Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.

The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.

“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all … on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”

The abrupt change of direction came after Putin had tried to attack the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump said. Appearing on Russian television, Putin had suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections before negotiating a peace deal.

Trump has previously called the Ukrainian president a dictator, but on Sunday he said: “I was very angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?”

He said “new leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time, right” and that he wanted to exert pressure on the Kremlin, which has thrown up a string of questions about a peace settlement and only agreed to limited maritime and energy ceasefires so far.

Trump repeated that “if a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, I’m going to put secondary sanctions on Russia”, but then indicated he would quickly back down if there was progress on a ceasefire.

“The anger dissipates quickly” if Putin “does the right thing”, Trump said, adding that he expected to talk to his Russian counterpart this week.

Later, speaking to a group of journalists, Trump pointed to similar tariffs imposed on Venezuela, which he said “had a very strong impact”.

“You know that every ship just got out and they left. A lot of them left. They dropped the hoses right into the ocean and they left,” he said.

Asked by the Guardian if his relationship with Putin had fallen to its lowest point, Trump responded: “No, I don’t think so, I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word … I was disappointed in a certain way. Some of the things that he said over the last day or two having to do with Zelenskyy … he’s supposed to be making a deal with him, whether you like him or you don’t like him. So I wasn’t happy with that.”

The US president also used the earlier NBC interview to tell Iran that if “they don’t make a deal” to curb their nuclear weapons programme, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. Officials from both countries were engaged in negotiations, he added.

He also mentioned fresh economic sanctions as an alternative. “There’s a chance that, if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them,” Trump said. “I am considering putting on secondary tariffs on Iran until such time as a deal is signed.”

Secondary tariffs are a novel idea. The US introduced a 25% tariff last week on countries that buy crude oil and liquid fuels from Venezuela, the largest of which is China, after Trump accused the Latin American country of sending criminals and gang members into the US under the cover of migrants.

Russian oil exports are already subject to a range of sanctions from the US, UK, EU and other G7 countries, leaving China and India as the two largest buyers, according to the International Energy Agency. What is not yet clear is whether the measures proposed would be effective once they come into force.

Finland indicated it may have had a role in Trump’s intervention. A day before the interview, Trump spent time with his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The two men had breakfast and lunch and played a round of golf on an unofficial visit, Stubb’s office said.

“My message in the conversations I have with the president is that we need a ceasefire, and we need a deadline for the ceasefire, and then we need to pay a price for breaking a ceasefire,” Stubb told the Guardian.

“So, number one, we need a ceasefire date, and I would prefer that to be Easter, say, 20 April, when President Trump has been in office for three months. If by then it’s not accepted or is broken by Russia, there needs to be consequences. And those consequences should be sanctions, maximum sanctions, and we continue the pressure up until the 20th and then we’ll see what happens.”

During a previous interview with NBC on Saturday, Trump said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”

During the election campaign, Trump had said that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours, comments he more recently claimed were “a little bit sarcastic”. That has proved elusive and his tactics to force Russia and Ukraine into agreeing a ceasefire have so far been focused on bullying and pressurising Kyiv.

Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, berated Zelenskyy at the Oval Office a month ago, which was followed by Washington cutting off intelligence and military aid. Kyiv then signed up to the principle of a 30-day ceasefire if the Kremlin would reciprocate in return for intelligence and aid being restored.

Putin said earlier this month that although he was in favour of a ceasefire, “there are nuances” and any halt in fighting should “remove the root causes of this crisis”, a sweeping but vague demand.

The Russian president and his allies have called for the demilitarisation of Ukraine, insisted that the presence of western troops as peacekeepers would be unacceptable and demanded the full annexation of four regions, three of which it only partially occupies.

Two people were killed and 25 were injured in and around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, in Russian attacks on Saturday night and Sunday morning. A military hospital was among the buildings struck. Ukraine’s general staff denounced what it said was a “deliberate, targeted shelling”, a rare acknowledgement of military casualties.

Trump also claimed to journalists on Sunday that Ukraine’s president was trying to back out of the minerals deal.

“And if he does that he’s got some problems. Big, big problems. We made a deal on rare earth and now he’s saying, well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal,” Trump said. “He wants to be a member of Nato. Well, he was never going to be a member of Nato. He understands that. So if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems.”

Zelenskyy last week told reporters the US was “constantly” changing the terms of a proposed minerals deal, but he did not want Washington to think he was against it.

Trump’s interventions follow a difficult week for the White House, during which senior administration officials were criticised for discussing attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen on the Signal messaging app, which is not authorised by the Pentagon.

The highly sensitive discussion, which included bombing plans, leaked because a journalist from the Atlantic magazine was mistakenly added to the chat by the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

Donald Trump is losing patience with Vladimir Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said after spending several hours with the US president – including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.

Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.

Stubb pointed out that a third golf partner on Saturday, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, already has a bill in the US Senate proposing what he has described as “bone-breaking” US sanctions on Russia if it did not accept an unconditional ceasefire.

The round of golf diplomacy seemed to make a positive impression on Trump, who wrote afterwards on his Truth Social platform: “I just played a round of Golf with Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. He is a very good player, and we won the Men’s Member-Guest Golf Tournament at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County …

“President Stubb and I look forward to strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the U.S., delivering Peace and International Security for our Countries, and the World.”

Asked how he thought Trump would express his impatience with Putin, Stubb said things would be clear in a matter of days. “When you spend seven hours with someone, you at least get an intuition of the direction in which we’re going,” he said.

Stubb – in London to see the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer – has emerged as a critical figure in the Ukraine talks process, and, like Starmer, said engagement rather than disengagement with Trump was the best way to persuade America not to abandon Ukraine.

Looking sprightly after his overnight flight to London, the Finnish president said: “I think we’re probably moving into the direction where the Americans are seeing Russia for what it’s worth. In other words, the overall ceasefire has been agreed by the United States, by Ukraine and by Europe, but not by Russia.

“The half-ceasefire has been broken by Russia, and I think America, and my sense is also the president of the United States, is running out of patience with Russia. I think that’s good news for engagement and negotiation. So this is what I sensed over the weekend as well.”

