Five Western countries announced on Tuesday that they would impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, a remarkable rebuke of Israel’s leadership and a significant escalation of Western pressure on Israel over settler violence in the West Bank and the conduct of the war in Gaza. Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Norway jointly…
Britain on Thursday lifted sanctions that had been imposed on several Syrian government agencies during the rule of the now-deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, in the latest sign of Western engagement with the country’s new leaders. In a notice updating its list of those sanctioned, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office named a dozen organizations…
China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese…
President Trump spared Russia from the tariffs he had imposed on 180 other nations in a bid to reshape global trade. But that did not exempt the country from the ensuing economic havoc. The price of oil, the lifeline of Russia’s economy and war machine, has fallen nearly 15 percent since Mr. Trump announced the…
The Ukrainian Navy patrol boat zipped across the Black Sea, its double-barreled, 25-millimeter machine gun locked on the horizon. The enemy, Russia, was nowhere in sight, yet ever-present. In the command room, Captain Mykhailo and his crew scanned screens showing color-coded zones marking Russian mine-laden waters and red arrows tracking drones prowling the area. The…
The U.S. fired a new round of sanctions at China on Monday, targeting six high-level Chinese and Hong Kong officials over what it described as acts of transnational repression for their crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and on U.S. soil. The move was the first significant step by the new Trump administration to…
One of the biggest corporate donors to the populist Reform U.K. party has sold almost $2 million worth of transmitters, cockpit equipment, antennas and other sensitive technology to a major supplier of Moscow’s blacklisted state weapons agency, documents show. From 2023 to 2024, the company, part of the British aerospace manufacturer H.R. Smith Group, shipped…
Ukraine thought it had a deal in place to suspend the fighting in the Black Sea immediately. Russia said economic sanctions would need be lifted first. And the United States didn’t address the question of timing at all, merely repeating President Trump’s broad demand that the killing stop. The conflicting statements released this week after…
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea in a U.S.-brokered deal, but it remains unclear whether the agreement can come into force soon — if at all. Russia had a major caveat: it would abide by the deal only after various restrictions were removed from its agricultural exports. The penalties…
The White House said Tuesday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to hash out the details for halting strikes on energy facilities. It would be the first significant step toward the full cease-fire the Trump Administration had been pushing, but it still would fall short of that…