The US and Ukraine appeared to be heading towards an irreconcilable rift after Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president “a dictator” and warning that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.

The US leader’s comments on Wednesday, which were rife with falsehoods, came after Zelenskyy said Trump was “trapped” in a Russian “disinformation bubble,” following Trump’s claims that Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s 2022 invasion, remarks that echoed the Kremlin’s narrative.

In a fiery rant on the Truth Social app marking his most direct threat to end the war on terms aligning with Moscow’s goals, Trump wrote: “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

He added that Zelenskyy had “done a terrible job” and accused the Ukrainian president – without evidence – of benefiting from continuing US financial and military support, suggesting he had an interest in prolonging the war rather than seeking its end.

The US president wrote that Zelenskyy, whom he dismissed as “a modestly successful comedian”, had “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a war that couldn’t be won, that never had to start.

“The only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle’,” Trump wrote.

The unprecedented escalation of tensions between Kyiv and Washington came after senior US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine, as well as economic and political cooperation, indicating a fundamental shift in the US approach to Moscow.

Ukraine and Europe were excluded from the talks, increasing fears that Trump could push for a peace deal favouring Vladimir Putin.

“We are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP’ and the Trump Administration, can do,” Trump wrote. At a conference in Miami later on Wednesday, Trump claimed Zelenskyy could have attended the Saudi talks “if he wanted” – Zelenskyy has denied this, and Trump administration officials were clear beforehand that the talks were bilateral between Russia and the US. Trump said on Wednesday that the talks had gone “very, very well”.

Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy, in a combative press conference in Kyiv, said the US president was pushing “a lot of disinformation coming from Russia”.

“Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly … is trapped in this disinformation bubble,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy’s comments, in turn, were a response to a series of inflammatory remarks on Tuesday evening, in which Trump first criticised him and suggested Ukraine was to blame for Moscow’s invasion.

Trump’s latest comments will cast serious doubt on future US aid to Ukraine. Zelenskyy has previously said that Ukraine had little chance of survival without support from the US, a key military partner.

While Zelenskyy said he would like Trump’s team to be “more truthful”, Putin, on the same day, said the US president had begun receiving “objective information” about the war in Ukraine that led him to “change his position”.

Putin also said that he “highly rated” the results of the Russia-US summit in Riyadh. “Russia and the US are cooperating on economic issues, energy markets, space, and other areas,” Putin said, adding that he was happy to meet Trump, but “preparation was necessary”.

On Truth Social, Trump doubled down on his accusations that Ukraine was at fault for Moscow’s invasion. He also claimed Zelenskyy “refused to hold elections”, and was “very low in Ukrainian polls.”

The statements aligned closely with the Kremlin’s narrative on Ukraine, and prompted a rare public challenge by Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, who said in a social media post: “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth.”

In a phone call to Zelenskyy late on Wednesday, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, expressed his support for “Ukraine’s democratically elected leader”, adding that it was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II”, a Downing Street spokesperson said. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that it was “wrong and dangerous” to deny Zelenskyy’s democratic legitimacy.

Earlier, Trump claimed Zelenskyy had a 4% approval rating, and called for a new election. On Wednesday Zelenskyy countered: “As we are talking about 4%, we have seen this disinformation, we understand it’s coming from Russia.”

The Ukrainian president said that he never commented on popularity ratings, “especially my own or other leaders’”, but added that the latest poll showed a majority of Ukrainians trusted him. He added that any attempt to replace him during the war would fail.

While Zelenskyy’s popularity has declined in recent months, a February poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found that 57% of Ukrainians trusted him, up from 52% a month earlier.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the head of Ukraine’s digital affairs ministry, argued on Wednesday that Zelenskyy’s ratings were “4-5%” higher than Trump’s.

Ukrainian legislation bans elections during martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022. Few Ukrainians support the idea of a poll at a time when Russia’s invasion has forced millions to flee abroad, and when Ukrainian soldiers are fighting and dying on the frontline.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, said Ukraine was not “giving up” on elections. “Inventing ‘democracy’ under shelling is not democracy, but a spectacle in which the main beneficiary is in the Kremlin. Ukraine needs bullets, not ballots,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Zelenskyy also disputed Trump’s comments that most of Ukraine’s support came from the US. “The truth is somewhere else,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he remained “grateful for the support” and wanted “the Trump team to have true facts”. He then said that the US supplied $67bn in weapons and $31.5bn in budget support.

Discussing a Trump-led initiative to corner his country’s critical minerals as a down-payment for continued military and economic aid, Zelenskyy said that he could not “sell Ukraine away” but he was prepared to work “on a serious document” if it contained “security guarantees”.

The US had proposed taking ownership of 50% of Ukraine’s critical minerals, but the proposal appeared to lack any security guarantees, such as the deployment of US troops in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s team has placed high importance on the need for guarantees from the US that would deter Russia from launching a new invasion once a peace deal was reached.

On Wednesday, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Ukraine envoy, arrived in Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian leaders. He is viewed as Trump’s most pro-Ukraine adviser, albeit one with declining influence. “We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg told journalists, saying that part of his mission would be “to sit and listen”.

Zelenskyy’s remarks included a challenge to Kellogg to “go and talk to ordinary Ukrainians about their reception of Trump’s comments”.

Late on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said he hoped for a “constructive” meeting with Kellogg the following day.

Earlier in the day, at a second meeting of European leaders in Paris, arranged by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, there were more calls for immediate action to support Ukraine and bolster Europe’s defence capabilities, but few concrete decisions.

Macron and Starmer will visit Washington next week, amid other meetings aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the White House national security adviser Mike Waltz.

The EU on Wednesday agreed on a 16th package of sanctions against Russia, including on aluminium and vessels believed to be carrying sanctioned Russian oil.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who was part of the delegation in Saudi Arabia, hailed Trump for criticising “pathetic” Zelenskyy and welcomed the US president’s claim that past US support for Ukraine’s Nato ambitions was a key factor in sparking the war.

