Emmanuel Macron will press ahead with a Paris summit of European defence powers to try to retake the initiative and demand the US ends its lockout of Europe from talks on Ukraine’s future.

With the US and Russia due to send high-powered delegations for talks in Riyadh this week – the first such meetings in two years – there are fears in Europe that Russia will relaunch its plan for imposed Ukrainian neutrality and a joint US-Russia carve-up with agreed spheres of influence.

Ukraine and many of its closest European allies believe Vladimir Putin wants to make a recasting of the postwar order his precondition for a ceasefire.

The Paris meeting will also discuss what defence capabilities Europe could provide to give Ukraine credible security guarantees, including a plan for Ukraine to be given automatic Nato membership in the event of a clear ceasefire breach by Russia.

It will be held under the “Weimar+” format, which includes France, Germany and Poland, plus the UK, Italy, Spain and Denmark.

An offer of Nato membership conditional on a Russian ceasefire breach, probably requiring the US to remain a backstop guarantor for Ukraine, has been promoted by some US senators and now has the backing of senior European leaders, including Alexander Stubb, the Finnish president.

Stubb led the warnings about Russia’s ambitions, saying there was no way the door should be opened for a Russian fantasy about spheres of influence. In any talks Ukraine had to be guaranteed “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he said.

Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy on Ukraine, has briefed European leaders in Munich on the US negotiating strategy, which the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, described as unorthodox.

The US will be represented in Riyadh by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the national security adviser, Mike Waltz; and the special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.

In a call on Saturday setting up the talks with the US, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, agreed the aim was to restore “mutually respectful interstate dialogue” in line with the tone set by the presidents.

The aim was also to remove “the unilateral barriers to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation inherited from the previous administration”. The US has been pressing for the lifting of some sanctions as a goodwill gesture.

Macron has said he is not shocked or surprised by the speed with which Trump is acting to drive a ceasefire bargain, but officials fear Russia is seeking not only Ukraine’s neutrality through capping the size of its army and the ousting of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but also a spheres of influence agreement akin to the Yalta agreement signed over the heads of many nations in 1945 by the US, Britain and the Soviet Union.

That would put some western countries within “a sphere of coercion in which nations lives in fear”, one official said.

Ukraine has not been invited to the talks in Riyadh, but Kellogg has insisted Kyiv will be involved with the US acting as mediator, and Europe consulted. He claimed previous Ukraine peace deals foundered due to the large negotiating table.

Kellogg suggested tougher sanctions including on the Russian shadow fleet could be imposed if Russia rejected a durable settlement that protected Ukrainian sovereignty. He said a breach of the settlement terms would require serious agreed consequences.

The Paris summit, due to be attended by Keir Starmer, will also need to respond to a request by the US to spell out whether leaders are prepared to commit troops to a stabilisation force in the event of a ceasefire.

European leaders are divided in their response to Trump’s initiatives, with some predicting the opening of a fundamental rupture between Washington and Europe, and others arguing that if Europe can fulfil the US demand to improve its security offer then the transatlantic relationship can be repaired and Europe will find a place at the table on the future of Ukraine.

The new EU foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, convened an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Munich on Sunday morning and said initiatives would be announced soon. The EU has announced plans to relax EU fiscal debt rules to allow for more defence spending, and Kallas has already warned against premature concessions to Russia on issues such as Ukraine’s Nato membership.

The phrasing of a call to arms issued to Europe by Zelenskyy in Munich on Saturday was regarded as unhelpful because he couched it in terms of a unified European army, anathema to many voters, but Macron has long argued that a distinctive European force is required. He was also the first nearly a year ago to suggest European forces enter Ukraine on an initial training mission.

Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said: “If the US wants us to step up in defence, it should have a national component, a Nato component, but I also believe a European EU component, EU subsidies for the defence industry to build up our capacity to produce, but also an EU force worthy of its name.”

He reiterated that having Polish troops on the ground in Ukraine was “not a consideration, because Poland’s duty to Nato is to protect the eastern flank, ie its own territory.”

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “Our assessment is that Putin has shown no desire to negotiate save for Ukraine to capitulate, which is nothing that we can tolerate and nor can our American friends.”

Lammy said an enduring peace plan was needed, adding that previous truces such as Minsk agreements did not work because Russia breached the terms set out by the OSCE 20 times. “Something has got to be in place this time that works and that is why we think an irreversible pathway to Nato is important to keep on the table,” he said.

Zelenskyy has been adamant. “Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement. And the same rule should apply to all of Europe,” the Ukrainian president said.

“No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine. No decisions about Europe without Europe. Europe must have a seat at the table when decisions about Europe are being made. Anything else is zero. If we’re left out of negotiations about our own future then we all lose.”

In a development that is worrying Ukraine, the US is applying pressure on it to hold elections this year. Kellogg said: “Most democratic countries hold elections in their wartime. I think it’s important that they do so. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person who could run.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday predicted Russia would “wage war against Nato” if the US stepped back from its support of Ukraine – and that he had seen intelligence suggesting that the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, was building up troops for a possible military invasion of another European country.

The Ukrainian president made the claim on the NBC show Meet the Press in a wide-ranging interview ahead of an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine – and peace talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.

“It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I do not know when he prepares it,” Zelenskyy said. “But it will happen. And at that moment, knowing that he did not succeed in occupying us, we do not know where he will go.”

Zelenskyy added that he believed Putin’s next targets could be Poland and Lithuania – which were occupied during the second world war by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – “because we believe that [Russian president] Putin will wage war against Nato,” the international military alliance formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Zelenskyy said he had viewed documents indicating that Putin was “preparing to train 150,000 people” in Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow – and that he had shared that intelligence with allies.

