US and Russian officials agreed to explore the “economic and investment opportunities” that could arise for their countries from an end to the war in Ukraine after talks in Saudi Arabia that amounted to a tectonic shift in Washington’s approach to Moscow.

The statements from the two sides came amid concerns in Kyiv and across Europe that Donald Trump could push for a peace settlement that favours Vladimir Putin. No Ukrainian or European officials were present at the meeting.

Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump dismissed Ukrainian concerns about being excluded from the talks and, astonishingly, seemed to imply that Kyiv was to blame for the war.

He said: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited’. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years [ago] – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

The president complained that he had seen no accounting of how US military aid is being spent and conspicuously avoided voicing support for Zelenskyy.

“I think I have the power to end this war,” he said.

After the talks at Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in three years, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said agreement had been made to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore “opportunities which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine”.

It marked a dramatic break with the Biden administration’s efforts to isolate Moscow. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, were photographed sitting across from Rubio, who attended the talks alongside the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.

Rubio said an end to the Ukraine conflict must be acceptable to all involved, including Ukraine, Europe and Russia, and that Washington’s European allies had been consulted.

Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, tweeted a message to Rubio: “Russia will try to divide us. Let’s not walk into their traps. By working together with the US, we can achieve a just and lasting peace – on Ukraine’s terms.”

The talks in the Saudi capital, however, underscored the rapid pace of US efforts to halt the conflict, raising alarm in Kyiv and across Europe, where officials met on Monday to discuss the possibility of sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

Lavrov rejected the prospect of such a move on Tuesday. He said the deployment of Nato member troops in Ukraine, even if they were operating under a different flag, was unacceptable to Moscow. Russia has repeatedly rejected the idea of western boots in Ukraine.

“We explained to our colleagues today what President Putin has repeatedly stressed: that the expansion of Nato, the absorption of Ukraine by the North Atlantic alliance, is a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation, a direct threat to our sovereignty,” Lavrov said.

He also rejected a US proposal that Russia and Ukraine halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure, falsely claiming that Russia had never endangered Ukraine’s civilian energy supply system.

Shortly after the meeting, Ushakov said the talks had gone well, with both sides agreeing that negotiators would discuss Ukraine. He said a potential Putin-Trump summit had been discussed, but that it was unlikely to happen next week.

Ukrainian officials were not invited to the talks. During a visit to Ankara, where he held talks with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country would not accept the results of talks on how to end the war with Russia that were held “behind Ukraine’s back”.

The Ukrainian president told reporters no decision could be made without Kyiv on how to end the war, and that he would always reject Putin’s “ultimatums”.

The discussions in Riyadh mark the first high-level attempt to negotiate an end to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since the war’s early days, when talks collapsed over the Russian president’s demands.

Despite the flurry of diplomacy, little is known about Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine or Russia’s willingness to engage, and Tuesday’s meeting offered few new clues.

Both sides issued carefully worded statements when the talks concluded. Rubio said the meeting was “the first step of a long and difficult journey”, adding: “An end to the Ukraine conflict must be acceptable to all involved, including Ukraine, Europe and Russia.”

Waltz said: “This needs to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary end as we’ve seen in the past.

“The practical reality is that there’s going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees, those are just fundamental basics,” he added.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said the two sides had started listening to each other but it was too early to talk about compromises.

Before the talks, Russian officials had said they would pursue “normalisation” with the US and lay the groundwork for a peace deal in Ukraine. But even before the meeting began, the US made several significant concessions to Putin, indicating that Ukraine would have to abandon its Nato ambitions and accept territorial losses.

Putin has not commented publicly on the Saudi talks but told Trump last week during a phone call that Russia wanted to “settle the reasons for the conflict”. Some observers believe this suggests Russia may not limit its focus to Ukraine and may instead seek to reshape European security more broadly.

Moscow’s demands could resemble those it issued on the eve of its full-scale invasion in 2022: that Ukraine adopt a neutral status and that Nato halts the deployment of weapons to member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began expanding to include former communist nations. This would affect much of eastern Europe including Poland and the Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

After the talks, Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, issued what appeared to be new conditions for peace, saying Russia was demanding “not just a pledge to deny Ukraine Nato membership but the annulment of the 2008 Bucharest summit declaration which promised Kyiv eventual membership without a specific timeline”.

Putin has previously insisted that Ukraine drastically reduce its military forces, which many in Ukraine fear would leave it vulnerable to future Russian attacks.

In Riyadh, Russia was also expected to leverage discussions on a potential Ukraine settlement to push for relief from western sanctions, which have placed significant strain on its economy.

Leading Moscow’s economic negotiations is Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and a close friend of Putin’s daughter. A former investment banker, Dmitriev has played a key role in Russia’s outreach to international investors.

“US oil majors have done very well in Russia,” Dmitriev said in a brief interview on Tuesday before the talks began, suggesting that American companies could come back to Russia. “We believe that at some point they will return – why would they pass up the opportunities Russia has provided for access to its natural resources?”

Tuesday’s talks in Riyadh offered Saudi Arabia and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an opportunity to assert themselves on the world stage.

Once labelled a pariah by Biden over the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi leader has emerged as a key intermediary in discussions between Russia and the US.

The latest US diplomatic push has left Kyiv and key allies scrambling to secure a seat at the table, fearing Washington and Moscow could move forward with a deal that sidelined their interests. In response, France convened an emergency meeting of EU nations and the UK on Monday to coordinate a response.