Russian officials also seized on Trump’s latest remarks that questioned Zelenskyy’s legitimacy as Ukraine’s president. Pyotr Tolstoy, a senior member of Russia’s State Duma, called Trump’s remarks “significant” and suggested they would be “of great interest to those who call themselves politicians in Kyiv”.

Reuters contributed to this report

• Russian drones attacked Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa for the second night running on Wednesday, with nearly 90,000 people affected by blackouts and loss of heating, said the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, and the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Four people, including a child, were injured in the initial attack on Tuesday.

• A Russian guided bomb killed at least one person on Wednesday in and around Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Kupiansk, east of Kharkiv, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov. Russian forces hit a residential area of Kupiansk and rescuers retrieved the body of one resident from under rubble; while two people were injured in an attack on a village south of the city. Prosecutors in the region put the death toll for the day at two people.

• In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian forces hit a multi-storey apartment building with guided bombs, injuring three people and causing serious damage, said Roman Mrochko, head of the city’s military administration. The injured included 13-year-old twins.

• Ukrainian drones hit the Syzran oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region on Wednesday, said the local governor. The refinery suspended oil processing afterwards, industry sources told Reuters. It is about 700km from the Ukrainian border.

• EU officials have proposed boosting it military aid for Ukraine amid uncertainty about continued backing from the US, whose president, Donald Trump, has started direct talks with Russia and on Wednesday launched a tirade laced with pro-Kremlin falsehoods against the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Reuters news agency said a paper suggested each EU member state contribute based on the size of its economy to produce a package that would include 1.5m rounds of artillery ammunition to be delivered this year, as well as air defence systems, missiles for deep precision strikes and drones. Diplomats held initial talks on the plan this week in Brussels and said EU foreign ministers may discuss it on Monday.

• EU envoys have also agreed a 16th package of sanctions on Russia. It includes restrictions on Russian banks, measures to strengthen the G7 oil price cap, a Russian aluminium import ban and new export bans. The package is expected to be adopted by the bloc’s foreign ministers on Monday to mark the third anniversary of the war.

• Britain and France are leading efforts to create a European “reassurance force” intended to prevent future Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, ports and critical infrastructure in the event of a US-brokered peace deal, Dan Sabbagh writes. The proposal, western officials said, would involve less than 30,000 troops and would be likely to be concentrated on air and maritime defence. Ground forces would be minimal and not deployed near the frontline in the east of Ukraine. Among the aims would be safe reopening of Ukraine’s airspace to commercial flights and the security of its seaborne trade over the Black Sea such as food and grain exports.

• South Korea has affirmed that a North Korean soldier captured by Ukraine has the right to start a new life on its side of the border. An official from Seoul’s foreign ministry said “North Korean soldiers are constitutionally considered our nationals” and the South “would provide the necessary protection and support”. The South’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper published an interview with a North Korean soldier on Wednesday describing “brutal” fighting on the frontline. The soldier, whom the newspaper called Ri, said he was “80%” decided that he “plans to apply for refugee status and go to South Korea”.

• Ri – visibly wounded – told Chosun that many of his fellow North Korean soldiers had been killed by drones and artillery fire. “Everyone who joined the army with me is dead. When I finally entered the battle, it was truly brutal … I had never seen people die before.”

• Ukraine on Wednesday denied claims by Vladimir Putin of a ground attack into Ukrainian territory from the Kursk region, which would have been a first in the region since 2022. “Putin’s information about a large-scale Russian offensive is a lie,” said Andriy Kovalenko, an official responsible for countering disinformation, who added that a Russian reconnaissance unit had tried to cross but was destroyed. Russia’s president claimed fighters of the 810th brigade had crossed into Ukrainian territory overnight.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would meet on Thursday with Donald Trump’s US envoy, retired Gen Keith Kellogg, and hoped for “constructive” work with the US.

All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.

All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble, but Zelenskyy said it out loud at a press conference on Wednesday.

In this new world where the foreign policy of the most powerful country on Earth has been rapidly reorganised around the fragile ego of a sullen and resentful old man, you might as well launch missiles at America’s eastern seaboard as utter a few words of rebuke.

Zelenskyy was aware of this. On Tuesday, he had complained that his country was being excluded from talks about its fate between the US and Russia in Riyadh. They were “about Ukraine but without Ukraine”, he said.

It was a fair point. What happened in Riyadh was an upending of western policy towards Ukraine, but none of that matters any more. This is year zero as far as Trump, Elon Musk and their supporters are concerned. The Ukrainian president’s gripe triggered a meltdown in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump told stunned reporters that Ukraine had started the war, and that Zelenskyy had a 4% approval rating.

It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage that: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.

When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.

Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.

Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.

The child who guilelessly points out the emperor has no clothes is the hero of the folk tale, but the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s story did not have a vast nuclear arsenal and the world’s mightiest army. Telling the truth is cathartic, but getting into a personal spat with Trump amid the dizzying euphoria of his restoration to the Oval Office risks serious damage to your country.

That begs the question: what will work with Trump now? He admires autocrats and is eager to please them, but that is not really an option for the world’s remaining democracies. The hope in western European capitals, based on patchy evidence from the first Trump term, is that if they can make discreet common cause with the calmer heads around Trump he can be gently steered away from his more extreme whims.

In that regard, they have some faith in Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. They may be able to talk the president out of his stated plan to own and ethnically cleanse Gaza, if only because it would be so disastrous for the US. But from the evidence of Trump’s rants, the poison about Ukraine has seeped deeper into the president’s nervous system.

Zelenskyy’s best option might be to persevere with the offer of an American share in Ukraine’s rare earths. Trump’s first offer was to take half of the spoils with no security guarantees in return. But the absurd opening offer is likely to be just part of his “art of the deal” brinkmanship. Further negotiations may distract him, like a dog with a bone, from his profound pro-Putin impulses.

