. It is very, very, very serious.’”

Crucially, Olmert’s plan included a proposed solution to the thorny issue of Jerusalem.

Each side would be able to claim parts of the city as their capital, while administration of the “holy basin” – including the Old City, with its religious sites, and adjacent areas – would be handed over to a committee of trustees consisting of Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US.

The implications of the map, for Jewish settlements, would have been colossal.

Had the plan been implemented, dozens of communities, scattered throughout the West Bank and Jordan Valley, would have been evacuated.

When the previous Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, forcibly removed a few thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it was regarded as a national trauma by those on the Israeli right.

Evacuating most of the West Bank would have represented an infinitely greater challenge, involving tens of thousands of settlers, with the very real danger of violence.

But the test never came.

At the end of their meeting, Olmert refused to hand over a copy of the map to Mahmoud Abbas unless the Palestinian leader sign it.

Abbas refused, saying that he needed to show his experts the map, to make sure they understood exactly what was being offered.

Olmert says the two agreed to a meeting of map experts the following day.

“We parted, you know, like we are about to embark on a historic step forward,” Olmert says.

The meeting never happened. As they drove away from Jerusalem that night, President Abbas’s chief of staff, Rafiq Husseini, remembers the atmosphere in the car.

“Of course, we laughed,” he says in the film.

The Palestinians believed the plan was dead in the water. Olmert, embroiled in an unrelated corruption scandal, had already announced that he was planning to resign.

“It is unfortunate that Olmert, regardless of how nice he was… was a lame duck,” Husseini says, “and therefore, we will go nowhere with this.”

The situation in Gaza also complicated matters. After months of rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled territory, Olmert ordered a major Israeli assault, Operation Cast Lead, at the end of December, triggering three weeks of intense fighting.

But Olmert tells me it would have been “very smart” for Abbas to sign the deal. Then, if a future Israeli prime minister tried to cancel it, “he could have said to the world that the failure was Israel’s fault”.

Israeli elections followed in February. Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal opponent of Palestinian statehood, became prime minister.

Olmert’s plan, and map, faded from view.

The former prime minister says he’s still waiting for Abbas’s reply, but his plan has since joined a long list of missed opportunities to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 1973, the former Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban, quipped that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. It’s a phrase that Israeli officials have frequently repeated in the years since.

But the world is more complicated than that, especially since the two sides signed the historic Oslo Accords in 1993.

The peace process ushered in by a handshake on the White House lawn between former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had moments of genuine hope, punctuated by tragedy. Ultimately, it resulted in failure.

The reasons are complex and there’s plenty of blame to go around but in truth, the stars were never properly aligned.

I witnessed this non-alignment at first hand 24 years ago.

In January 2001, at the Egyptian resort of Taba, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators once again saw the outlines of a deal.

A member of the Palestinian delegation drew a rough map on a napkin and told me that, for the first time, they were looking at the rough outlines of a viable Palestinian state.

But the talks were irrelevant, drowned out by the violence raging on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, where the second Palestinian uprising, or “intifada”, had erupted the previous September.

Once again, Israel was in the midst of a political transition. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had already resigned. Ariel Sharon comfortably defeated him a few weeks later.

The map on the napkin, just like Olmert’s map eight years later, showed what might have been.

For months, Japan’s entertainment industry has been rocked by a scandal that unseated one of its most popular celebrities and put one of its biggest broadcasters at risk.

But some believe it has also marked a turning point in how cases of sexual assault are perceived in Japan – where traditionally victims have been shamed into silence.

At its heart was Masahiro Nakai, a household name and leading presenter for Fuji TV, one of the country’s biggest broadcasters.

Nakai, who is also a former member of J-pop boy band SMAP, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a dinner party in 2023.

The revelations, which first appeared last December in weekly tabloid magazine Shukan Bunshun, marked the latest of a series of scandals involving celebrities in Japan, including that of late entertainment mogul Johnny Kitagawa, who was found by investigators to have abused hundreds of boys and young men over six decades.

Nakai didn’t admit guilt and denied using force against the woman. But he apologised for “causing trouble” in a statement and said that he had “resolved” the matter in a settlement, reportedly worth more than half a million dollars.

