Last week, the US demanded that Russia accept Ukraine’s right to maintain a military as part of a peace deal. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s “America First” policies are causing a political backlash in Canada, Australia, and beyond, helping center-left governments regain ground.
US to Demand Putin Accept Ukraine’s Right to Military Force
- The US is demanding that Russia accept Ukraine’s right to develop its own army and defense industry as part of a peace agreement, pushing back on Russia’s insistence on demilitarization.
- The US also wants Moscow to return Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which would then fall under US control to administer energy to both sides, and to ensure Ukraine has passage over the Dnieper River and that land occupied by Russia is returned.
- The US has proposed lifting sanctions on Moscow if a deal is reached, but has warned that it will walk away from the talks if a deal isn’t reached soon, with President Trump saying he thinks Putin wants to make a deal and that he’s “using a lot of pressure on both” sides.
The US will demand that Russia accept Ukraine’s right to develop its own, adequately equipped, army and defense industry as part of a peace agreement, according to people familiar with the matter, pushing back on Russia’s insistence that the country largely demilitarize as a condition to end the war.
US envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Russia to raise the issue with President Vladimir Putin, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
It’s a signal that President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking some concessions from the Kremlin, as well as Ukraine, as it tries to end a war that’s now into its fourth year. Critics have thus far viewed the US proposals as tilted toward Russia, including the Trump administration’s insistence that Ukraine give up its aspirations to join the NATO military alliance.
Agreeing to let Kyiv maintain its military, as demanded by Ukraine and its European allies, would mean Putin would have to give up on his announced goal for a “demilitarization” of the country, one of his main stated war aims. The outcome on that issue may depend on Russia’s willingness to let Ukraine independently determine the scope of its future forces.
As part of a draft agreement discussed in the weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Putin’s government proposed putting strict limits on the future size of Ukraine’s military in a move that critics said would have left it helpless in the face of future threats. Those proposals would have seen the size of Ukraine’s army reduced by more than half. Its number of tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers would also have been slashed.
The Trump administration also wants Moscow to return Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which it seized early in its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The facility would then fall under US control to administer energy to both sides, said the people. They added that details of the plans had yet to be completed and could still change.
An administration official said Witkoff’s outreach to Putin is part of Trump’s efforts to make peace, move beyond past failed strategies, and end the deadly conflict. Spokespeople for the US National Security Council and the State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Trump said Thursday that he’s “using a lot of pressure” on both sides in the war. He said he thinks Putin “wants to make a deal. We’re going to find out very soon.” Asked what concessions Russia has offered, Trump said, “Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country — pretty big concession.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in an interview with CBS News, said there were “several signs that we are moving in the right direction” toward a deal, while conceding that Russia still saw issues that needed to be negotiated.
“The statement by the president mentions a deal, and we are ready to reach a deal, but there are still some specific points — elements of this deal which need to be fine-tuned,” Lavrov said.
In addition to letting Ukraine maintain its military, the US wants to ensure that it has passage over the Dnieper River and that land occupied by Russia in the Kharkiv region is returned. Putin has demanded recognition of the entirety of the Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Kherson regions, despite having failed to fully occupy them.
Russia has continued to bomb Ukrainian cities even as talks have continued, and as it has insisted that it’s prepared for peace. Overnight, Russia launched the biggest airstrike of the year against Ukraine, targeting Kyiv and killing at least 12 people.
That forced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to cut short a visit to South Africa on Thursday. Before he left, Zelenskiy told reporters that “we can’t talk about red lines without an unconditional ceasefire.”
At a meeting in Paris last week, Trump’s team presented Europe and Ukraine with a proposal to end the war that would also see the US recognize Ukraine’s Crimea region as Russian while freezing most other occupied territories along current battle lines, effectively leaving them under Moscow’s control, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Crimea was taken by the Kremlin in 2014 following an invasion and subsequent referendum held under occupation, and the international community has resisted recognizing the peninsula as Russian to avoid legitimizing the illegal annexation. Zelenskiy has repeatedly said he won’t cede territory to Moscow.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social this week that nobody was asking Zelenskiy to recognize Crimea, and he lashed out at the Ukrainian president, accusing him of undermining peace negotiations.
