Vladimir Putin has said he has many questions about the proposed US-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine and appeared to set out a series of sweeping conditions that would need to be met before Russia would agree to such a truce.

Speaking at a press conference at the Kremlin alongside the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said he agreed in principle with US proposals to halt the fighting but said he wanted to address the “root causes of the conflict”.

“The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin said. But he suggested that Ukraine should neither rearm nor mobilise and that western military aid to Kyiv be halted during the 30-day ceasefire.

Donald Trump responded briefly before a meeting with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, saying Putin had “made a very promising statement, but it was not complete”.

The US president said he was “ready to talk” to Putin. “We will see if Russia agrees, and if not, it will be a very disappointing moment,” he said. “I would like to see a ceasefire from Russia. We hope that Russia will do the right thing.”

Putin claimed Ukraine was seeking a ceasefire because of the battlefield situation, asserting that Russian forces were “advancing almost everywhere” and nearing full control of the Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a surprise incursion last year.

“How will these 30 days of [ceasefire] be used? To continue forced mobilisation in Ukraine? To supply weapons to Ukraine? … These are legitimate questions,” he said.

Ukraine has previously indicated it would continue its mobilisation efforts during any ceasefire.

“We need to discuss this with our American partners – perhaps a call with Donald Trump,” Putin added, thanking the US president for his involvement in the peace negotiations.

By avoiding an outright rejection of Trump’s proposal, Putin appears to be balancing between not openly rebuffing Trump’s push for peace while also imposing his own stringent demands – potentially prolonging negotiations.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dismissed Putin’s ambivalent response to the proposal as “manipulative”.

“We now have all heard from Putin’s very predictable, very manipulative words in response to the idea of a ceasefire,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “As we have always said, the only one who will drag things out, the only one who will be unconstructive, is Russia.”

Zelenskyy said Putin was “afraid to say directly to President Trump that he wants to continue this war”, accusing the Russian leader of “framing the idea of a ceasefire with such preconditions that nothing will work out at all, or for as long as possible”.

Speaking from the White House, Trump went into further detail on the US negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, saying that a “lot of individual subjects have been discussed”.

Trump indicated that the US and Ukraine had discussed “pieces of land that would be kept and lost, and all of the other elements of a final agreement”, including a power plant. Trump said Ukraine had also brought up Nato membership.

“We’ve been discussing concepts of land because you don’t want to waste time with the ceasefire if it’s not going to mean anything,” Trump said. “So we’re saying: look, this is what you can get, this is what you can’t get. Now we’re going to see if Russia’s there and if not it’s going to be a very disappointing moment for the world.”

Asked whether he had any leverage to compel Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump said he did but did not want to go into detail.

Trump said he could do “things financially that would be very bad for Russia” if a ceasefire was not agreed, but did not elaborate on whether he meant new sanctions or tariffs.

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, said: “It would be wrong for Putin to lay conditions. Our support for Ukraine, and that of other partners, remains ironclad.”

The Russian president had travelled to the Kursk region on Wednesday in a rare battlefield visit, where he spoke with Russian troops who were on the verge of expelling Ukrainian forces from the land it captured last year.

“What will happen in the Kursk region? Will an order be given for the troops stationed there to surrender?” Putin asked. “How the situation along the frontline will be resolved remains unclear.”

Ukraine has not officially confirmed an organised retreat from the Kursk region but Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that “the military command is doing what it should do – saving the maximum number of lives of our soldiers”.

On Thursday, a source in Ukraine’s military who recently left the Kursk region said: “It’s over. The only question now is managing the withdrawal with as few losses as possible.”

But although Ukraine appears to be withdrawing from Kursk, Kyiv has largely stabilised the front in eastern Ukraine, where a Russian offensive has stalled in recent weeks.

Putin’s remarks came hours after Trump’s envoy and close ally, Steve Witkoff, landed in Moscow, where he is expected to meet Putin to push for a ceasefire after Washington’s talks with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.

After those talks, Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire and the US said it was putting the proposal to Moscow.

Recent rhetoric from Russian officials has shown little urgency to reach an agreement or make concessions, as Moscow remains on the offensive on the battlefield.

A Kremlin aide, Yuri Ushakov, said he had informed the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, that Moscow views the proposed 30-day ceasefire as “nothing more than a short reprieve for Ukrainian forces”.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said on Thursday that Moscow was ready to discuss a US-backed peace initiative “as early as today”. But she indicated that Russia saw little urgency in a halt to fighting, reiterating it would not accept western peacekeepers in Ukraine as a security guarantee and that they would be targeted if deployed.