But as public anger mounted, he was forced to announce his retirement from the entertainment industry in January. Another channel, the Tokyo Broadcasting System, has also stopped airing a program that Nakai regularly appeared on as an MC.

The impact on Fuji TV has been devastating.

The broadcaster’s reputation is now in ruins. Its revenue is under threat and some of its top executives have also been forced to step down.

High-profile companies like Nissan and Toyota were among those who pulled advertising from the broadcaster as outrage grew. Fuji TV has since admitted it allowed Nakai to continue presenting shows even after finding out about the allegations.

“If this had happened 10 years ago, there would not have been this outcry,” Keiko Kojima, who worked in Japan’s media industry for 15 years as a TV presenter, told the BBC.

Sexual violence against women is one of Japan’s worst-kept secrets. A 2020 survey claimed that more than 70% of sexual assaults in the country go unreported. And according to a 2024 study published in the International Journal of Asian Studies, for every 1,000 rapes in Japan, only 10–20 result in a criminal conviction – and fewer than half of convicted rapists are incarcerated.

“There’s still a prevalent attitude of ‘Shoganai ‘ or ‘there’s nothing you can do’ that is being projected on women – so they’re encouraged to keep silent,” Machiko Osawa, professor emeritus at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo, told the BBC.

She added that women were seldom believed and did not have proper mechanisms to even report such incidents, which contributed to this culture of silence.

Ms Kojima said that the media industry in particular, has long had a culture of impunity and lack of accountability where many young women felt they must keep silent to keep their jobs.

“It was common for men to make rude comments about women’s bodies or appearance or age. I remember my colleagues and I being asked how many people we’ve had sex with,” she said.

“We were expected to reply with a sense of humour without getting angry or offended. I saw sexual harassment and other forms of derogatory treatment of women on a daily basis. For a woman, adapting to these situations was the only way to become a full-fledged TV or media professional.”

The Fuji TV case has also raised the question of whether dinners and drinking parties involving celebrities and young women were common practice.

Although Shukan Bunshun retracted an earlier report that claimed the alleged assault took place at a party organised by Fuji TV, Ms Kojima told the BBC that it was indeed common to use women as “tools for entertaining”.

“In Japanese working culture, it’s an everyday practice to half-forcibly take young female employees to events to entertain clients.”

“Men are happy when young women join them. The idea that women are like a gift and that taking a young woman with you is a way of offering hospitality to the other person is very common.”

That is why the fallout of this scandal has encouraged women’s rights activists.

Minori Kithara, one of the founders of the Flower Demo movement – where groups of sexual violence victims and their supporters gather in public spaces on the 11th of every month – admitted she was surprised at how swiftly and severely the sponsors reacted.

“Even if it’s more of self-preservation than human rights for sponsors, this is a turning point for the MeToo movement in Japan. It’s up to us how big we make it,” she told the BBC.

Nearly 50 companies have walked away from the now tarnished Fuji TV.

The government has also withdrawn all its recent and planned advertisements with the network.

The Japanese government has called on the broadcaster to regain the trust of viewers and sponsors. So far it seems to have done neither.

The scandal and Fuji TV’s role in hiding it, sent the company on a crisis-management frenzy that seems to have dug it deeper into disgrace and fuelled more public anger.

Then Fuji TV president Koichi Minato admitted that the company had known about the allegation shortly after the alleged incident.

But he said they chose not to disclose it at the time because they “prioritised the woman’s physical and mental recovery as well as the protection of her privacy.”

After a press conference which it held in the hope of defusing the outrage turned into a PR disaster, the company held a second one that lasted 10 hours – intended to show remorse.

Both Fuji TV’s chairman Shuji Kano and its President Koichi Minato stepped down – bowing humbly as they announced their resignations.

It was announced that the company’s executive vice president Kenji Shimizu would replace Mr Minato as president.

But these were seen as mere face and revenue saving exercises rather than substantial change, especially because the president’s replacement was of the same leadership cadre.

Professor Osawa told the BBC however, that high profile cases like Fuji TV become important precedents for these patterns to change.

