Latest news with #UNsecuritycouncil
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Death toll from Russian strikes on Kyiv rises to 26 as Ukraine calls for UN security council meeting
Update: Date: 2025-08-01T07:26:35.000Z Title: Morning opening: Death toll in Kyiv rises to 26 as Ukraine calls for UN security council meeting Content: The death toll from Thursday's Russian attack on Kyiv has risen to 26 with over 150 injured, making it one of the deadliest attacks on the capital since the start of the full-scale war in 2022. Responding to the attack, Ukraine called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council this afternoon as it seeks to unite its allies and ramp up pressure on Russia to end the war. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the meeting, scheduled for afternoon European time, will be a platform for countries to make it clear where they stand. 'Putin rejects peace efforts and wants to prolong his war. And the world has the necessary strength to stop him – by united pressure and principled position in favor of a full, immediate, and unconditional ceasefire,' he said. Andriy Yermak, the most senior aide to president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, did not mince his words reacting to the news this morning as he spoke of 'Russian murderers.' US president Donald Trump, who recently set a new deadline for Russia to end the invasion until 8 August, told journalists that it was 'disgusting what they are doing.' 'We're going to put sanctions. I don't know that sanctions bother him,' the US president said, referring to Putin. US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who currently is in Israel, will be told to visit Russia next, he added. Elsewhere, I will be keeping an eye on the latest on the EU-US trade, after Trump signed his executive order, but delayed the effects of sanctions by a week, until 7 August. You can follow market reactions on our business blog, too. I will bring you all key updates from across Europe here. It's Friday, 1 August 2025, it's Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live. Good morning.
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Britain told US that invading Iraq could cost Blair his premiership, papers reveal
The stark terms in which the US was warned that invading Iraq without a second UN security council resolution could cost Tony Blair his premiership have been revealed in newly released documents. Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, warned Condoleezza Rice, the then US national security adviser: 'The US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.' The meeting between the two took place before Blair visited the US president, George W Bush, at Camp David on 31 January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. While the US had not yet decided on a second security council resolution, Blair's objectives at Camp David were to convince the US a second resolution was 'politically essential for the UK and almost certainly legally essential as well', and to hold off from a February invasion until the end of March, according to a briefing note to Blair from Manning released by the National Archives in London. In a separate 29 January memo to Blair marked 'secret – strictly personal, very sensitive', Manning said he told Rice: 'A second resolution is a political necessity for you [Blair] domestically. Without it, you would not secure cabinet and parliamentary support for military action. She must understand that you could be forced from office if you tried. The US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.' Manning wrote: 'I said that Bush could afford to gamble. He wanted a second resolution but it was not crucial to him. He already had congressional authority to act unilaterally. This was quite different from the situation you were facing. 'Condi acknowledged this but said that there came a point in any poker game when you had to show your cards. I said that was fine for Bush. He would still be at the table if he showed his cards later. You would not.' The Americans were becoming increasingly impatient with the unwillingness of France and Russia – which both had a veto on the UN security council – to agree a resolution so long as UN inspectors were unable to find any evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the supposed justification for war. After Bush's annual State of the Union address to Congress, shortly before Blair's visit, the UK's Washington ambassador, Christopher Meyer, warned that the options for a peaceful solution had effectively run out. Meyer described Bush's message on Iraq by this point as 'messianic'. It was now 'politically impossible' for Bush to back down from war 'absent Saddam's surrender or disappearance from the scene', he wrote. Bush's State of the Union address had closed off any room for manoeuvre, Meyer informed London: 'In the high-flown prose to which Bush is drawn on these set-piece occasions, he said in effect that destroying Saddam is a crusade against evil to be undertaken by God's chosen people.' In another cable the previous month, he said of Bush: 'His view of the world is Manichean. He sees his mission as ridding it of evil-doers.' In the end, the US and UK abandoned their efforts to get agreement on a resolution, claiming the French president, Jacques Chirac, had made it clear he would never agree. In another briefing note before Camp David, the Ministry of Defence warned: 'The loosening of Saddam's grip on power may give rise to significant levels of internecine violence.' One of the key findings of the Chilcot report was that Blair had ignored warnings on what would happen in Iraq after invasion, and it rejected Blair's claim that the subsequent chaos and sectarian conflict could not have been predicted.
