The US should not have made concessions to Russia in advance of peace negotiations by ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine and accepting the country would have to forfeit some of its territory, Germany’s defence minister has said.

Boris Pistorius, arriving at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels, echoed European frustrations in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s declaration on Wednesday that he was ready to negotiate with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“In my view it would have been better to speak about a possible Nato membership for Ukraine or possible losses of territory at the negotiating table,” Pistorius said.

His comments were echoed by his French counterpart, Sébastien Lecornu, who warned against “peace through weakness” as he arrived at Nato headquarters, rather than the “peace through strength” formulation nominally favoured by Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump said he had spoken to Putin for more than an hour and the two countries would begin negotiations to try to end the Ukraine war. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, added that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to restore its pre-2014 borders and that it would not be allowed to join Nato.

The unilateral declarations provoked dismay and opposition in Europe. A group of the largest countries – the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain – said overnight they were “ready to enhance our support” for Ukraine and committed themselves to the country’s “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees,” the Weimar+ group of countries said.

On Thursday morning, Hegseth was asked by reporters whether the US was betraying Ukraine. “That is your language, not mine. Certainly not a betrayal,” he said. “There is no betrayal. There is a recognition that the whole world and the US is invested in peace, in a negotiated peace.”

Trump, he added, was “the best negotiator on the planet”.

The Kremlin said it was impressed by the positioning of Trump and Hegseth in a briefing. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, said there was “political will” on both sides to reach a negotiated end to the war.

He added: “The previous US administration held the view that everything needed to be done to keep the war going. The current administration, as far as we understand, adheres to the point of view that everything must be done to stop the war and for peace to prevail.

“We are more impressed with the position of the current administration, and we are open to dialogue.”

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was slightly more cautious than Pistorius in his immediate reaction to Trump’s announcement. “The next task is to ensure that there is no dictated peace,” he said in an interview, emphasising that the US would have to be involved in any effort to end the near three-year war.

John Healey, the UK defence secretary, said Ukraine must be “at the heart of any talks” about a ceasefire with Russia. “There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he said, adding it was “our job as defence ministers here at Nato, to put them in the best position to secure a lasting peace through strength”.

Trump spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday after his call with Putin. The Ukrainian president said afterwards: “Donald Trump informed me of what Putin had told him. We believe that America’s strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace.”

On Thursday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Nato membership remained a strategic objective for Kyiv as the cheapest way for the alliance to guarantee its own security, though it has long been opposed by Russia.

Nato operates by consensus, meaning that the objection of a single country is enough to block a new country from joining. Hegseth’s statement on Wednesday that the “US does not believe Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome” as part of a peace deal appears to amount to a veto on Kyiv membership.

About a sixth of Ukraine’s territory is occupied by Russia, including Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, and large parts of the east and south which were mostly seized after the full scale invasion in 2022.

Though Kyiv’s leaders have signalled it might be willing to negotiate over territory, until Hegseth’s remarks on Wednesday the country and its allies were formally committed to trying to restore its internationally recognised, pre-2014 borders.

Overnight, Ukraine’s air force reported that 140 Russian Shahed and decoy drones had attacked the country from five directions. It reported that 85 had been shot down and 52 decoy drones had disappeared from the radar without any negative consequences.

European powers, including Britain, France and Germany, have said they have to be part of any future negotiations on the fate of Ukraine, underscoring that only a fair accord with security guarantees would ensure lasting peace.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations,” seven European countries and the European Commission said in a joint statement after a foreign ministers meeting in Paris.

“Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security,” the statement said, adding that the European powers were looking forward to discussing the way ahead with their American allies.

The meeting took place after US President Donald Trump said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the pair were ready to immediately begin negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.

The rapid developments have worried Europe, with Putin and Trump appearing to be negotiating the future of the continent’s security over the heads of European leaders themselves. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is due to meet with dozens of Nato ministers in Brussels on Thursday, after meeting a Ukraine contact group of defence ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.

“There will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without the participation of Europeans,” French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said at the meeting of ministers from France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Ukraine and the European Commission on Wednesday.

Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and Spain’s Jose Manuel Albares Bueno both told the meeting that no decision on Ukraine could be made “without Ukraine” and called on EU countries to show unity on this question.

Albares Bueno added: “We want peace for Ukraine but we want an unjust war to end with a just peace.”

Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski meanwhile said that “continued cooperation with the US” was a topic of discussion at the meeting. “There is no better guarantee for the security of our continent than close transatlantic cooperation,” Sikorski said.