The saga is the latest in a series of high-profile sexual misconduct cases that have generated conversation on women’s rights in Japan.

These include the case of journalist Shiori Ito, who became a symbol of the country’s #MeToo movement when in 2017 she took the rare step of going public with allegations that Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a senior television journalist, had raped her after she met him for drinks. While he denied the allegations, in 2019 she won her civil lawsuit against him.

“People have now started to realise that it was OK to speak out and say that this (sexual harassment) is a problem. We are changing what we take as the norm,” Ms Kojima said.

Ms Kojima and Ms Kithara both say however, that Japan is not moving fast enough.

“I think it’s time for that generation (of media leadership) to step down. The industry needs to create a new corporate culture. The change is slow.” Ms Kojima said.

“The TV industry has long neglected the issue of exploitation and violence and has not dealt with the victims properly. If the root of the problem doesn’t change, the same will happen again.”

Professor Osawa agrees that while change is happening, Japan still has a long way to go. Mainly because of the ubiquitous power imbalance in the country’s male dominated society.

She adds that while women have been part of the workforce for decades they’re still seen as the “caretakers” and men as the “breadwinners” by a society that is still heavily shaped by patriarchal values.

“This is an important time… But it’s unclear how far attitudes will change.” she said.

While Ms Kithara is hopeful, she says she’s still angry: “The sexual violence never stops.”

“I still meet new survivors at Flower Demo (protests) every month and learn what happened to them. We had a high school girl other day. When we started the movement (In 2019) she was probably in Junior High, ” she said.

“One day I hope I will never have to go on a Flower Demo protest again.”

A body has been found in a forest search for a runner who went missing five days ago, police said.

Jenny Hall, 23, was last seen leaving her home at Barracks Farm, Tow Law, County Durham, on Tuesday, just after 15:00 GMT.

Her red Ford Focus was found parked on the B6278 between Eggleston and Stanhope on Wednesday.

Durham Police said the body had been found in a “very remote area of Teesdale” shortly after 09:30 GMT on Sunday.

Formal identification has yet to take place but Ms Hall’s family have been informed.

The force said it was not treating her death as suspicious and a file was being prepared for the coroner.

Mountain rescue teams have been searching for Ms Hall since Tuesday.

Teesdale and Weardale Search and Mountain Rescue Team led the search alongside the police and by Friday had covered 60 miles (97km) of paths and tracks.

More than a dozen mountain rescue team members took part and on Saturday seven drones, 10 mountain rescue dogs and more than 60 volunteers took part.

Ms Hall was a keen long distance runner and was known to run through Hamsterley Forest, which is the largest in the county and spans 4,942 acres (2,000ha).

Earlier this week, rescue volunteer Peter Bell said the area was difficult to search.

“The biggest challenge is the area size itself and the terrain,” he said.

“The terrain is muddy and boggy.”

Durham Police thanked the mountain rescue teams which had been working alongside officers on the ground.

The force also thanked the public for their help in sharing their appeal.

Visitors to the forest had been asked to give officers space and to not to disturb the area while the search was ongoing.

Friedrich Merz – leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – is predicted to become Germany’s next Chancellor.

His party is projected to win around 28% of the vote. The question now is who he might form a coalition with.

Described by his supporters as an antidote to Europe’s crisis of confidence, Merz, 69, is a familiar face to his party’s old guard.

Politically, he has never come across as exhilarating. And yet he promises to provide Germany with stronger leadership and tackle many of his country’s problems within four years.

His explosive bid last month to tighten migration rules with the support of far-right votes in parliament revealed a man willing to gamble by breaking a major taboo.

It also marked yet another clear break from the CDU’s more centrist stance under his former party rival Angela Merkel.

Although Merz ultimately failed to change the law, he had launched a lightning bolt into an election campaign triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government late last year.

Famously sidelined by Merkel before she became chancellor, he quit parliament entirely to pursue a lucrative series of corporate jobs and was written off as yesterday’s man.

But he now looks set to clinch the job he has coveted for so long.