Ukraine has said it would need some kind of security guarantee in order to sign a lasting ceasefire deal.

Moscow’s continued resistance to European peacekeeping forces – seen by Ukraine as the only viable alternative to Nato membership for guaranteeing its security – presents a big obstacle to a peace acceptable to Kyiv.

Observers believe Putin is determined to put forward a string of maximalist demands before agreeing to any ceasefire, which is likely to prolong negotiations.

Reuters and Bloomberg have reported that Russia, in discussions with the US, has presented a list of such demands to end the war in Ukraine and reset relations with Washington. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on the reports.

These demands could include the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a commitment to keeping Kyiv out of Nato. Moscow may also push for a ban on foreign troop deployments in Ukraine and international recognition of Putin’s claims to Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022.

Putin could also revisit some of his broader demands from 2021, which go beyond Ukraine, including a call for Nato to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began expanding into former communist countries.

Many in Europe fear these conditions for peace could weaken the west’s ability to increase its military presence and could allow Putin to expand his influence across the continent.

Rodrigo Duterte is expected to make his first appearance at the international criminal court (ICC) on Friday, as the former Philippines president faces crimes against humanity charges over his deadly “war on drugs”.

The court said in a statement late on Thursday that it “considers it appropriate” for Duterte to appear Friday at 2pm local time (1pm GMT).

At the hearing, the 79-year-old will be informed of the crimes he is alleged to have committed, as well as his rights as a defendant.

Duterte stands accused of the crime against humanity of murder over his years-long campaign against drug users and dealers that rights groups said killed tens of thousands of people.

As he landed in The Hague, the former leader was calm when he appeared to accept responsibility for his actions, saying in a Facebook video: “I have been telling the police, the military, that it was my job and I am responsible.”

It stood in sharp contrast to details that emerged of a chaotic 12-hour standoff around his arrest on Tuesday in Manila. Duterte threatened a police general with lawsuits, refused to be fingerprinted and told law enforcers “you have to kill me to bring me to The Hague,” according to police Maj. Gen. Nicolas Torre.

The standoff occurred at a Philippine airbase before he and other police officers managed to bring the former leader on to a government-chartered jet that took him to the Netherlands.

Torre described the confrontation as “very tense” and said Duterte refused to be fingerprinted.

Duterte’s legal team challenges his arrest and said that Philippine authorities didn’t show any copy of the ICC warrant and violated his constitutional rights.

The arrest also came amid a breakdown in relations between his family and the Marcos family, who had previously joined forces to run the Philippines.

Current president Ferdinand Marcos and vice-president Sara Duterte – Rodrigo’s daughter – are at loggerheads, with the latter facing an impeachment trial over charges including an alleged assassination plot against Marcos.

Sara Duterte is in the Netherlands to support her father, after labelling his arrest “oppression and persecution”, with the Duterte family having sought an emergency injunction from the supreme court to stop his transfer.

But victims of the “war on drugs” hope that Duterte will finally face justice for his alleged crimes.

The high-profile Duterte case comes at a critical moment for the ICC, as it faces unprecedented pressure from all sides, including US sanctions.

In February, US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court over what he said were “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”

The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza war.

Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan hailed Duterte’s arrest as a key moment for victims and international justice as a whole.

“Many say that international law is not as strong as we want, and I agree with that. But as I also repeatedly emphasise, international law is not as weak as some may think,” Khan said in a statement following Duterte’s arrival in ICC custody.

“When we come together … when we build partnerships, the rule of law can prevail. Warrants can be executed,” he said.

At the initial hearing, a suspect can request interim release pending a trial, according to ICC rules. Following that first hearing, the next phase is a session to confirm the charges, at which point a suspect can challenge the prosecutor’s evidence.

Only after that hearing will the court decide whether to press ahead with a trial, a process that could take several months or even years.

“It’s important to underline, as we now start a new stage of proceedings, that Mr Duterte is presumed innocent,” said Khan.

With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

The Trump administration has called on the Pentagon to provide military options to ensure the country has full access to the Panama canal, two US officials told Reuters on Thursday.

Donald Trump has said repeatedly he wants to “take back” the Panama canal, which is located at the narrowest part of the isthmus between North and South America and is considered one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, but he has not offered specifics about how he would do so, or if military action might be required.