“I think we have a deal with Russia. We have to get a deal with Zelensky. I hope that Zelenskiy — I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelenskiy. So far, it’s been harder,” Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office.
Then on Thursday, Trump criticized Putin for the latest round of attacks on Ukraine.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday. “Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”
The US has indicated that any peace agreement would need security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure that a deal holds, without specifying exactly what form such assurances would take. It has also proposed lifting sanctions on Moscow if there’s a deal.
The UK and France have been leading efforts to form a postwar “reassurance force” in Ukraine, but the US has so far not offered to contribute to it or to provide Kyiv with military aid in the future, some of the people said. Additional options to guarantee an agreement could include a non-European peacekeeping force, some of the same people added. Russia has said it won’t accept troops from NATO countries in Ukraine.
Trump and other US officials have warned that they will walk away from the talks if a deal isn’t reached soon.
“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass,”’ Trump said at the White House last week. “But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
Global Trump Backlash to Be Tested as Canada and Australia Vote
- Center-left governments in Canada and Australia are seeing their electoral fortunes revived as a backlash grows against Donald Trump’s America First policies.
- Incumbents are getting a poll bounce by standing up to Trump’s policies, while right-leaning candidates are losing ground through association with the US president or his policies.
- Trump’s unpopularity is affecting elections globally, with his tariffs and threats to annex Canada and Australia crowding out local issues and making him a top concern for voters.
Donald Trump’s Nov. 5 victory capped a bad year for incumbents as authoritarian populists gained ground across the globe in an unprecedented year of elections. Less than six months later, the tide seems to be turning.
Center-left governments in Canada and Australia that appeared destined to lose office at the start of 2025 are seeing their electoral fortunes revived as Trump’s America First policies spur a backlash across Western democracies.
In Europe, the ability to stand up for Ukraine and manage Trump in the process has earned plaudits and a bump in polls for both UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. The duo have worked to salvage support for Ukraine after a late February Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy devolved into a fiery exchange.
And Mexico’s first female president Claudia Sheinbaum, already enjoying high popularity following her landslide victory last year, saw her approval rating soar to a 30-year high as her ability to negotiate on trade with Trump was applauded by voters and foreign leaders alike.
As incumbents get a poll bounce by standing up to Trump’s salvos, right-leaning candidates are losing ground through association with the US president or his policies. The effect may be less pronounced in the UK, where Starmer’s personal approval ratings are up but his Labour Party is down, and the right-wing Reform UK is surging. Still, the inflation and cost-of-living pressures that led voters to unseat dozens of governments globally now seem less urgent next to Trump’s trade and other threats.
“The Trump effect has trumped the affordability issues and debate because people are even more frightened of him than they are of the lack of affordability,” said Ian Lee, associate professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business in Ottawa.
The reversal in fortunes is perhaps starkest in Canada, where for much of the last two years, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party’s popularity were in a rapid decline after fumbling immigration and housing policies. Their rivals Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, who promised to fix “broken” Canada after nearly a decade under Trudeau, were surging in polls and on track to win a parliamentary majority.
At the start of the year, their fortunes flipped. Trudeau quit, and his party chose former central banker Mark Carney to replace him. By March, the Conservatives lost their poll dominanc,e and now the Liberals look set to win a fourth term in the April 28 federal election.
While Trudeau’s resignation initially drove the Liberal resurgence, Trump has played an outsize role. Opinion polls show Trump consistently tops the list of most important issues to voters as his tariffs and threats to annex Canada crowd out pre-Trump problem,s including worsening housing shortages, unsustainable levels of immigrationand a declining standard of living.
“The question is, will that concern about our survival as a country trump on Election Day the bread-and-butter issues of affordability?” said Lee. “It just comes down to which suites of values are going to prevail. Will it be affordability, which is more micro and individual, or the more aggregate concern about the future of the country?”
Read More: Carney Rides Anti-Trump Sentiment to Lead Canada Election Race
For many Liberal voters, dealing with Trump and navigating what Carney has called “the biggest crisis of our lifetimes” is most pressing. They see the former governor of both Canadian and UK central banks as the most qualified.