Emmanuel Macron announced after the meeting that he had spoken to Trump and Zelenskyy. “We seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine. To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians,” Macron wrote on X.

Still, the security talks in Paris yielded no concrete measures, as European leaders struggled to present a united front amid divisions over the deployment of troops to Ukraine.

Ukraine reacted with gloom and dismay on Tuesday to the meeting between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he would never accept Russia’s ultimatums.

The high-stakes negotiations between the two delegations got under way in Riyadh just hours after Russia attacked Ukraine with dozens of drones. At least two people were killed and 26 injured in strikes across the country.

One drone hit the top floor of a high-rise residential building in the central city of Dolynska, in the Kirovohrad region. A mother and her two children were injured and taken to hospital. “A difficult night,” said the local governor, Andriy Raikovych.

Soon after the talks concluded in Riyadh, air raid sirens wailed across the capital, Kyiv. Millions of Ukrainians were told by text message to seek shelter because of a threat from Russian ballistic missiles.

Speaking in Ankara after a meeting with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not accept the results of talks on how to end the war with Russia that were held “behind Ukraine’s back”.

“It feels like the US is now discussing the ultimatum that Putin set at the start of the full-scale war,” Zelenskyy told reporters. He added: “Once again, decisions about Ukraine are being made without Ukraine. I wonder why they believe Ukraine would accept all these ultimatums now if we refused them at the most difficult moment?”

Zelenskyy also said he would seek the return of occupied eastern and southern towns and villages via diplomatic means, emphasising: “They will be Ukrainian. There can be no compromise.”

Reuters reported that Zelenskyy has postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia planned for Wednesday to avoid giving the US-Russia talks “legitimacy”.

It was absurd for Moscow to talk about peace while killing Ukrainians, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office. The latest salvo of 176 drones fired at Ukraine represented Russia’s actual “negotiating position”, he posted.

Without criticising the Trump administration directly, he said the high-level US-Russia talks had not been properly prepared, adding that they were merely a forum for more Russian “ultimatums”.

“Encouragement rather than coercion, a voluntary and bizarre renunciation of strength in favour of disheartening and unmotivated appeasement of the aggressor,” Podolyak wrote, summing up Kyiv’s negative reaction.

There is widespread scepticism that Russia would abide by any ceasefire deal unless it was underpinned by security guarantees – from the US and other western powers. Podolyak said there was no point in having a “fake peace” that would lead to “an inevitable continuation of the war”.

Ukrainians have bitter memories of two deals signed with Russia in the Belarus capital, Minsk, after Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and began a covert invasion of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Russia repeatedly violated both ceasefires.

There are fears that a quick deal between Washington and Moscow would amount to Minsk 3 – another agreement that Russia would swiftly break. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Zelenskyy said Russia was ready to expand its invasion and “wage war” against Nato.

More immediately, there were concerns that a Trump-Putin deal would demand that Ukraine hold elections immediately after a ceasefire came into force, and before any final agreement was reached. The goal, Ukrainian commentators suggested, would be to replace Zelenskyy with a weaker leader, or even a pro-Russian candidate.

Ukraine is not obliged to hold elections under martial law. Few Ukrainians think they are practical at a time when Russia’s invasion has forced millions of citizens to flee abroad and when soldiers are fighting and dying on the frontline. European embassies in Kyiv agree.

The White House excluded Kyiv and European nations from its direct talks with Russia, the first bilateral contact between the two sides since before Moscow’s 2022 invasion.

Ukraine’s former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he did not expect a truce with Russia any time soon, telling the BBC: “Peace is not even visible on the horizon.” Kuleba said it was in Ukraine’s interest to resist US pressure for a speedy solution and to instead engage with Trump over a sustained period.

Kuleba said: “Peace isn’t visible for one simple reason: because Putin still believes that he can outwit everyone, that time is on his side, fate is on his side, the west has wavered, America is retreating, Europe is not able to take the field instead of America, or … is not ready to put on the captain’s armband.”

He added: “The key question now is, actually, where is Putin in this scheme? In my opinion, he believes that he will win. Victory for him is all of Ukraine. He didn’t come for some piece of land. He came for Ukraine.”

Ukraine was laid out on the glossy conference table in Riyadh on Tuesday, not to be dissected on this occasion, but rather for an initial inspection by the Americans and Russians, who have reserved the carving knives for future use.

No Ukrainians were present for these opening discussions on the country’s fate, or for the lunch of whole lamb and “symphony of scallops”, nor was anyone there representing the rest of the European continent. Whether they will be given a seat at the table before lines are drawn is far from clear. For now, they must wonder if they are among the “irritants” in US-Russia relations referred to by the US state department.

The US national security adviser, Michael Waltz, insisted the Ukrainians and Europeans had been – and would be – regularly consulted in their absence. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said any agreement about Ukraine would have to be acceptable to “everyone involved”.

Rubio is the most traditional foreign policy Republican in the Trump team, and he seemed anxious throughout. Notably, the former Florida senator did not repeat pledges he had made two days earlier in Jerusalem, that Ukraine and Europe would have to be at the table for any substantive talks, and that a settlement would respect Ukrainian sovereignty.

When asked in Riyadh on Tuesday about Kyiv and Europe’s sense of being sidelined, the secretary of state retorted that “the world should be thanking President Trump” for getting the peace process this far.

In a press briefing after the meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Rubio and Waltz repeated the same mantra eight times between them, that President Trump was the only person capable of leading the way to a peace deal.