On 23 January, one month before Germany’s snap federal election, people gathered in one of Berlin’s five-star hotels to hear Merz give a foreign policy speech.

The buzz around the “ballroom” in the Hotel de Rome isn’t exactly electric – but it is a far cry from 20 years ago, when his political career looked over.

Merz is also a licensed pilot, who drew criticism in 2022 for flying to the north German island of Sylt in his private plane for the wedding of fellow politician Christian Lindner.

As he takes to the stage in the Hotel de Rome, there’s polite applause for the leader of Germany’s conservative CDU opposition, who are consistently ahead in the polls.

Tall, slim, in a suit and glasses, Merz cuts a calm, conventional, business-like figure as he tries to project a readiness for power.

But it has been a winding journey to get to this point.

Merz was born in the west German town of Brilon in 1955 into a prominent conservative, Catholic family.

His father served as a local judge, as does Friedrich Merz’s wife Charlotte to this day.

The younger Merz joined the CDU while still at school.

In an interview 25 years ago with German newspaper Tagesspiegel he laid claim to a wilder youth than his strait-laced CV might suggest.

Among his misadventures, he described racing through the streets on a motorcycle, hanging out with friends by a chip stand and playing the card game Doppelkopf in the back of the class.

A teenage party he referenced ended up with a group of students taking a collective pee in the school aquarium, according to Der Spiegel magazine.

There is some scepticism that the teenage Merz was much of a rabble-rouser. A former classmate recalled that the young Friedrich’s disruptive behaviour more often amounted to simply wanting “the last word”.

Whether on or off the record, people who have known him have told me he enjoys a beer and can indeed be fun, though few were able to offer an anecdote to illustrate this.

After school, he went on to military service before studying law and marrying fellow student Charlotte Gass in 1981.

The couple have three children.

For a few years, Merz worked as a lawyer but he always had his eye on politics and was elected to the European Parliament in 1989, aged 33.

“We were both quite young and very fresh and let’s say unspoilt,” says Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, who became an MEP at the same time for the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

She found the young Merz to be serious, reliable, honest and polite.

Even humorous – a quality that she feels is less obvious now: “I assume the amount of bruises over time might have hardened him a bit.”

But did he come across early in his career as a potential chancellor?

“I would have probably have said no, no way. Come on, you must be kidding!”

Yet everyone knew him to be deeply ambitious and Merz soon made the switch from EU politics to Germany’s national parliament, the Bundestag, in 1994.

He rose through the ranks, touted as a talent on the party’s more right-wing, traditionalist faction.

“He’s a splendid speaker and a profound thinker,” says Klaus-Peter Willsch, a CDU member of the Bundestag who has known him for more than 30 years.

“A fighter,” says Willsch, evidenced by the fact that Merz made three attempts to lead his party.

His first two failures, in 2018 and January 2021, could also be read as a sign of his struggle to woo the grassroots.

But it was back in the early noughties, when his ambitions were initially derailed, that he lost out to Angela Merkel in a party power struggle.

Merkel, the understated quantum chemist from the former communist east, and Merz, the overtly assured lawyer from the west, never much saw eye-to-eye.

Merz glosses over this bitter episode in a brief autobiographical post on the CDU website, saying that by 2009 he had decided to leave parliament to “make room for reflection”.

His years of reflection involved forging a career in finance and corporate law – becoming a boardroom executive at various international firms and, reputedly, a millionaire.

It would be more than a decade before he returned to parliament, where he has since sought to rip up Merkel’s more centrist doctrine on CDU conservatism.

A marked moment of political severance came at the end of January, when Friedrich Merz pushed through a non-binding motion on tougher immigration rules, by relying on votes from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

He insisted there had been no direct collaboration with the AfD, but his move led to mass protests and was twice condemned by none other than Merkel herself.

These were rare public interventions by the woman who ruled Germany for 16 years.

Detractors said it was an unforgivable election gambit, but supporters insisted Merz was, in fact, seeking to lure people cleverly from the far right.

He has risked alienating more moderate parts of the electorate before, voting in the 1990s against a bill that included the criminalisation of marital rape.

He later explained that he considered marital rape to already be a crime, and it was other issues in the bill that he objected to.

