International
Ukraine isn’t naive, Zelenskiy says after Russia pledges to scale down attack on Kyiv

Ukraine reacted with skepticism to Russia’s promise in negotiations to scale down military operations around Kyiv and another city as some Western countries expected Moscow to intensify its offensive in other parts of the country.
Talks took place in an Istanbul palace more than a month into the largest attack on a European nation since World War Two that has killed or injured thousands, forced nearly 4 million to flee abroad and pummelled Russia’s economy with sanctions.
The invasion has been halted on most fronts by stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces who have recaptured territory even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities.
“In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing (an) agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions,” Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin told reporters.
He made no mention of other areas that have seen heavy fighting, including around Mariupol in the southeast, Sumy and Kharkiv in the east and Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south.
“Ukrainians are not naive people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Tuesday.
“Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbass, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”
The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said that Russia’s promise to curtail military operations in some areas was “probably a rotation of individual units and aims to mislead.”
The Russian military accused Ukrainian forces in cities under attack of using ceasefires to restore their combat readiness and set up firing points in hospitals and schools, Interfax news agency said.
Russia has started moving very small numbers of troops away from positions around Kyiv in a move that is more of a repositioning than a retreat or a withdrawal from the war, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
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“We all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”
Britain’s Ministry of Defence in an intelligence update said: “It is highly likely that Russia will seek to divert combat power from the north to their offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.”
Reuters could not immediately verify the claims made by either side.
The Moscow-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine may consider joining Russia once it controls all of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, its leader was quoted as saying. Kyiv has said any such move would have no legal basis.
Russia calls its assault a “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” Ukraine. The West says it launched an unprovoked invasion.
Some analysts noted that Russia’s promise to reduce fighting mostly covered areas where it has been losing ground.
U.S. troops in Poland are “liaising” with Ukrainian forces as they hand over weapons to them and a total of 10 F-18 aircraft and more than 200 troops are being deployed to NATO member and Russian neighbour, Lithuania, said Kirby.
PROPOSALS
Ukrainian negotiators said that under their proposals, Kyiv would agree not to join alliances or host bases of foreign troops, but would have security guaranteed in terms similar to “Article 5”, the collective defence clause of the transatlantic NATO military alliance.
They named Israel and NATO members Canada, Poland and Turkey as countries that may give such guarantees. Russia, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy could also be involved.
The proposals, which would require a referendum in Ukraine, mentioned a 15-year consultation period on the status of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
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The fate of the southeastern Donbass region, which Russia demands Ukraine cede to separatists, would be discussed by the Ukrainian and Russian leaders.
Kyiv’s proposals also included one that Moscow would not oppose Ukraine joining the European Union, Russia’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said. Russia has previously opposed Ukrainian membership of the EU and especially of NATO.
Medinsky said Russia’s delegation would study and present the proposals to President Vladimir Putin.
To prepare a peace agreement, Medinsky later told the TASS news agency, “We still have a long way to go”.
U.S. President Joe Biden discussed with allies more financial aid of up to $500 million for Ukraine, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
MARIUPOL DEATH TOLL
On the ground, reports of attacks continued.
A shell hit a temporary Russian military camp near the border with Ukraine late on Tuesday, Tass news agency said and cited a source as saying preliminary data showed it had been fired from the Ukrainian side.
Tass issued the report shortly after a senior local official reported a series of explosions outside the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the border with Ukraine. Reuters could not immediately verify the details.
In Ukraine’s besieged seaport Mariupol, thousands of civilians may have died, the head of the United Nations human rights mission in the country told Reuters on Tuesday.
Those who remain are suffering.
“We are eight people. We have two buckets of potatoes, one bucket of onions,” said Irina, an engineer, in her apartment where windows had been blasted out.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have made advances, recapturing territory from Russian troops on the outskirts of Kyiv, in the northeast and in the south.
In the southern city of Mykolaiv, a missile blasted a hole through the main administrative building. Authorities said at least 12 people were killed and 33 injured.
Reuters
International
US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks

US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks
The first US strikes against Yemen’s Huthis since Donald Trump took office killed 31 people, the rebels said Sunday, with the US president warning “hell will rain down upon” the Iran-backed group if it did not stop attacking shipping.
The Huthis, who have attacked Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, said children were among those killed.
An AFP photographer in the rebel-held capital Sanaa heard explosions and saw plumes of smoke rising.
Attacks on Sanaa, as well as on areas in Saada, Al-Bayda and Radaa, killed at least 31 people and wounded 101, “most of whom were children and women”, Huthi health ministry spokesperson Anis Al-Asbahi said.
Footage on Huthi media showed children and a woman among those being treated in a hospital emergency room, including a dazed girl with blackened legs wrapped in bandages.
Trump, in a post on social media, vowed to “use overwhelming lethal force” to end the Huthi attacks, which the rebels say are in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza war.
“To all Huthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!” he said.
Trump also issued a stern warning to the group’s main backer.
“To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” he said.
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“Do NOT threaten the American People, their President… or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”
The Huthis vowed the strikes “will not pass without response”, while Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi condemned the deaths and said Washington had “no authority” to dictate Tehran’s foreign policy.
The Huthi Ansarullah website slammed what it called Washington’s “criminal brutality”.
US Central Command, which posted videos of fighter jets taking off and a bomb demolishing a compound, said “precision strikes” were launched to “defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation”.
- ‘Escalation with escalation’ –
“Our Yemeni armed forces are fully prepared to confront escalation with escalation,” the Huthi political bureau said.
The rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the United States.
They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Huthis had “attacked US warships 174 times and commercial vessels 145 times since 2023”.
The campaign put a major strain on the vital route, which normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic, forcing many companies to take a costly detour around southern Africa.
The Palestinian group Hamas, which has praised the Huthi support, lashed out at the US strikes, branding them “a stark violation of international law and an assault on the country’s sovereignty and stability”.
Iran “strongly condemned the brutal air strikes” in a statement, denouncing them as a “gross violation of the principles of the UN Charter”.
The head of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, said: “Iran will not wage war, but if anyone threatens, it will give appropriate, decisive and conclusive responses.
- ‘Political dialogue’ –
The United States has launched several rounds of strikes on Huthi targets.
After halting their attacks when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza in January, the Huthis announced on Tuesday that they would resume them until Israel lifted its blockade of aid to the devastated Palestinian territory.
Trump’s statement did not reference the dispute over Israel, but focused on previous Huthi attacks on merchant shipping.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration reclassified the Huthis as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, banning any US interaction with it.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Moscow is close to Tehran.
“Continued Huthi attacks on US military and commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea will not be tolerated,” Rubio told Lavrov, according to the State Department.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that “Lavrov stressed the need for an immediate cessation of the use of force and the importance for all sides to engage in political dialogue… (to) prevent further bloodshed”.
The Huthis captured Sanaa in 2014 and were poised to overrun most of the rest of the country before a Saudi-led coalition intervened.
The war devastated the already impoverished nation.
US strikes in Yemen kill 31 as Trump vows to end Huthi attacks
International
South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says

South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says
The US is expelling South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying he is “no longer welcome in our great country”.
In a post on X, Rubio accused Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of hating America and President Donald Trump and described him as a “race-baiting politician”.
The decision was “regrettable”, the office for South Africa’s president said on Saturday, adding that it remained committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with America.
The rare move by the US marks the latest development in rising tensions between the two countries.
In his post on Friday, Rubio linked to an article from the right-wing outlet Breitbart that quoted some of Rasool’s recent remarks made during an online lecture about the Trump administration.
“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency, at home… and abroad,” Rasool said at the event.
He added that the Maga movement was a response “to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate… is projected to become 48 percent white”.
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In response, Rubio called Rasool “PERSONA NON GRATA,” referencing the Latin phrase for “unwelcome person”.
The post from Rubio came as he departed Canada from a meeting with foreign ministers.
Ties between the US and South Africa have been deteriorating since Trump took office.
The US president signed an executive order last month that freezes assistance to South Africa. The order references “egregious actions” by South Africa and cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – those who descended from Dutch settlers.
The South African government has repeatedly denied this.
The order also references a new law, the Expropriation Act, that the order claims targets Afrikaners by allowing the government to take away private land.
“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” according to a statement from the White House.
The government in South Africa denies its law is related to race, the Associated Press reported.
A fact sheet from the White House states the country “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups”.
While lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled, it’s highly unusual in the US for it to happen to a more senior official like a foreign ambassador, the Associated Press reported, noting neither the US nor Russia took such actions against one another even amid tensions during the Cold War.
Rasool previously served as the country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before being tapped again for the post in 2025.
He was born and grew up in Cape Town. When he was nine, he and his family were forcibly removed from an apartment that was declared only for white people. As he grew older, he became more interested in politics and said the eviction was a significant moment in his upbringing that guided his future.
South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’ in US, Rubio says
BBC
International
US court to Trump: Return workers fired across agencies

US court to Trump: Return workers fired across agencies
A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire thousands of workers involved in mass firings across multiple agencies.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that the terminations were directed by the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell, who lacked the authority to do so.
The administration immediately filed an appeal of the injunction with the Ninth Circuit Court. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier Thursday cast the ruling as an attempt to encroach on executive power to hire and fire employees. “The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” she said in a statement.
Alsup’s order tells the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer job reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14. He also directed the departments to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the agencies complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to reduce the federal workforce.
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“These mass-firings of federal workers were not just an attack on government agencies and their ability to function, they were also a direct assault on public lands, wildlife, and the rule of law,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, one of the plaintiffs.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections and cannot appeal.
He was appalled that employees were told they were being fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Lawyers for the government maintain the mass firings were lawful because individual agencies reviewed and determined whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment.
But Alsup, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has found that difficult to believe. He planned to hold an evidentiary hearing Thursday, but Ezell, the OPM acting director, did not appear to testify in court or even sit for a deposition, and the government retracted his written testimony.
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