One US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a document, described as interim national security guidance by the new administration, asked the military to look at options to ensure “unfettered” access to the Panama canal.

A second official said the US military had a wide array of potential options to guarantee access, including ensuring a close partnership with Panama’s military.

The Pentagon last published a national defense strategy in 2022, laying out the priorities for the military. An interim document sets out broad policy guidance, much like Trump’s executive orders and public remarks, before a more considered policy document like a formal NDS.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The interim document was first reported by CNN. NBC News earlier on Thursday reported that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to create options for the Panama canal.

Trump has asserted that the US needs to “take back” the canal, arguing, without evidence, that China controls it and could use the waterway to undermine American interests. In his inaugural speech in January, Trump accused Panama of breaking a promise for the final transfer of the canal in 1999.

Ilya Espino de Marotta, the canal’s deputy administrator, told the Guardian in January: “The canal is run by Panamanians 100%. We are an autonomous entity. …

“There is no Chinese management of the canal.”

Any move by a foreign power to take the canal by force would almost certainly violate international law.

The US and Panama are treaty-bound to defend the canal against any threat to its neutrality and are permitted to take unilateral action to do so.

The US acquired the rights to build and operate the canal in the early 20th century. In a treaty signed in 1979, during the administration of Jimmy Carter, the US agreed to turn over control of the canal to Panama at the close of 1999.

A federal judge in California has granted a preliminary injunction to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at federal agencies as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees.

The ruling by the judge William H Alsup applies to fired probationary employees at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury.

Many of the at least 30,000 employees were fired with the cited reason being poor performance, though workers have disputed this based on positive performance evaluations. Alsup said it was a “lie” that the probationary workers who were fired had performance issues.

Here is what else happened on Thursday:

A US hunting influencer who caused outrage in Australia after grabbing a baby wombat from its mother has left the country after the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said immigration authorities were checking if she had breached the conditions of her visa.

A government source told the Guardian that Montana-based Sam Jones left the country on Friday morning.

Burke, who is also the immigration minister, said on Thursday that he couldn’t “wait to see the back of this individual” and authorities were “working through the conditions” on Jones’s visa to determine “whether immigration law has been breached”.

That review was still ongoing when Jones made the decision herself to leave the country, the Guardian understands.

Burke said on Friday: “There has never been a better day to be a baby wombat in Australia.”

Jones had shared footage on Instagram of herself approaching and then grabbing the wombat joey as it walked with its mother at an unknown location.

She then ran with the joey towards the camera, with a seemingly distressed mother wombat following and circling in the background. The joey hissed and screeched as Jones held it up and told the camera: “I caught a baby wombat.” The joey was then released by the side of the road.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Jones’s actions were “an outrage” and suggested she should try and “take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there”.

RSCPA Australia said the footage showed a “blatant disregard” for native wildlife and the distress to the joey and the mother caused by the “callous act” was clear.

The Instagram account where Jones shared the footage was set to private and a TikTok account also disappeared. The footage sparked thousands of angry comments on social media sites where the clip was widely reshared.

A new TikTok account claiming to have been created by Jones after she was previously “banned” posted two messages. The Guardian has been unable to confirm if the account was genuine.

In one message the account creator said she was “really sorry about the wombat incident” and that “it was a mistake”.

In another message, posted about midnight on Thursday, the creator of the account wrote to “fellow fans and haters” that the hate was “too much for me to handle”.

“You guys are insane,” the account said. “I get hundreds of dea** threats for picking up an animal. WT*? Imagine someone just goes up to your child and curses at them? Let’s have some respect.”

Syria’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hailed the start of a “new history” for his country, after signing into force a constitutional declaration regulating its five-year transitional period and laying out rights for women and freedom of expression.

The declaration comes three months after Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s repressive government, leading to calls for an inclusive new Syria that respects rights.

It also follows a wave of violence that broke out on Syria’s Mediterranean coast last week, in which security forces killed nearly 1,500 civilians, according to a war monitor, most of them members of the Alawite minority to which the Assad family belongs.

Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, said on Thursday he hoped the constitutional declaration would mark the beginning of “a new history for Syria, where we replace oppression with justice … and suffering with mercy”, as he signed the document at the presidential palace.

The new authorities had previously repealed the Assad-era constitution and dissolved parliament.