Polls suggest he is not especially popular among young people and women – but Klaus-Peter Willsch believes the picture painted of him in German media is unfair.

“I had him several times in my constituency,” he tells me. “Afterwards, women come up and say he’s a nice guy.”

Charlotte Merz has likewise come to his defence, telling the Westfalenpost: “What some people write about my husband’s image of women is simply not true.”

She says their marriage has been one of mutual support: “We both took care of each other’s jobs and divided the childcare in such a way that it was compatible with our professional obligations.”

Whatever the critiques, one EU diplomat told me Brussels was “anxiously awaiting his arrival”.

“It’s time to move on from this German deadlock and get that motor running.”

Just occasionally, there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive change. 1968, with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Paris riots and the anti-Vietnam War protests in America, was one of them. 1989, the year of the Tiananmen massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the implosion of the Soviet empire, was another.

I was on hand to see each of these things happen, and from that perspective it seems to me that, only seven weeks in, 2025 could be a year like that: a time when the basic assumptions about the way our world works are fed into the shredder.

The basic reason, of course, is Donald Trump.

Since the end of World War Two, each one of the 13 US presidents before Trump’s current term in office has at least paid lip service to a set of key geopolitical principles: that America’s own security depended on protecting Europe from Russia, and the non-Communist countries of Asia against China.

Trump has up-ended this approach. He says he’s putting American interests first, way before everything else. Mostly that comes down to the single question of how much it costs the US.

In itself, this is pretty hard for his friends and allies abroad, especially in Europe. But it’s made far more difficult by Trump’s own personality. No US president in modern times, not even Richard Nixon, let his personal characteristics shape his policies like Trump does.

“He’s just like Louis XIV,” one retired American diplomat said to me, referring to France’s self-aggrandising Sun King.

Critics like this believe Trump is both breathtakingly vain, and amazingly thin-skinned at the same time. As a result, the appointees who surround him, people like Elon Musk and JD Vance, perhaps think that their position depends entirely on how much they praise him and back his views.

When President Trump claims, with no evidence, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is corrupt and has a low approval rating, Musk then takes it further: he piles in to say that Zelensky is despised by the Ukrainian people and is feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

No one in the Trump circle today, it seems, will cough discreetly and say, “Mr President, maybe you should consider rowing back on that statement.”

Judging from his previous term in office, we can be sure that every one of the people around him knows how he detests being disagreed with. And they will also know that many voters wholeheartedly back Trump’s approach, and feel they have been bankrolling security in a far-off continent.

He has committed himself to stopping the Ukraine war by Easter. He is absolutely correct when he says that President Vladimir Putin is keen on this. Russian troops are, through sheer force of numbers, making slow advances in the eastern part of Ukraine.

But the cost in Russian lives is immense. If the process continues, Russia may have to turn to conscription, which would be dangerously unpopular and might even destabilise Putin’s regime. Everything Trump says about getting peace is music to his ears.

John Bolton, Trump’s far-from-subservient national security adviser during his first administration, said the other day that they’d be breaking out the champagne in the Kremlin when they heard the Trump administration’s peace plan. It certainly felt like a historic moment – not just in Moscow but around the world.

Putin has pointedly backed the idea that Trump really won the 2020 election. It may not be true, but President Putin knows that Trump favours anyone who backs his view of things.

Why, by contrast, have Trump and the people round him come down so hard on President Zelensky? It must partly be because he’s not obediently doing what he’s told, such as returning to the negotiating table and strike a deal on US access to Ukraine’s critical minerals.

At the same time, President Trump understands that Zelensky is the weakest link in the US-Russia-Ukraine trio, and can be squeezed in a way that Putin can’t be. The more pressure that is piled on Zelensky, the quicker a peace deal will come.

President Trump never seems, at least in public, to show much interest in the fine detail of any agreement. It’s the agreement itself that matters to him, even if Ukraine and its allies believe it’s manifestly unfair and allows Russia to come back at some future date and start the war all over again.