It is a long shot. It is also an act of faith to believe this Trump episode in American history will eventually pass. But we are not even one month into his chaotic second term. For a country like Ukraine, facing an existential threat, it is going to be a very long four years.

Britain and France are leading efforts to create a European “reassurance force” intended to prevent future Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, ports and critical infrastructure in the event of a US-brokered peace deal.

The proposal, western officials said, would involve less than 30,000 troops and would be likely to be concentrated on air and maritime defence. Ground forces would be minimal and not deployed near the frontline in the east of Ukraine.

Among the aims of the force would be to ensure the safe reopening of Ukraine’s airspace to commercial flights and to maintain the security of seaborne trade over the Black Sea, critical to the country’s food and grain exports.

Ukraine’s electricity and other utilities have been repeatedly bombed by Russia during the near-three-year war, and maintaining their integrity is also deemed critical to the recovery of the country if the conflict is brought to a close.

It is unclear whether a force that is relatively small in number would be supported by Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for the creation of a deterrence force 100,000-150,000 strong, which involves the US.

However, last week, Pete Hegseth, the new US secretary of defence, said “there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine”.

The size of European militaries remains modest, meaning that any postwar security effort would have to be in the low tens of thousands and focused on areas of technological superiority.

A precondition of the European plan, however, would also be a US commitment to a “backstop” which, though not spelled out in detail is likely, one official said, to be “biased towards air power and the extraordinary strength we have in air power”. Such operations could be based in Poland and Romania, they added.

Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, is due to fly out to Washington next week to lobby the US president, Donald Trump, directly and persuade him to agree to providing a backstop that would ensure the European “reassurance force” would not be challenged by Russia in the future. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is also due to visit Washington next week.

Russia, meanwhile, has said publicly it objects to any Nato country deploying in Ukraine in the event of an end to the war. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Tuesday that Nato forces under any other flag would be “unacceptable to us”.

Western officials emphasised on Wednesday that there was little or no appetite to place European forces in the east of Ukraine, where they could be attacked in Russian provocations, reflecting the policy of the previous three years to ensure there was no escalation of the war into fighting between Nato and Moscow.

“It would be odd,” one said, “to start putting in place something that might mean that you end up in direct conflict between western forces and Russia.”

The effort is described as being at the “concept stage” – the work of militaries trying to draw up proposals that could be approved by European politicians, and ultimately form part of a peace agreement, if Russia and Ukraine are able to accept one.

Ukraine still has stocks of US weapons being transferred to it after decisions taken in the last days of the Biden administration, and for now is considered by the west to be capable of fighting off the Russian invasion for some time to come.

The country’s defence ministry estimates that 20% of its arms come from the US, compared to 55% from its own manufacturing and 25% from Europe. But the US arms tend to be of a higher quality, the experts added.

“Kit is still going in,” an official emphasised. They said there were enough arms available to “keep Ukraine in the fight well beyond some of the conversations about what might emerge in terms of ceasefire negotiations”.

Ousted South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol will become the first leader to stand trial in a criminal case as hearings open on Thursday over his bid to impose martial law.

The 64-year-old former prosecutor has been in prison since he was arrested in January on charges of insurrection, for which he could be sentenced to life in prison or face the death penalty if found guilty. Criminal proceedings begin on Thursday at Seoul’s central district court.

Prosecutors have accused the suspended president of being the “ringleader of an insurrection”. His lawyers say the investigation lacked legitimacy from the start and have challenged the legality of his indictment, claiming it was within his power as head of state to declare martial law.

Separately, South Korea’s constitutional court is deliberating whether to formally remove Yoon from office following his impeachment by parliament in December. His 10th hearing in that case is scheduled for 3pm, just hours after he takes the stand in his criminal trial.

Called to testify at the constitutional court are Han Duck-soo, who was also impeached as acting president following Yoon’s removal from office in December, and former senior intelligence official Hong Jang-won.

The head of South Korea’s national police agency, Cho Ji-ho, who is also on trial on insurrection charges related to the martial law decree, has also been called as a witness.

But it is still not clear whether that impeachment hearing will be his last before the constitutional court’s eight judges go behind closed doors to deliberate. That process could take up to a fortnight or even longer.

Previously impeached presidents Park Geun-hye and Roh Moo-hyun had to wait 11 and 14 days respectively, to learn their fates.

If Yoon is removed from office, the country must hold fresh presidential elections within 60 days.

Much of Yoon’s impeachment trial has centred on the question of whether he violated the constitution by declaring martial law, which is reserved for national emergencies or times of war.

His decree lasted only around six hours as the opposition-led parliament defied troops to vote it down. But it has plunged the democracy into months of political turmoil with protests, two impeachments and a surge of online disinformation.

Yoon’s lawyers told reporters last week that his martial law declaration was “an act of governance and cannot be subject to judicial review”.

Donald Trump has derailed Senate Republicans’ budget strategy by endorsing a competing House option, leaving GOP leaders scrambling to save their agenda just weeks before a potential government shutdown.

The president’s surprise intervention came just hours after Senate Republicans moved to advance their own two-track proposal, as he declared instead that he wants “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” through the House’s reconciliation process.

“Unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The announcement forces Senate Republicans to reconsider their carefully planned schedule of votes this week on a slimmer package that was meant to cover defense, border security and energy provisions.

While the Senate majority leader, John Thune, admitted being blindsided, he told reporters his side was still full steam ahead on a Thursday vote for its version of a bill.

“If the House can produce one big, beautiful bill, we’re prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line,” Thune said. “But we believe that the president also likes optionality.”

The House proposal Trump is backing would add $4.5tn to the deficit through tax cuts while demanding enormous cuts to federal benefits programs. Under the plan’s strict rules, Republicans must either slash $2tn from mandatory programs (which could include Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance) or scale back their proposed tax breaks by an equal amount.