Altogether, they invoked Trump’s name 18 times, fearful perhaps that they might end up on the White House television in a clip in which the president was not mentioned.

Rubio insisted that any enduring peace deal would have to be acceptable to the warring sides, but Trump’s rhetoric thus far raises questions over whether he shares that outlook. He has raised the prospect that ultimately, once everything has been said and done, Ukraine could end up being Russian.

The culmination of the Riyadh process, the US delegation made clear, will be a summit encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, two leaders who share an imperial bent that leans towards great power spheres of influence.

It will not be the first time superpowers meet in the Middle East to divide a European state. The Tehran Conference in 1943 put a line right through eastern Europe. In Riyadh, Trump will take the Roosevelt role and Putin will play Stalin. It is long past the time when there was a place for a Churchill. Britain has joined the anxious European voices a long way offstage.

To the Ukrainians, and many Europeans, this does not feel like Tehran. They fear a new Munich, with the gilded chambers and acres of polished marble of the Diriyah Palace auditioning for the role of a latter-day Führerbau, the venue in September 1938 for the betrayal and carve-up of Czechoslovakia.

In Munich, the Czechoslovak delegation were kept in an adjoining room to await details of when and how they would surrender the Sudetenland to Hitler. On Tuesday, the Ukrainians were not even in the same country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was nervously waiting for news in Turkey. He is due in Saudi Arabia next month to be briefed by the royal court and make his feelings clear.

As the chairs were being put away and the floors mopped in the Diriyah Palace, a new paradigm seemed to be coming into focus, one that was familiar from the 19th century and the cold war: great powers will make the decisions, while lesser states will anxiously wait for the big boys’ meetings to finish, and then call Riyadh to find out what has been decided.

In this back-to-the-future world, Russia is fully restored to the top table, its status assured by the size of its nuclear arsenal. Lavrov was delighted with the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting, noting the two sides “did not just listen to each other, but heard each other”. He predicted that follow-on talks would begin “as soon as possible”.

All involved had fulsome thanks for the hosts. Riyadh’s advantage as a venue is the zero risk of protests. The Diriyah Palace is close to the Ritz Carlton, where many of the kingdom’s princes and other potential rivals were detained and beaten when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seized a monopoly of power in 2017.

As a broker to the Ukraine and Israel-Palestinian talks, the prince has come a long way from his spell as a pariah after the 2018 murder and dismemberment of the dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul – a murder US intelligence concluded was approved by the crown prince.

Bin Salman emerged on Tuesday as the consigliere and hotelier to the mighty, there as a facilitator rather than dealmaker, but very much on the inside, unlike Europe. In the age of Trump, the Gulf monarchy takes precedence above Washington’s old democratic allies, even in European matters.

• A Ukrainian drone squad knocked out a North Korean self-propelled howitzer in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday. The Khortytsia, or east, group of forces said it was the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion that a “very rare” North Korean M-1978 Koksan howitzer had been hit by a Ukrainian drone. As well as Moscow using North Korean troops in the war, South Korean intelligence and other sources have reported that Kim Jong-un’s regime is supplying the Koksan self-propelled artillery guns.

• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced on Tuesday that he will host another meeting on Ukraine “with several European and non-European states”, after an emergency meeting on Monday in Paris that brought together a small number of key European countries in response to the US and Russia holding talks in Saudi Arabia without Ukraine and Europe.

• Donald Trump had “bought Putin’s propaganda, hook, line, and sinker” when he suggested on Monday that Ukraine had “started” the war with Russia, said Sean Savett, who was national security council spokesperson under Joe Biden’s presidency. “A reminder no one should need: Putin started the war by invading Ukraine unprovoked and his forces have committed war crimes against the Ukrainian people,” Savett said. “Russia is the party responsible for this war continuing.”

• It came amid continued criticism of the Trump administration for holding peace talks without Ukraine or Europe, to which Trump responded: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited.’ Well you’ve been there for three years, you should have ended it … you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” Russia and the US said they would establish negotiating teams, and bring in European countries “at some point”.

• Trump said he would “probably” meet with Putin before the end of the month. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wanted Ukraine to take part in the talks in Riyadh but the US and Russia refused, the Bloomberg news agency has reported. As those talks took place, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told the UN security council on Tuesday that “China supports all efforts conducive to peace talks”. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has set out four principles: respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; observance of the UN Charter; due regard for legitimate security concerns of all countries; and supporting efforts towards a peaceful settlement.

• Russia said its air defences downed 21 Ukrainian drones in the space of an hour late on Tuesday – most over the western Kursk region, and one over Crimea. Russia’s claims could not be verified.

• The Danish PM, Mette Frederiksen, said her government would announce plans on Wednesday for a “massive” rearming of Denmark’s military due to the threat posed by Russia. “We must upgrade massively to protect Denmark. And we must rearm massively to avoid war,” Frederiksen told parliament on Tuesday. Danish public broadcaster DR said the government was expected to announce the creation of a 50bn kroner (€6.7bn/US$7bn) fund for additional defence spending in 2025-2026. It would bring Denmark’s defence spending to 3% of GDP. Denmark has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers.

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with allegedly masterminding and leading a far-right conspiracy to cling to power through a military coup.

The South American country’s attorney general, Paulo Gonet, levelled the charges against the radical rightwing populist and several key allies on Tuesday night. He accused Bolsonaro and six key associates of leading a criminal organization with an “authoritarian power project”. The alleged plot, he wrote, included a plan to poison Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and shoot dead Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a foe of the former president.