British and German diplomats whom I know have been enraged by the way Trump went about getting Russia to the negotiating table. “He had two major cards in his hand,” said one. “The first was Russia’s isolation. Putin would have made plenty of concessions to get himself to the talks with America – only Trump didn’t insist on any concessions at all. He just let him sit down and start talking.”

The other card, the diplomat said, was to insist that Ukraine should be allowed to join Nato. “Trump could have banged away about this and extorted all sorts of agreements from Putin, before finally saying OK, well, Ukraine won’t join Nato in that case.” In European capitals it’s felt that he threw away both of his essential cards before the talks even started, without any preconditions.

Already, though, some European diplomats with experience of US politics are advising their governments that this grand monarchical period in Donald Trump’s presidency, where his advisers defer to him (he literally referred to himself as a “king” this week), won’t last.

Trump currently has control of a pliant Congress and a conservative Supreme Court – but in only 20 months’ time, in November 2026, there will be mid-term elections in the US.

There are signs that inflation is starting to rise in America, and enough people may well be affected badly by the upheavals to want to punish Trump’s Republicans.

If he loses control of one or both Houses, the power he has at present of pushing through every plan and policy, no matter how controversial, will diminish.

But an awful lot can happen in the next year and eight months. Trump’s expansionism might embolden China. A major international trade war, sparked off by Trump’s tariffs, could open up. The European Union seems likely to become politically and economically weaker than ever.

Agreeing peace in Ukraine on Russia’s terms will be something entirely new for the United States. In the great majority of negotiations since 1945, Russia has struggled to get its way because of America’s economic and military strength.

Now President Putin, having made the costly decision to invade Ukraine three years ago, looks likely to get away with it, and prosper.

If that happens, then 2025 will indeed be remembered as a key year: a moment when the history of the world changed, and nothing was ever quite the same again.

Volodymyr Zelensky said he would be willing to “give up” his presidency in exchange for peace ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“If to achieve peace you really need me to give up my post – I’m ready. I can trade it for Nato membership, if there are such conditions,” the Ukrainian president said in response to a question during a news conference.

His comments came after US President Donald Trump called Zelensky a “dictator without elections” earlier in the week.

“I wasn’t offended, but a dictator would be,” Zelensky, who was democratically elected in May 2019, responded on Sunday.

“I am focused on Ukraine’s security today, not in 20 years, I am not going to be in power for decades,” he added.

According to Ukrainian law, elections are suspended under martial law, which has been in place since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Zelensky is meeting Western leaders on Monday, some in person in Kyiv and some online, as they work out how to provide a post-war security where the US will not.

He said the topic of Ukraine joining Nato would be “on the table” at the meeting but he did not know how the discussions would “finish”. He hoped the meeting would be a “turning point”.

On the topic of Trump, Zelensky said that he wanted to see the US president as a partner to Ukraine and more than a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow.

“I really want it to be more than just mediation…that’s not enough,” he said.

With the White House demanding that it gets access to billions of dollars’ worth of Ukraine’s natural minerals in exchange for the military aid it provided to date – and could in the future – Zelensky said US help so far had been agreed as grants, not loans.

He said he would not agree to a security deal which – in his words – would be “paid off by generation after generation”.

When asked about a potential mineral deal, Zelensky said “we are making progress,” adding that Ukrainian and US officials had been in touch.

“We are ready to share,” the Ukrainian leader said, but made clear that Washington first needed to ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin “ends this war”.

Zelensky appeared relaxed as he faced questions from the world’s media. In previous years he had been more impassioned and even emotional, but on Sunday his approach was business-like.

If Ukraine’s leader rejects a Donald Trump-shaped peace proposal he does not agree with – as he suggested today – then it could have lasting consequences for the course of this war.

Zelensky’s comments came hours after Russia launched its largest single drone attack on Ukraine yet, Ukrainian officials said.

On Saturday night, Ukraine’s Air Force Command spokesman Yuriy Ignat said a “record” 267 Russian drones were launched in a single, coordinated attack on the country.

Thirteen regions were targeted and while many of the drones were repelled, those that were not caused destruction to infrastructure and at least three casualties, emergency services said.