The declaration sets out a transitional period of five years, during which a “transitional justice commission” would be formed to “determine the means for accountability, establish the facts, and provide justice to victims and survivors” of the former government’s misdeeds.

According to a copy of the document shared by the presidency, “the glorification of the former Assad regime and its symbols” is forbidden, as is “denying, praising, justifying or downplaying its crimes”.

Abdul Hamid al-Awak, a member of the committee that drafted the document, said it also enshrined “women’s right to participate in work and education, and have all their social, political and economic rights guaranteed”.

The declaration maintains the requirement that the president of the republic must be a Muslim, with Islamic jurisprudence set out as “the main source” of legislation.

It gives the president a sole exceptional power: declaring a state of emergency.

Awak added that the people’s assembly, a third of which will be appointed by the president, would be tasked with drafting all legislation.

Under the declaration, the legislature cannot impeach the president, nor can the president dismiss any lawmakers.

Executive power would also be restricted to the president in the transitional period, Awak said, pointing to the need for “rapid action to confront any difficulties”.

He added that the declaration also guarantees the “freedom of opinion, expression and the press”, and affirms the independence of the judiciary.

Awak said a committee would be formed to draft a new permanent constitution.

Sharaa, who under his previous nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded Assad’s overthrow, was appointed interim president in late January. He promised to issue the constitutional declaration to serve as a “legal reference” during the transition period.

The Kurdish-led administration in north-eastern Syria sharply criticised the declaration, saying it “contradicts the reality of Syria and its diversity”.

Earlier this week, the Syrian Democratic Forces – the Kurdish-led administration’s de facto army – struck a deal with the authorities in Damascus to be integrated into state institutions.

But the administration on Thursday said the declaration “does not represent the aspirations of our people” and “undermines efforts to achieve true democracy”.

The text of the declaration states: “Calls for division and separatism, requests for foreign intervention, or reliance on foreign powers are criminalised,” without offering specifics.

It adds, however, that the government “seeks to coordinate with relevant countries and entities to support the reconstruction process”.

A UN spokesperson quoted the special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, as saying he “hopes the [constitutional] declaration can be a solid legal framework for a genuinely credible and inclusive political transition”, adding “proper implementation will be key”.

The declaration comes a week after the deadly rash of violence on Syria’s coast, in what analysts described as the gravest threat so far to the transitional process.

Mass killings mainly targeted Alawites, resulting in at least 1,476 civilian deaths at the hands of the security forces and their allies, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Sharaa has vowed to prosecute those behind the bloodshed, and the authorities have announced several arrests.

Syria’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hailed the start of a “new history” for his country, after signing into force a constitutional declaration regulating its five-year transitional period and laying out rights for women and freedom of expression.

The declaration comes three months after Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s repressive government, leading to calls for an inclusive new Syria that respects rights.

It also follows a wave of violence that broke out on Syria’s Mediterranean coast last week, in which security forces killed nearly 1,500 civilians, according to a war monitor, most of them members of the Alawite minority to which the Assad family belongs.

Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, said on Thursday he hoped the constitutional declaration would mark the beginning of “a new history for Syria, where we replace oppression with justice … and suffering with mercy”, as he signed the document at the presidential palace.

The new authorities had previously repealed the Assad-era constitution and dissolved parliament.

The declaration sets out a transitional period of five years, during which a “transitional justice commission” would be formed to “determine the means for accountability, establish the facts, and provide justice to victims and survivors” of the former government’s misdeeds.

According to a copy of the document shared by the presidency, “the glorification of the former Assad regime and its symbols” is forbidden, as is “denying, praising, justifying or downplaying its crimes”.

Abdul Hamid al-Awak, a member of the committee that drafted the document, said it also enshrined “women’s right to participate in work and education, and have all their social, political and economic rights guaranteed”.

The declaration maintains the requirement that the president of the republic must be a Muslim, with Islamic jurisprudence set out as “the main source” of legislation.

It gives the president a sole exceptional power: declaring a state of emergency.

Awak added that the people’s assembly, a third of which will be appointed by the president, would be tasked with drafting all legislation.

Under the declaration, the legislature cannot impeach the president, nor can the president dismiss any lawmakers.

Executive power would also be restricted to the president in the transitional period, Awak said, pointing to the need for “rapid action to confront any difficulties”.

He added that the declaration also guarantees the “freedom of opinion, expression and the press”, and affirms the independence of the judiciary.