Bolsonaro, who experts say could face between 38 and 43 years in jail if convicted, stands accused of crimes including being involved in an attempted coup d’état and an armed criminal association and the violent abolition of the rule of law. He has repeatedly denied breaking any laws and on Tuesday told reporters he was “not at all worried about these accusations”.

The charges come three months after a bombshell 884-page federal police report accused Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 until 2022, of playing a lead role in planning and organising a conspiracy designed to stop the leftwing victor of Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking power.

Bolsonaro lost that vote to Lula but refused to accept defeat and on 8 January 2023 his hardcore supporters ran riot in the capital Brasília, trashing the presidential palace, congress and the supreme court in a bid to overturn the internationally accepted result.

​The attorney general’s office accused another 33 people of being part of the alleged plot including Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, the far-right congressman Alexandre Ramagem; his former defense ministers Gen Walter Braga Netto and Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; his former minister of justice and public security, Anderson Torres; his former minister of institutional security Gen Augusto Heleno, and the former navy commander Adm Almir Garnier Santos. Netto has denied involvement in a coup plot. The other men are yet to publicly comment on the allegations.

Perhaps most shockingly, the attorney general’s 272-page report claimed Bolsonaro had been aware of an alleged plot – which it said had “received the sinister name of ‘Green and Yellow Dagger’” – to sow political chaos by assassinating top authorities including Lula and the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes.

“The plan was thought up and brought to the attention of the president of the republic [Bolsonaro], who agreed to it,” the document claimed. “[The plot] cogitated using weapons against the minister Alexandre de Moraes and killing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with poison.”

News that Bolsonaro had been officially charged was welcomed by opposition politicians and progressive Brazilians who despise the former president for his anti-scientific handling of the Covid pandemic, his hostility to minorities, Indigenous communities and the environment, and his relentless attacks on Brazil’s democratic system.

Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of Lula’s Worker’s party, called the formal accusations, “a crucial step in the defense of democracy and the rule of law”.

Bolsonaro’s senator son, Flávio Bolsonaro, rejected the charges on X, claiming there was “absolutely NO PROOF against Bolsonaro”.

The case will now be considered by the supreme court whose judges will decide the fate of Bolsonaro and his alleged accomplices. That is expected to happen in the first half of this year.

Historian Carlos Fico, one of the leading experts on the dictatorship that seized power after Brazil’s 1964 military coup, said it was particularly noteworthy that those charged included three high-ranking military figures: Gen Braga Netto, Gen Heleno and Adm Garnier Santos.

“The most significant aspect is not Bolsonaro’s indictment – he is, after all, an avowed admirer of the military dictatorship and of torture – but rather the indictment of the generals,” said Fico, a history professor at Rio’s federal university. “The indictment of generals through a judicial process led by the federal police, with the endorsement of the country’s attorney general and [that is] set to be judged by the supreme court, is unprecedented in Brazilian history.”

“Over the years, numerous military coup plotters were never properly punished and ended up being granted amnesty,” added Fico, referring to those who were never prosecuted for crimes committed during the dictatorship, which ended in 1985. “I hope that this time, there will be no amnesty.”

The Trump administration abruptly cut off legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children on Tuesday, telling government-funded attorneys across the country they should immediately stop their work.

Advocates called the decision shocking and warned that taking away legal aid programs would endanger minors already at risk of child trafficking, an issue that Trump and Republican members of his administration repeatedly highlighted as a concern during the 2024 election. The order to “stop all work” affects US non-profits that provide legal counsel for about 26,000 unaccompanied minors.

Tuesday’s sudden “stop-work” orders from the Department of the Interior were confirmed by multiple organizations, including Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), the largest legal service provider to unaccompanied children in southern California, and the Acacia Center for Justice.

“It’s abhorrent,” said Yliana Johansen-Méndez, the chief program officer for (ImmDef). She added that advocates had been expecting some efforts to cut back these services, but were not anticipating such an abrupt and complete stop to all services, including for children who are currently in government custody.

Among ImmDef’s clients are children just a few months oldas well as school-aged, including teenagers. Many are in exceedingly vulnerable situations and have been abused either in their home countries or in the US, or are minors who have been trafficked. For clients who have hearings scheduled for the coming days or weeks, a failure to appear could result in an immediate removal order.

Lindsay Toczylowski, ImmDef’s president and CEO, said the government-funded legal defense efforts were “a 20-year-old program meant to safeguard the rights of the most vulnerable among us”, and that eliminating legal aid for children “will only cause more chaos in our immigration courts and violates our commitment to children’s safety”.

“This decision flies in the face of ensuring children who have been trafficked or are at risk of trafficking have child-friendly legal representatives protecting their legal rights and interests,” Shaina Aber, the executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, said in a statement.

Despite the stop-work order, which stipulates a complete, immediate and indefinite halt to all legal aid work, ImmDef plans to continue working on behalf of its clients, Johansen-Méndez said. “We have professional obligations to these clients,” she said. “We are required by the oaths that we’ve taken as attorneys by our state bars to not do anything that will prejudice [their cases].”

Among the children affected by this stop-work order are those who presented themselves to officials at the border without their parents and were put under the custody of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR). ImmDef and other legal service non-profits have been acting as subcontracts who provide legal services to minors to see if they can qualify for reprieve from deportations while the ORR searches for family members who can take custody of them.

“These kids who are in government custody, and are not in the care of a family member or adults who can step in for them, they would be going into court with nobody to stand at their side and help,” she said. “And to think that our legal system would be okay with that kind of setup – it’s unbelievable.”