The timing is already tight, as Congress is barreling down a 14 March deadline to pass the bill that would avoid a shutdown forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without pay. Although Republicans control both chambers, the majorities are so thin they will need Democratic votes to pass any funding measure.

In the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats, at least 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, working with a slim 218-215 majority, faces similar math problems and internal drama.

Johnson immediately claimed victory over Trump’s endorsement of the House plan, saying on X that House Republicans are “working to deliver President Trump’s FULL agenda – not just a small part of it”.

But his proposal faces resistance from Republicans worried about proposed entitlement cuts – cuts Trump himself rejected on Tuesday on Fox News, saying: “Medicare, Medicaid – none of that stuff is going to be touched.”

“If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it,” the freshman Republican congressman Rob Bresnahan said on X.

The White House dispatched the vice-president, JD Vance, to meet Senate Republicans on Wednesday afternoon, attempting to smooth tensions as both chambers grapple with how to advance Trump’s agenda. But it’s clear that some senators will be hard to convince.

“I’m not sure [the House budget could] pass the House or that it could pass the Senate,” the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson told reporters.

The House remains in recess until next week, leaving Senate Republicans alone on Capitol Hill to plot their next move.

Donald Trump is receiving widespread backlash after he likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program.

On Wednesday, following a letter issued by his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, to the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, that ended the transportation department’s agreement with New York over a new congestion pricing program for Manhattan, Trump wrote on Truth Social:

“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

The White House then proceeded to share Trump’s quote on social media, accompanied with a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while donning a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.

In response to Trump’s comments, Hochul issued a statement, saying: “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.” She added: “Public transit is the lifeblood of New York City and critical to our economic future – as a New Yorker, like president Trump, knows very well.”

She went on to add that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has initiated legal proceedings in the southern district of New York to preserve the program.

In a separate address to reporters on Wednesday, Hochul said: “New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now … In case you don’t know New Yorkers, we’re going to fight. We do not back down, not now, not ever.”

Justin Brannan, a New York City council member, also condemned Trump’s statement, and referred to the Trump-appointed justice department that ordered prosecutors to drop their federal corruption case against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.

“Doesn’t matter what [yo]u think of congestion pricing, federal government doesn’t get to make this decision. NY State passed a law, USDOT approved it. No matter what corrupt deal Donald Trump made with the Mayor, he isn’t king. Only fools concede to false power. It’s an illusion,” Brannan said.

Similarly, Don Beyer, a Democratic representative of Virginia, wrote on X: “We don’t have kings in the USA.”

Meanwhile, David Hogg, vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Republicans: Stop overreacting and calling Trump a king. Literally the White House twitter account:” as he reposted a picture of the computer-generated magazine of Trump with the crown.

Additionally, as the White House shared the photo of Trump, Illinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, delivered a State of the State address in which he said: “As governor of Illinois, my oath is to the constitution of our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.”

Google and Meta do not meet the requirements to partner with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the organisation has said, after the two tech giants ended their official involvement and ditched diversity obligations in the US.

At the 47th annual Mardi Gras parade up Oxford Street next Saturday, a notable absence will be the two tech firms, previously event sponsors.

When Sydney hosted the biannual World Pride global event in 2023, Meta sent a float to the parade. It was a media partner for last year’s Mardi Gras; Google was a supporting partner.

The two companies have this year curtailed their spending on Mardi Gras, Guardian Australia has confirmed, and are not sponsoring the event in any capacity.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Neither company would comment on the shift but it is understood that the costs of sponsorship were a factor for at least one of them – rather than the move away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the US since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Mardi Gras disputed the level of funding that Guardian Australia was told would be required for companies to sponsor a float and partner with the festival.

Last year Mardi Gras received $3.5m in sponsorship income, organisers said – about $464,000 less than expected, which was blamed on a slowing economy and the cancellation of the Fair Day cultural event in Victoria Park amid concerns about asbestos in mulch.

Though Meta and Google have withdrawn of their own accord, a spokesperson for Mardi Gras said the companies would not now meet the festival’s criteria for partners.

“Partnership values are assessed based on the scale of the festival and an organisation’s commitment to the community,” the spokesperson said. “They are not always monetary in value and are underpinned by the ethical charter process – one that neither Google nor Meta currently meets the requirements of.”

The Mardi Gras website says: “We want to partner with industry leaders in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – who champion DEI as an integral part of their organisation and culture.”

Meta’s revision of its hateful conduct policy now allows users on Facebook and Instagram to accuse transgender or gay people of being “mentally ill”.

The Guardian reported last week that internally in Meta, the decline of the company’s diversity goals began with the departure of the chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in 2022.

Google announced this month it was scaling back its diversity initiatives and removing LGBTQ+ holidays from its online and mobile calendars.

Other companies remain involved in the parade. Canva is partnering with the event, TikTok is supporting LGBTQ+ creators and the ABC will be broadcasting the parade live on its TikTok account.

Amazon has taken part in Mardi Gras activities under the banner of “Glamazon” and participated in Fair Day this year, as it has in previous years, despite announcing in January that it was winding back diversity initiatives in the US. The Australian Amazon website still provides information about diversity initiatives.

Other large companies including American Express and Coles are listed as partners for the event.

Australia’s peak LGBTQ+ lobbying organisation, Equality Australia, declined to comment.

A spokesperson for activist group Pride in Protest, Damien Nguyen, said corporate participation in Mardi Gras had “never been about inclusion or community, it has always been about pinkwashing”.

Nguyen, who is also a member of the Mardi Gras board, said corporate interests were “drowning out the protest roots of community events like Mardi Gras”.

Aside from the annual debate about the inclusion of police and politicians in the parade, the involvement of corporations in Mardi Gras – an event that originated as a protest against police violence in 1978 – has frequently been a source of controversy.