He explained: “My message in the conversations I have with the [US] president is that we need a ceasefire, and we need a deadline for the ceasefire, and then we need to pay a price for breaking a ceasefire. So number one, we need a ceasefire date, and I would prefer that to be Easter, say, 20 April, when President Trump has been in office for three months. If by then it’s not accepted or is broken by Russia, there needs to be consequences. And those consequences should be sanctions, maximum sanctions, and we continue the pressure up until the 20th and then we’ll see what happens.”

He added: “I think it would be quite a useful combination at this moment to get a deadline from the president of the United States with a sanctions package coming from the Senate.”

Stubb said it was not for him to give the US advice on the kind of sanctions it could impose, but Trump said on Sunday, after meeting Stubb, that he was considering secondary sanctions on any country that bought Russian oil.

Stubb said: “We in Finland understand not to trust Putin. Don’t underestimate his capacity to delay. But we need to call his bluff. It’s typically Russian to say, ‘yes, Mr President, there’s a ceasefire’. And after that, say, ‘but the conditions are …’ That’s not the way in which I think we should negotiate with the Russians. The only thing they understand is power.”

The Finnish president stressed it would be wrong for Europe to loosen its own sanctions now, as demanded by Putin as the price for a Black Sea peace deal, saying any European sanctions relaxation should be strictly conditions-based.

He remains a good deal more sceptical than Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff about Putin’s bona fides. Witkoff had said it was preposterous to think Russia would want to seize further European land if it was given the four main Ukrainian regions it currently party occupies.

For all the golf diplomacy, Stubb has no compunction in criticising Witkoff, who seemed in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson to regard the referendums held in Russian-held regions and Crimea as a legitimate expression of their wish to be annexed by Russia.

Stubb said: “Anyone who says that a referendum that has been conducted in the Crimean peninsula is somehow valid doesn’t know what international relations means. We fundamentally disagree with that approach. I personally will never, ever recognise any territorial acquisition by Russia to Ukraine.”

Stubb has been pressing his fellow leaders to be more specific about what they are seeking to achieve. “A ceasefire is about monitoring the line of contact and can entail some kind of coalition of the willing in the air, sea, and then also in land,” he said.

“But a completely different story is the actual peace agreement. That’s when you get into traditional peacekeeping, which is usually UN mandated, and so on and so forth.”

He explained: “What we are saying in Finland, from the northern flank, having the 1340-kilometre (830-mile) border of Europe with Russia, is that that border actually starts from northern Norway and covers all the way, and if you count Belarus as part of it, that’s 5000 kilometres (3107 miles). So that’s the border that we need to protect.

“That’s why we are not probably going to provide troops in the ceasefire stage, but we can definitely do something when the peace agreement is there, if there’s an international mandate.”

Either way, Stubb suggests like Starmer, there would have to be some kind of US involvement – something Trump has not yet offered. But, Stubb said: “I don’t exclude that some of the monitoring is done by Americans and American technology, because it’s non-military activity. So, there’s so many ways in which you can do this.”

Like Graham, Stubb is interested in protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty in any peace agreement not by offering Nato membership, but instead through a clear political statement as part of the agreement that Ukraine would be given automatic Nato membership if Russia breached the ceasefire.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, at the weekend proposed a variation by which Ukraine would not be offered Nato membership but instead the protection of Nato’s article 5 security guarantee. Stubb said her ideas would be studied closely, but hinted at scepticism, saying article 5 was the essence of Nato. “We think that the core of this war is about the triangular existence of a nation state, which is independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

He recalled how Finland lost its sovereignty after the winter war and the war of continuation. “In other words, world war two, we weren’t able to decide the clubs where we wanted to participate. We also lost 10% of our territory, including the areas where my grandparents, my father, were born.”

Stubb, who clearly sees Ukraine as an entry-point for a wider, more formal pact with the UK on security, said: “One of the things that I’m particularly pleased about in this tragic war is that we are now seeing a Britain engaged again in Europe. And before coming here, had I had enough time, I would have written a column in the Guardian saying ‘Britain is back’.

“We are now seeing British and French leadership in brokering the European position, not only here in London, but also in Paris, and in the way in which prime minister Starmer is conducting the discussions his national security team, led by Jonathan Powell. This is a great opportunity for Britain to engage with Europe again and vice versa. So if this could be now the embryo of a new British-EU relationship, I would warmly welcome that.”

Despite his multilingual, academic pro-European background, Stubb is in some ways an ideal conciliator with Trump since he spent three years at university in the US and was at one point considered good enough for the Finnish national golf team –something he modestly admitted was equivalent to being selected for the English ice-hockey team.

“I did play [golf] seriously. And I played at the British amateur Open at Litchfield sometime in the 1980s. I missed the cut by one,” he ruefully recalled, “and then I went to study in the US with the dream of becoming a professional. But I basically quit after three months and got serious about studying.”

Stubb said tactfully he would not analyse Trump’s golf game for hints of his personality, but said he was “very impressive, and I’m not only speaking because of his age, but he hit the ball very well. It was quite fun in the sense that we were on the same team, so we were playing best ball … we were alternating giving an impact for our teams.”

Stubb said of their game: “It’s a good, good, good, good way of spending the better part of seven hours together with the president. So we had breakfast, and then we had a go round the course, and then we had lunch, and we had sitting with Lindsey Graham there, and then we had legendary Gary Player, the South African grand slam winner, at the tender age of 89. It is a good way to get to know one another.”

Golf diplomacy has been seen as the entry ticket to Trump’s heart since the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe successfully courted him in his first term by playing endless rounds. Stubb said it was feasible in golf to mix pleasure with business, so to discuss Russia’s trustworthiness “between shots”.

“Anyway, for sure I prefer a golf course to meeting rooms,” he said.

Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms.

In an interview aired Sunday on NBC, Trump was asked about his trying to stay in office beyond his second presidency, a specter he has repeatedly raised while sometimes claiming he is just joking.

Trump told host Kristen Welker “there are methods which you could do it” – and this time made it a point to say he was not joking.

“Well, there are plans,” Trump said to Welker. “There are – not plans. There are methods – there are methods which you could do it, as you know.”