The Russian leader, Zelenskyy said, wanted to “show it for the world that it is just training” and would claim “that these are exercises that are always ongoing” in Belarus.

“But it’s not truth,” Zelenskyy said. “From such point, he began the occupation [of Ukraine] three years ago. Full-scale war he began from some symbolic trainings. The missiles the first night flew from Belarus, and the invasion came from Belarus.”

Zelenskyy insisted he still had trust in Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate with Russia after beginning his second US presidency in January. But Zelenskyy said he would not accept any peace agreement that excluded Ukraine from the negotiating table. He also said that some of the “messages” coming from the US in recent days, such as Vice-President JD Vance’s speech in Munich denouncing European leaders, and Trump’s comment that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”, were “a disappointment”.

In a recent exclusive interview with the Guardian, Zelenskyy stressed that Europe could not guarantee Ukraine’s security without US help – and he returned to the theme in his Meet the Press interview.

“There is no leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us about us,” he said, speaking in English.

“Of course, the US can have a lot of decisions, economical partnerships, etc. We’re not happy with it, but they can have [them] with [the] Russians. But not about this war without us.

“There are messages, which, you know, make disappointment for a lot of leaders of Europe, because they also feel sometimes that they are out of decisions.

“They have to be in unity with the US otherwise, not only [can the] US lose Europe as a strategic partner, Europe also can lose the US.”

His comments mirrored the alarm of European leaders at the US’s backpedalling over support for Ukraine, and Trump’s cozying up to Putin in a recent phone call, which many have portrayed as a capitulation.

Ahead of Vance’s divisive speech at the Munich Security Conference, European powers including Britain, France and Germany said there could be no lasting peace in Ukraine without their participation in peace talks.

After it, some, including the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, took Vance to task for his comments questioning the future of the decades-old US-European alliance. Scholz also accused the US of “unacceptable interference” in its upcoming election after praise from Vance and the billionaire businessman Elon Musk, Trump’s “special government employee”, for the far-right nationalist party AfD.

Zelenskyy, who in Munich on Saturday called for the formation of an armed forces of Europe, told NBC that any weakening of US support for Europe or Nato would open the door to Putin’s plans for a territory grab.

“What is he waiting for? For a weakening of Nato by, for instance, policy of the US, that the US will think to take its military from Europe,” he said.

“Yes, Putin thinks of that. But I will believe that the US will not take its forces, its contingents from Europe, because that will severely weaken Nato and the European continent. Putin definitely counts on that, and the fact that we receive information that he will think of the invasion against former Soviet republics.

“The risk that Russia will occupy Europe is 100%, not all Europe, they will begin [with] those countries who are our friends, small countries who’ve been in the USSR, in the Soviet Union. Forgive me, but today these are Nato countries.”

Democracy around the globe is under threat from the retreat of Donald Trump’s US into isolationism and its likely replacement by China on the world stage, John Major has said.

The former UK prime minister, who rarely offers direct opinion on contemporary politics, used an interview with BBC Radio 4 to say Trump’s administration was unlike anything he had seen before – and to warn that Washington may live to regret ceding global leadership to a more autocratic power.

Major, who was in office from 1990 to 1997, also condemned JD Vance, the US vice-president, as hypocritical and “not statesmanlike” for lecturing Europe on free speech while “cuddling” Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that democracy is threatened. It’s been in modest decline for the last 18 years. There’s an ugly nationalism growing mostly from the intolerant right,” Major said.

“At this particular time the big nations – America, China, Russia – are beginning to act unilaterally, where once they would have consulted. And that is a concern, because it does presage the prospect of very great and rather unpleasant changes.”

Asked about Trump’s administration, Major called it “a form of presidency I haven’t previously seen”, and he warned against the US president – who appears to be trying to reach an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by consulting more closely with the Russian president than Europe – avoiding conceding too much to Russia.

“Consider what happens if Russia can claim a win,” Major said. “China is going to notice that, and so will the world, and so will every tin-pot dictator around the world. If America is not to stand behind its allies in the way the world has previously seen, then we are moving into a wholly different and, in my view, rather more dangerous world.”

Major said he feared the US “may now be turning her back on the international responsibilities she has previously taken, and if she does so there is no other nation state that can replace them, other than China”.

He added: “That is not something I think the west would certainly wish to see. And so if that happens, the world, including America, may regret what subsequently follows.”

Major was scathing about Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference on Friday, in which he said the erosion of free speech in Europe was more of a threat to the continent than Russia or China.

“That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world,” Major said. “It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off a very dangerous signal.

“It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr Putin. In Mr Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, at a statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.”

Asked why he had decided to speak out, Major said: “I rather take the view that former prime ministers by and large should keep out of the way and leave it to the current generation, but sometimes there are things that need to be said that perhaps can’t be said so easily by the present government or by politicians in office that nonetheless need to be said.”

After three years of Russia’s attempt to occupy and annex Ukraine, the country continues to put up a fierce resistance.

Russia is suffering more than 1,500 casualties a day and only slowly taking ground. But the Ukrainian army is also being put under immense pressure.

As the opening moves are made towards a negotiated solution, it is vital that military support is maintained. If Vladimir Putin believes he can reach his objectives by force, he will talk, but won’t stop fighting.

The Russian approach today has three core components: infantry, glide bombs, and first-person-view (FPV) drones. Russian infantry advance continuously in small groups to threaten Ukrainian positions. The Ukrainians focus on trying to kill their attackers over the 10km or so in front of their positions to minimise the size of the Russian units that they must fight directly.