During World Pride, Guardian Australia revealed that Meta was taking part in the parade while also taking thousands of dollars from Australian groups promoting anti-LGBTQ advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Roughly 10% of the Mardi Gras floats represent corporate partners.

Google and Meta would be eligible to partner with the organisation in the future provided they could demonstrate how they met the requirements of its ethical charter.

Google and Meta do not meet the requirements to partner with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the organisation has said, after the two tech giants ended their official involvement and ditched diversity obligations in the US.

At the 47th annual Mardi Gras parade up Oxford Street next Saturday, a notable absence will be the two tech firms, previously event sponsors.

When Sydney hosted the biannual World Pride global event in 2023, Meta sent a float to the parade. It was a media partner for last year’s Mardi Gras; Google was a supporting partner.

The two companies have this year curtailed their spending on Mardi Gras, Guardian Australia has confirmed, and are not sponsoring the event in any capacity.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Neither company would comment on the shift but it is understood that the costs of sponsorship were a factor for at least one of them – rather than the move away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the US since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Mardi Gras disputed the level of funding that Guardian Australia was told would be required for companies to sponsor a float and partner with the festival.

Last year Mardi Gras received $3.5m in sponsorship income, organisers said – about $464,000 less than expected, which was blamed on a slowing economy and the cancellation of the Fair Day cultural event in Victoria Park amid concerns about asbestos in mulch.

Though Meta and Google have withdrawn of their own accord, a spokesperson for Mardi Gras said the companies would not now meet the festival’s criteria for partners.

“Partnership values are assessed based on the scale of the festival and an organisation’s commitment to the community,” the spokesperson said. “They are not always monetary in value and are underpinned by the ethical charter process – one that neither Google nor Meta currently meets the requirements of.”

The Mardi Gras website says: “We want to partner with industry leaders in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – who champion DEI as an integral part of their organisation and culture.”

Meta’s revision of its hateful conduct policy now allows users on Facebook and Instagram to accuse transgender or gay people of being “mentally ill”.

The Guardian reported last week that internally in Meta, the decline of the company’s diversity goals began with the departure of the chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in 2022.

Google announced this month it was scaling back its diversity initiatives and removing LGBTQ+ holidays from its online and mobile calendars.

Other companies remain involved in the parade. Canva is partnering with the event, TikTok is supporting LGBTQ+ creators and the ABC will be broadcasting the parade live on its TikTok account.

Amazon has taken part in Mardi Gras activities under the banner of “Glamazon” and participated in Fair Day this year, as it has in previous years, despite announcing in January that it was winding back diversity initiatives in the US. The Australian Amazon website still provides information about diversity initiatives.

Other large companies including American Express and Coles are listed as partners for the event.

Australia’s peak LGBTQ+ lobbying organisation, Equality Australia, declined to comment.

A spokesperson for activist group Pride in Protest, Damien Nguyen, said corporate participation in Mardi Gras had “never been about inclusion or community, it has always been about pinkwashing”.

Nguyen, who is also a member of the Mardi Gras board, said corporate interests were “drowning out the protest roots of community events like Mardi Gras”.

Aside from the annual debate about the inclusion of police and politicians in the parade, the involvement of corporations in Mardi Gras – an event that originated as a protest against police violence in 1978 – has frequently been a source of controversy.

During World Pride, Guardian Australia revealed that Meta was taking part in the parade while also taking thousands of dollars from Australian groups promoting anti-LGBTQ advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Roughly 10% of the Mardi Gras floats represent corporate partners.

Google and Meta would be eligible to partner with the organisation in the future provided they could demonstrate how they met the requirements of its ethical charter.

Police in Kashmir have raided dozens of bookstores and seized more than 650 books as part of crackdowns on dissent in the Indian-administered region.

Most of the titles were written by Abul A’la Maududi, a prominent 20th-century Islamic scholar who founded Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic organisation banned in Kashmir.

Raids began last Friday in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city, before moving to other parts of the disputed region. In a statement, Srinagar police said that the raids were “based on credible intelligence regarding the clandestine sale and distribution of literature promoting the ideology of a banned organisation”, and that 668 books were seized in all.

The books were mostly published by Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers, based in New Delhi, which is affiliated with the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the largest religious and political organisations in the Indian subcontinent.

“These books were found to be in violation of legal regulations, and strict action is being taken against those found in possession of such material,” police said.

In February 2019, Indian authorities banned Jamaat-e-Islami, declaring it an “unlawful association”, for five years. In August that year, Narendra Modi’s government scrapped the region’s partial autonomy. The repression of human rights in the region has since escalated.

Jamaat-e-Islami leaders said that the seizure of books “is unjust, unconstitutional, and a violation of fundamental rights”, adding that the books are “legally published” in Delhi. “If the government has any security concerns, we are fully prepared to cooperate with any investigation.”

“The current approach appears arbitrary and unfair, as it does not even fall within the scope of a legitimate investigation”, they added. “Instead, it reflects an attempt to marginalise us.”

The Kashmir conflict began after India gained independence from Britain in 1947, and both India and Pakistan claimed the region. For decades, insurgent groups have fought Indian rule, and tens of thousands have been killed in the conflict.

When armed rebellion broke out in 1989, Kashmir’s largest militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, declared it was Jamaat-e-Islami’s military wing. However, in a petition against the 2019 ban, Jamaat-e-Islam claimed it had “never supported violence” and “never been associated with the Hizbul Mujahideen”. In February last year, the ban on the organisation was extended for a further five years.

Umar Farooq, Kashmir’s chief cleric, said in a statement that “cracking down on Islamic literature” is “condemnable” and “ridiculous”.

“Policing thought by seizing books is absurd to say the least, in the time of access to all information on virtual highways”.

Police are searching for a Chinese woman who escaped from a downtown Panama City hotel where she was being held following her deportation from the US under Donald Trump’s intensified campaign against immigrants.