Some of the clients at risk of imminent removal if they are left without legal aid include children who could be sent back to dangerous or abusive environments in their home countries, she added.

The Trump administration previously issued a similar stop-work order for legal aid programs for adults at risk of deportation, but the justice department restored the funding in early February, two days after non-profits sued the government over the funding cuts, the Associated Press reported.

In the week after the Trump administration issued the stop-work order for adult legal aid, advocates reported confusion and scaling back of services across the country, and staff from at least one advocacy group said they were escorted out of a Virginia detention facility after attempting to continue their legal aid work without funding.

More than 150 whales have stranded on a beach near Arthur River, on Tasmania’s remote north-west coast.

A group of 157 animals that appear to be false killer whales have stranded, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania.

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Marine conservation experts including wildlife veterinarians arrived to the site on Wednesday morning, confirming 90 animals were still alive.

“Our mass stranding events usually involve pilot whales. However, these are false killer whales, and it is our first large mass stranding of these animals in around 50 years,” Brendon Clark, a liaison officer at the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, said at a press conference in Hobart on Wednesday morning. “They’ve been stranded now for, we estimate, 24 to 48 hours.”

“Initial assessments indicate that refloating the whales will be difficult due to the inaccessibility of the site, ocean conditions and the challenges of getting specialised equipment to the remote area,” Clark said.

“We have approximately 200 metres of surging tidal waters, a breaking surf, and so to try and refloat the animals directly back into that surf would be challenging,” he said, adding that would pose safety risks for rescue personnel.

“At this stage, we do not know why these animals have stranded,” he said, adding that helicopter reconnaissance suggested there were no other animals on beaches 10km either side of the stranding site.

Authorities emphasised there was an active bushfire on the state’s west coast and urged the public to avoid the stranding area.

“If it is determined there is a need for help from the general public, a request will be made through various avenues,” the environment department said in a statement.

“All whales are protected species, even once deceased, and it is an offence to interfere with a carcass.”

The Tasmanian environment department’s stranding responses are guided by a “cetacean incident manual”, which was reviewed following Australia’s worst mass whale stranding in 2020. In that incident, more than 450 long-finned pilot whales beached inside Macquarie Harbour, also on Tasmania’s west coast.

Two mass strandings in Tasmanian waters also occurred within a week in September 2022.

Clark said: “While we’ve had good recent success at previous whale standing events on the west coast at Macquarie Harbour and surrounds with refloating and rescuing whales, it’s important to note that the environmental and access challenges mean we are unlikely to be able to use those same rescue techniques.”

“Those onsite will be doing triages to determine the animals with the best chance of survival, and we’ll be implementing … methods to try and keep them alive and comfortable until they determine whether there is any likelihood of being able to refloat.”

He said the last false killer whale mass stranding occurred in June 1974 at Black River beach near Stanley, also on Tasmania’s north-west coast. That incident also involved a pod of 160-170 animals.

The false killer whale, despite its common name, is a highly sociable species of dolphin. The animals, which grow to about 6 metres long, form large pods that can predispose them to mass strandings.

False killer whales varied in weight from 500kg to 3 tonnes, Clark said.

Pope Francis has been diagnosed with double pneumonia after further tests showed a continuing “complex” medical situation, the Vatican said in a statement on Tuesday.

The pontiff, 88, underwent a chest X-ray, which “demonstrated the onset of bilateral pneumonia that required further pharmacological therapy”.

Antibiotic cortisone therapy to treat an earlier-diagnosed polymicrobial infection of the respiratory tract “makes the therapeutic treatment more complex”.

The pope was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Friday after suffering from the respiratory tract infection, which he referred to as bronchitis on several occasions, for more than a week.

A polymicrobial infection is one caused by two or more micro-organisms, and can be caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi.

The statement added that the pontiff was in good spirits and had received the Eucharist earlier in the day.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Vatican said it had cancelled the pope’s commitments at the weekend because of his continued ill health.

“Due to the health conditions of the Holy Father, the Jubilee audience of Saturday February 22 is cancelled,” the Vatican said, adding that the pontiff had delegated a senior church figure to celebrate mass on Sunday morning. His general audience on Wednesday has also been cancelled.

Francis had part of his lung removed in his early 20s while training to be a priest in his native Argentina.

Despite his hospitalisation, the pope has maintained his nightly routine since 9 October 2023 of telephone calls to the Holy Family church in Gaza.

“He was tired but had a clear voice,” Father Gabriel Romanelli told the Italian press after Monday night’s call. “He asked how we were and thanked us with prayers. At the end of the call he gave us his blessing.”

The pope, who has suffered ill health in recent years, was also admitted to hospital in March 2023 for what was initially said to be bronchitis but later diagnosed as pneumonia. He was readmitted to the Gemelli for health checks in June that year and again in February 2024 after suffering from what he said was “a bit of a cold”.

He also underwent a colon operation in June 2021.

The pope has often been seen in a wheelchair or with a walking stick as a result of a sciatic nerve pain and a knee problem.

Pope Francis has been diagnosed with double pneumonia after further tests showed a continuing “complex” medical situation, the Vatican said in a statement on Tuesday.

The pontiff, 88, underwent a chest X-ray, which “demonstrated the onset of bilateral pneumonia that required further pharmacological therapy”.

Antibiotic cortisone therapy to treat an earlier-diagnosed polymicrobial infection of the respiratory tract “makes the therapeutic treatment more complex”.