When asked if any European countries would be involved in peace talks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “I don’t have any European nations who are involved currently to read out for you.”

The Paris meeting , scheduled weeks ago, aimed at outlining the bloc’s defence strategy, discussing how to strengthen Ukraine, planning for future peace talks and discussing how to approach talks with the US administration when they meet at a security conference in Munich this weekend.

But it was derailed after Hegseth delivered the bluntest public statements from the Trump administration on its approach to the nearly three-year war between Ukraine and Russia at a meeting with Ukraine’s international backers in Brussels on Wednesday.

He said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US did not see Nato membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war. “Chasing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Hegseth’s comments were followed by a call by between Trump and Putin, after which Trump said their teams had agreed to start negotiations immediately. European powers had not been made aware of the call beforehand and were surprised by the bluntness of Hegseth’s position, diplomats said.

Having ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, Hegseth said peace would instead have to be secured by “capable European and non-European troops”, who he stressed would not come from the US.

Any British or European troops deployed in Ukraine would not be covered by part of a Nato mission or covered by the alliance’s article 5 guarantee, Hegseth added, meaning they would in effect be reliant on help from participating states.

UK defence secretary John Healey said London had heard Hegseth’s “call for European nations to step up. We are and we will.” After a bilateral meeting with Hegseth earlier in the day, he announced the UK will spend £4.5bn on military aid for Ukraine this year, the Times reported.

Earlier this week, Zelenskyy, told the Guardian that Europe was not able to offer resilient security guarantees to Kyiv without the involvement of the US. “Security guarantees without America are not real,” he said.

A multinational deterrence force based in Ukraine after a ceasefire would need to be 100,000 to 150,000 strong, Zelenskyy said, though that would be far smaller than the 600,000-plus Russian troops in occupied Ukraine.

“Europe cannot field a force like this right now,” one senior European diplomat told the Guardian. “But we cannot force the US [to commit troops]. So we must accept this and figure out what we can do.”

Another senior European diplomat called the US position outlined by Hegseth a premature surrender, asking what there would be left to negotiate. The person also said that the readiness to offer concessions from Ukraine would encourage Russia to demand more in the upcoming negotiations.

Vladimir Putin on Wednesday achieved his most significant diplomatic breakthrough yet in a three-year war that, at times, seemed to threaten his regime.

During a 90-minute call with Donald Trump, Putin felt his long-sought vision taking shape: two great powers determining Ukraine’s fate over Kyiv’s head – and that of its European allies.

“A direct call with Trump was precisely what Putin had been waiting for,” said a source in the Russian foreign policy establishment. “It is only the start of the negotiations, but Putin has won the first round,” the source added.

Despite catastrophic setbacks at the start of his invasion, record losses, and mounting economic strain, the Russian president will feel that momentum has firmly shifted in his favour, with growing hopes in Moscow that the Trump administration could help achieve Russia’s objectives in Ukraine.

“Putin remained patient and didn’t bend. Instead, he waited for the world to change around him,” the foreign policy source said, referring to Trump’s election and his administration’s radically different foreign policy outlook.

The call between the two leaders took place just hours after the US defence secretary told officials in Brussels that Ukraine would need to abandon its ambitions of joining Nato and accept territorial losses, in effect conceding to some of Russia’s demands even before negotiations began.

Viewed as a whole, the rapidly unfolding events will probably be seen in Moscow as the culmination of Putin’s months-long diplomatic overtures to Trump, during which he lauded the president’s braveness and intelligence and echoed some of his favourite narratives, including unfounded claims that the 2020 US election was stolen from Trump.

“Now, Putin’s main focus is Trump – everyone else is irrelevant,” the foreign policy source said. “His next move is to secure a closed-door meeting with Trump, where he can further press his case,” the source added, saying they believed the two leaders could soon meet for a summit in Saudi Arabia.

The mood in Moscow’s political circles was buoyant on Thursday morning. Several pro-Kremlin observers pointed to the timing of the call between the two leaders, noting that Trump only informed Volodymyr Zelenskyy afterwards, in effect imposing the terms of the conversation on the Ukrainian president.

“Zelenskyy had repeatedly urged Trump to speak with him first before engaging with Putin. Instead, Trump did the exact opposite,” gloated Sergei Markov, a popular Russian commentator.

Many also celebrated Putin’s invitation for the US president to visit Moscow, which the Kremlin later hinted was for the 9 May Victory Day parade.

The once-unthinkable image of a US leader seated beside Putin, watching Russian soldiers who fought in Ukraine march across Red Square in the country’s grandest display of power, no longer feels so far-fetched. If it came to pass, it would deal a devastating blow to the west’s three-year effort to diplomatically isolate the Russian president.