Welker alluded to a purported loophole some Trump supporters have fantasized about finding in which he could be the running mate to his vice-president, JD Vance, or someone else in the 2028 election. The person to whom Trump would be the running mate in that scenario could then immediately resign after winning and being sworn in as president, letting Trump take over by succession.

Their argument would be that the constitution’s 22nd amendment only explicitly bans being “elected” to more than two presidential terms without saying anything about becoming the commander-in-chief on an additional occasion through succession.

Vance has not indicated he is interested in participating in such a plan. And an election law professor at Notre Dame, Derek Muller, told the Associated Press that the constitution’s 12th amendment says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States.”

Muller said that indicates that if Trump is not eligible to run for president again because of the 22nd amendment, he is not eligible to run for the vice-presidency, either.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Muller said.

Nonetheless, Welker theorized that Vance could somehow “pass the baton” to Trump.

Trump replied, “Well, that’s one.”

“But there are others too. There are others.”

When pushed to detail those methods, Trump said, “No.”

Trump then said it was “far too early to think about” trying to defy the two presidential term limit in the constitution to stay in office and that he was “focused on the current”. But asked if being president a third time would be too much work, he said: “I like working.”

And asked if he was just joking, as he and his supporters like to say whenever he floats anti-constitutional ideas, he said: “No, no, I’m not joking. I’m not joking.”

Trump’s comments came after he previously likened himself to a “king” – the royal title without term limits – on social media.

In February, he prompted widespread outcry when he took to Truth Social following his executive order for New York City to rescind its congestion pricing program and wrote: “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 the president grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while wearing a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.

Meanwhile, the Republican US House member Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a resolution in January expressing support for amending the constitution into allowing a president to serve up to three terms – under the condition that they did not serve two consecutive terms.

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush – who all served two consecutive terms – could not seek a third term under an amendment like the one posited by Ogles, which would stand virtually no chance of passing. Only Trump would be eligible for a third term because he won the presidency in 2016 and in November 2024 but lost in 2020 to Joe Biden.

Nevertheless, not all members of the Trump-led Republican party are on board with the idea of changing the constitution to let the president stay in power beyond the end of his second term in early 2029. After Trump’s “King” comments in February, the Republican US senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said he would not back an unconstitutional third term under Trump.

“I’m not changing the constitution, first of all, unless the American people chose to do that,” Mullin told NBC.

To modify presidential term limits would require two-thirds approval from both the Senate and the House, as well as approval from three-quarters of the country’s state legislatures. Trump’s enablers do not have the numbers required in those various contexts to easily get that approval democratically.

The 22nd amendment was ratified after Franklin D Roosevelt served two terms following his election in 1932 – and was then re-elected in 1940 and 1944 amid the second world war. He died as president in 1945, and the 22nd amendment was ratified in 1951.

Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms, in an explosive interview in which he also said he was “very angry” with Vladimir Putin, threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.

In the interview, which aired Sunday on NBC, Trump told host Kristen Welker regarding a third term that “there are methods which you could do it”. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of serving a third term but has often masqueraded it as a joke. But on Sunday, he confirmed he was “not joking”.

• Catching up? Here’s what happened on 29 March.

Rejecting claims from Hamas and Israeli protesters that his government is not engaged in serious negotiations aimed at securing the release of those held captive in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he was committed to reaching an agreement to free the hostages and military pressure had been effective.

“We are willing,” Israel’s prime minister told a cabinet meeting. “We are negotiating under fire” and “can see cracks beginning to appear” in what Hamas has demanded in its negotiations, he said.

“Military pressure is working,” he added. “It works because it acts simultaneously. On the one hand, it crushes Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities, and on the other hand, it creates the conditions for the release of our hostages.”

Netanyahu said on Saturday night “the security cabinet convened and decided to increase the pressure, which had already increased, in order to further pound Hamas and create the optimal conditions for releasing our hostages”.

Tens of thousands of people who rallied in Tel Aviv and throughout Israel on Saturday night accused the prime minister of deprioritising a deal to free those still held captive in Gaza.

Speaking to protesters at Habima Square in central Tel Aviv, Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, who is still held captive by Hamas, accused Netanyahu of carrying out a “targeted assassination” against her son after the Israel Defense Forces launched an aerial attack on Gaza last week.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to bomb Matan instead of saving him and bringing him home,” she said.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, 58 remain in Gaza, including 34 who, the Israeli military says, are dead.

Under pressure at international and domestic level, Netanyahu stressed that “Hamas must lay down its arms”, adding that its leaders would be allowed to leave after they did so, and Israel was also willing to talk about “the final stage” of a hostage release-ceasefire deal with the militant group.

“We are ready,” he said. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will ensure general security in the Gaza Strip and enable the implementation of the Trump plan, the voluntary immigration plan.”

Days after taking office, the US president, Donald Trump, announced a plan that would relocate Gaza’s more than 2 million inhabitants to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, an announcement that was condemned by much of the international community, including allies across Europe and the Middle East.

Netanyahu’s remarks came as mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US continued efforts to broker a ceasefire and secure the release of the Israeli hostages.

On Saturday, Hamas allegedly offered to free five living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire, and released a video of a hostage making an appeal for his freedom.

Hamas’s chief, Khalil al-Hayya, said on Saturday that the militant group expressed willingness to release the five hostages over the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins on Sunday, after a proposal it received two days ago from Egypt and Qatar, Reuters has reported.

“Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediators in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and accepted it,” Hayya, who leads the Hamas negotiating team, said in a televised speech. “We hope that the [Israeli] occupation will not undermine [it].”

Hamas stated on Saturday that the group had approved a new ceasefire proposal put forward by mediators, and urged Israel to support it. Netanyahu’s office confirmed receipt of the proposal and said Israel had submitted a counterproposal.

The details of the latest mediation efforts remain undisclosed, although, according to media reports in Israel, Netanyahu’s government insists on the release of 10 of the 24 hostages.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s office said he would visit Hungary on 2 April for a multi-day trip in defiance of an arrest warrant from the international criminal court against him for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, publicly extended an invitation to Netanyahu in November shortly after the ICC issued the warrant.