The Russians have struggled to take ground, largely because of the continued decline in the quality of their infantry driven by a high rate of attrition over the course of 2024. But this tactic puts the Ukrainian troops in the crosshairs of Russia’s other capabilities.

The most lethal tool in Russia’s arsenal today is the glide bomb. The Russians use precision guided glide bombs, launched from Russian aircraft between 40-70km behind the frontline, with enough explosive power to collapse trenches or level buildings. To avoid being killed in their trenches the Ukrainians must spread out, so that a squad of eight soldiers is tasked with defending between 70-200m of ground. With so few defenders at any point along the front, it becomes hard for soldiers on the positions to rest, and they must be resupplied.

Resupply is threatened by Russia’s drones and artillery. Russia has caught up with Ukraine in using FPV drones, and innovated with the use of fibre-optic-wire-guided FPVs that are impervious to electronic warfare, to hunt Ukrainian troops and vehicles behind the frontline, where Ukraine now suffers about 50% of its casualties. Combined with Russian artillery, this makes it exceedingly dangerous to resupply the fighting positions or evacuate the wounded.Ukrainian medics are having to talk soldiers through procedures over the radio, because it is too dangerous to try and reach the trenches.

This combination of systems is slowly forcing Ukraine back. Even though Russia is taking more casualties it has the mass to continue with this attritional exchange for another year. The Russian force attacking Ukraine now comprises 580,000 troops. The Russians contracted 400,000 soldiers in 2024, whereas the Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding 1,200km of front with fewer than 200,000 troops. On this basis, Putin believes he can simply fight for longer than Ukraine can sustain the effort.

Although at present Russia has the military advantage, the margin of that advantage is thin. The Russian military is massively underperforming, largely because of the poor quality of its infantry and a lack of lower-level command and control. While Russia is regularly breaching the Ukrainian defence lines, it is failing to exploit those breaches. The current paths to a military victory for Russia are that Ukraine finds itself with so few troops that it cannot properly defend the entire front, allowing Russia to simply bypass Ukrainian units, or Ukraine’s partners stop supplying the country with enough arms to keep fighting. Closing down these Russian paths to victory require measures by Kyiv and its partners.

The biggest risks for Ukraine today are force generation and morale. Ukraine has enough people to keep up the fight, but it has a broken training system. The bulk of tactical training is done in the combat unit, but the good combat units are all fixed at the front. This drove Ukraine to try to create new brigades, but the result was inexperienced new units, while the experienced force was hollowed out. If the recruits are simply sent to the existing units, however, they will find themselves in combat with inadequate training.

President Zelenskyy has started to address this problem by stopping the creation of new units and forming army corps, which are intended to command several brigades so that experienced units can be brought off the line, receive new recruits, and train them, before going back to fight. The other vital function of this reform is to give Ukraine’s veterans the chance to rest. Other measures that could significantly improve morale would be increasing payments and compensation to families and providing any means to defeat the glide bomb threat. This should be a priority for Ukraine’s partners.

If Ukraine can fix its force generation process then the timelines for a Russian military victory could be protracted significantly. In these circumstances leverage would swing away from Moscow and it is possible that Russia would switch tack. Rather than slowing down talks to buy time to break the Ukrainian army, the Russians might well push for a ceasefire. But Ukraine would then be in immense peril. It would need to hold elections – which will be contentious. Troops will want to be demobilised and see their families. But Russia will not demobilise, and once it stops taking heavy losses its industries will rearm its forces. The risk then becomes that Moscow destabilises Ukraine internally, cripples its economy by threatening to restart hostilities, and then attacks when Ukraine is much weaker.

It is because of this sustained threat, even in the event of a ceasefire, that President Zelenskyy has emphasised that security guarantees are essential for a lasting peace. The United States has now made clear that it will not be the guarantor. Europe’s policymakers therefore now face a clear choice. If they want peace, they must invest in their militaries to be able to keep it. If Ukraine is defeated the threat to Europe will be acute. Enabling Ukraine’s victory similarly requires investment in the industrial capacity to sustain it. Europe has the money. It is not yet clear if Britain and Ukraine’s other European partners have the will to spend it.

Dr Jack Watling is senior research fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said his government is working closely with the US to implement Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, which involves US ownership of the coastal strip, the removal of more than 2 million Palestinians and the redevelopment of the occupied territory as a resort.

The Israeli prime minister was speaking after a meeting in Jerusalem with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who defended the Trump plan as bold and visionary. Rubio and Netanyahu blamed Iran for the violence in the Middle East and insisted Tehran would be stopped from developing nuclear weapons.

Trump’s shock proposal earlier this month for a “Riviera of the Middle East” has been condemned around the world as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing, but Rubio and Netanyahu insisted it would proceed.

“We discussed Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality,” Netanyahu told reporters after the meeting, which overran by an hour. “We have a common strategy, and we can’t always share the details of this strategy with the public”.

He did say, however, that it included opening “the gates of hell” on Gaza, a phrased used by Trump, if all the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups were not released.

Rubio promoted the Trump plan as a breakthrough. “It may have shocked and surprised many,” he said. “But what cannot continue is the same cycle where we repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place.”

Neither Rubio nor Netanyahu answered questions at their press event in Jerusalem. Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Saturday night that he hoped the mass transfer of Palestinians from Gaza endorsed by Trump could begin soon. He said he expected Palestinians would be forced to leave by a resumption of bombing.