“The promise to exchange visits is a victory for Putin. Any dictatorship sees a visit from the US president as the highest form of international legitimacy, almost a magical ritual that lifts a diplomatic curse,” said Alexander Baunov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank.

Russian officials were quick to highlight Europe’s complete exclusion from the peace talks, as European leaders struggled to come to terms with being sidelined.

“Frigid spinster Europe is mad with jealousy and rage,” said the former president Russian Dmitry Medvedev. “It’s been shown its real place; its time is over.”

Summing up the day, the state TV host Evgeny Popov declared on Wednesday that Trump was in effect doing Moscow’s job by tearing the western world apart. “We wanted to chainsaw the western world into pieces, but he decided to cut through it himself,” Popov cheered.

In a tangible sign of optimism from Moscow’s business community, the Moscow exchange surged more than 6% on Thursday, while the rouble climbed to its strongest level since the summer. Shares of big Russian companies, including Gazprom and Rostelecom, jumped by more than 8%, as businesses anticipated that a potential peace deal could reverse some of the thousands of sanctions imposed on the country.

“Investors dreamed about this scenario but did not really believe it was possible,” the Cifa Broker chief analyst, Ovanes Oganisyan, told the business newspaper Kommersant.

Still, observers in and outside Moscow believe negotiations could be drawn out and fraught with uncertainty, with Russian success far from guaranteed. In its readout on Wednesday, the Kremlin struck a sober tone while maintaining a maximalist stance, with Putin saying he had “mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict”.

In Kremlin parlance, this signals that Putin is likely to push for greater territorial control in Ukraine beyond what Russia now holds, as well as demand regime change in Kyiv – conditions that even a Trump administration may struggle to accept.

Few believe Putin would ever agree to the prospect of tens of thousands of European peacekeeping troops on Russia’s border, a scenario proposed by Hegseth on Wednesday.

“The positions of the parties differ significantly and, at this moment, seem incompatible,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a prominent Russian political analyst and the founder of R Politik, a political analysis company.

“For Putin, a real solution means a Ukraine that is ‘friendly’ to Russia – deprived of military capability, which has a rewritten constitution and guarantees non-membership in Nato.”

Stanovaya said Putin was “fully prepared” for the talks to collapse and to press ahead with the fighting, confident in his battlefield superiority and bolstered by Trump’s reluctance to supply Ukraine with additional weapons. “From the Kremlin’s perspective, there is nothing the west can do that would reverse Russia’s territorial gains and prevent Ukraine’s collapse in the long run,” she said.

There were also grumblings about the phone call and the possibility of peace talks from Russia’s far-right camp, which has gained significant influence over the course of the war. “Trump will ‘allow’ Russia to take what it has conquered – but no more, of course. Meanwhile, he’ll offer Ukraine some guarantees,” said the prominent Russian ultranationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin on his Telegram channel.

“He’ll plant himself right in the middle of our Ukraine. Let me remind you, all of Ukraine is ours. All of Ukraine is Russian land,” Prilepin said.

Putin has largely embraced Russia’s fiercely pro-war faction, though he has, at times, purged those who have criticised his leadership for being too lenient in prosecuting the war.

Still, for now, optimism in Moscow prevails. “At times, many in the elites questioned whether it was wise for Putin to start the war or not settle for peace earlier,” said a well-connected businessman in Moscow. “Now, few are asking that question – his gamble is starting to pay off.”

A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker has driven a car into a trade union demonstration in Munich, injuring at least 28 people, German police have said, in a suspected attack that is expected to inflame tensions before this month’s election.

The car, a Mini Cooper, accelerated and ploughed into people at the back of a rally by the Verdi union at about 10.30am during a strike by public sector workers. Employees of daycare centres, hospitals, sanitation facilities and public swimming pools had joined the work stoppage calling for higher pay and longer holidays. More than 1,000 people were reportedly at the scene.

Among those hurt were children, and some of the victims had critical injuries. Media images showed the damaged car and several bodies lying on the ground, which was strewn with shoes and stained with blood.

At the height of a campaign for the 23 February election that has been dominated by fears around security and immigration, fuelling far-right support, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, condemned the car ramming as “terrible” and pledged a “no-tolerance” policy.

“This assailant cannot expect any leniency,” he told reporters. “He must be punished and then leave the country.”

Opposition leader Friedrich Merz said on X that as chancellor he would “impose law and order decisively”. “The security of people in Germany will be the top priority for us,” he said. “Everyone must feel safe again in our country. Something has got to change in Germany.”