Ukraine’s Air Force reported that 138 of the drones were shot down and 119, which were decoy drones, were lost without negative consequences, likely due to jamming.

In Kyiv, the attack meant six hours of air alerts.

In a statement, Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s emergency services for their response and called for the support of Europe and US in facilitating “a lasting and just peace”.

In a post on X, Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska said that “hundreds of drones” had “brought death and destruction” overnight.

“It was another night of explosions, burning houses and cars, and destroyed infrastructure,” she wrote. “Another night when people prayed for their loved ones to survive”.

On Monday, the war will enter its fourth year.

Diplomatic wrangling over a potential peace deal continues, with Ukraine, European allies and the US offering differing visions for how to end the conflict.

The US and Russia held preliminary talks in Saudi Arabia this week – without delegates from Europe, including Ukraine, present – which resulted in European leaders holding a hastily-arranged summit in Paris.

Zelensky criticised Ukraine’s exclusion from the US-Russia talks, saying Trump was “living in a disinformation space” governed by Moscow, prompting Trump to respond by calling the Ukrainian president a “dictator”.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit Washington on Monday, while UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will be there on Thursday.

Sir Keir has publicly backed Zelensky, reiterating the UK’s “ironclad support” for Kyiv, and said he would discuss the importance of Ukraine’s sovereignty when he speaks to Trump.

Pope Francis – who is in hospital with respiratory illness – wrote in a remarks released on Sunday that the third anniversary of the war was “a painful and shameful occasion for the whole of humanity”.

A former aide to the Prince of Wales has said the royal was at his “lowest” after the Princess of Wales was diagnosed with cancer.

In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Jason Knauf, formerly the chief executive of William and Kate’s Royal Foundation, said: “It was awful, absolutely awful. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen him.

“Within a couple of weeks, if you’re Prince William, you find out that both your wife and your father have cancer. I couldn’t believe it.”

Both the King and the Princess of Wales were treated for cancer last year. Kate is now in remission and Charles is having ongoing treatment.

Mr Knauf, 43, stepped down from his position at the end of 2021.

Catherine’s diagnosis was made public in March last year, and Mr Knauf said: “The problem was that all this crazy conspiracy theory stuff kicked off in the background, online. ‘Was she really ill?’.

“But they didn’t want to say yet that she had cancer because they hadn’t told the children and they were still working through how to tell the children.”

Speaking to reporters last year at the end of his visit to South Africa, Prince William, 42, talked about how he has coped after both his wife and his father were diagnosed with cancer, describing the past year as the “hardest year” of his life.

“It’s been dreadful. It’s probably been the hardest year in my life. So, trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult,” he said after being asked how his year has been after a difficult year for the Royal Family.”

Mr Knauf also previously worked for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

In October 2018, while working for the couple as their communications secretary, Mr Knauf made a bullying complaint against Meghan.

He wrote of his concerns to William’s then private secretary in an email, in an apparent attempt to force Buckingham Palace to protect staff.

The duchess’s legal team strenuously denied the allegation.

Discussing William’s relationship with Harry, Mr Knauf said: “It’s very difficult to have this stuff play out in the public eye, but he’s chosen to keep his thoughts on it private, and I think all of us who know him really have to respect that we should do the same.

“But I will say, of course, it’s been hard and sad, especially for all of us who know both of them.

“I worked really closely with the two of them and we had lots of great times.”

Mr Knauf has previously expressed regret in not giving evidence in the Duchess of Sussex’s High Court case against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, the Court of Appeal.

Meghan won her privacy case against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) in 2021, when the High Court found its publication of her letter to her father – sent in August 2018 – was unlawful.

Mr Knauf was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (RVO) in the 2023 New Year Honours List.

Before joining the royal household the American-born former corporate affairs executive worked for a range of institutions, from the office of the New Zealand prime minister to HM Treasury and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Mr Knauf led a review of the Royal Foundation’s role and structure from March 2019, before becoming its chief executive in September of that year.

He oversaw the launch of the Foundation’s Earthshot Prize – William’s £50 million environmental prize, now an independent charity, which recognises solutions, ideas and technologies that “repair the planet”.