“It’s a process I hope will begin in the coming weeks,” he told Israel’s Channel 12. “Even if it’s slow at first, it will gradually pick up pace and intensify. There won’t be anything for the Gazans in Gaza for the next 10 to 15 years. After we go back to fighting, and all of Gaza looks like Jabaliya, there definitely will be nothing for them there.”

Smotrich was referring to Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, which was flattened by blanket bombing during 15 months of conflict.

He said that ultimately the vast majority of Palestinians would want to leave, and that the challenges for Israel would be finding countries willing and able to take 2 million Palestinians, coupled with “the huge logistical operation to get such vast numbers of people out of here”.

The planned removal of Palestinians from Gaza is a potential crime against humanity. The international court of justice is already examining allegations of genocide against Israel, and the international criminal court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Netanyahu denounced both courts for what he called “lawfare”, thanked the Trump administration for placing sanctions on the ICC, and suggested more joint action against international judicial institutions was being planned.

“The secretary and I discussed working together to formulate a common strategy to deal with the threat of lawfare and neutralise this threat once and for all,” he said.

Neither Netanyahu nor Rubio addressed the terms of the Gaza ceasefire, other than to demand the return of all hostages. The Israeli prime minister depends on Smotrich’s party for his governing coalition to survive, and the latter restated his opposition to the current deal and his desire to see it collapse.

“The current deal is bad but I very much hope it is temporary,” Smotrich said in his Saturday night interview.

The Israeli government is reportedly seeking to change the terms of the agreement with Washington’s backing. It is calling for the six surviving hostages who remain in Gaza scheduled to be released in the first phase of the agreement to be freed all at once next Saturday, rather than in two groups of three over the final two weeks of the first phase, which ends on 1 March.

The ceasefire agreement envisaged that talks on a second phase would start in the first week of February, but Netanyahu has so far prevented Israeli negotiators from discussing the issue. Israeli political analysts say he fears that the implementation of the second phase could trigger the collapse of his coalition, leading to new elections and increasing his legal jeopardy in his trial on corruption charges.

In an embodiment of the Trump administration’s unconditional support for Israel, a shipment of US-made heavy bombs arrived in the port of Ashdod on Saturday night.

The Biden administration had suspended delivery of the 2,000lb (907kg) MK-84 bombs on the grounds that they were too indiscriminate and could cause too many civilian casualties in a densely populated area such as Gaza. Trump immediately lifted the ban when he assumed office.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Sunday morning: “The munitions shipment that arrived in Israel tonight, released by the Trump administration, represents a significant asset for the air force and the IDF, and serves as further evidence of the strong alliance between Israel and the United States.”

At Sunday’s press statement in Jerusalem, Netanyahu and Rubio began their presentations on Iran, which they said was primarily responsible for all the instability and violence in the region. Netanyahu said they agreed that Tehran could never have nuclear weapons and that “Iran’s aggression in the region has to be rolled back”.

“There can never be a nuclear Iran, a nuclear Iran that could then hold itself immune from pressure and from action. That can never happen,” Rubio said. “Behind every terrorist group, behind every act of violence, behind every destabilising activity, behind everything that threatens peace and stability for the millions of people who call this region home, is Iran.”

During Trump’s first administration, Netanyahu failed to convince him to participate in joint strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, but the heightened rhetoric of the new administration has raised questions about whether the Israeli prime minister might succeed this time.

Protesters gathered outside Tesla dealerships across the US on Saturday in response to Elon Musk’s efforts to shred government spending under the president, Donald Trump.

Groups of demonstrators up to 100-strong gathered outside the electric carmaker’s showrooms in cities including New York, Seattle, Kansas City and across California. Organisers said the protests took place in dozens of locations.

While the protests were scattered, they highlighted the risks to the car company of Musk’s close association with Trump’s radical rightwing agenda. Many of the protesters carried placards likening the Trump administration to Nazis – a characterisation that Musk has previously emphatically denied.

Musk is leading the US president’s “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, its name deriving from an internet dog meme. Doge’s actions, rapidly dismantling government agencies and firing federal workers en masse across the US, have been criticised as illegal by some constitutional experts.

Some Tesla investors have queried whether Musk’s association with the Trump administration, including spending more than $200m on the presidential election campaign, will dent its sales – particularly in liberal areas of the US. Places including California have tended to be the biggest markets for electric cars in the US, while the Republican party and the Trump administration are actively opposed to the technology.

American musician Sheryl Crow posted a video of herself on Saturday waving goodbye to a Tesla being towed away on the Instagram social network. She said she had sold the car and donated money to US National Public Radio station (NPR), which “is under threat by President Musk”.

“My parents always said … you are who you hang out with,” she wrote. “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla.”

People within the Tesla business insist the company is separate from its chief executive. However, its surging valuation – thanks to previously fast-growing sales – has played a key role in building Musk’s wealth used to fund Trump’s election campaign.

Shares in Tesla account for about a third of Musk’s wealth, according to Bloomberg. His ownership of private rocket company SpaceX accounts for another third, while the rest is linked to stakes in xAI, the X social network, the Boring Company, a tunnelling business, and brain-computer interface company Neuralink. Musk has used his shares in Tesla and SpaceX to secure personal loans worth billions of dollars.

Tesla reported its first ever annual decline in sales in 2024, amid tough times for the global car industry. It is not yet clear whether Musk’s rightwing politics contributed to that decline, and the company could conceivably make up for lost leftwing customers with new enthusiasts on the right.

Some commentators have linked a steep decline in Tesla sales in Germany with his December declaration of support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). German Tesla sales fell 60% year-on-year in January, although delivery schedules can be affected by other factors beyond demand.