In a separate development on Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the bodies of 14 rescuers, including a UN employee, had been found in Rafah in southern Gaza, a week after its ambulances came under heavy fire from Israeli forces.

Three PRCS first responders and one civil defence paramedic are still missing.

“The bodies were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition,” the Red Crescent said.

Israel’s military admitted on Saturday that it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”.

The incident occurred in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood just days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border. The military resumed its wider bombardments of Gaza on 18 March, breaking a ceasefire that had lasted almost two months.

The PRCS president, Younis al-Khatib, condemned Israel for targeting its paramedics as they were fulfilling their humanitarian mission.

He said a rescue team had been able to reach the scene where the crew members went missing two days ago and had retrieved the body of a crew member, which had been buried.

“There are a number of scenarios for what happened … After more than one week of losing communication with our crew either they have been killed or detained by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said.

The scale of devastation in central Myanmar is unlike anything rescue workers or medics have seen before, even in a country that has endured more than four years of fierce conflict.

In Sagaing, buildings have collapsed almost everywhere after Friday’s earthquake. The provincial fire department was among the building destroyed, damaging all the rescue machinery and vehicles inside.

There are not enough rescue teams to retrieve the dead bodies, nor is there sufficient equipment to sift through debris.

“It’s been two days, and the smell is starting to emanate,” said Ma Ei, who has helped in the humanitarian efforts. “We haven’t received any help because of the internet and phone connection outages. At the moment, only the residents are involved in the rescue work, and we urgently need more rescue workers.”

They also need dry food, drinking water and medicines, she said.

Sagaing’s hospital has also been damaged, forcing patients outside into the searing heat. Until Sunday there were no tents to protect them from the sun, said Ma Ei.

She saw about 200 patients who arrived at Sagaing hospital in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. “There may be more patients than this,” she said. Most have broken limbs and head injuries. “Some patients with pre-existing chronic diseases are suffering even more,” she added.

Ko Doe, a member of a local rescue team in Sagaing, said equipment had been damaged in the quake, but that his team began work “as soon as we received some machinery from the government and did not stop until yesterday morning”. Even with the extra supplies, however, they only have four cranes for the whole township.

Rescue teams are battling with supply shortages, power outages, connection disruptions and broken roads. They are also working under a repressive military junta. Generals seized power in a coup in 2021, triggering a spiralling conflict. The military has suffered humiliating losses in its fight against an armed resistance made up of civilian groups that formed after the coup to fight for the return of democracy, and ethnic armed groups that have long sought independence.

Airstrikes, a daily occurrence as the regime tries to stamp out opposition, continued even after the earthquake on Friday. In military-controlled areas, the junta routinely arrests anyone it suspects of opposing its rule, and people live in fear of being rounded up or forcibly conscripted to fight for it.

“Some rescue workers do not dare to give help because they are afraid of being arrested,” said a local person in Sagaing town who asked not to be named.

The man added that his friend had been admitted to a military hospital, a prospect many civilians would want to avoid. The public hospital was overrun. “He could have died if he was not sent because gangrene had set in in his wound,” the person said.

Sagaing patients who require more complex treatment would be normally be sent to Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city, which has the largest hospital in the region. Roads and bridges have been badly damaged, however, and even if they make it, the city’s general hospital is badly overstretched.

“I am middle-aged and I’ve experienced a lot of incidents, but never been busy like this before. This is very severe,” said a doctor at Mandalay general hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He remembers standing in the city centre after the quake: “Wherever I looked, east, west, south, north, I saw collapsed buildings and only dust,” he said. One medic was knocked off their feet while doing surgery because the shaking was so violent.

All patients at Mandalay hospital have been evacuated and are being treated outside. Those unable to manage the intense heat have been placed near an entrance, so they can be easily moved. Some patients have been sent home because they are too traumatised to stay near the hospital building, fearing the collapsed ceilings and broken tiles, he said.

The UN has warned of “a severe shortage of medical supplies” including trauma kits, blood bags, anaesthetics, assistive devices, essential medicines and tents for health workers.

The doctor at Mandalay hospital said supplies had not run out yet. “We can provide necessary IV drips and injections,” he said, adding they also had blood supplies. But it was less clear the hospital had enough resources for the surgeries needed by patients, he said.

In areas outside the main cities, the situation appears worse. In Sagaing, Ei Hnin Phway said aid had yet to arrive. “We can’t even post updates on Facebook about what happening,” she said, citing the bad connections.

Ko Doe said his team had recovered 190 bodies so far, but he believed many more remained trapped. Work continued urgently on Sunday, he said. His team was due to attend a monastery, a Buddhist summer school, a private school and a nunnery school, where bodies remained trapped, he said. Many were children.

“The chances of survival are very low,” he said.

• The death toll from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday has surpassed 1,700 and flattened huge swathes of the South-east Asian nation.

• The US Geological Survey’s predictive modelling estimates Myanmar’s death toll could eventually top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.

• Red Cross officials said Myanmar was facing “a level of devastation that hasn’t been seen over a century in Asia”.

• In neighbouring Thailand, at least 18 people have been killed and rescue efforts are continuing at the site of a collapsed 30-storey tower in Bangkok. Rescuers are scrambling to find 78 people still missing.

• Rescuers freed a woman from the ruins of a hotel in Myanmar’s Mandalay, officials said on Monday, offering a glimmer of hope that more survivors may be found.

• Images from the city of Mandalay show entire neighbourhoods in ruins and broken-off pagodas from the top of temples reduced to rubble. Highways, bridges, airports and railways in several parts of the country have been damaged, Reuters reports.

• Burmese military jets launched airstrikes and drone attacks in Karen state, according to the Free Burma Rangers, a relief organisation. The strikes hit near the headquarters of the Karen National Union (KNU), an armed resistance group against the country’s military-run government.

• The KNU criticised the country’s military government for “deploying forces to attack its people” when it should be focused on the relief effort. Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, called for an immediate ceasefire to help aid distribution.

• Aid from China, Russia, India, the UK and neighbouring South-east Asian nations has begun flowing into Myanmar.