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD), called the incident “awful” and countered that Merz’s party colleagues in Bavaria were to blame for a “failure of state” by not deporting the suspect. While listing the most recent attacks, she said on X: “Should this continue for ever? An about-face on migration, now!”

The Bavarian capital had already begun implementing tighter security measures before the Munich Security Conference, starting on Friday, which will be attended by top officials from around the world including the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Authorities said they did not believe the car ramming was connected to the conference.

The news website Spiegel said the suspect, identified only as Farhad N, had arrived in Germany seeking asylum in December 2016 and cited sources saying he had posted Islamist content on social media before the incident.

Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect was known to police in connection with theft and drug offences.

Police confirmed they had fired one shot while making the arrest but it was unclear whether the suspect was injured. “As reported, the secured person is the driver of the car,” police said on X. “Speculation is swirling about further people being involved. We cannot confirm that at this time.”

The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that one woman had died but authorities did not immediately comment.

The Munich mayor, Dieter Reiter, told the daily newspaper Bild: “The police chief just informed me that a vehicle drove into a group of people and unfortunately many were injured, including children. I am deeply shocked. My thoughts are with those hurt.”

Two months ago a car ramming at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg killed six people. Police arrested a Saudi doctor who had frequently expressed far-right sympathies on social media.

The Munich incident came as an Afghan man with suspected Islamist sympathies went on trial on charges of murder and attempted murder after a stabbing attack targeting a political rally last May in the western city of Mannheim. The defendant, identified by prosecutors as Sulaiman A, is accused of stabbing and seriously injuring six people, including a 29-year-old police officer who died of his injuries, during the attack on an anti-Islam demonstration.

In August, a 26-year-old Syrian asylum seeker with Islamist sympathies allegedly carried out a stabbing rampage at a festival in the western city of Solingen that left three dead and eight wounded.

Last month a 28-year-old Afghan man was arrested after a knife attack on children in a park in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, killing a two-year-old Moroccan boy and a 41-year-old German man who tried to intervene.

Scholz noted the difficulty of deporting Afghan nationals because Germany does not have diplomatic relations with the ruling Taliban. But he stressed his centre-left-led government had taken measures to ensure more suspects accused of violent crimes could be returned to the war-ravaged country.

During the election campaign, the centre-right and far right in particular have accused Scholz’s government of failing to stop immigrant crime, while Scholz has argued that the conservatives’ counterproposals would violate national and EU law.

In the aftermath of the Aschaffenburg attack, the election frontrunner, Merz of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, pressed for hardline measures to turn back irregular migrants at the border. In what was widely criticised as a breach of a post-Nazi taboo, Merz said he was willing to accept the support of the far-right AfD to get the proposals through parliament.

The anti-Muslim AfD, which is under investigation as a suspected extremist organisation, is second in opinion polls at about 21%, behind the CDU/CSU on about 30%. All the mainstream parties have ruled out including the AfD in a governing coalition.

Sandra Demmelhuber, a journalist who had been reporting on the trade union strike in Munich, described shocked witnesses at the scene. “There is a person lying in the street and a young man was taken away by police,” she posted on X. “People are sitting crying and shaking on the ground. Details are still unclear.”

Another witness told local media that the Mini struck a woman with a child. “The mother and child were lying under the car.”

Claudia Weber, of the Verdi union, described the scene as “incomprehensible”. “We are completely shocked and are afraid for our colleagues who were at the march,” she said. “We heard that the car intentionally crashed into the demonstration. We hope no one will die.”

Google’s former chief executive has warned that artificial intelligence could be used by rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Russia to “harm innocent people”.

Eric Schmidt, who held senior posts at Google from 2001 to 2017, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that those countries and terrorists could adopt and misuse the technology to develop weapons to create “a bad biological attack from some evil person”.

The tech billionaire said: “The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI – I talk about extreme risk.

“Think about North Korea, or Iran, or even Russia, who have some evil goal. This technology is fast enough for them to adopt that they could misuse it and do real harm.”

In reference to the head of the al-Qaida terrorist group who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in 2001, he said: “I’m always worried about the Osama bin Laden scenario, where you have some truly evil person who takes over some aspect of our modern life and uses it to harm innocent people.”

Schmidt agreed with the US export controls introduced by the former US president Joe Biden, which restricted the sale of the microchips that power the most advanced AI system to 18 countries to slow adversaries’ progress on AI research.

He urged government oversight on private tech companies that are developing AI models, but added that over-regulation could stifle innovation. “It’s really important that governments understand what we’re doing and keep their eye on us,” he said.