Zheng Lijuan was one of 299 migrants – from China, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries with which the US lacks extradition agreements – who have been flown in shackles to Panama since last Wednesday. Panamanian authorities say they believe that Zheng was aided by locals who had been “prowling” outside the Decapolis hotel in the capital city where the deportees had been held.

News of her escape came as 170 of the deported migrants were taken to the Darién region, close to the border with Colombia, according to a Panamanian lawyer representing one of the migrant families. The Panamanian government has said it would expand a camp previously used to house migrants arriving in Panama after crossing the Darién Gap, the dangerous jungle separating Central and South America.

After his election last July, Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino signed a deal with the US to control the flow of migrants through the jungle, stringing up barbed wire, upping border patrols and deporting mainly Ecuadoran and Colombian citizens on flights from the runway close to the town of Metetí.

Amid Trump’s threats to “take back” the Panama Canal, the Panamanian government has agreed to receive hundreds of migrants who the US cannot easily deport.

Mulino has said that the runway at Metetí will be expanded, in order for larger planes – presumably those able to make transatlantic flights – to land and take-off.

Representatives of the International Organization for Migration, a UN-related body responsible for undertaking the plan, were unable to comment.

However, Panama also lacks the flight agreements to deport the migrants to their home countries. They could, therefore, remain incarcerated in the San Vicente facility that will be “like a concentration camp”, according to one person with knowledge of the plan.

Many of them fear they will face punishment, or even death, should they return.

Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27 year old Iranian English teacher who had been held at the Decapolis hotel, told the New York Times that she was a Christian convert and would face possible execution under Shariah law should she return. “Only a miracle can save us,” she told reporters.

On Wednesday afternoon, the incarcerated guests at the Decapolis hotel peeked from behind the curtains. One woman in a hijab waved a hand.

A family of four dressed in red T-shirts made hand gestures to sign that they had had their phones taken away from them. Finally, the police arrived to escort the Guardian’s reporter from the premises.

Panamanian politicians are aware that, in a state of political duress following Trump’s threats, their country has come to play an ugly role in his aggressive deportation policy.

On Wednesday, the government of neighbouring Costa Rica also agreed to receive 200 migrants from Central Asian countries and India. The move was prompted by the potential threat of trade tariffs, president Rodrigo Chaves said, adding: “We’re helping our powerful economic brother in the north, because if [the US] imposes a tax on our export zones, we’re screwed.”

Police are searching for a Chinese woman who escaped from a downtown Panama City hotel where she was being held following her deportation from the US under Donald Trump’s intensified campaign against immigrants.

Zheng Lijuan was one of 299 migrants – from China, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries with which the US lacks extradition agreements – who have been flown in shackles to Panama since last Wednesday. Panamanian authorities say they believe that Zheng was aided by locals who had been “prowling” outside the Decapolis hotel in the capital city where the deportees had been held.

News of her escape came as 170 of the deported migrants were taken to the Darién region, close to the border with Colombia, according to a Panamanian lawyer representing one of the migrant families. The Panamanian government has said it would expand a camp previously used to house migrants arriving in Panama after crossing the Darién Gap, the dangerous jungle separating Central and South America.

After his election last July, Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino signed a deal with the US to control the flow of migrants through the jungle, stringing up barbed wire, upping border patrols and deporting mainly Ecuadoran and Colombian citizens on flights from the runway close to the town of Metetí.

Amid Trump’s threats to “take back” the Panama Canal, the Panamanian government has agreed to receive hundreds of migrants who the US cannot easily deport.

Mulino has said that the runway at Metetí will be expanded, in order for larger planes – presumably those able to make transatlantic flights – to land and take-off.

Representatives of the International Organization for Migration, a UN-related body responsible for undertaking the plan, were unable to comment.

However, Panama also lacks the flight agreements to deport the migrants to their home countries. They could, therefore, remain incarcerated in the San Vicente facility that will be “like a concentration camp”, according to one person with knowledge of the plan.

Many of them fear they will face punishment, or even death, should they return.

Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27 year old Iranian English teacher who had been held at the Decapolis hotel, told the New York Times that she was a Christian convert and would face possible execution under Shariah law should she return. “Only a miracle can save us,” she told reporters.

On Wednesday afternoon, the incarcerated guests at the Decapolis hotel peeked from behind the curtains. One woman in a hijab waved a hand.

A family of four dressed in red T-shirts made hand gestures to sign that they had had their phones taken away from them. Finally, the police arrived to escort the Guardian’s reporter from the premises.

Panamanian politicians are aware that, in a state of political duress following Trump’s threats, their country has come to play an ugly role in his aggressive deportation policy.

On Wednesday, the government of neighbouring Costa Rica also agreed to receive 200 migrants from Central Asian countries and India. The move was prompted by the potential threat of trade tariffs, president Rodrigo Chaves said, adding: “We’re helping our powerful economic brother in the north, because if [the US] imposes a tax on our export zones, we’re screwed.”

Brazilian democrats have celebrated the strength of their country’s judiciary and institutions after the former president Jair Bolsonaro was left facing political oblivion and jail time for allegedly plotting a coup, in stark contrast to the US’s failure to bring Donald Trump to justice for his anti-democratic acts.

“In Brazil coup-mongers go to jail. In the US they get back into the White House,” said Marcelo Freixo, a leading leftwing politician on Wednesday after the attorney general formally accused Bolsonaro of engineering a sprawling conspiracy to cling to power following his defeat in the 2022 election.

For his alleged crimes – which include participation in an attempted coup d’état, an armed criminal association and a violent attempt to abolish the rule of law – Bolsonaro could face a prison sentence of over 40 years. Trump meanwhile is beginning his second term as president after managing to shirk responsibility for his alleged offenses, including inciting the January 2021 attacks in Washington DC.

“In the US Trump encouraged an attempted coup through the storming of the Capitol and emerged unpunished. In Brazil Bolsonaro led an attempted coup and he is going to jail,” said Freixo hailing the South American country as “a more serious democracy than the US”.

