Israeli army kills five Palestinian militants in West Bank after pregnant settler killed

Israel's military killed five Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, hours after a pregnant settler was killed in a shooting, as hardline pro-settler leaders including a government minister called for Palestinian towns to be razed.

The military said in a statement it had killed five "terrorists" and arrested a sixth who had barricaded themselves in a building in Tamoun, following an exchange of gunfire and the use of shoulder-fired missiles by Israeli soldiers.

The military wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad later issued a statement saying five of its members were killed while clashing with Israeli forces that surrounded their house in the town of Tamoun, north of the West Bank.

Tamoun is a Palestinian town about 35 km (22 miles) from the Israeli settlement of Brukhin, near which the heavily pregnant woman, Tzeela Gez, was killed on Wednesday night in a shooting that drew strong condemnation from Israeli leaders.

The military said it was searching for those responsible for Wednesday's shooting - whom it did not identify - though it was not immediately clear whether the Tamoun operation was linked.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, which occurred amid one of the largest Israeli military operations in the West Bank in two decades and while the Israeli military bombards Gaza.

Gunfire could be heard in Tamoun on Thursday, while Reuters footage showed flames and black smoke on the top floor of a house as Israeli soldiers stood on the street outside. The Palestinian WAFA news agency said the Israeli military was demolishing the house where the Palestinian men had been killed.

The Israeli military said soldiers had identified the "terrorists" in a building during an overnight operation in Tamoun and the nearby city of Tubas. It recovered rifles used by the militants in the building in Tamoun, it said.

The military also said that three armed individuals had been arrested in Tubas.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the military had taken the bodies of four of the deceased. The local Red Crescent said it had recovered a fifth body from a burning building.

DEMAND FOR RETRIBUTION

Gez, the pregnant woman, was shot near the Brukhin settlement while travelling to hospital with her husband to give birth. She was pronounced dead at the hospital where her baby was delivered by caesarean section, Israeli media reported.

The baby was reportedly in serious but stable condition, while Gez's husband Hananel was lightly injured.

As retribution, Israel's far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the nearby Palestinian towns of Bruqin and az-Zawiya should be destroyed, just as cities in Gaza have been.

"Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza (in the Gaza Strip), we must also flatten the terror nests in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich said on social media, employing the term often used in Israel for the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped security forces would quickly find those responsible for Gez's death, while President Isaac Herzog expressed his condolences to her family.

The chief of Israel's general staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, visited the troops searching for Gez's killer on Thursday near Brukhin.

The Israeli military has killed dozens of Palestinians and destroyed many homes since it launched an operation in January in the West Bank city of Jenin to root out militants.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia says forces capture two settlements, Ukraine says fighting continues throughout front

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Thursday that its forces seized two more settlements in their drive through eastern Ukraine, but Kyiv made no such acknowledgement and its top commander said battles raged over 1,100 km of the front line.

The frontline fighting continued as direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators appeared set to get underway in Turkey.

The talks will be the first direct discussions between the sides since March 2022, but hopes of a breakthrough were limited as Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin ignored a call by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said there would be no progress towards peace without a meeting between himself and Putin.

A Russian Defence Ministry statement said Moscow's forces had seized Novooleksandrivka, a village near Pokrovsk, a logistics hub that Moscow has targeted for months without capturing it.

The ministry said its forces had also taken Torske, further northeast and near two other cities Moscow would like to capture in the longer term -- Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The General Staff of Ukraine's military, in a late evening report, listed Novooleksandrivka as one of more than dozen settlements which it said had come under Russian attack.

The General Staff made no mention of Torske, but the popular blog DeepState said Russian forces had tried to seize the settlement but had been repelled.

Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports from either side. Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, currently holds about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Kyiv wanted a "just peace", but continued to face "active combat continuing on a stretch of the front extending about 1,100 km (680 miles)".

Describing on Telegram his presentation to a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council, Syrskyi said Russia "has turned its aggression against Ukraine into a war of attrition and is using a combined force of up to 640,000 troops."

After an initial unsuccessful drive on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in the first weeks of the invasion, Russian forces focused their efforts on the Donbas in the east, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

They have been capturing village after village for several months, but Ukrainian forces have achieved some successes in holding back the advance, particularly around Pokrovsk.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky seeks to make a “political show” out of the expected peace talks with Russia in Istanbul, even if it means disrupting the negotiations, former Ukrainian diplomat Andrey Telizhenko has told RT.

Russian chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said he would be waiting for the Ukrainian team starting at 10 a.m. local time on Friday, for the first direct talks since 2022. During a visit to Ankara on Thursday, Zelensky criticized what he described as the “low-level” composition of the Russian delegation, but nevertheless promised to dispatch his own negotiators to Istanbul.