“My experience with the tech leaders is that they do have an understanding of the impact they’re having, but they might make a different values judgment than the government would make.”

Schmidt was speaking from Paris, where the two-day AI Action summit finished on Tuesday with the US and UK refusing to sign an agreement on “inclusive” AI. The declaration was signed by 57 countries, including India and China, the EU and the African Union.

The UK declined to back the joint communique because it failed to provide enough “practical clarity” or address “harder questions” about national safety.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, has said that regulation would “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off”.

Schmidt said Europe’s more restricted approach meant “that the AI revolution, which is the most important revolution in my opinion since electricity, is not going to be invented in Europe”.

Separately, Schmidt, who was head of Google when the company bought Android, which now makes the most-used mobile phone operating system in the world, said he supported initiatives to keep phones out of schools.

“The situation with children is particularly disturbing to me,” he said. “I think smartphones with a kid can be safe, they just need to be moderated … we can all agree that children should be protected from the bad of the online world.”

Schmidt has also supported proposals for a ban on social media for children under 16. He said: “Why would we run such a large, uncontrolled experiment on the most important people in the world, which is the next generation?”

Denmark’s “ghetto law”, which allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of residents have a “non-western” background, constitutes direct discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, a senior adviser to the EU’s top court has found.

Danish social housing law categorises neighbourhoods on the basis of unemployment, crime, education, income and immigrant population. Those where more than 50% of residents are from a “non-western” backgrounds are labelled a “parallel society”, formerly referred to as a “ghetto”.

If, in addition to unfavourable socioeconomic conditions, a neighbourhood has also had an immigrant population of more than 50% for the last five years, it is labelled a “transformation area”, formerly known as a “hard ghetto”.

This requires the public housing association to propose a plan to cut social housing by 40% – including by selling properties, demolition or conversion and terminating the lease of the former tenants – by 2030.

The European court of justice (ECJ) said in a statement on Thursday that Tamara Ćapeta, an advocate general, had found in a non-binding legal opinion that “the division between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ immigrants and their descendants is based on ethnic origin.”

The statement added: “She considers that, although ‘non-westerners’ are an ethnically diverse group, what unites that group is not a commonality of factors that form ‘ethnicity’ within that group, but rather the perception by the Danish legislature that this group does not possess the characteristics of the other group, the ‘westerners’.”

The ECJ follows the advice of its advocates general most of the time.

Although tenants whose leases were terminated were not selected on the basis of their non-western origin, “they nevertheless suffer direct discrimination on the basis of the ethnic criterion,” Ćapeta found, according to the statement.

She said the legislation put tenants in a vulnerable position in terms of housing that led to worse treatment than those in neighbourhoods where the majority of the population was of “western” origin.

“The ethnic criterion used by Danish legislation stigmatises the ethnic group whose structural disadvantage in their ability to integrate into Danish society was recognised, thus curtailing rather than enhancing their chances to integrate into that society,” the statement said.

The case was referred to the ECJ by Denmark’s eastern high court after tenants on the Mjølnerparken estate in Copenhagen and Schackenborgvænge estate in Slagelse challenged the legality of development plans based on Danish social housing law.

Louise Holck, the director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which was involved in the case, welcomed the ruling, which she said could have broad implications if it is agreed upon by the ECJ.

“Her interpretation of the directive ensures effective protection against discrimination based on ethnicity. If the court reaches the same conclusion as the advocate general, the Parallel Societies Act could be in violation of EU law,” she said.

“In that case, the state must correct the situation to ensure that citizens are not discriminated against and amend the law to comply with EU regulations. This case is both important and a matter of principle, as it could have implications for everyone who has been subjected to the same treatment.”

The “parallel societies” law, formerly known as the ghetto law, came into force in July 2018, but Denmark has had regulations targeting so-called “ghetto areas” since 2010.

The Danish minister of social affairs and housing, Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, said she had noted the advocate general’s proposal, but would not take action until the ECJ made a final decision, which is expected in the spring.

Denmark’s “ghetto law”, which allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas where at least half of residents have a “non-western” background, constitutes direct discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, a senior adviser to the EU’s top court has found.

Danish social housing law categorises neighbourhoods on the basis of unemployment, crime, education, income and immigrant population. Those where more than 50% of residents are from a “non-western” backgrounds are labelled a “parallel society”, formerly referred to as a “ghetto”.

If, in addition to unfavourable socioeconomic conditions, a neighbourhood has also had an immigrant population of more than 50% for the last five years, it is labelled a “transformation area”, formerly known as a “hard ghetto”.