Tesla could also be vulnerable in other ways to political backlash. In the UK, Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, this week said the Labour government should impose tariffs on Tesla cars in retaliation for the White House imposing levies on steel imports.

Tesla was approached for comment.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has vowed to oversee a radical hollowing out of government agencies, asserting this week that some should be “deleted entirely” as he defunds public programs and lays off federal workers. While the immense cuts are framed as a means of removing waste, they may also become a boon to private companies – including Musk’s own businesses – that the government increasingly relies on for many of its key initiatives.

Musk and his allies in the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the unofficial committee acting as the operations arm of his cost-cutting efforts, have targeted a range of major government departments. They have moved to close the United States Agency for International Development, slashed the Department of Education and taken over the General Services Administration that controls federal IT structures. Doge staffers have also gained access to the treasury department, as well as set their sights on the Department of Defense, energy department, Environmental Protection Agency and at least a dozen others.

While Doge begins to make deep cuts throughout the government, Musk and those acting on his behalf have called for implementing new artificial intelligence systems in federal agencies and completely overhauling American weapons programs. As humanitarian aid groups reel from Musk’s cuts, tech and defense firms are seeing a chance to integrate themselves deeper into the new Trump administration’s agenda.

Musk’s plans have already excited Silicon Valley mainstays such as Palantir, whose executives praised Doge on an earnings call last week and talked about how the disruption by the billionaire’s strike squad was good for the company. Palantir already has won hundreds of millions of dollars in US military contracts in recent years for AI-related projects.

“I think Doge is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” Palantir’s chief technology officer, Shyam Sankar, said on the call. Sankar claimed the cost cutting would target straggling software projects, which he called “sacred cows of the deep state”.

“This is a revolution, some people are gonna get their heads cut off,” Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, added. “We’re expecting to see unexpected things and to win.”

Other CEOs and tech executives have similarly praised Musk and told investors that Doge’s plans represent an opportunity for their companies. Brian Armstrong, CEO of the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, lauded Doge last week for its “great progress” and suggested putting government expenditures on blockchain technology. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman spoke favorably of the effort on recent earnings calls, while the Predator drone-maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems wrote a letter directly to Musk last month asking him to speed up the way the Pentagon handles defense contracts.

As companies seek to benefit from Doge’s reshaping of the government, Musk also has extensive contracts worth billions of dollars through his own companies like SpaceX that are potentially set to expand under the new administration.

Musk’s decimation of government agencies has drawn comparisons to the frenzied cuts he made after acquiring Twitter in 2022, but the long-term effect of Doge may more closely resemble how SpaceX enmeshed itself with Nasa to the point where it now handles the majority of the United States’ space launches. Already, products like Musk’s satellite communications provider Starlink have become so integral to government programs that the US now relies on them for everything from use in foreign conflicts to domestic disaster relief.

SpaceX won its first Nasa contract in 2006, receiving $278m to help with cargo flights to the International Space Station. The company’s innovations in rocket technology allowed for cheaper spaceflights and more launches, undercutting older aerospace competitors. As Nasa increasingly outsourced its needs to private companies in the late 2000s, SpaceX continued to partner with the agency on about $15bn worth of contracts in the years since. The Pentagon awarded the firm hundreds of millions of dollars in satellite contracts, expanding its influence and creating a crisis at the agency when Musk refused to let Ukraine use Starlink to launch an attack on Russia.

SpaceX now controls over 60% of the world’s active satellites, while last month Nasa tapped the company to rescue two of its stranded astronauts. What began as outsourcing supply runs turned into some of the United States’ marquee agencies depending on Musk, even before he became a fixture of the Trump administration.

Removing checks on Musk’s conflicts

Donald Trump has given Musk enormous power to reshape the government, including on Tuesday issuing an executive order that requires agencies to coordinate with Doge on staffing decisions and cuts.

Musk’s influence in the White House also puts in peril the numerous federal investigations against his companies for a range of alleged wrongdoings that includes violating federal labor and securities laws. Trump has already dissolved one watchdog agency investigating Tesla. Government accountability groups have warned that Musk’s myriad of potential ethical conflicts and a lack of transparency around his actions in government carry the risk that he will use his power for political corruption.

“You don’t need to be any kind of ethics expert to to appreciate the massive problem there is with a billionaire who helped fund the president’s campaign and has government contracts of his own being given the power to root around in agency systems that impact how and when government contractors are paid,” said Donald Sherman, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog organization.

Crew is one of several advocacy groups that have filed lawsuits alleging Doge is violating federal transparency laws. Unions have also sued, but a judge allowed Musk and Trump’s buyouts to continue.

Musk and Doge’s takeover of federal agencies has coincided with Trump removing many of the government officials that act as checks on ethical conflicts and malfeasance. Shortly after taking office, Trump fired 18 inspectors general at different agencies whose role was to act as guards against abuses from government officials.

“Trump got rid of the independent watchdogs who could investigate what Musk and his minions are doing at these agencies and then has let him run amok,” Sherman said.

Musk holds the role of “special government employee” which also allows him to sidestep the usual financial disclosures that would pertain to an official at his level of power, and on Tuesday White House officials stated that while Musk plans to make such a filing it will be confidential and not available to the public.

The Trump administration has repeatedly dismissed any concerns over ethical concerns with Musk’s role. Speaking with reporters last week, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, stated: “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that Doge is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.”

Procurement laws prevent government officials from self-dealing to their own businesses and awarding contracts that come with ethical conflicts. But these laws are nuanced and may only apply to the people with direct decision-making power over who gets those government contracts, Sherman of Crew said. This leaves open a gray area where Musk’s sprawling influence could pressure government officials to greenlight contracts that benefit him or decide against those that reward his competitors.