Telizhenko told RT that Zelensky has been relying on France and the UK for weapons and financial aid because he “does not listen to Washington anymore.” If the Ukrainian leader secures more support from the West, he “may agree and move forward with the negotiations, or he may sabotage them,” the ex-diplomat said, expressing doubts that real talks could “ever happen.”

“This is just a political show, not diplomacy,” he said. “Zelensky is not thinking about Ukrainians. He is trying to play this game for himself,”Telizhenko argued.

Russian and Ukrainian delegations were initially expected to meet in Istanbul on Thursday after President Vladimir Putin proposed resuming direct talks without any preconditions. According to Moscow, the negotiations should resume from the process that was interrupted in the spring of 2022, when Ukraine abruptly walked away from the table.

Zelensky initially ruled out any negotiations with Moscow unless Russia agreed to a 30-day ceasefire. Moscow has argued that Kiev would use such a truce to rearm and regroup its forces. Putin has said that, for a lasting ceasefire, Ukraine must halt its mobilization campaign and stop receiving weapons from abroad.

Reuters/RT

Burkinabe leader Ibrahim Traore is acting like a rock star. It’s not entirely his fault. He’s receiving a lot of help from dozens of social media users, especially TikTokers, who are desperate to anoint him as the best thing to come out of Burkina Faso since Thomas Sankara.

Traore must be enjoying it, because even though he is pretending, he knows he’s not Sankara. He is an opportunist, happy to capitalise on the current frustration in his country and the Sahel for his benefit.

A recent report by The Africa Report summarised Traore’s fictional character. “In dozens of viral TikTok edits, Traore leads imaginary armies, topples Western empires and is hailed as the ‘new Thomas Sankara.’ The captions, bold and uncompromising, include ‘Africa’s Messiah!’ ‘The People’s Captain!’ and ‘France Must Fall.’”

Traorephytes even invent videos of Rihanna and R Kelly (imprisoned since 2021) serenading the Burkinabe leader with hit songs!

Fairytale

If he were an elected president, Traore would have served three years of his first term. When he overthrew the government of President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in September 2022 due to the rise in Islamic insurgency, and announced himself as head of the new Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (PMSR), he promised to hand over power back to civilians in two years – that was in 2024. He hasn’t said a word about any possible new date since, and if you have seen him recently, you would know why.

Apart from the adulation he has enjoyed as a social media fairytale, and dressing the part in stylish fatigues and matching neck scarves, berets, and boots, he has also talked the part.

He rallied support by giving speeches – not as many or as eloquently as he has been credited with – against Western imperialism and colonialism, vowing to create conditions at home to stem youth migration and tackle insurgency. Traore has portrayed himself as the new face of the African Renaissance. But talk is cheap.

Traore and the other delinquents

He has been in good company. The turmoil in West and Central Africa, which began in Chad, Mali, and Guinea, and later spread to Niger, has disrupted security and trade in the subregion, rupturing the 49-year-old Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Burkina Faso experienced two coups in a single year. After breaking out of ECOWAS, Traore and his fellow delinquents in the Sahel have pursued a singular mission of cutting off the noses of their Sahelian francophone ties to spite the faces of French business and political interests.

To be fair, it’s a moment of reckoning for decades of brazen French insensitivity, compounded by President Emmanuel Macron’s lack of charity when he described the relationship between France and Francophone West Africa as “part of a civilising obligation.” Which was self-interested nonsense.

Trouble speaking French

France has accumulated a notoriously poor record on the continent that it can hardly be proud of. In Niger, for example, Tom Burgis writes in his book, The Looting Machine, that French state-owned atomic energy group Areva's profit from uranium is twice Niger’s GDP. The shameful French footprint is the same in Burkina Faso and throughout the region.

Fourteen Francophone countries, including the troubled ones – Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Chad – hold 50 percent of their reserves in the French Treasury. This arrangement has been widely criticised, but if shame is in the French dictionary, it doesn’t exist in the Macron version.

It is this background of despair and frustration, especially among the continent’s youths, that has fostered fairytale messiahs like Traore, who have managed to replace French hegemony with a mix of fussy state control and Russian suzerainty, with the Chinese just around the corner.

If it’s not Sankara…

Traoré is not Sankara, a fact that may be lost on Burkina Faso’s predominantly young population, as well as millennials and Gen Zs across the continent, whose forlorn search for role models tempts them to canonise an impostor. Of course, both are soldiers, similar in age and rank and usurpers of constitutional rule. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Like the demagogues before him, Traore and significant sections of the military and political elite from Maurice Yameogo to Blaise Compaore have been complicit in the misery of their citizens, feeding them instead on a diet of pseudo-ideological jingoism and Western bashing, but offering no genuine alternative. Africa – anglophone, francophone, or lusophone – shares a similar heritage of exploitation; a few of its people, especially the political elite after independence, collaborated with the colonialists to compound the problem.