• China sent an 82-person team of rescuers into the country in the hours after the quake and a 118-member search and rescue team had also arrived, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

• The Chinese government said it would provide 100m yuan ($13.8m) in emergency humanitarian assistance, with shipments to begin Monday.

• In contrast, the US government – which is in the process of gutting its central foreign aid agency, USAID – has pledged just $2m for the relief effort.

• In the city of Sagaing, which was hit by the quake and a series of aftershocks, the provincial fire department was among the building destroyed, damaging all the rescue machinery and vehicles inside. There are not enough rescue teams to retrieve the dead bodies, nor is there sufficient equipment to sift through debris.

• Sagaing’s hospital has also been damaged, forcing patients outside into the searing heat, said Ma Ei, a resident who has helped in the humanitarian efforts. They also need dry food, drinking water and medicines, she said.

Rescue volunteers, many of them poorly equipped local people, raced to find survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings across central Myanmar, two days after a huge earthquake killed more than 1,700 people in the country and at least 18 in neighbouring Thailand.

Red Cross officials said Myanmar was facing “a level of devastation that hasn’t been seen over a century in Asia”, after a 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the centre of the country on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.

The quake has damaged and destroyed countless buildings including hospitals, damaged roads and bridges, and brought down power supplies, phone and internet connections.

“People who need help are continually calling us, but even now there are difficulties for them to reach us,” said a rescue worker in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city.

Ko Doe, a rescue worker in Sagaing, said his team believed as many as 100 bodies were still to be removed from collapsed buildings in the town. “A bad smell is coming from the bodies that remain trapped, and which we are unable to save immediately. We need backhoes, cranes, and heavy-duty diggers to demolish the damaged buildings and retrieve the bodies,” he said.

In Thailand, rescue efforts continued at the site of a collapsed 30-storey tower in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok, which fell to the floor while under construction, trapping dozens of workers. Officials from Bangkok metropolitan administration said signs of life had been detected in one area of the site early on Sunday morning. Eleven people have been confirmed dead and workers are frantically searching for 78 who remain missing.

Myanmar’s ruling junta said in a statement on Saturday that at least 1,700 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured in the country, with at least 300 more missing.

The true scale of the devastation in Myanmar, which has been gripped by conflict for the past four years, could take days or even weeks to emerge, according to aid experts.

The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated Myanmar’s death toll could top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.

On Sunday morning, a small aftershock struck, sending people scurrying out of a hotel for safety, after a similar tremor felt late Saturday evening, AFP reported.

Truckloads of firefighters gathered at one of Mandalay’s main fire stations to be dispatched to sites around the city.

China and Russia, two allies of the junta, have sent aid and personnel, while India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have also sent assistance.

The US pledged $2m (£1.5m) in aid “through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organisations” and said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAid, which is undergoing massive cuts under the Trump administration, was deploying to Myanmar.

It follows a rare request by Myanmar’s isolated junta for international help. The junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, said on Sunday he called on “all military and civilian hospitals, as well as healthcare workers” to “work together in a coordinated and efficient manner”, according to state-run media.

The earthquakes have compounded the crisis in Myanmar, which was plunged into war when the military seized power in a coup in 2021.

It is facing an armed opposition formed of people’s defence forces, which emerged to oppose the coup, and more established ethnic armed groups, that have long demanded independence.

The shadow national unity government, set up to oppose the junta, said anti-coup groups had declared a two-week partial ceasefire in quake-affected regions starting on Sunday. The military continued airstrikes following the quake, including just hours afterwards.

The national unity government said it would “collaborate with the UN and NGOs to ensure security, transportation, and the establishment of temporary rescue and medical camps” in areas it controls, according to the statement, which was released on social media.

Aid agencies have warned that responding to the disaster will be complex, given the conflict and the severe level of need. Even before the earthquake 15 million people – about a third of the country’s population – were estimated to be facing acute food insecurity. The conflict has displaced 3.5 million people and pushed the economy and health services into crisis.

The junta has been repeatedly accused of weaponising aid, blocking supplies to areas where its opponents are present.

An assessment by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said hospitals and health facilities warned of “a severe shortage of medical supplies” and said damage to infrastructure such as roads was hampering efforts to respond to the earthquake.

In some of the country’s hardest-hit areas, people told Reuters that government assistance was scarce so far, leaving people to fend for themselves. The entire town of Sagaing near the quake’s epicentre was devastated, said Han Zin, a local person.

“What we are seeing here is widespread destruction – many buildings have collapsed into the ground,” he said by phone, adding that much of the town had been without electricity since the disaster hit and drinking water was running out. “We have received no aid, and there are no rescue workers in sight.”

But some aid and rescue personnel were beginning to arrive. Indian military aircraft made sorties into Myanmar on Saturday, including ferrying supplies and search-and-rescue crews to Naypyidaw, the purpose-made capital, parts of which have been wrecked by the earthquake.

The Indian army will help set up a field hospital in Mandalay, and two navy ships carrying supplies are heading to Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon, said India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Teams of Chinese rescue personnel have arrived, including one that crossed overland from its south-western province of Yunnan, China’s embassy in Myanmar said on social media.

A 78-member team from Singapore, accompanied by rescue dogs, was operating in Mandalay on Sunday, Myanmar state media said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement that “destruction has been extensive, and humanitarian needs are growing by the hour”.

It added: “With temperatures rising and the monsoon season approaching in just weeks, there is an urgent need to stabilise affected communities before secondary crises emerge.”

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

The US will not get Greenland, its new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has said in response to Donald Trump’s latest statements that he wants to take control of the vast Arctic country.

“President Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that. We do not belong to anyone else. We determine our own future,” Nielsen said.

During an interview with NBC on Saturday, the US president said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”

Trump said he “absolutely” had had real conversations about annexing the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Nielsen, a 33-year-old former minister of industry and minerals, was sworn in as Greenland’s youngest prime minister on Friday. In his first press conference as leader, in his home town of Nuuk, he called for political unity to combat external pressures. His message was clear: “At a time when we as a people are under pressure, we must stand together.”

He was sworn in a few hours before a high-profile delegation led by the US vice-president, JD Vance, arrived on the island. Vance said: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass.”