This requires the public housing association to propose a plan to cut social housing by 40% – including by selling properties, demolition or conversion and terminating the lease of the former tenants – by 2030.

The European court of justice (ECJ) said in a statement on Thursday that Tamara Ćapeta, an advocate general, had found in a non-binding legal opinion that “the division between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ immigrants and their descendants is based on ethnic origin.”

The statement added: “She considers that, although ‘non-westerners’ are an ethnically diverse group, what unites that group is not a commonality of factors that form ‘ethnicity’ within that group, but rather the perception by the Danish legislature that this group does not possess the characteristics of the other group, the ‘westerners’.”

The ECJ follows the advice of its advocates general most of the time.

Although tenants whose leases were terminated were not selected on the basis of their non-western origin, “they nevertheless suffer direct discrimination on the basis of the ethnic criterion,” Ćapeta found, according to the statement.

She said the legislation put tenants in a vulnerable position in terms of housing that led to worse treatment than those in neighbourhoods where the majority of the population was of “western” origin.

“The ethnic criterion used by Danish legislation stigmatises the ethnic group whose structural disadvantage in their ability to integrate into Danish society was recognised, thus curtailing rather than enhancing their chances to integrate into that society,” the statement said.

The case was referred to the ECJ by Denmark’s eastern high court after tenants on the Mjølnerparken estate in Copenhagen and Schackenborgvænge estate in Slagelse challenged the legality of development plans based on Danish social housing law.

Louise Holck, the director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which was involved in the case, welcomed the ruling, which she said could have broad implications if it is agreed upon by the ECJ.

“Her interpretation of the directive ensures effective protection against discrimination based on ethnicity. If the court reaches the same conclusion as the advocate general, the Parallel Societies Act could be in violation of EU law,” she said.

“In that case, the state must correct the situation to ensure that citizens are not discriminated against and amend the law to comply with EU regulations. This case is both important and a matter of principle, as it could have implications for everyone who has been subjected to the same treatment.”

The “parallel societies” law, formerly known as the ghetto law, came into force in July 2018, but Denmark has had regulations targeting so-called “ghetto areas” since 2010.

The Danish minister of social affairs and housing, Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, said she had noted the advocate general’s proposal, but would not take action until the ECJ made a final decision, which is expected in the spring.

International health organizations have warned that Donald Trump’s push to dismantle US foreign aid and orders barring diversity, equity and inclusion are destroying programs that once provided healthcare to millions of women and girls worldwide.

Providers said a 90-day stop-work order imposed by the Department of State to “review” contracts for compliance with the new administration’s orders means many clinics, which operate on shoestring budgets, will never reopen – pausing services for everything from cervical cancer screenings to HIV treatment to the removal of intrauterine contraceptive devices.

“The whole ecosystem is crumbling,” said Dr Carole Sekimpi, a doctor in Uganda and senior director for Africa with MSI Reproductive Choices, a UK-based non-profit that provides family planning services around the world, and which expects to lose $14m in US funding.

“Ninety days later – we’re going to be rebuilding from the ground … Because of the extensive damage done to the ecosystem for reproductive health and rights.”

The pause has also sown distrust, she said, as women had scheduled healthcare only to find clinics closed: “Women and girls walked up one morning and there was no care.”

The US provides $8.2bn each year for foreign humanitarian aid, about 1% of total US spending. That money supports programs that touch the lives of tens of millions of people globally, particularly in countries with weak health systems or which are strategically important, such as Sudan, Uganda and Ukraine.

For nearly a decade, Congress has appropriated $607.5m in foreign aid for family planning, funding that experts estimate would have provided modern contraceptives to 47 million women and girls.

However, when Trump entered office, he ordered all US foreign aid frozen for 90 days as contracts are “reviewed” and ordered a work stoppage on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, often called DEI.

Although the state department later issued waivers and said “life-saving” humanitarian aid was not subject to the pause, staffing reductions and confusion caused by the president’s orders mean that there have been significant delays even for such basic programs as food assistance. The USAid inspector general’s office identified more than $489m in food aid at risk of spoiling as it sat at ports and warehouses around the world.

The inspector general responsible for the report was fired the day after its release by the Trump administration. Trump fired 17 other inspectors general after he took office. Inspectors general are legally required to be given 30 days’ advance notice and a detailed list of reasons for their firing.

“Can you imagine if you are a woman seeking help, and the clinic is shut?” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of the Global Health Council. “You can’t get treatment, you can’t get care, because America has decided on a whim that you’re not worthy. That’s unfathomable.”