Awak said a committee would be formed to draft a new permanent constitution.

Sharaa, who under his previous nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded Assad’s overthrow, was appointed interim president in late January. He promised to issue the constitutional declaration to serve as a “legal reference” during the transition period.

The Kurdish-led administration in north-eastern Syria sharply criticised the declaration, saying it “contradicts the reality of Syria and its diversity”.

Earlier this week, the Syrian Democratic Forces – the Kurdish-led administration’s de facto army – struck a deal with the authorities in Damascus to be integrated into state institutions.

But the administration on Thursday said the declaration “does not represent the aspirations of our people” and “undermines efforts to achieve true democracy”.

The text of the declaration states: “Calls for division and separatism, requests for foreign intervention, or reliance on foreign powers are criminalised,” without offering specifics.

It adds, however, that the government “seeks to coordinate with relevant countries and entities to support the reconstruction process”.

A UN spokesperson quoted the special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, as saying he “hopes the [constitutional] declaration can be a solid legal framework for a genuinely credible and inclusive political transition”, adding “proper implementation will be key”.

The declaration comes a week after the deadly rash of violence on Syria’s coast, in what analysts described as the gravest threat so far to the transitional process.

Mass killings mainly targeted Alawites, resulting in at least 1,476 civilian deaths at the hands of the security forces and their allies, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Sharaa has vowed to prosecute those behind the bloodshed, and the authorities have announced several arrests.

Protesters organized by a progressive Jewish group occupied the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University student held by US immigration authorities. About 100 were arrested.

Chanted slogans included: “Free Mahmoud, free them all” and: “Fight Nazis, not students.”

Other chants in footage posted to social media included: “We will not comply, Mahmoud, we are on your side” and: “Bring Mahmoud home now.”

At a news briefing on Thursday afternoon, a police official said those arrested faced charges including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.

Many of the protesters in a group organizers said was more than 250-strong wore red T-shirts bearing the message “Jews say stop arming Israel”. By early afternoon, footage was posted showing officers from the New York police department beginning to arrest protesters.

The protest in the gold-coloured lobby of Donald Trump’s signature Fifth Avenue building, the US president’s New York home, was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world” and has staged protests at New York landmarks including Grand Central Station.

In a statement, the group said: “The detention of Mahmoud is further proof that we are on the brink of a full takeover by a repressive, authoritarian regime.

“As Jews of conscience, we know our history and we know where this leads. It’s on all of us to stand up now. Many of us are the descendants of people who resisted European fascism and far too many of our ancestors lost their lives in that struggle. We call on the strength of our ancestors and we call on our tradition, which teaches us we must never stand idly by.”

The actor Debra Winger participated in the protest.

Accusing the Trump administration of having “no interest in Jewish safety” and “co-opting antisemitism”, Winger told the Associated Press: “I’m just standing up for my rights, and I’m standing up for Mahmoud Khalil, who has been abducted illegally and taken to an undisclosed location. Does that sound like America to you?”

Khalil, 30, was a lead organizer of protests at Columbia University over Israel’s war in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.

Having completed a master’s degree, Khalil is due to graduate from Columbia in May. Though he is a legal permanent US resident and married to an American citizen, he was arrested in New York last Saturday.

He is now in custody in Louisiana, without charge but held under a rarely used immigration law provision that allows the secretary of state to approve the detention of anyone deemed a threat to US foreign policy.

His lawyer, Baher Azmy, the director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has called the arrest “absolutely unprecedented” and “essentially a form of retaliation and punishment for the exercise of free speech”.

Amid Trump administration attacks on universities over pro-Palestinian protests, observers say Khalil is being used as a test case for mass arrests. Trump has said Khalil’s arrest is “the first of many to come”, and promised to deport students seen to be guilty of “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity”. Khalil has not been accused of breaking any laws.

On Thursday, Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant, spoke to Reuters. She said Khalil asked her a week ago if she knew what to do if officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) came to the door of their home.

“I didn’t take him seriously. Clearly I was naive,” she said.

She added: “I think it would be very devastating for me and for him to meet his first child behind a glass screen.”

Khalil “is Palestinian and he’s always been interested in Palestinian politics”, she said. “He’s standing up for his people, he’s fighting for his people.”

On Wednesday, in a statement read by a lawyer, Abdalla, 28, said: “My husband was kidnapped from our home, and it is shameful that the US government continues to hold him because he stood for the rights and lives of his people. I demand his immediate release and return to our family.