Freixo was far from alone in voicing those sentiments as Brazilians absorbed the shocking details in the attorney general’s 272-page indictment, which laid bare just how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to suffering a violent military rupture after Bolsonaro lost its last presidential election to his leftwing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022.

Desperate to cling to power, Bolsonaro allegedly presided over an intricate two-year authoritarian conspiracy, which involved using social media to spread disinformation about Brazil’s supreme court and election voting system, sowing chaos on the country’s streets, and using that turmoil as a justification for a military intervention.

The most sinister element of the alleged plot involved the “neutralization” of public figures considered foes of Bolsonaro’s political movement, with the use of guns and poison. The targets allegedly included the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes and Brazil’s current president, Lula.

Bolsonaro had even allegedly prepared an address he planned to make to the nation after carrying out his power grab. In it, the far-right populist planned to quote the Italian theologian and philosopher St Thomas Aquinas’s ideas about resisting “unjust laws”, seemingly as a way of validating his illegal actions.

Bolsonaro has rejected the attorney general’s accusations, with his lawyers voicing “astonishment and anger” over the charges. His politician son, Carlos Bolsonaro, compared the claims in the indictment to a “sack of dung”.

In a statement, Bolsonaro alleged Brazil’s justice system had been “weaponized” against him in an effort to criminalize his movement and silence millions of Brazilian supporters. “This is the same failed strategy that was used against President Trump,” he said of his most important international ally.

But progressive Brazilians hailed how, unlike in the US, Brazil’s police and judiciary seemed to be successfully holding those who allegedly conspired against Brazil’s young democracy to account.

“Here in Brazil the institutions did their job defending democracy,” Freixo said. “We’ve always been told that North American institutions are really strong – but the institutions that showed themselves to be truly strong were the Brazilian ones, which did not allow a coup to take place.”

A former Brazilian secretary of justice, the lawyer Augusto de Arruda Botelho, said: “For any person who calls themselves a democrat, this is a historic moment in Brazil. This is a moment where we say: ‘There are limits.’”

“Political and ideological and party political divergences are healthy … in any democracy. But there are limits. And Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo went way beyond this limit,” Botelho added. “The limit is the law. They broke the law when they tried to stage a coup d’état and they are now being prosecuted for this.”

Conrado Hübner Mendes, a constitutional law professor at the University of São Paulo, said he believed there was “more than enough evidence” for Bolsonaro to be found guilty at trial. Mendes believed a criminal conviction, combined with the fact that Bolsonaro has already been barred from seeking elected office until 2030, “should put an end to his political career”.

However, Mendes doubted it would deal a fatal blow to “the political criminality Bolsonaro helped build and which remains strong” in Brazil, in the form of the ex-president’s hard-right successors.

Botelho said it was hard to predict the future of Bolsonaro, who is only likely to be arrested once the legal process has fully played out, something that could take months.

“It hurts him politically,” he said. “But in a way it also boosts his supporters,” who would try to paint their leader as the victim of political persecution.

The NHS in England is facing a “ticking timebomb” when it comes to retaining young staff, nursing leaders have warned, after new analysis showed its generation Z workers are becoming more stressed and unhappy over time.

A new report by the Nuffield Trust shows soaring dissatisfaction rates among staff in the health service’s youngest cohort, aged 21 to 30 – based on analysis of NHS surveys.

Researchers found that, between 2013 and 2023, stress levels in clinical staff aged 21 to 30 rose by 14 percentage points. In 2023, more than half (52%) said they had been made unwell through work-related stress in the previous year, compared with 38% in 2013.

But the proportion of older NHS workers – aged between 51 and 65 – who had become ill for the same reason decreased across the same period, dropping from 43% to 40%.

The report also found that the proportion of young NHS staff unhappy with their salary has doubled, from 10% in 2013 to 22% in 2023. But in older staff, there has been a much smaller increase, from 11% in 2013 to 12% in 2023.

Prof Nicola Ranger, the chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said that the findings were a “ticking timebomb” for the NHS.

She added: “Young nursing staff are the future of the workforce, but those at the start of their careers are the most unhappy.

“A new nurse today is likely to face extreme pressure in severely understaffed services, with stagnant pay and little prospect of progression. In these conditions, it is little wonder so many feel undervalued and overworked.

“The number of people leaving within the first years of their career has skyrocketed, while applications to study nursing are in collapse. Ministers need to realise you cannot fix a broken NHS without making nursing a more attractive career, starting with a proper pay rise and new investment to grow the workforce.

“That’s how you support staff to deliver care the way they want to, and improve job satisfaction.”

Thea Stein, the chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, said the findings showed that the “traditionally tough start faced by the youngest staff has got even tougher over the past decade”.

She added: “Gen Z NHS workers are now having to manage exams, early career demands and learning the job in potentially overstretched services alongside escalating cost of living pressures. Our findings raise real concerns around the NHS’s ability to retain its youngest workers, who are just at the start of their careers but are increasingly unhappy.

“The future of the health service depends on these workers. It is vital policymakers and employers now act on what the NHS’s own staff poll shows us about what the next generation of clinicians need to stay and thrive in the NHS.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS organisations have done a huge amount to improve the working environment for staff over the past couple of years and our staff retention levels are among the highest in over a decade – with a reduction in sickness and absence rates and an improvement in productivity.

“The NHS is fully committed to ensuring staff get the support they need, and the health service is now offering more flexible working options than ever before, as well as a range of mental health support available for staff, including access to coaching and wellbeing resources.”

Australia will “watch every move” of three Chinese warships which have been detected off the country’s east coast, the defence minister has said.

Three People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessels – the Jiangkai-class frigate Hengyang, the Renhai-class cruiser Zunyi and the Fuchi-class replenishment vessel Weishanhu – were detected off north-east Queensland last week and have been surveilled since as they have sailed south. The Financial Times reported the ships were about 150 nautical miles off the coast of Sydney.