The pause in foreign aid funding and many of Trump’s executive orders are now part of court cases seeking to stop the actions – part of what legal scholars are calling a “constitutional crisis” in the US, as the president dismantles programs established and funded by Congress – the branch of government with the “power of the purse”.

As those issues move through courts, funding orders are sowing “chaos” for programs around the world, including for international sexual and reproductive health workers whose work is necessarily tailored to women, girls and sexual minorities.

“We are really in a fight for our lives – for everybody’s life,” said Dunn-Georgiou. “We have got to do everything we can to get this foreign aid freeze declared unconstitutional, to get everything we can salvage from USAid re-employed, to get a major campaign to counteract the misinformation coming from the administration, because people are not getting services. People are getting sick and people are dying.”

Waivers have failed to effectively restart programs because of the long and, at times, impossible process of translating a waiver into money that can be used to support a program, Dunn-Georgiou added.

“If you hear from the US government, ‘Well, there is a waiver, we don’t understand what the problem is,’ that is a lie,” said Dunn-Georgiou.

Due to the Trump administration’s stop-work order on foreign aid, the Guttmacher Institute estimates 130,390 women each day will be denied access to such contraception, with 11.7 million women denied after the 90-day pause. That could result in as many as 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 8,340 maternal deaths.

That number is based on the assumption that after the 90-day pause, programs will resume. In a press call on Wednesday, leaders of international programs said the long pause means the program might return in a form wholly unrecognizable.

“If it returns it will probably be abstinence and natural methods which we know will not address the issues,” said Sekimpi.

“Since the suspension of USAid and USAid programs, we have witnessed unprecedented chaos … The impact is on a scale not anticipated.”

Elon Musk said on Thursday that the US should “delete entire agencies” from the federal government as a part of his extraordinary strategy under the Trump administration to make huge cost cuts with the stated goal of boosting efficiency.

Musk made the latest suggestion on a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in response to a question about what changes he planned to execute under Donald Trump’s direction.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind,” said Musk, adding: “If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn’t stop weeds from ever going back, but it makes it harder.”

Musk’s appearance at the summit comes as his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has implemented widespread cuts across the federal government, firing people and demanding resignations and layoffs.

Since 20 January, when Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president, Musk and the controversial agency have swiftly gutted several US agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAid). The agency has carried out humanitarian and development projects abroad to save lives and also to exert “soft power”, since the agency was created by the Kennedy administration.

On Tuesday, Musk slashed nearly $1bn in US Department of Education contracts, in effect shutting down an independent research arm meant to gather data on student achievement.

Federal employees are also preparing for large-scale layoffs as Trump and Musk promise to reduce workforces.

So far, Musk has rolled out a deferred resignation plan, the “Fork in the Road” program, under which employees who agreed to stop working soon would be paid through 30 September, although there is uncertainty about the validity of the payment offer.

After several legal challenges, a US district judge in Boston, George O’Toole Jr, ruled on Wednesday that the buyout offers could proceed. The program was previously halted in advance of its 6 February deadline after unions representing employees sued. But O’Toole determined that the unions did not have legal standing to challenge the resignation offers. A new deadline for staff to sign up is awaited, amid reports that not as many are signing up as Musk and Trump want, risking more compulsory layoffs.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, celebrated O’Toole’s ruling, telling the Associated Press: “This goes to show that ‘lawfare’ will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.”

Such a statement highlights the battle between the executive branch and the co-equal judicial branch, with the White House pushing back against judges and uncertainty about its willingness to comply with rulings, even up to the US supreme court, in what many experts say is precipitating a constitutional crisis.

Meanwhile, Everett Kelley, head of the American Federation of Government Employees union, told Reuters on Wednesday: “Today’s ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it’s not the end of that fight.”

Approximately 75,000 federal workers, about 3.75% of federal employees, have accepted a resignation offer so far, Semafor reported. That figure is below the 5-10% of workers that the White House projected would take the buyout deals.

Amid the federal shakeup, Trump said on Wednesday that he wants to immediately close the Department of Education.

Linda McMahon, a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive and Trump’s pick for education secretary, will face a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday in which lawmakers will probably ask how she plans to cut the entire department.

Send us a tip
If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761.

A plan for Russia to establish its first naval base in Africa will go ahead, Sudan’s foreign minister has confirmed, after years of delays over the Red Sea military port.

If the agreement is implemented, Russia would join the US and China in the region; they have bases to the south in Djibouti.