The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said on Saturday: “We are open to criticisms, but let me be completely honest, we do not appreciate the tone in which it’s being delivered.

“This is not how you speak to your close allies, and I still consider Denmark and the United States to be close allies.”

With Reuters

The US will not get Greenland, its new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has said in response to Donald Trump’s latest statements that he wants to take control of the vast Arctic country.

“President Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that. We do not belong to anyone else. We determine our own future,” Nielsen said.

During an interview with NBC on Saturday, the US president said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”

Trump said he “absolutely” had had real conversations about annexing the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Nielsen, a 33-year-old former minister of industry and minerals, was sworn in as Greenland’s youngest prime minister on Friday. In his first press conference as leader, in his home town of Nuuk, he called for political unity to combat external pressures. His message was clear: “At a time when we as a people are under pressure, we must stand together.”

He was sworn in a few hours before a high-profile delegation led by the US vice-president, JD Vance, arrived on the island. Vance said: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass.”

The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said on Saturday: “We are open to criticisms, but let me be completely honest, we do not appreciate the tone in which it’s being delivered.

“This is not how you speak to your close allies, and I still consider Denmark and the United States to be close allies.”

With Reuters

Richard Chamberlain, the hero of the 1960s television series Dr Kildare who found a second career as an award-winning “king of the miniseries,” has died. He was 90.

Chamberlain died on Saturday night in Waimānalo, Hawaii of complications after a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.

Martin Rabbett, his lifelong partner, said in a statement: “Our beloved Richard is with the angels now. He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us. How blessed were we to have known such an amazing and loving soul. Love never dies. And our love is under his wings lifting him to his next great adventure.”

Tall, with classic good looks and romantic style, Chamberlain became an instant favorite with teenage girls as the compassionate physician on the TV series that aired from 1961 to 1966. Photoplay magazine named him most popular male star for three years in a row, from 1963-65.

Not until 2003 did he acknowledge publicly what Hollywood insiders had long known: that he was gay. He made the revelation in his autobiography, Shattered Love.

The actor became known as “king of the TV miniseries” in 1978 when he landed the starring role in Centennial, an epic production 24 hours long and based on James Michener’s sprawling novel. He followed that in 1980 with Shōgun, another costly, epic miniseries based on James Clavell’s period piece about an American visitor to Japan.

He scored his greatest miniseries success in 1983 with another long-form drama, The Thorn Birds, based on Colleen McCullough’s bestseller. He played Father Ralph de Bricassart, a Roman Catholic priest in Australia who falls in love with beautiful Meggie Cleary (Rachel Ward). The ABC production, which also starred Barbara Stanwyck, reportedly attracted 100 million viewers.

Chamberlain won Golden Globes for his work on Shōgun and The Thorn Birds. Years earlier, he received one for Dr Kildare.

When the public began to lose interest in miniseries, Chamberlain turned to the theatre, where he displayed a fine singing voice. He appeared as Henry Higgins in a 1994 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady and as Captain von Trapp in a 1999 revival of The Sound of Music.

He reprised the role of de Bricassart in the 1996 TV movie The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years.

He also appeared in numerous films, including The Music Lovers (as Tchaikovsky), The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Towering Inferno and The Three Musketeers and its sequels.

Dr Kildare was based on a string of successful 1930s and 1940s films that had starred Lew Ayres in the title role.

Chamberlain’s hunky, all-American appearance made him an overnight star. Another medical show that debuted the same season, Ben Casey, was also a smash and made its leading man, the darkly handsome Vince Edwards, a star, too.

The so-called “Ben Casey shirt” became a fashion item, both shows’ theme songs made the pop Top 40 (the Kildare song performed by Chamberlain himself) and there was even a pop song called Dr Kildare! Dr Casey! You Are Wanted for Consultation.

But in his autobiography, Chamberlain recounted how he was forced to hide his sexuality. He would escort glamorous female colleagues to movie premieres and other public events at the request of studio executives and dodge reporters’ questions about why he had never married with a stock reply: “Getting married would be great, but I’m awfully busy now.”

“When I grew up, being gay, being a sissy or anything like that was verboten,” he said in an NBC interview. “I disliked myself intensely and feared this part of myself intensely and had to hide it.”

The book also described a troubled childhood and an alcoholic father, and Chamberlain said that writing it finally lifted a heavy emotional burden. He also expressed relief that he was no longer hiding his sexuality.

“I played a cat-and-mouse game with the press. Game over,” said Chamberlain, who for years was involved with fellow actor Martin Rabbett.

Born George Richard Chamberlain in Beverly Hills on 31 March 1934, the actor originally studied at Pomona College to be a painter. But after returning from the army, where he had served as an infantry clerk in the Korean war, Chamberlain decided to try acting.

He studied voice and drama, appearing in guest roles in a handful of TV shows and in the 1960 film The Secret of the Purple Reef, and ultimately won the Dr Kildare role.

When Dr Kildare was cancelled, he initially found it difficult to shake the image of the handsome young physician.

He moved to England for a time to find work and hone his acting skills. While there, he appeared in three of director Richard Lester’s films: Petulia (1968), The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). He reunited with Lester in 1989 for The Return of the Musketeers, once more playing Aramis.

In 1969, Chamberlain played the title role in Hamlet at England’s Birmingham Repertory Company and repeated it in a TV adaptation that appeared on NBC in the United States. He also appeared as Octavius in a film version of Julius Caesar, which co-starred Charlton Heston and Jason Robards.

He continued to act well into the 21st century, appearing on such television shows as Will & Grace, The Drew Carey Show and Touched by an Angel.

The future of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen – and France’s political landscape – will be decided on Monday when a court hands down its verdict on charges she and party officials embezzled money from the European parliament.

If convicted, the three-time presidential candidate of the National Rally (RN) could be barred from standing to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the 2027 presidential election.

Public prosecutors have demanded Le Pen be given a €300,000 (£250,000) fine, a prison sentence and that she be prevented from holding or seeking to hold a political position or five years.

On Friday, in a case that did not involve Le Pen, France’s constitutional council delivered a blow to the RN figurehead when it ruled that politicians can be barred from office immediately if convicted of a crime.