“That portion of the law is not designed for the level of capture of our government functions that President Trump has allowed Mr Musk to accomplish,” Sherman said.

European leaders have condemned the Kremlin’s “ultimate responsibility” in the death of Alexei Navalny, as supporters of Russia’s best-known opposition politician held remembrance events a year after he died in an Arctic penal colony.

A steady queue of people braved freezing temperatures and possible arrest in Moscow to visit Navalny’s grave in Borisovskoye cemetery, while his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, was due to address a memorial ceremony in Berlin, where she is living in exile.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, paid tribute to Navalny on Sunday, saying Vladimir Putin’s most significant challenger to date had died “because he fought for democracy and freedom in Russia”.

Putin “brutally combats freedom and its defenders. Navalny’s work was all the more brave,” Scholz said in a social media post. “His courage made a difference and reaches far beyond his death.”

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Putin bore “ultimate responsibility” for Navalny’s death. Navalny “gave his life for a free and democratic Russia”, she said, calling for the release of all political prisoners in the country.

“As Russia intensifies its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, it also continues its internal repression, targeting those who stand for democracy,” Kallas said, adding that Navalny’s lawyers and “hundreds of others … remain unjustly imprisoned”.

In a video released on Sunday, Navalnaya said opposition supporters “know why we are fighting: for a future Russia free, peaceful and beautiful. The one Alexei dreamed of is possible; do everything to make his dream come true.”

Navalnaya, a leading figure in Russia’s weakened and fractured opposition, most of whose members are now in exile, accused Putin of trying to “erase our memory of Alexei’s name, of hiding the truth about his murder and forcing us to give up”.

She said: “Everyone can do something: protest, write to political prisoners, change the minds of those close to you, support each other. Alexei inspires people … who understand that our country is not just about war, corruption and oppression.”

Navalny died aged 47 on 16 February last year in the Polar Wolf penal colony in Kharp, to where he had been transferred in 2023. He was arrested in 2021 after returning to Russia from medical treatment in Germany for novichok nerve agent poisoning.

He was declared an “extremist” by Russian authorities, meaning anyone who mentions his name or that of his Anti-Corruption Foundation without also saying they are “extremist” can be fined or, for repeat offences, jailed for up to four years.

Participation in an organisation designated as “extremist” is punishable by up to six years in prison, and even public displays of “symbols” of an extremist organisation – including photos of Navalny or his name – risk a fine or stint in a police cell.

Despite posts on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels warning of “Big Brother and his ever-watchful eye” and including a photo of a security camera sign at the cemetery, several hundred people gathered at Borisovskoye on Sunday, an Agence France-Presse reporter said.

Russia has never fully explained Navalny’s death, which came less than a month before a presidential election that extended Putin’s more than two-decade rule, saying only that it happened as he was walking in the prison yard.

The opposition figurehead had continued to call for Russians to oppose the Kremlin and denounced Moscow’s Ukraine offensive, even from behind bars. “I took the decision not to be afraid,” he wrote in his autobiography published after his death.

A stabbing that left a teenager dead and five others injured in southern Austria was an Islamist attack, Austria’s interior minister has said.

“It is an Islamist attack with IS connections,” Gerhard Karner told reporters on Sunday in the southern city of Villach, where Saturday’s attack took place, referring to the Islamic State group.

He said the suspect, a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, had been radicalised online “in a short space of time”.

In the city centre attack a man targeted passersby with a folding knife, police said. The man was arrested just after the attack, which was stopped when a fellow Syrian, a food delivery driver, rammed a car into the suspected assailant.

A 14-year-old boy died and five other males were hurt, two of them seriously. Among the wounded are two 15-year-old teenagers, police said.

The suspect is an asylum seeker with a valid residence permit and no criminal record, according to police.

On Sunday, people placed candles in front of shops in the street where the attack took place in the centre of Villach, a city in Carinthia province.

Tanja Planinschek, a local person, said: “I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for those around me. I fear for the future. I fear where this will lead. I am endlessly sad.

“Not only I, but all of us have been afraid for a long time that something bigger will happen,” she said, adding that the country “should open our eyes and see who we let in, who we help, who we leave with all kinds of freedoms. If nothing is done, it will get even worse.”

The food delivery driver who rammed his car into the attacker was slightly hurt, police said.

The Krone tabloid quoted the driver, Alaaeddin Alhalabi, 42, as saying: “I saw a person lying on the ground, a man was attacking other passersby – I didn’t think twice and drove at him.

“He wanted to go towards the city centre, there were children on the street – I couldn’t let that happen,” he said, adding that he regretted he could not save the 14-year-old.

The Carinthia governor, Peter Kaiser of the Social Democrats, called for the “harshest consequences” for this “unbelievable atrocity”.

The far-right leader Herbert Kickl, whose party topped September’s national elections for the first time, said he was “appalled” by the attack and called for “a rigorous clampdown on asylum”.

Kickl’s Freedom party this week failed in talks to form a government with the runner-up and incumbent conservatives because of disagreements including over who would hold sensitive cabinet posts dealing with security.

Austria has a large Syrian refugee population of almost 100,000 people. After Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power in Syria in December, Austria and several European countries froze pending asylum requests from Syrians to reassess the situation.

Austria has also stopped family reunifications and sent at least 2,400 letters to revoke refugee status. The interior ministry has said it is preparing “an orderly repatriation and deportation programme to Syria”.

Austria has previously had one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four.