The announcement came during a visit by the foreign minister, Ali Youssef Ahmed al-Sharif, to Moscow where he met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. After their meeting, Sharif said the two countries were in “complete agreement” on establishing a Russian base “and there are no obstacles”.

The Red Sea is one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, connecting the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean. About 12% of global trade passes through it.

Sudan first floated the idea of allowing Russia to have a naval facility on its coast in 2017 during a trip to Sochi by Omar al-Bashir, the then president, who was ousted in a 2019 coup. A deal was eventually signed in 2020 that reportedly permitted Russia to keep up to four navy ships, including nuclear-powered ones, in Sudan for a period of 25 years.

At the time, a draft agreement said the bases were for logistical purposes and were “defensive and not aimed against other countries”.

After the meeting with Lavrov, Sharif said a new deal was not required as “there was a deal signed [in 2020] and there is no disagreement”, adding that it only had to be ratified by both sides.

Sudan’s military and civilian leaders dragged their feet on moving ahead with the deal due to lingering differences over its terms. The civil war that started in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces further complicated relations between Russia and Sudan, as the Russian-backed Wagner group threw its weight behind the RSF while the Kremlin appeared to back the Sudanese army.

“Russia was playing both sides,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank and the author of a book on Moscow’s engagements with Africa. Since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary group’s leader, the Kremlin had “incrementally” deepened ties with the Sudanese army, Ramani added.

Last April, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, visited Sudan and pledged “uncapped” support for its army. Russia has also backed Sudan at the UN security council, where it vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons, a move the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, called a disgrace.

Sudan’s army has won a string of battles against the RSF in recent months and is increasingly confident of a decisive victory over the paramilitary group, whose leaders the US has accused of genocide. In January the US imposed sanctions on Sudan’s army leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, for “choosing war over good-faith negotiation”.

Aid organisations have said Sudan is the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with the largest internally displaced population and fears that famine has broken out in parts of the country.

The announcement comes weeks after Moscow’s ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad, was overthrown in an armed rebellion in Syria, casting doubt on the future of Russia’s Tartus naval base in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ministers have declined to restate their election pledge to ban the importation of foie gras in response to claims that a proposed “reset” with the EU will make it impossible.

Negotiations with Brussels over a veterinary agreement to reduce the need for border checks on agricultural products are due to start in May with the aim of boosting economic growth.

Animal rights groups said they were concerned that such a deal, involving the mutual recognition of standards, would prevent the UK government from banning the importation of foie gras from suppliers in France and elsewhere.

Before the election the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said Labour would “ban the commercial import of foie gras, where ducks and geese are aggressively force-fed”.

Foie gras is made by a process known as gavage, in which grain is poured into a funnel that has been forced down a bird’s neck. The process swells the animal’s liver to many times its normal size.

Asked whether the government was still committed to a ban on importing foie gras in light of a potential veterinary agreement with the EU, a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We won’t be commenting on this one.”

Abigail Penny, the executive director of Animal Equality UK, said: “Every year, millions of terrified ducks and geese endure unbearable suffering for foie gras, force-fed until their livers swell to the size of a small football.

“Steve Reed MP has personally condemned this cruelty, promising an end to UK imports of this abhorrent product, yet progress has been disappointingly slow.

“Any action that risks or restricts an outright ban on foie gras imports would fly in the face of the Labour party’s electoral promise and insult the animal-loving people across the UK. We expect this commitment to be upheld.”

Mandy Carter, the co-executive director of Animal Policy International, a charity focused on trade and animal welfare policy, said a U-turn by the government would be a “betrayal”.

She said: “Labour has already pledged to ban foie gras imports – a promise that could be impossible to keep under a strict EU veterinary agreement. Without specific protections in the agreement, we risk undoing decades of progress on animal welfare.

“Foie gras imports betray British values of compassion. It’s simple – we should not be importing products that don’t meet UK values or our production standards.”

Production of foie gras has been banned in the UK since 2006, but about 180 tonnes of the delicacy are imported from Europe each year.

The Conservative government had planned to use its “Brexit freedoms” to bring an end to the trade. An outright ban had been impossible under EU single-market rules.

The proposal was shelved during the brief premiership of Liz Truss in the face of opposition from cabinet ministers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Sam Lowe, a leading European trade expert at the Flint Global consultancy, said he was never convinced the government would follow through on its proposed ban.

He said any prohibition today would probably face an objection from France at the World Trade Organization, and a veterinary agreement would complicate matters.

“I think it would probably be an issue for a veterinary agreement in that while you could obviously negotiate a carve-out, the French would probably kick off. But I am not convinced the government would ban it anyway.”