The pope was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Friday after suffering from the respiratory tract infection, which he referred to as bronchitis on several occasions, for more than a week.

A polymicrobial infection is one caused by two or more micro-organisms, and can be caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi.

The statement added that the pontiff was in good spirits and had received the Eucharist earlier in the day.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Vatican said it had cancelled the pope’s commitments at the weekend because of his continued ill health.

“Due to the health conditions of the Holy Father, the Jubilee audience of Saturday February 22 is cancelled,” the Vatican said, adding that the pontiff had delegated a senior church figure to celebrate mass on Sunday morning. His general audience on Wednesday has also been cancelled.

Francis had part of his lung removed in his early 20s while training to be a priest in his native Argentina.

Despite his hospitalisation, the pope has maintained his nightly routine since 9 October 2023 of telephone calls to the Holy Family church in Gaza.

“He was tired but had a clear voice,” Father Gabriel Romanelli told the Italian press after Monday night’s call. “He asked how we were and thanked us with prayers. At the end of the call he gave us his blessing.”

The pope, who has suffered ill health in recent years, was also admitted to hospital in March 2023 for what was initially said to be bronchitis but later diagnosed as pneumonia. He was readmitted to the Gemelli for health checks in June that year and again in February 2024 after suffering from what he said was “a bit of a cold”.

He also underwent a colon operation in June 2021.

The pope has often been seen in a wheelchair or with a walking stick as a result of a sciatic nerve pain and a knee problem.

Hamas has said it will release six hostages from Gaza this week and hand over the bodies of four others, including the remains of two young children from the same family whose deaths had not previously been confirmed.

Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas negotiator, said the four bodies to be handed over on Thursday would include those of 32-year-old Shiri Bibas and her sons, Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months old and four years old when Hamas abducted them from the Nir Oz kibbutz during the 7 October 2023 attack that ignited the Gaza war.

The boys’ father, Yarden Bibas, was told by Hamas that his family was dead when he was released earlier this month, but Israeli authorities were not able to confirm their deaths, and family members said that the father had continued to believe they could still be alive. Hamas has claimed the young boys and their mother were killed by Israeli bombing.

Hamas has said it will release six surviving hostages on Saturday, which represents a slight acceleration of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. Under the originally agreed timetable, they were to be released in two groups of three, the last on 1 March, when the second phase is due to begin. A further four bodies are to be handed over on schedule next week.

The release of six hostages on Saturday was confirmed by the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In return, all the remaining Palestinians due to be released from Israeli prisons in the first phase will be freed on Saturday. Israeli press reports said that Israel would also allow into Gaza some of the bulldozers and mobile homes that have been waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, to begin the vast task of rebuilding the devastated Palestinian territory.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said that Israeli negotiators in Doha would begin discussing the details of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement “this week”, something Netanyahu had previously refused to condone despite the fact that under the agreement second-phase talks were supposed to start in the first week of February.

The second phase is supposed to include the release of all remaining hostages with a corresponding number of Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and the completion of the Israel Defense Forces’ withdrawal from Gaza, including the Rafah crossing point into Egypt – in effect putting an end to the war.

The right wing of Netanyahu’s governing coalition has adamantly opposed the start of the second phase, threatening to bring down his government, but Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, put his foot down on the issue over the weekend.

“Phase two is a little more complicated than phase one. But phase two is absolutely going to begin,” Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday, adding that he just talked to Netanyahu about the issue by telephone that day.

Two days later, Sa’ar said: “In the security cabinet meeting last night, we decided to open negotiations on the second phase. It will happen this week.”

Asked what would happen if there was no agreement in the next 10 days on how to implement the second phase, Sa’ar said there were two other options: a return to war or an extension to the 1 March deadline for beginning the phase two if there was “constructive dialogue aimed at getting to an agreement”.

Gaza’s future beyond the second phase is even more hazy. Israel has insisted that Hamas can play no further role in its governance. Sa’ar argued there had to be a complete “deradicalisation” of Gaza’s society.

Trump caused global outrage earlier this month by saying the US would take over ownership of Gaza, its more than 2 million residents should somehow depart to neighbouring countries, and the whole coastal strip would be redeveloped into a “Riviera” resort.

Egypt and Jordan, which were expected to take most of the deported Palestinians under this plan, have rejected the proposal. On Friday, leaders of the two countries are due to meet their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in Riyadh to put together an alternative plan that would ensure Gaza remains Palestinian land. There will then be an Arab League summit on the issue in Cairo on 4 March.

The musician A$AP Rocky has been found not guilty of shooting a former friend after an altercation in Hollywood in 2021, sparing him from a potentially decades-long prison sentence.

A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday acquitted him of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

After the verdict was read, the 36-year-old hip-hop star dove into the gallery to hug his longtime partner, Rihanna, and expressed his gratitude to the jurors as they left the courtroom.

“Thank y’all for saving my life,” he said.

The verdict follows a more than two week trial during which the alleged victim, whose stage name is A$AP Relli, testified that Rocky fired two shots from a handgun at him, grazing his knuckles.

The trial began on 24 January, after Rocky, born Rakim Athelston Mayers, turned down a plea offer before the proceedings, insisting he was innocent. If he had been found guilty, Rocky could have faced up to 24 years in prison.

Before the jury’s ruling, Rocky’s longtime partner, the superstar singer Rihanna, attended closing arguments with the couple’s toddlers, two-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and one-year-old Riot Rose Mayers.