“Before we cut taxes or do anything, we just have to sort tariffs out first. It may be a short-term problem. But it would cripple us in the long term,” said Tobias Binder, a business owner in Toronto who said he’s no longer under “Poilievre’s spell” and now plans to vote Liberal.
Committed Conservative voters, on the other hand, view Trump as a distraction to many of Canada’s chronic problems. “This is an extremely important election. Just ask one very simple question: What has improved in your life over the last eight years? Then decide who you want to vote for,” said Sonduren Fanarredha, an automotive content creator.
Australia has long been known for its prosperous economy, with many calling it “The Lucky Country.” But that luck may be starting to change. While the overall economy is not in recession, its people are weathering financial headwinds.
After news of Trump’s victory broke in Canberra, some members of the center-right Liberal-National Coalition held parties in their parliamentary offices, seeing the American election result as part of a global shift that would help them topple Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor government. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton drew comparisons between the US election and the imminent one in Australia, highlighting issues such as immigration and anti-woke policies.
Read More: Ex-Cop Rises as Australia Opposition Seeks to Defeat PM Albanese
“Australians deserve a migration program that acts in our country’s best interest, not against our best interests, and again, I think that was a big issue in the US and it’ll be a big issue in our election as well,” Dutton told radio station 2GB shortly after the US election. In February, he called Trump “shrewd” and a “big thinker.”
Dutton’s Coalition led the Labor government in the polls through the final months of 2024, and some lawmakers were increasingly optimistic about their chances of making Albanese the first prime minister in a century to lose power after just one term.
Crafted over his two decades in Parliament, Dutton’s own image was that of a strong leader, with Trump-like policies such as heavy cuts to immigration, shrinking the size of government, and winding back progressive social reforms. While far more of an establishment figure than Trump, Dutton had framed the election as a contest between a “weak” leader in Albanese and his own strength and experience.
But it didn’t take long for Trump to become deeply unpopular in Australia. Following the two rounds of tariffs on Australian steel and aluminum in March, and then the “reciprocal” imposts of 10% in April, a poll by Resolve found 68% of those surveyed believed that Trump’s election win had been bad for the country. A third of voters said they were less likely to vote for Dutton because of Trump.
A survey by the Lowy Institute think tank released the same month found trust in the US had plunged to its lowest point in the poll’s history.
As Trump has become increasingly unpopular in Australia, Dutton’s approval ratings and his party’s support have dropped. These days, Dutton is less upbeat about Trump and has ditched policy proposals such as forcing government workers back into the office after criticism he was borrowing from the US president’s agenda.
Asked on the Rest Is Politics podcast over the Easter weekend whether or not Trump had sparked a positive turnaround in his polling, Albanese said the effect was far less than in Canada, but didn’t discount it entirely.
“Some of that can be overestimated,” Albanese told the UK-based podcast on Saturday. “Canada obviously has a border with the US, and it’s pretty brutal and upfront, that division that is going on there.” The Australian prime minister added that the global “uncertainty” had likely had an impact on the 2025 election.
Hong Kong Pension Fund Loses $5.6 Billion in April Selloff
Hong Kong’s public pension fund is on track for a paper loss of about HK$43.4 billion ($5.6 billion) this month after the escalating trade war hammered global stocks.
An estimated 3.2% decline in April puts the Mandatory Provident Fund on course for its worst performance for the first four months since 2022, according to research firm MPF Ratings Ltd.
Hong Kong and Chinese equities are the worst-performing asset class for the pension this month, with a 7.1% decline.
Hong Kong’s benchmark stock index has dropped more than 5% this month while the S&P 500 has slid more than 2%, after US President Donald Trump unveiled a range of sweeping tariffs on April 2, upending global trade and raising concerns about a recession.
“He thought it was a good idea, markets did not,” MPF Ratings Chairman Francis Chung said in a statement Friday.
Introduced in 2000 to prepare for a rapidly aging population, the MPF mandates participation for most employees in the city. The fund has about 4.8 million contributing members and HK$1.3 trillion in assets.
Conclusion
The US is pushing hard to shape the end of the Russia-Ukraine war, but deep divisions remain. Meanwhile, Trump’s international impact is growing, causing political shifts far from American shores. For investors, these developments could mean continued geopolitical volatility — something to watch closely in the weeks ahead.
Source: Bloomberg
