Donald Trump says there has been agreement to begin negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine, after holding phone calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
It is the US president’s first big step towards diplomacy over a conflict which he promised to end within 24 hours of being inaugurated.
“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social following discussions with Russia’s president.
He said the pair would “work together, very closely” towards winding down the conflict and “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.
Image: Donald Trump has triggered the start of peace talks with Vladimir Putin. File pic: AP
A Kremlin spokesperson said Mr Putin and Mr Trump had agreed to meet, with the Russian president inviting the US leader to visit Moscow.
“President Putin, for his part, mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement can be achieved through peaceful negotiations,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Image: Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking on the phone with Donald Trump on Wednesday. Pic: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president wrote on X that he had a “meaningful conversation” by phone with Mr Trump to discuss “opportunities to achieve peace” and the preparation of a document governing security and economic cooperation.
“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” he said.
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8:42
Trump-Putin call: What do we know?
Mr Trump added that his phone conversation with Mr Zelenskyy “went very well”, suggesting that “he [Mr Zelenskyy], like President Putin, wants to make PEACE”.
On social media, the US president said: “It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”
He says there have been NATO efforts all day to stop the damage to unity done by defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who said it’s unrealistic that Ukraine will get all of its land back in a peace deal or join NATO.
That impression of unity is crumbling.
Trump’s call with Putin is a break from three years of firm determination by NATO members to be united behind the principle of not talking about Ukraine without Ukraine.
The president’s announcement that Russian and US teams will start negotiations does not make clear whether they are bilateral talks or involve Kyiv.
Donald Trump seems to have made commitments in that phone call with Putin that the Russians expect him to hold himself to – what are those commitments?
On Wednesday, the US defence secretary delivered a blunt statement on the new US administration’s approach to the nearly three-year-old war.
Speaking at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Pete Hegseth said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US did not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war.
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Pete Hegseth: Ukraine getting all land back in peace deal ‘not realistic’
“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.
Separately the US and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap. America freed a Russian cybercrime boss in return for Moscow’s release of schoolteacher Marc Fogel, a US official said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile at a White House news conference on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she was “not aware of” Mr Trump putting any preconditions on his meeting with Mr Putin.
Mr Trump said the peace negotiations will be led by secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and ambassador Steve Witkoff.
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community. and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Image: Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Image: Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Image: Sylvie Courselle with distributers
Image: The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Image: Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Mr Trump it is now being as turned on, as France, along with the rest of Europe, finds itself in what many would argue is a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on what he calls “the worst offenders” come into effect at 5am UK time, with China facing by far the biggest levy.
The US will hit Chinese imports with 104% tariffs, marking a significant trade escalation between the world’s two largest superpowers.
At a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump “believes that China wants to make a deal with the US,” before saying: “It was a mistake for China to retaliate.
“When America is punched, he punches back harder.”
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0:54
White House announces 104% tariff on China
After Mr Trump announced sweeping levies last week – hitting some imported goods from China with 34% tariffs – Beijing officials responded with like-for-like measures.
The US president then piled on an extra 50% levy on China, taking the total to 104% unless it withdrew its retaliatory 34% tariff.
China’s commerce ministry said in turn that it would “fight to the end”, and its foreign ministry accused the US of “economic bullying” and “destabilising” the world’s economies.
More on China
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‘Worst offender’ tariffs also in effect
Alongside China’s 104% tariff, roughly 60 countries – dubbed by the US president as the “worst offenders” – will also see levies come into effect today.
The EU will be hit with 20% tariffs, while countries like Vietnam and Cambodia see a 46% levy and 49% rate respectively.
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2:03
What’s going on with the US and China?
Since the tariffs were announced last Wednesday, global stock markets have plummeted, with four days of steep losses for all three of the US’ major indexes.
As trading closed on Tuesday evening, the S&P 500 lost 1.49%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.15%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.84%.
According to LSEG data, S&P 500 companies have lost $5.8tn (£4.5tn) in stock market value since last Wednesday, the deepest four-day loss since the benchmark was created in the 1950s.
Image: Global stock markets have been reeling since Trump’s tariff announcement last week. Pic: AP
Meanwhile, the US president signed four executive orders to boost American coal mining and production.
The directives order: • keeping some coal plants that were set for retirement open; • directing the interior secretary to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands; • requiring federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the US away from coal production, and; • directing the Department of Energy and other federal agencies to assess how coal energy can meet rising demand from artificial intelligence.
At a White House ceremony, Mr Trump said the orders end his predecessor Joe Biden’s “war on beautiful clean coal,” and miners “will be put back to work”.