Trump wants deal to end Russia's war in Ukraine by Aug. 8, US tells UN
'Both Russia and Ukraine must negotiate a ceasefire and durable peace. It is time to make a deal. President Trump has made clear this must be done by August 8. The United States is prepared to implement additional measures to secure peace,' senior U.S. diplomat John Kelley told the 15-member council.
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The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Poetry pulled me out of the abyss': keeping culture alive in Kharkiv
The city of Kharkiv, just 18 miles from the Russian border, is a paradoxical mix of tended-to and broken. Public sculptures are wrapped and coddled in sandbags to protect them from missiles. Flowerbeds in parks are punctiliously maintained. The life of the streets is several notches quieter than you would expect from a European country's second city – and yet, bookshops, coffee shops and restaurants are open and doing a steady business. People browsing the books at Pochaina market But the signs of Russia's unrelenting attacks on this frontline city are omnipresent. On the roads are rows of rusted lines of the spiky metal tank obstacles known as 'hedgehogs'. The magnificent 1920s Derzhprom building, a constructivist masterpiece and the architectural pride of the city, is now badly battered. Across the city, windows, blown out from buildings by nightly explosions, have been replaced by sheets of chipboard. One panel in the city centre has been pasted over with a paper cutout of two enfolding arms and the words, 'I love you, beloved Kharkiv.' Cultural life clings on. But it has largely burrowed below ground: the basements of theatres are now their main stages; bookshops' event venues are subterranean. One Kharkiv visual artist, Kostiantyn Zorkin, has created an apt metaphor for the atmosphere of this underground world. A series of his works imagines wartime Kharkiv as a ship alone in stormy seas, its inhabitants huddled, in relative safety, in the vessel's hold. The city's population now consists of those who have moved here from places even more dangerous; and those who have stayed in their own city either because they must, or from a refusal to let Kharkiv's urban life die. Such resolve to stay involves a having made a personal accommodation with the proximity of death. Air defences in Kharkiv are few, and Russia is near. By the time the air-raid alarm sounds, often the missiles are already falling. Under these circumstances, something as intimate and emotionally charged as a poetry festival – such as the recent two-day event in a below-ground venue in the city centre – takes on a significance and intensity unimaginable in peacetime. When Kharkiv's most celebrated poet, novelist and musician Serhii Zhadan performs his own poems, some rapt audience members mouth along, clearly knowing the verses by heart. 'There are more than a million people in Kharkiv,' says Zhadan, now serving with the local Khartiia brigade, between readings. 'They have cultural needs. The festival is important from a psychological point of view: they see that they are not alone, that they have not been abandoned, that there are many people around them who share their values, are on the same wavelength.' Poet Yuliia Paievska on stage at the festival The festival, organised by publisher Meridian Czernowitz, is the first of its kind in Kharkiv, though the publishing house has conducted events in southern frontline cities such as Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson since 2023. 'People from frontline cities can go to a shelter and feel safe and listen to poetry – and while they are doing that, they are not sitting at home listening to drones or reading Facebook,' says organiser Evgenia Lopata. 'Being here means being part of a community that is supporting each other,' she says. It is partly a case of people connecting to fellow Ukrainian speakers in a city that for years has been mainly Russophone, Lopata adds. Though many inhabitants, particularly in the city's creative community, have shifted to Ukrainian since Russia launched its invasion in 2022. 'People are searching for Ukrainian identity, a lot of people took a big decision to change language to Ukrainian, and people want Ukrainian literature to read,' says Lopata. 'We print all our books in Kharkiv,' she adds, 'and we can produce our books only because the people employed at the printworks are still working. The least we can do is come here and do readings.' The sizeable printing industry in Kharkiv is precarious, however: in May last year, several S300 bombs badly damaged the city's Factor Druk printworks and killed seven people. The first poet to read at the Kharkiv poetry festival is Yuliia Paievska, a celebrated combat medic with the nom de guerre 'Taira'. She was captured in March 2022 while treating a civilian in Mariupol, and held in captivity in Russia for several months. She endured appalling conditions and torture until her release in June 2022. Paievska started writing poems in captivity, she says, by taking a tiny piece of plaster and scratching words into the cell wall – a forbidden act. 'It pulled me out of the abyss,' she says. Afterwards, she could not remember those fragments with any clarity, only the feelings that had created them. But after her release she began writing poems in earnest. 'It was a way of remaining human, of preserving your mind,' she says of those wall-scratchings after her reading. 'I wrote in order to remember who I was … Everything in the Russian penitentiary system is aimed at making you sure that you cannot control anything.' All she could control, she says, were 'my breathing and poem-making'. It is life as a civilian that celebrated film-maker and poet Iryna Tsilyk describes as she takes to the stage, reading, among other poems, My Day, an account of the way that contradictory experiences – sheltering from an air attack, making breakfast for a child, weeping in the shower, choosing wine in the supermarket – are uncomfortably compressed together in wartime Kyiv. She speaks too of a mounting preoccupation in Ukraine: how those from different parts of society, coping with widely differing experiences of war and trauma, are divided by mutual incomprehension. She tells the audience of her own experience, when her husband, novelist Artem Chekh, returned home from the frontline in 2016 (he is now serving in Kyiv, after a stint in the battle for Bakhmut in 2023). 'It was a date you've been waiting for for six months, and a stranger arrives with sunken shoulders and a glassy stare, because he had spent 10 months in the trenches,' she tells the audience. 