Rocky’s defense attorney Joe Tacopina, who also represented Donald Trump in lawsuits with Stormy Daniels and E Jean Carroll, argued that Rocky had fired a prop gun, which he had taken from the set of a music video for security reasons.

Tacopina cast Relli as a jealous opportunist, saying that Relli had only reported the incident so he could file a subsequent civil case against Rocky. In text messages and phone calls recorded by a mutual friend, Relli said he was going to take Rocky for millions. Relli testified the calls were faked, but the prosecution played long excerpts during closing arguments.

During witness testimony, which concluded on Tuesday without Rocky taking the stand, prosecutors argued that the hip-hop star fired at Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron.

“Mr Ephron wants to get paid,” deputy district attorney Paul Przelomiec said, “because he was the victim of a real crime by a real gun.”

Rocky and Relli were both members of a New York hip hop group called the A$AP Mob, and remained friends after Rocky gained global fame with No 1 albums in 2012 and 2013.

But, by the time the two reunited on 6 November 2021, their friendship had soured. Upon meeting outside a Hollywood hotel, the pair scuffled. Moments later, Rocky fired the shots, which Relli said grazed his knuckles.

During the trial, Relli testified that he believed the gun was real and described Rocky pointing it at him before walking away. Relli told jurors that he shouted at Rocky as he walked after him, then Rocky pulled the gun again and held it in the air.

“He turned around and then it was like, boom!” Relli said. “The whole thing was like a movie, he kind of like pointed down and he shot the first shot.” He said he felt a burning on his hand where a bullet grazed it.

Another member of the hip hop group, A$AP Twelvyy, testified that he had been present for the encounter and that Rocky had fired the shots as a warning to stop Relli from attacking another member of the crew.

Twelvyy testified that Rocky fired blanks from the prop gun, and that everyone involved knew it was a fake.

Neither side produced a gun as evidence, and despite more than three years passing, the defense did not say the gun was fake until the beginning of trial, which Przelomiec said “defies all reason”.

Jurors were also shown video surveillance of the altercation and heard testimony from a witness who claimed to hear the shooting from the seventh floor of a nearby apartment building.

Jurors were not supposed to be aware of the possible 24-year sentence Rocky faced, but Rocky’s tour manager, Lou Levin, mentioned the length of the possible sentence during his testimony. The judge told the jury to disregard the statement, but prosecutors said they believed the slip was intentional.

The Associated Press contributed

Sudanese paramilitaries have killed more than 200 people in a three-day assault south of Khartoum, according to a lawyers’ network, while the army-backed government put the death toll at more than double that figure.

The Emergency Lawyers network, which has documented human rights abuses during 22 months of fighting between the rival security forces, said hundreds more were wounded or missing and feared drowned after the paramilitaries opened fire on villagers as they attempted to flee across the White Nile.

The foreign ministry of the army-backed government said 433 people, including children, had been killed in the attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The attack on the White Nile state villages of al-Kadaris and al-Khelwat, 100km (60 miles) south of the capital, sent thousands fleeing, witnesses said.

A spokesperson for the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the world body had received “horrifying reports that dozens of women were raped and hundreds of families were forced to flee”.

Emergency Lawyers said that for three days RSF fighters had subjected unarmed civilians to “executions, kidnappings, forced disappearances and looting”.

Since the war broke out in April 2023, the army and the paramilitaries have been accused of war crimes.

The RSF also stands accused of genocide by the US for allegedly targeting non-Arab minorities in the Darfur region of western Sudan with summary executions and systematic sexual violence.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and has created what the International Rescue Committee has called the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”.

Control over the White Nile State, which extends from just south of Khartoum to the border with South Sudan, is divided by the warring parties.

The army controls the south, including the state capital, Rabak, as well as two major cities and a key military base. The RSF holds the northern parts of the state, including the villages where the latest attacks took place.

A medical source said it was nearly impossible to confirm a toll.

“Some bodies are still lying in the street, and some were killed in their homes and no one can reach them,” the source said, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.

Fighting has intensified across Sudan in recent weeks as the army attempts to reclaim full control of the capital from the paramilitaries.

On Tuesday, the Emergency Lawyers accused the army of “barbaric” assaults on civilians in east Khartoum, days after its paramilitary opposition killed six civilians in the area.

The network said that civilians in the East Nile district accused of collaborating with the RSF had been subjected to “killings, forced disappearances and arbitrary arrests” by individuals linked to the army.

The UN’s children’s agency said children in Khartoum were trapped in “a living nightmare” of indiscriminate shooting, looting and forced displacement.

Unicef said it had also received alarming reports of families being separated, with children abducted and subjected to sexual violence.

The UN human rights office said “entrenched impunity” had fuelled mass human rights violations across Sudan.

“Continued and deliberate attacks” on civilians including “summary executions, sexual violence and other violations and abuses underscore the utter failure” by both sides to respect international humanitarian law, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The UN also called for the expansion of the international criminal court’s jurisdiction and a longstanding arms embargo to cover all of Sudan instead of just Darfur.

The vast western region, home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population, has seen escalating violence in recent weeks as the RSF seeks to consolidate its hold. The paramilitary group has intensified attacks on North Darfur state capital El Fasher, the only major city in Darfur it does not control.

Kevin Spacey has responded to Guy Pearce’s allegation that the actor “targeted him” during the filming of LA Confidential, telling Pearce to “grow up” and “you are not a victim”.

On Monday, Pearce expanded further on his alleged experiences with Spacey, having previously called him “a handsy guy” in 2018. Spacey, who has been dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct, has conceded he made some “clumsy” approaches to men in the past, but never anything illegal.