The ships’ presence off Australia’s coast closely follows an incident in the South China Sea last week, in which a Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military plane.

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The ships have not crossed into Australia’s territorial waters – 12 nautical miles from the coastline – but are inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone (200nm). The ships have not breached international law and the defence force has said its monitoring of the fleet is “routine”.

Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, said while the ships’ passage off Australia’s coast was “not unprecedented” it was unusual.

“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles told Sky News.

“And whenever this mission is over on the part of the Chinese task group, we will assess everything we have seen to make a proper assessment of exactly what they were trying to achieve through this mission.”

Australia’s air force and navy were monitoring the ships, he said.

“This is not unprecedented but an unusual event,” Marles said. “Just as they have a right to be in international waters … we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”

In a statement on Thursday, the defence department said it “routinely monitors all maritime traffic in Australia’s exclusive economic zone and maritime approaches”.

“Australia respects the rights of all states to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace, under international law, particularly the UN convention on the law of the sea.”

The ships’ arrival off Australia’s coast comes as the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, met with Marles and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, in Australia.

Paparo is scheduled to meet Australia’s chief of joint operations in Canberra on Thursday.

A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Guo Jiakun, declined to comment on the ships’ presence in Australia’s EEZ when asked on Wednesday, saying he was “not familiar” with the situation.

According to earlier Chinese media reports, the PLA-Navy frigate, cruiser and replenishment vessel have been conducting “real-combat” exercises in an unspecified part of the Pacific Ocean over the past month.

The three Chinese vessels’ voyage down Australia’s east coast is understood to be the farthest down Australia’s east coast Chinese naval ships have sailed outside an official military visit to Australia.

Chinese ships sailed into Sydney Harbour in 2019 but that visit was undertaken in coordination with the Australian government.

Paparo told the Honolulu Defense Forum earlier this month that China’s escalating military demonstrations of force towards Taiwan were “not exercises; they are rehearsals” for an invasion or blockade of the autonomous island.

Despite the Chinese Communist government never having ruled Taiwan, Beijing claims the island as an inviolable part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to annex it.

Paparo said China had shown “clear intent and capability” to attack Taiwan. Most recently, China conducted a massive simulated air and sea blockade of Taiwan in October as Taipei marked its national day.

In an incident on 11 February, a Chinese PLA-AF J-16 fighter aircraft released flares near an Australian P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft as it was flying what Australia has said was a “routine maritime surveillance patrol in the South China Sea”.

“This was an unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvre that posed a risk to the aircraft and personnel,” the Australian government said, noting there was no damage to aircraft nor injuries.

China rejected Australia’s protests over the incident, saying the Australian plane “deliberately intruded into China’s airspace” and undermined its national security.

The flare incident was the latest of a number of contested run-ins between military craft from the two countries, following a similar aircraft encounter in the same area last year and a highly controversial report of a Chinese ship deploying sonar in close proximity to Australian navy divers in 2023.

The US has added six Mexican cartels to its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), as it calls for the “total elimination” of the criminal groups trafficking drugs to the US.

Mexico’s two biggest organised crime groups, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, were among those added, as were Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha, groups with ties to Venezuela and El Salvador.

It remains unclear how the designation will change US agencies’ ability to go after these criminal groups, besides widening the range of people that can be charged for supporting them.

But some fear it could be the first step towards US military strikes in Mexican territory.

“It’s part of a political discourse and leverage,” said María Calderón, from the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. “If cartels are terrorist organisations, that paves the way for other arguments in the political realm for taking US military action.”

The designation is part of Trump’s plan to “wage war” on Mexico’s organised crime groups, which he claims will address the fentanyl crisis in the US.

Despite what Trump described as “wonderful” and “very friendly” calls with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, he has repeatedly claimed that Mexico is “essentially run by the cartels”.

Sheinbaum previously rejected the plan to designate cartels as terrorist organisations as “interference” in Mexico, while saying the US government should look to crime in its own country first.

“Let them start with their country,” said Sheinbaum. “Don’t they have organised crime there? They have a lot to do in the United States.”

The designation, which came into effect on Thursday, marks a shift in how the threat from certain organised crime groups is perceived by US agencies and augurs a greater role for the CIA and the US military.

Trump’s pick for the new US ambassador in the Mexico, Ron Johnson, served as ambassador in El Salvador from 2019 to 2021 and before that spent decades in the CIA and the US army, including as a Green Beret, the elite army unit that conducts covert operations abroad.

However, it is still unclear just what effect the designation will have. US agencies already have an array of tools at their disposal to go after transnational organised crime groups by restricting their members’ abilities to travel or do business.

The main difference will be the range of people that can be targeted, which will widen to include anyone who provides “material support” to the cartels.

Material support could mean anything between logistical support and financial services, training and lodging, guns and false documents. But exactly how that is interpreted will depend on political will.

While the designation of cartels as FTOs itself will not authorise US military action in Mexico, some fear it is a first step towards it. Trump has already suggested bombing drug labs, and has reportedly discussed sending special forces to kill cartel leaders.

Since Trump returned to power, the US military has increased its airborne surveillance of the cartels along the US-Mexico border, while the CIA has stepped up drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs – though Sheinbaum said that this was with Mexico’s permission.

Earlier this month, Trump delayed his threatened 25% tariffs on all imports from Mexico after Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 more soldiers to the border to reduce fentanyl trafficking and migration.

It is unclear how those soldiers will reduce the flow of fentanyl, given that it is so potent that only relatively small volumes are moved, and that the great majority is trafficked through ports of entry by US citizens.

Nonetheless, Sheinbaum said that Trump in return agreed to help reduce arms trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of guns sold in the US each year end up in the hands of Mexican groups now designated as terrorist organisations.

Sheinbaum has said that Mexico could expand its ongoing lawsuit against US gunmakers to include alleged complicity with terror groups.