On Thursday in Munich, Germany, a man rammed a car into people, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and wounding 37 other people.

A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving the car into a trade union march. German police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives.

A stabbing that left a teenager dead and five others injured in southern Austria was an Islamist attack, Austria’s interior minister has said.

“It is an Islamist attack with IS connections,” Gerhard Karner told reporters on Sunday in the southern city of Villach, where Saturday’s attack took place, referring to the Islamic State group.

He said the suspect, a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, had been radicalised online “in a short space of time”.

In the city centre attack a man targeted passersby with a folding knife, police said. The man was arrested just after the attack, which was stopped when a fellow Syrian, a food delivery driver, rammed a car into the suspected assailant.

A 14-year-old boy died and five other males were hurt, two of them seriously. Among the wounded are two 15-year-old teenagers, police said.

The suspect is an asylum seeker with a valid residence permit and no criminal record, according to police.

On Sunday, people placed candles in front of shops in the street where the attack took place in the centre of Villach, a city in Carinthia province.

Tanja Planinschek, a local person, said: “I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for those around me. I fear for the future. I fear where this will lead. I am endlessly sad.

“Not only I, but all of us have been afraid for a long time that something bigger will happen,” she said, adding that the country “should open our eyes and see who we let in, who we help, who we leave with all kinds of freedoms. If nothing is done, it will get even worse.”

The food delivery driver who rammed his car into the attacker was slightly hurt, police said.

The Krone tabloid quoted the driver, Alaaeddin Alhalabi, 42, as saying: “I saw a person lying on the ground, a man was attacking other passersby – I didn’t think twice and drove at him.

“He wanted to go towards the city centre, there were children on the street – I couldn’t let that happen,” he said, adding that he regretted he could not save the 14-year-old.

The Carinthia governor, Peter Kaiser of the Social Democrats, called for the “harshest consequences” for this “unbelievable atrocity”.

The far-right leader Herbert Kickl, whose party topped September’s national elections for the first time, said he was “appalled” by the attack and called for “a rigorous clampdown on asylum”.

Kickl’s Freedom party this week failed in talks to form a government with the runner-up and incumbent conservatives because of disagreements including over who would hold sensitive cabinet posts dealing with security.

Austria has a large Syrian refugee population of almost 100,000 people. After Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power in Syria in December, Austria and several European countries froze pending asylum requests from Syrians to reassess the situation.

Austria has also stopped family reunifications and sent at least 2,400 letters to revoke refugee status. The interior ministry has said it is preparing “an orderly repatriation and deportation programme to Syria”.

Austria has previously had one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four.

On Thursday in Munich, Germany, a man rammed a car into people, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and wounding 37 other people.

A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving the car into a trade union march. German police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives.

At least 18 people have died in a crush at a railway station in India’s capital when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the world’s largest religious gathering, officials have said.

The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, and has a history of crowd-related disasters – including one last month, when at least 30 people died in another crush at the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.

The rush at the train station in Delhi on Saturday appeared to break out as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on 26 February.

The death toll included 10 women and three children, local media said.

Dr Ritu Saxena, the deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak hospital in Delhi, told Agence France-Presse: “I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most [likely died from] hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy.

“There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries.”

Broadcaster NDTV reported three more dead from the crush, quoting an official of another hospital in the city.

“I have been working as a coolie since 1981, but I never saw a crowd like this before,” a porter at the railway station was quoted as saying by the Times of India newspaper.

“People started colliding and fell on the escalator and stairs” when a platform for a special train departing for Prayagraj was suddenly shifted, the porter said.

The railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said a “high-level inquiry” had been ordered into the causes of the accident. Vaishnaw said additional special trains were being run from Delhi to clear the rush of devotees.

Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said on X: “My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured have a speedy recovery. The authorities are assisting all those who have been affected by this stampede.”

The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said he was “extremely pained by the loss of lives due to stampede” at the Delhi railway station.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. Praying for the speedy [recovery] of the injured,” Singh said in a social media post.

The governor of the capital, Vinai Kumar Saxena, said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies”.

The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone in the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said about 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began last month.

More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Five people in New York have been charged with subjecting a transgender man from Minnesota to “repeated acts of violence and torture” before murdering him, according to police.

The allegations come after the discovery of human remains believed to be those of Sam Nordquist, 24, in a field near Canandaigua in upstate New York on 13 February.

Police on Friday identified Precious Arzuaga, 38; Jennifer Quijano, 30; Kyle Sage, 33; Patrick Goodwin, 30; and Emily Motyka, 19, as suspects in Nordquist’s slaying. They are all charged with second-degree murder with depraved indifference, police said.

“Our investigation has revealed a deeply disturbing pattern of abuse that ultimately resulted in Sam’s tragic death,” police captain Kelly Swift said during a press conference on Friday.

“Based on evidence and witness statements, we have determined that Sam endured prolonged physical and psychological abuse at the hands of multiple individuals.

“Our investigation has confirmed that from early December 2024 to February 2025 Sam was subjected to repeated acts of violence and torture in a manner that ultimately led to his death.”

Police had launched a missing person investigation on 9 February after Nordquist’s family asked them to carry out a welfare check.

Evidence that Nordquist was subjected to ongoing physical abuse was discovered after police searched several locations, including Patty’s Lodge, a roadside motel where he was last known to be staying.

They believe his body was taken to the field where the remains were discovered in an attempt to “conceal the crime” that killed Nordquist, Swift said.

A fundraiser has been launched on GoFundMe to help his family which as of Sunday had received more than $47,000 from about about 1,300 donors.