'You have no idea how you can be together, how to talk, and how to rebuild a shared space of intimacy. I think that many couples are experiencing this and some, unfortunately, do not survive.' Many audience members – most of them in their 20s and 30s – stay for the entire programme of conversations and readings that lasts from lunchtime through to 8.30pm. One of the audience, IT worker Olena Dolya, has a fatalistic approach to remaining in the city: 'My windows and balcony are intact,' she says. 'And I'm more comfortable at home than anywhere else.' She takes regular trips to Kyiv to experience a fuller cultural life: 'I need it and I miss it.' She is reading now more than she has since childhood – 'it's one of my ways of staying sane, and it calms me', she says. 'It's very important to have culture during war,' says copywriter Arsenii Vasyliev, also in the audience. 'It shows you are human.' According to his girlfriend, ex-librarian Sofia Kyshkovarova, 'The festival is a sign that Kharkiv is alive.' According to Zhadan: 'War is a state of maximum abnormality, maximum disintegration. It seems to me that culture, above all else, is capable of somehow conveying these things, of somehow articulating them. 'In 50 or 100 years, if humanity survives, if books survive, then we will learn about this war primarily through literature.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Victoria police criticised for Gaza protest tactics while thousands marched ‘freely' in Sydney
An organiser of a pro-Palestine protest in Melbourne's CBD says demonstrators were left 'traumatised and confused' after police blocked their path at King Street Bridge – while thousands in New South Wales were able to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Tasnim Sammak from Free Palestine Coalition Naarm told Guardian Australia police did not inform protest organisers they were going to block the bridge before they arrived on Sunday afternoon. Police had previously urged protesters to change their plans, claiming that blocking King Street Bridge – a major thoroughfare into Melbourne's CBD – could delay emergency services and put lives at risk. Sammak estimated about 25,000 people protesting against the ongoing starvation in Gaza and demanding a ceasefire marched from the State Library of Victoria through the city to the bridge and were 'shocked' to be met by a 'heavy police presence'. 'It was a huge display of force by Victoria police against civilians and against members of the public who have been protesting for over 90 weeks in Melbourne,' Sammak said. Images showed police in riot gear behind barricades on King Street Bridge, backed by a row of mounted officers and riot squad vans. Sammak said protesters initially sat down at the bridge crossing, with footage showing fellow organiser Mohammad Sharab urging the crowd to remain calm. 'We are sitting here for Palestine … peacefully,' Sharab said. 'We have women, children, vulnerable people.' Jordan van den Lamb, a Victorian Socialists candidate known online as PurplePingers, attended the protest. He said he was 'shocked' to turn on to King Street and see the bridge closed and police 'kitted out in riot gear, shields, horses, armoured vehicles, the lot'. 'I think they assumed that if they shut down the bridge, the protest would be less visible but really it's drawn more attention to the protest,' van den Lamb said. 'It would have just been done in half an hour if they hadn't closed the bridge. It's a bit stupid of them, really.' Sign up: AU Breaking News email He said police mostly stood silently behind their shields, with the main protest dispersing around 3pm as most attenders turned back towards the State Library. A 'small group' wearing masks and goggles stayed, van den Lamb said. Footage shows the group stopped traffic, burnt an Australian flag and spray-painted 'Abolish Australia' on to Spencer Street. In a statement, police said about 3,000 protesters gathered at the State Library on Sunday and 'despite repeated requests from police, they marched to King Street'. 'As a result of this, Victoria police closed the King Street Bridge and diversions were put in place,' the statement said. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion They confirmed there were no arrests but they were following up a report that an egg was thrown at a person during the protest. Police did not answer specific questions about how many officers were deployed or the decision-making behind blocking the bridge, citing operational reasons. They said there had been no reports made to them of disruption to emergency services. Sammak said protesters were left 'feeling very traumatised and confused' by the police response, suggesting it was made at the 'the encouragement' of the premier, Jacinta Allan. 'The Sydney Harbour Bridge was facilitated quite freely and easily, and there was a positive atmosphere. So why in Melbourne did we have to face riot cops?' Sammak said. On Saturday, Allan had warned any protesters disrupting emergency services 'will be dealt with swiftly'. She defended her comments on Monday, telling ABC Radio Melbourne she had been focused on 'ensuring that safety wasn't compromised'. Allan said the protest was peaceful and backed the police response. She also said there was 'a small group of extremists behaving in an extreme way'. David Mejia-Canales, senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said there had also been a heavy-handed response to Sydney's protest. On Saturday, NSW police had sought an order to prohibit the protest going ahead but it was rejected by the supreme court. 'In NSW and Victoria we are seeing how anti-protest laws from the Minns and Allan governments are emboldening heavy handed policing and the repressive treatment of protesters and attempts to shut down protests,' Mejia-Canales said. 'Governments and police have a legal obligation to protect protesters, not punish or hinder people who are peacefully demonstrating and exercising their human right to demand justice.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Is Trump building a political dynasty?
America has had its fair share of political dynasties – the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Kennedys – but has Donald Trump been quietly moulding his own family to become a political force long after he leaves office? Who from within the family fold could be a successor to the president? Or does Trump simply see the presidency as an opportunity to enrich himself and promote the Trump family brand? In this episode, reporter Rosie Gray paints a picture of Don Jr taking over from his father in politics. Dan Adler introduces us to the younger members of the Trump family, and why, in particular, the ever-silent Barron excites the Maga base so much. And Eric Cortellessa explains why Trump might not envisage a blood relative taking over from him at all – it could be a successful in-law. Archive: ABC News, Bloomberg News, Forbes, Fox News, Kai Trump YouTube, Newsweek, PBS Newshour, Theo Von