Le Pen has accused prosecutors of seeking her “political death” and said making her ineligible for office would confound voters’ wishes and threaten the democratic process.

A poll in Le Figaro earlier this month suggested 42% of French people wanted her to stand in 2027. Le Pen appointed Jordan Bardella, 29, as RN president in 2021 but a senior party member said there was “no plan B” if Le Pen was ruled immediately ineligible to stand in 2027, and accused the party of sticking its head in the sand.

Marc de Fleurian, the RN MP for Pas-de-Calais, said: “The question of ineligibility doesn’t arise. It’s not taboo, but as long as we’ve said that such injustice cannot happen, it won’t.”

Le Pen and 24 others from RN, including party officials, employees, MEPs and assistants, were tried last November on charges of taking money from the European parliament as part of an alleged fake jobs scam. Instead of the money being spent on EU staff, they were accused of having used it to pay party staff in France. The European parliament estimated the allegedly embezzled funds amounted to about €7m. Le Pen and the others have denied the charges.

Any verdict that does not clear Le Pen of wrongdoing will leave her political future in grave doubt. If she is found guilty of embezzlement she will almost certainly appeal, which will require a new trial to be held, and any prison sentence or fine will be postponed until the appeal hearing is judged. If she is given a five-year bar on standing for public office with immediate effect it will be unlikely she can enter the 2027 presidential race unless the appeal process is speeded up and she is cleared in time to stand. If the judges decide the bar on standing should be postponed, she will still have what one RN member described as a “Damoclean sword” hanging over her political campaign.

Asked last week if she was concerned for her political future, Le Pen said: “I’m not thinking about it. Fear doesn’t remove the danger so I don’t see any interest in guessing in advance. I consider myself completely innocent of what I have been accused, so if my guilt is declared then I will use the law to again defend my innocence.”

A mother has been arrested after she allegedly stabbed her three children multiple times in their home in Sydney’s north-west.

New South Wales police Det Supt Naomi Moore said on Monday that the children’s father woke to yells in their Baulkham Hills home, and secured the kitchen knife from his partner.

He then reported the incident to police about 5.20am on Monday.

The three children – a 10-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl – and the 46-year-old mother were in a stable condition and receiving medical treatment in hospital.

“We believe the father and the children were all in their rooms, and potentially all of them asleep when the mother has [allegedly] carried out this act,” Moore told reporters.

“Upon waking up to what I would believe to be a number of screams or yells, he’s then gone to approach the situation. And from what I am told, has secured the weapon and has contacted police.”

Moore said police had established a crime scene and and were yet to know the intent of the mother, who was under police guard in hospital, she said.

“That female is entitled to her medical treatment at the moment, and we have no intention of speaking to her until she is capable of being spoken to, which may be at some stage today,” Moore said.

She said it was the first time that police had responded to that home for “any type of domestic situation” and there had been nothing that had previously flagged any concern.

“It’s tragic … it’s sad. It’s certainly not something that my staff or I want to wake up to on a Monday morning.”

A mother has been arrested after she allegedly stabbed her three children multiple times in their home in Sydney’s north-west.

New South Wales police Det Supt Naomi Moore said on Monday that the children’s father woke to yells in their Baulkham Hills home, and secured the kitchen knife from his partner.

He then reported the incident to police about 5.20am on Monday.

The three children – a 10-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl – and the 46-year-old mother were in a stable condition and receiving medical treatment in hospital.

“We believe the father and the children were all in their rooms, and potentially all of them asleep when the mother has [allegedly] carried out this act,” Moore told reporters.

“Upon waking up to what I would believe to be a number of screams or yells, he’s then gone to approach the situation. And from what I am told, has secured the weapon and has contacted police.”

Moore said police had established a crime scene and and were yet to know the intent of the mother, who was under police guard in hospital, she said.

“That female is entitled to her medical treatment at the moment, and we have no intention of speaking to her until she is capable of being spoken to, which may be at some stage today,” Moore said.

She said it was the first time that police had responded to that home for “any type of domestic situation” and there had been nothing that had previously flagged any concern.

“It’s tragic … it’s sad. It’s certainly not something that my staff or I want to wake up to on a Monday morning.”

Helen Mirren has said that James Bond should never be played by a woman, as the spy franchise is “born out of profound sexism”.

The future of 007 is currently up in the air, after Amazon MGM Studios struck a $1bn (£770m) deal for creative control over the character with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the British-American heirs to the film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films.

Speaking about her MobLand co-star and former Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, Mirren said that though she was a “massive fan” of Pierce, Bond was “not [her] thing” due to its portrayal of women.

“I have to say I was never a great ward [of Bond],” Mirren told the Standard. “I’m a huge fan of Pierce Brosnan, I mean massive fan. I mean, oh my God. Obviously, he’s gorgeous and everything, and I think he’s fabulous in MobLand, but he also happens to be one of the nicest people you’ll ever have the pleasure to work with. And indeed Daniel Craig, who I’ve met and know a little bit, again – a very lovely, gracious person.”

But she added: “The whole series of James Bond, it was not my thing. It really wasn’t. I never liked James Bond. I never liked the way women were in James Bond.”

She told the Standard that she was opposed to the idea of addressing the spy’s historic sexism by casting a woman in the lead role, and that she believed that women would be better served by portrayals of real female spies.

“The whole concept of James Bond is drenched and born out of profound sexism,” she said. “Women have always been a major and incredibly important part of the Secret Service, they always have been. And very brave. If you hear about what women did in the French Resistance, they’re amazingly, unbelievably courageous. So I would tell real stories about extraordinary women who’ve worked in that world.”

In the wake of the Amazon deal, much of the concern among former Bonds has not been over his future gender but his nationality. Brosnan had previously said it was a “given” that Bond should remain a British character despite now having American owners, while Timothy Dalton said the deal had left him “kind of sad”, adding: “It is one of the few wonderful stories we’ve got in film that is British.”

With creative control, Amazon will have the power to move forward with new films and potentially spin-offs without approval from Wilson and Broccoli, who have overseen the integrity of the character originally created in 1953 by the author Ian Fleming.