Originally from Oakdale, Minnesota, Nordquist had travelled to New York in September to meet his “online girlfriend”, according to the fundraising page.

It states that he had purchased a round-trip plane ticket and was supposed to return home by mid-October.

Nordquist’s family had not heard from him since January – and the last time he was seen was in early February.

In an interview with Minnesota’s KARE television news station, Nordquist’s mother, Linda, recalled: “The last thing Sam said is, ‘I love you, and I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Tomorrow came, and I never heard a word.”

Linda Norquist said Sam “sounded sad, really sad”, during that conversation, which was on New Year’s Day.

“And Sam is an outgoing person,” Linda Norquist said. “He had a heart of gold and wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

All five suspects have been arraigned and remanded to the jail in Ontario county, which includes Canandaigua.

“We understand that the details of this case are deeply unsettling, and we want to assure the public that we are committed to seeking justice for Sam and his family,” Swift said.

She added: “In my 20-year law enforcement career this is one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated.”

An autopsy will be carried out by the medical examiner’s office in Monroe county, New York, to confirm Nordquist’s exact cause and manner of death, though authorities’ actions indicate he was the victim of a homicide.

The LGBTQ+ rights organization The New Pride Agenda said in a post on social media: “We are devastated and enraged by the horrific murder of Sam Nordquist … whose life was brutally taken in the Finger Lakes region after enduring weeks of torture.

The group based in New York added: “While arrests have been made, we know that this is not an isolated incident; it is a tragic consequence of the rising culture of hate in our society.”

Linda Norquist told KARE that Sam’s death was “devastating” to her family.

“Sam did not deserve this,” Linda Norquist said. Nobody deserves this type of torment that he had to endure.

“These people that did this to Sam are pure evil. They’re not even human. We will get justice for you, Sam. Even if it takes the last breath out of me – you will have justice.”

• Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

Muhsin Hendricks, considered the world’s “first openly gay imam”, has been shot dead near the southern city of Gqeberha, South African police have said.

The imam, who ran a mosque intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims, was in a car with another person on Saturday when a vehicle stopped in front of them and blocked their exit, police said.

“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” the Eastern Cape force said in a statement.

“Thereafter they fled the scene, and the driver noticed that Hendricks, who was seated at the back of the vehicle was shot and killed.”

A police spokesperson confirmed to AFP the authenticity of a video on social media that purported to show a targeted killing in Bethelsdorp near Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth.

“The motive for the murder is unknown and forms part of the ongoing investigation,” police said, urging anybody with information to come forward.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association denounced the killing.

“The ILGA World family is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks, and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,” the executive director, Julia Ehrt, said in a statement.

Hendricks, involved in various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, came out as gay in 1996. Two years later he started hosting meetings in his home city for LGBTQ+ Muslims, who treated him like their community imam. “I opened my garage, put a carpet down and invited people to have tea and talk,” he told the Guardian in 2022.

In 2011 Hendricks bolstered his role as an imam figure by setting up a mosque space after a friend endured a local sermon condemning homosexuality. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s time we started our own space, so people can pray without being judged’.”

He ran the Al-Ghurbaah mosque at Wynberg near his birthplace, Cape Town. The mosque provides “a safe space in which queer Muslims and marginalised women can practise Islam”, its website states.

Hendricks, the subject of a 2022 documentary called The Radical, had previously alluded to threats against him.

He told the Guardian he had been advised to hire bodyguards but said he never feared attacks and insisted that “the need to be authentic” was “greater than the fear to die”.

Hendricks, who had worked as an Arabic language teacher and fashion designer, was 29 when he came out to his mother. Born into a Muslim family, he married a woman, had children, then divorced before revealing his sexuality to his family, eight years after his father died.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with 28,000 murders in the year to February 2024, according to police data.

A contraception debate is gripping one of Argentina’s most notable luxury neighbourhoods – not for its wealthy residents, but for its original occupants, the capybaras.

In recent years, the lovable rodents have been accused of overrunning the Nordelta, a meticulously landscaped and manicured suburb north of Buenos Aires.

Now, in a bid to quell reproduction – some accounts suggest the number of capybaras has tripled to more than 1,000 in the past three years – the Buenos Aires government has approved wildlife population control plans, involving selective sterilisation and contraceptives.

Marcelo Cantón, a resident and spokesperson for the Nordelta Neighborhood Association, says that while capybaras themselves are not a problem, the “excessive growth” of their populations is, adding that it is causing the creatures to “fight among themselves, fight with dogs in private gardens”, leading to traffic accidents.

“Capybaras have more than 500 hectares of lakes and public parks here, with no predators, no hunters to catch them for slaughter,” he says. “There are none of the limits to population growth that exist elsewhere.”

According to El País, the new plans would see two doses of contraceptives injected into 250 of the rodents, known locally as carpinchos, which authorities hope will stem reproduction for up to a year.

But not all neighbours are in agreement. The Nordelta sits within the Paraná Delta, an environmentally important wetland home to dense flora, an abundance of birds and dozens of species of mammals.

Silvia Soto and a group of neighbours known as “Nordelta Capybaras – We Are Your Voice” say the plans should be halted, dispute that there is an overpopulation problem and criticise property developers for ignoring proposals to create biological corridors and protected areas.

“For years, we have been asking for different, linked green areas that function as natural reserves connected by biological corridors, to protect the capybaras and preserve their survival and coexistence in their own natural space,” Soto said, adding that the group’s surveys had “not been taken into account”.

Environmentalists are also now weighing in and calling on the government to protect the capybaras, which are the world’s largest rodent, and the wetlands.