Pearce told the Hollywood Reporter that Spacey “targeted me, no question” while they made the 1997 film LA Confidential. He said that he told his then wife that he felt safe on set when his co-star Simon Baker was present, because Spacey focused on Baker instead.

“But I did that thing that you do where you brush it off and go, ‘Ah, that’s nothing. Ah, no, that’s nothing.’ And I did that for five months. And, really, I was sort of scared of Kevin because he’s quite an aggressive man. He’s extremely charming and brilliant at what he does – really impressive, et cetera. He holds a room remarkably. But I was young and susceptible, and he targeted me, no question,” Pearce said.

Pearce said the #MeToo movement, which saw multiple allegations of sexual misconduct levelled against men in Hollywood in 2017, was “a really incredible wake-up call” for him. Spacey was accused at the time by the actor Anthony Rapp of having made sexual advances towards him at a party in New York in 1986, when Rapp was 14.

Spacey was legally cleared of misconduct and sexual assault respectively in separate trials in the US and the UK, and successfully defended himself against a lawsuit brought by Rapp.

“I was in London working on something, and I heard [the reports] and I broke down and sobbed, and I couldn’t stop,” Pearce said. “I think it really dawned on me the impact that had occurred and how I sort of brushed it off and how I had either shelved it or blocked it out or whatever.”

He said he was reluctant to describe himself as a victim, “even though I probably was a victim to a degree; I was certainly not a victim by any means to the extent that other people have been to sexual predators.”

Spacey responded to the allegations on Tuesday on X. “We worked together a long time ago,” he said in a video, addressing Pearce. “If I did something then that upset you, you could have reached out to me. We could have had that conversation, but instead, you’ve decided to speak to the press, who are now, of course, coming after me, because they would like to know what my response is to the things that you said. You really want to know what my response is? Grow up.”

Spacey claimed that Pearce flew to Georgia a year after LA Confidential was made “just to spend time with me” while Spacey was filming Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

“I mean, did you tell the press that too, or does that not fit into the victim narrative you have going?” Spacey said. “I apologise that I didn’t get the message that you don’t like spending time with me. Maybe there was another reason, I don’t know, but that doesn’t make any sense. That you would have just been leading me on, right? But here you are now on a mission, some 28 years later, after I’ve been through hell and back.”

Spacey ended his message by saying: “You want to have a conversation? I’m happy to do so, anytime, anyplace. We can even do it here, live on X, if you like. I’ve got nothing to hide. But Guy – you need to grow up. You are not a victim.”

Pearce told the Hollywood Reporter that he had raised Spacey’s alleged behaviour with him years later, but he subsequently “had a couple of confrontations with Kevin” that “got ugly”.

Speaking last May on NewsNation, Spacey said he believed the #MeToo movement had “swung very, very far in the direction of unfairness” but that he was “trying to show that I’ve listened. I’ve learned. I’ve got the memo. I feel very strongly that whatever mistakes I’ve made in my life, that I paid a price.”

Four alleged victims of sexual violence by Andrew Tate have urged the US to stay out of Romanian criminal proceedings, after reports the Trump administration had put pressure on authorities to lift travel restrictions against the self-styled “misogynist influencer”.

The former professional kickboxer and his brother Tristan were arrested in 2022 and indicted in mid-2023, along with two Romanian women, on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.

The brothers, who are dual UK-US citizens and have been vocal supporters of Trump, have denied wrongdoing. The UK is seeking the brothers’ extradition after Bedfordshire police were granted a warrant as part of an investigation into allegations of rape and human trafficking.

Andrew Tate is also facing a separate civil action from four women who have alleged rape and coercive control between 2013 and 2016.

On Tuesday, the British women, who say they were victims of sexual violence by the controversial social media influencer, expressed deep concern over reports of US government involvement with the case and asked for Romanian and UK authorities to be “left alone to do their jobs”.

“We are extremely concerned about reports that figures in Donald Trump’s administration are pressuring the Romanian authorities to relax travel restrictions on Andrew Tate and his brother, which would increase the risk of the Tate brothers evading justice or fleeing from the authorities in Romania and the UK,” the victims said in a statement through their lawyers, McCue Jury & Partners.

“We hope that the Romanian and the UK authorities will be left alone to do their jobs,” it added.

The brothers’ case was brought up by US officials in a phone call with the Romanian government last week, according to the Financial Times, which said Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, met the Romanian foreign minister at the Munich Security Conference. Both diplomats served as ambassadors to Germany during Trump’s first term.

A source told the paper a request was made to return the Tates’ passports to allow them to travel during the ongoing proceedings. The Romanian foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, confirmed the US had raised the Tate brothers’ case.

“Richard Grenell told me he is interested in the fate of the Tate brothers,” he told G4Media on Monday. “Later I requested a new meeting to better understand his intentions in relation to Romania, but it never took place.” Grenell said there was “no substantive conversation” with Hurezeanu.

In November, Tristan Tate touted the brother’s influence on the US election, posting on X: “Millions of young men in Europe and the USA have a healthy rightwing approach to politics that they would not have if Andrew Tate had never appeared on their phone screens. His role in this cannot be overlooked.”

Matthew Jury, lawyer for the British victims, said Trump was “interfering in due process” not just in Romania, but in the UK also, where the Tates are pending extradition.

“It would be embarrassing for the UK government and a complete abdication of its responsibility to the victims if it stands by and lets this continue,” said Jury.