“So many who know and love Mahmoud have come together, refusing to stay silent. Their support is a testament to his character and to the deep injustice of what is being done to him.”

Sonya E Meyerson-Knox, director of communications for Jewish Voice for Peace, posted footage of the Trump Tower protest on Thursday and said: “We will not comply – Mahmoud we are in your side[,] 300 Jews and friends in Trump Towers [sic] [because] we know what happens when an autocratic regime starts taking away our rights and scapegoating and we will not be silent[.] COME FOR ONE – FACE US ALL[.]”

Jewish Voice for Peace said descendants of Holocaust survivors were among the protesters.

Meyerson-Knox told NBC News: “My grandmother lost her cousins in the Holocaust. I grew up on these stories. We know what happens when authoritarian regimes begin targeting people, begin abducting them at night, separating their families and scapegoating. And we know that it’s one step from here to losing all right to protest and then further horrors happening, as we have seen too well in our history.

“We’re calling on everyone to speak up today because otherwise we won’t be able to tomorrow.”

Israel’s systemic attacks on women’s healthcare in Gaza amount to “genocidal acts”, and Israeli security forces have used sexual violence as a weapon of war to “dominate and destroy the Palestinian people”, a UN report states.

The 49-page report on sexual and gender-based violence was drawn up by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and presented to the UN human rights council.

It details attacks on maternity wards and other healthcare facilities for women, the destruction of an IVF clinic and controls on the entry of food and medical supplies into Gaza that together “destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group”.

Israel’s actions amounted to “two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome statute and the genocide convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births”, the human rights council said in a press release about the report.

The report found that Israel’s security forces had made certain forms of sexual and gender-based violence part of “standard operating procedures”, including forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, and sexual assault.

The “pattern of sexual violence” that Israeli forces used, including cases of rape and sexualised torture, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity, the commission found.

“The frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory leads the commission to conclude that sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilise, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.”

Israel’s civilian and military leadership provided “either explicit orders or implicit encouragement” to carry out sexual violence including rape and attacks on genitals, the UN investigators said.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the accusations in the report were baseless, and attacked the UN human rights council as biased against Israel.

A previous commission report investigated sexual and gender-based violence committed by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups during the 7 October 2023 attacks, when about 1,200 people were killed, the majority of them civilians, and 250 taken hostage to Gaza.

The latest report documents a wide range of violations against Palestinian men, women and children across the occupied territories in the wake of that attack.

Repeated patterns in the abuse of Palestinian boys and men showed the violence was intended as collective punishment, to “humiliate and intimidate”, the report found. This included filming and photographing public stripping, nudity and sexualised abuse and torture, and sharing images online.

Most perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence listed in the report were members of the armed forces or working in detention centres, but they also included Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians.

The chair of the commission that drew up the report, Navi Pillay, said Israel’s failure to investigate or prosecute abuses created a culture of impunity.

Israel last month sentenced a soldier to seven months for severe assaults of Palestinian detainees, the first conviction for abuse in the detention system. Nine other soldiers were arrested last year over allegations of sexual abuse so violent it left a detainee in a critical condition, but they have not gone on trial.

Pillay said: “The exculpatory statements and actions by Israeli leaders and the lack of effectiveness shown by the military justice system to prosecute cases and convict perpetrators send a clear message to members of the Israeli security forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability.

“In this context, accountability through the international criminal court and national courts, through their domestic law or exercising universal jurisdiction, is essential if the rule of law is to be upheld and victims awarded justice.”

The ​UN’s international court of justice ordered the Israeli government to ensure its forces did not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in January 2024.

Israel is party to the genocide convention, but not the Rome statute under which the international criminal court has jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide.

The UN commission of inquiry also highlighted the “unprecedented scale” of female deaths in Gaza as another gendered aspect of the violence. Israeli attacks have killed more than 48,000 people in Gaza, 33% of them women and girls.

That is a higher proportion than during Israel’s past wars in Gaza, caused by “an Israeli strategy of deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas”, the report said.

Egypt and Hamas officials on Thursday welcomed comments from Donald Trump that Palestinians would not be forced out of Gaza. “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians from Gaza,” the US president said after a White House meeting with the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin.

Trump has repeatedly called for the US to take ownership of the strip and rebuild it as a “riviera” for the Middle East without its Palestinian residents, suggesting they should move to neighbouring countries including Egypt.

