Many critical issues were left uncertain — including the fate of Ukraine — at the end of Europe’s first encounter with an angry and impatient Trump administration. But one thing was clear: An epochal breach appears to be opening in the Western alliance. After three years of war that forged a new unity within NATO,…
Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday entered the vital trading hub of Bukavu in the east of the country, according to the fighters and videos circulated by local residents. If confirmed, Bukavu would be the latest city to fall in a sweeping offensive that has revealed the weakness of the crumbling Congolese…
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, rejected an offer by the Trump administration to relinquish half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for U.S. support, according to five people briefed on the proposal or with direct knowledge of the talks. The unusual deal would have granted the United States…
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shocked the audience at the annual security conference in Munich in 2007 by demanding the rollback of domineering American influence and a new balance of power in Europe more suitable to Moscow. He didn’t get what he wanted — then. Nearly two decades later, during the very same conference,…
Updated Feb. 15, 2025, 4:54 a.m. ET Hamas freed three thin and pale Israeli hostages from captivity in Gaza on Saturday, prolonging a fragile cease-fire with Israel that seemed on the brink of collapse earlier this week. The Palestinian captors forced the Israelis to mount a stage in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis…
The top foreign policy official for the European Union had a blunt assessment on Friday of the Trump administration’s apparent willingness to give Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, much of what he wants in Ukraine, even before negotiations to end the three-year war begin. “It’s appeasement,” the official, Kaja Kallas, declared at the Munich Security…
After 15 months of war, Hani al-Dibs, a high-school teacher, thought his greatest wish was to see the bombardment of Gaza come to an end. But the long-awaited cease-fire has brought only bitterness and dread. Mr. al-Dibs is one of countless Gazans burdened with an agonizing duty: trying to recover the remains of loved ones…
Vice President JD Vance told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that all military and economic options were on the table if Russia did not agree to negotiate in good faith to end the war in Ukraine. “There are economic tools of leverage, there are, of course, military tools of leverage” available to the United…
President Trump on Thursday offered reassurances that Ukraine would be involved in negotiations to end the war with Russia, a day after his remarks left that prospect in doubt and alarmed officials in Kyiv and Ukraine’s European allies that they would be left out of peace talks. “Of course they would,” Mr. Trump said in…
The great collision has begun. As President Trump’s national security team arrived in Europe this week, very little about their hard-line message came as a surprise. But to the political and diplomatic leaders arriving in Munich on Friday for an annual security conference where fault lines in the Western alliance are always on display, it…