There have reportedly been fierce rows over 007’s future, with Broccoli branding Amazon executives “fucking idiots”, according to the Wall Street Journal, over ideas to expand the franchise with spin-offs and a TV series.

Wilson has said he and Broccoli had been “very reluctant to delegate” the intellectual property to a television series, with Broccoli adding: “It’s not something we’ve ever wanted to do.”

While there is no script, director or lead actor in place for a new Bond film, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and James Norton are currently all favourites for the role.

Mail Online reported a source from Amazon had said the actor “has to be British or from the Commonwealth – and he has to be male”.

• China and India could be affected if Donald Trump introduces tariffs of 25-50% against countries buying Russian oil, analysts and officials have suggested. Dan Sabbagh reports that the US president told NBC he would impose such measures within a month “if a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault”, as he vented frustration at Vladimir Putin’s delaying tactics and attempts to discredit Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.

• Some countries, including China and India, are not participating in anti-war sanctions against Russian oil. Secondary sanctions or tariffs imposed directly on them by the US could further limit Putin’s access to oil revenue to fund the war. While not joining the international sanctions against Russia, China has been wary about breaching them in case it attracts secondary penalties. Some Chinese banks, for example, have curtailed dealings with Russian companies for fear of being barred from the international banking system.

• UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said that targeting buyers – as Trump has done with Venezuela’s oil – could affect China and India. “We need to see, however, what will be announced over the coming days.” India has surpassed China to become the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude oil, which comprised about 35% of India’s total crude imports in 2024. There have been concerns since the beginning of the war about India being a “back door” for Russian oil exports.

• William Reinsch, a former senior US commerce department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the haphazard way Trump was announcing and threatening tariffs left questions unanswered, including how US officials could trace and prove which countries were buying Russian oil.

• Trump also claimed on Sunday that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was “trying to back out of the rare earth deal and if he does that he’s got some problems, big, big problems”. The White House is demanding the first cut of all Ukraine’s mineral resource revenue for years, plus interest, in return for military aid. Zelenskyy has been open to a deal but cautious about the terms, while the Trump administration has been on-again, off-again about getting it signed.

• Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its forces had gained control over Zaporizhzhia settlement in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The village is unrelated to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is in another region. The Russian claim was reported by Reuters, which said it was not able to verify it. The village is 7km from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. The Donetsk region borders Dnipropetrovsk to the east.

• Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that it destroyed 65 out of 111 drones launched by Russia during an overnight attack. It added that another 35 drones were “locationally lost” without causing damage – typically a reference to electronic jamming – but damage was reported in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa and Donetsk regions.

Donors abandoned the charity Prince Harry founded in memory of his late mother when he left the UK, the chair of Sentebale has said amid a bitter media row in which she accused the prince of trying to “eject” her through “bullying” and “harassment”.

Sophie Chandauka told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme that there was a “significant correlation” between a drop in funders and the Duke of Sussex’s departure to the US after the controversy caused by his rift with the royal family.

It was “pretty obvious” the charity, which supports people with HIV and Aids in Lesotho and Botswana, had lost corporate sponsors and individual donors around that time but there was “no discussion” about it, she said, adding that trustees had told her it was “uncomfortable” with Prince Harry in the room.

Chandauka, a Zimbabwean lawyer, told the programme: “So when I arrived in July in 2023, of course the first thing you do is you open the annual report, you look at the board minutes to see what is going on in the organisation.

“I did a seven-year historical review of the financials, looking at our costs and looking at our revenue, so income, it was pretty obvious to me that we had lost quite a number of corporate sponsors.

“We’d lost some families, and we’d lost individuals who were donating to the organisation, and there was quite a significant correlation between the time the organisation started to see a departure of sort of major organisations, and Prince Harry’s departure from the UK itself.

“When you look at the board minutes, though, there is no discussion about what’s happening with respect to some of our most significant funders and then when you discuss with the senior executive team and ask why there isn’t a conversation about this – the answer is: ‘It’s really difficult to have this conversation because the instruction was, it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have with Prince Harry in the room.’”

She said: “Really, what Prince Harry wanted to do was to eject me from the organisation and this went on for months.

“It went on for months through bullying, harassment. I have documentation. There were board meetings where members of the executive team and external strategic advisers were sending me messages saying: ‘Should I interrupt? Should I stop this? Oh my gosh, this is so bad.’

“In fact, our strategic adviser for fundraising then sent me a message saying she wouldn’t want to ever attend any more board meetings or bring her colleagues because of the treatment.

The interview, trailed on Saturday and aired in full on Sunday morning, included allegations of “harassment and bullying at scale” from the prince towards the chair, after Harry and several others quit the organisation earlier this week.

Though Harry has not commented specifically on the bullying and harassment allegations, sources close to the prince said the claims were “completely baseless”.

A source close to the charity’s trustees and patrons who stood down last week said they “fully expected this publicity stunt” – meaning Chandauka’s comments – and reached their collective decision to quit with this in mind. They added they “remain firm in their resignation, for the good of the charity, and look forward to the adjudication of the truth”.

Two named former trustees have come out in support of the prince, with Kelello Lerotholi, who resigned from the charity this week, telling Sky News he did not recognise the allegations: “I can honestly say, in the meetings I was present in, there was never even a hint of such.”

Chandauka said the prince, who she said had not been to Africa for five years, had made moves against her, adding further trustees to the charity’s board in efforts to bolster his control. In a separate interview with the Financial Times, she said there was noticeable friction between the UK staff and those based in Lesotho, where most of the charity’s 500-plus workforce is based. She said the board felt “a loss of power and control and influence … ‘Oh my goodness, the Africans are taking over.’”

When Harry could not have her removed through a vote, because of a legal challenge, she alleges, he aimed to sabotage the charity, which he set up in 2006 in memory of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Chandauka, who appeared on Sky News with another board member, the investment banker Iain Rawlinson, claimed the rift became public with the prince’s “unleashing of the Sussex machine” against her.

The Conservative peer Lynda Chalker, who served as a trustee for nearly two decades until November, described Chandauka as having an “almost dictatorial” style.