Greenland’s probable new prime minister has rejected Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, whose centre-right Democrats won a surprise victory in this week’s legislative elections and now must form a coalition government, pushed back on Thursday against Trump’s repeated claims that the US will annex the island.

“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” Nielsen, 33, told Sky News. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”

Greenland’s outgoing prime minister, Múte Egede, said he would convene a meeting of party leaders to jointly reject Trump’s threats, warning: “Enough is enough.”

“This time we need to toughen our rejection of Trump. People cannot continue to disrespect us,” Egede wrote on Facebook.

Egede continues to lead Greenland while a new government is formed.

“The American president has once again evoked the idea of annexing us. I absolutely cannot accept that,” he wrote.

“I respect the result of the election, but I consider that I have an obligation as interim head of government: I have therefore asked the administration to summon the party heads as soon as possible.”

The comments came after Trump repeated his vow to take over the island on Thursday.

During an Oval Office meeting with the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, Trump claimed that Greenland’s election had been “very good for us,” adding: “The person who did the best is a very good person, as far as we’re concerned.”

Asked whether he thought the US would annex Greenland, Trump said: “I think it’ll happen.”

Trump said that “Denmark’s very far away” from Greenland and questioned whether that country still had a right to claim the world’s largest island.

“A boat landed there 200 years ago or something. And they say they have rights to it,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually.”

Trump said US control of Greenland could be important for national security reasons and even suggested Nato should be involved, but Rutte demurred.

With most Greenlanders opposing Trump’s overtures, the election campaign focused more on issues such as healthcare and education than on geopolitics.

The 31 men and women elected to parliament on Tuesday will have to set priorities for issues such as diversifying Greenland’s economy, building infrastructure and improving healthcare, as well as shaping the country’s strategy for countering the US president’s “America first” agenda.

The Democrats won 29.9% of the vote by campaigning to improve housing and educational standards while delaying independence until Greenland is self-sufficient. Four years ago, the party finished in fourth place with 9.1%.

Nuuk resident Anthon Nielsen said the party’s victory would be good for the country.

“Most politicians want Greenland to be independent,” he said. “But this party who won, they don’t want to hurry things, so everything must be done right.”

Carina Ren, head of the Arctic program at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, said the results show that Greenlanders tried to ignore Trump and focus on issues that were important to them.

“The voters have been able to drag down all the drama, all the alarmist talk from the outside to say: ‘Well, this is about our everyday lives, our everyday concerns as citizens. Where are we going, how are we going to develop our society from the inside.’”

Now, Demokraatit will have to turn its attention to forming a governing coalition.

Naleraq, the most aggressively pro-independence party, finished in second place, with 24.5% of the vote. It was followed by Inuit Ataqatigiit, which led the last government, at 21.4%.

Noel Clarke’s wife has said his accusers are liars who have deliberately fabricated sexual misconduct claims about him.

Giving evidence in the actor’s libel case against the Guardian, Iris Clarke said her husband was generous and caring, and that people he had worked with and helped had taken advantage of him.

Noel Clarke, 49, who wrote and produced the Kidulthood trilogy, is suing Guardian News and Media (GNM) over seven articles and a podcast published between April 2021 and March 2022.

Among GNM’s witnesses are Gina Powell, a film producer and documentary maker, who worked for Clarke from 2014 to 2017 and alleges “a pattern of abusive behaviour, financial exploitation, bullying and sexual misconduct”.

Iris Clarke said Powell had never seemed uncomfortable around her husband and so could not be telling the truth. “She is a liar,” she said. “She was not threatened or intimidated by him. I feel like she was infatuated with him.”

Asked by Gavin Millar KC, for GNM, how she could say Powell had never been uncomfortable away from her own presence, she replied: “I am telling you, she was never uncomfortable around my husband, and even when she was not in my presence I could see she was not uncomfortable, or do I have to be physically beside her?”

She also accused Davie Fairbanks, a writer, director and former creative partner of her husband, of lying. Fairbanks’s allegations include claims that Noel Clarke secretly filmed nude auditions and groped an actor at a wrap party.

Iris Clarke said Fairbanks had been like a brother to her husband but had been envious of him and deceitful. “He would go around telling people not nice things about my husband to better himself,” she told the court. “He’s a liar … It’s very clear he wanted to target my husband.”

She said the former Doctor Who star had tried to help Fairbanks when his friend’s mother had died and with finding a place to live. She told the court she had warned her husband that Fairbanks was manipulative but he was “always with his kind heart trying to help people”.

“Noel is a person who is too generous, he’s too caring,” she said.

Earlier, completing his evidence on day four in the witness box, Noel Clarke said: “I think the world has changed. I think things that were acceptable 10, 20 years ago are just no longer acceptable and throwing a blanket lens of 2021 on them is just not fair on anybody.”

The destruction of a large Ukrainian dam in 2023 triggered a “toxic timebomb” of environmental harm, a study has found.

Lakebed sediments holding 83,000 tonnes of heavy metals were exposed when the Kakhovka dam was blown up one year into Russia’s invasion, researchers found.

Less than 1% of these “highly toxic” heavy metals – which include lead, cadmium and nickel – are likely to have been released when the reservoir drained, the scientists found. They said the remaining pollutants would leach into rivers as rains wore down the sediment, threatening human health in a region where river water is widely used to make up for shortages in municipal water supplies.

The lead author, Oleksandra Shumilova, said the scale of the environmental impacts was comparable to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

“All these pollutants that were deposited on the bottom can accumulate in different organisms, pass through the food web, and spread from vegetation to animals to humans,” said Shumilova, a scientist at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. “Its consequences can be compared to the effects of radiation.”

The researchers linked on-the-ground measurements with remote sensing data and hydrology models to map the environmental impacts of the dam’s destruction, which flooded the region and killed 84 people. They estimated water from the breach killed 20-30% of floodplain rodents, along with the entire juvenile fish stock.

They said the reservoir released 9,000-17,000 tonnes of phytoplankton each day in the first week after the dam was blown up, driving an increase in water turbidity that led to the “probable loss” of 10,000 tonnes of macroinvertebrates.

The destruction of natural life detailed in the study appears to contrast with the striking images of wildlife that has returned to the reservoir since the dam burst. White willows and black poplars have reforested the land, and wild boars and other animals have taken over areas that people still avoid. Fish that have not been seen for decades, such as sturgeon and herring, have returned to the water.

The researchers expect that the area will reach a level of biodiversity equivalent to 80% of an undammed ecosystem within five years.

“It’s not recovery, it’s better to use a word such as re-establish,” said Shumilova. “It means that it will develop its own way, but not necessarily to the initial conditions.”

The Kakhovka dam, which was built in the 1950s on the Dnipro River, was destroyed on 6 June 2023 while under Russian occupation. Its reservoir supplied water to cool the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and irrigate southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian ecologists have debated whether the dam should be rebuilt after the war – and how much land should be flooded if it is – with some arguing for the new ecosystem to be left alone as part of a growing movement to rewild human-disturbed areas. Shumilova said that the unresolved question of heavy metal contamination complicated this approach, because it was unclear whether the vegetation was enough to keep the exposed sediments in place.

“It’s still something that people have to investigate,” she said. “Presently, it’s difficult because of the war – it’s difficult for scientists to go there to take samples and conduct experiments.”

Shumilova, a Berlin-based researcher whose home town of Mykolaiv was cut off from water for a full month at the start of the war, said the study findings were relevant for peacetime removals of large dams, as well as for other wars between industrialised countries.

Water has repeatedly been used as a weapon of war in Ukraine, with attackers and defenders having blown up dams for military gain. Legal scholars say the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which Ukraine blames on Russia, and which Russia disputes, could constitute an environmental war crime.

Shah Maruf, a law researcher at the University of Dhaka who has published research on the legal consequences of the Kakhovka dam’s destruction, said the new findings “suggest that the damage is ‘widespread, long-term, and severe’, fulfilling one of the key requirements for an environmental war crime”.

But he added that the speed of the ecosystem’s recovery could affect the strength of the case. “If the recovery is faster – and if that was anticipated by the perpetrator while attacking – that may compromise the finding of ‘long-term’ damage in the context of environmental war crime.”

Last month, a separate study exploring the effects of the Kakhovka dam destruction on the Black Sea ecosystems observed some habitats and species replenishing, but found “significant habitat destruction, disturbances and pollutant damages remain”.

Carol Stepien, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution and co-author of the study, said Ukraine’s freshwater, estuarine and marine species “evolved under conditions of longtime flux”, exposing them to a range of temperatures, salinity levels and habitat qualities. This “may aid their resilience and recovery”, she added.