Hard to beat

Where Traore is trading French hegemony for Russian control, for example, Sankara offered something different. In Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution, Ernest Harsch said of Sankara, “In a conscious effort at nation-building, the revolutionary government also promoted a new national identity…that revolutionary project succeeded in altering the contours of the state and social and political life.”

Whereas Sankara attempted to forge a proudly African identity, deepening regional integration among ECOWAS countries, Traoré and his cohorts have, by exiting, put at risk the estimated $596.42 billion in trade within the community, excluding informal trade among citizens, which constitutes 30 per cent of the transactions, not to mention the impact on regional collaboration on security.

Sankara pursued radical economic self-sufficiency, agrarian reform, and social justice by outlawing female genital mutilation and promoting women’s rights. He rejected foreign aid, regardless of its source, even if it came without strings attached, something that Traore would be happy to overlook if it came from Russia.

What matters

I get it. With jihadists controlling about 40 percent of the country’s territory (it’s the most terrorised country), and climate shocks compounding its misery, the challenges are as different as are the times. That is why what Traore needs now is not clout-chasing or AI propaganda by Russian-backed Wagner, but sober-minded commitment to turn around the fortunes of his country, one step at a time.

For three years, Traore’s stock has risen amid algorithmic populism expressed in languages he neither understands nor speaks, with minimal institutional reforms, if any, and no prospects or commitment to return the country to civilian rule.

“His rhetoric,” The Africa Report said, “still falls short of real, measurable improvements in security and civic freedoms. There’s a gap between his message and the reality on the ground, something that will ultimately test his legitimacy and legacy.”

That’s not what the netizens want to hear. But in the end, that’s what matters.

** Ishiekwene is the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

The Department of State Services (DSS) has filed a lawsuit against Pat Utomi, accusing him of attempting to establish a “shadow government” in Nigeria—a move the agency describes as a direct threat to the nation’s constitution and democratic order.

In a suit filed on May 13 at the Federal High Court in Abuja (Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/937/2025), the DSS is seeking a judicial declaration that Utomi’s alleged actions are unconstitutional and an attack on the legitimacy of the elected government.

Utomi, who was the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate in 2007, is the sole defendant in the case. The DSS, through its counsel Akinlolu Kehinde, argues that the creation of a shadow government is not only illegal but also capable of inciting political unrest, encouraging separatist tendencies, and destabilizing the country.

The agency is asking the court to declare Utomi’s proposed “shadow cabinet” as unconstitutional and tantamount to setting up a parallel authority not recognized under the 1999 Constitution (as amended). It also seeks a perpetual injunction restraining Utomi and his associates from proceeding with the plan.

According to the DSS, the Constitution’s Sections 1(1), 1(2), and 14(2)(a) prohibit any form of governance not derived from democratic elections and lawful authority. The suit argues that Utomi’s actions undermine these provisions and the sovereignty of the Nigerian people.

In a supporting affidavit, the DSS stated that intelligence reports and public materials—including statements and interviews by Utomi—confirm the formation of a “shadow cabinet” allegedly comprising individuals assigned various portfolios. Named members include Dele Farotimi (Ombudsman and Good Governance), and a Policy Delivery Unit Team made up of Oghene Momoh, Cheta Nwanze, Daniel Ikuonobe, Halima Ahmed, David Okonkwo, and Obi Ajuga.

The DSS warned that Utomi’s efforts could mislead the public, weaken faith in the elected government, and erode constitutional order. The agency also disclosed that multiple attempts were made to dissuade Utomi from the initiative, including public warnings by the Minister of Information, but he reportedly remained defiant.

The DSS, tasked with safeguarding national security and constitutional governance, insists Utomi’s actions represent a clear danger to Nigeria’s democratic stability. The suit has not yet been assigned to a judge for hearing.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that over 300,000 candidates from 157 examination centers will retake the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) following technical errors that affected the processing of their results.

In a press conference held at JAMB's headquarters in Bwari, Abuja on Wednesday, Registrar Is-haq Oloyede admitted that technical failures by service providers had compromised the integrity of results for candidates who took the examination in Lagos and the South-Eastern states.

"In the process of rectifying an issue, the technical personnel deployed by the Service Provider inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers," Oloyede explained. "Regrettably, this oversight went undetected prior to the release of the results."

The error affected 65 centers (206,610 candidates) in Lagos and 92 centers (173,387 candidates) in the Owerri zone, which includes South-Eastern states.

Retests to Begin Immediately

The rescheduled examinations will begin on Friday, May 16, with JAMB contacting affected candidates through text messages, emails, and phone calls. Candidates are directed to reprint their examination slips for the new dates.

JAMB has coordinated with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to avoid timetable clashes for candidates currently taking their Senior School Certificate Examinations.

"Any candidate with a clash of timetable, particularly for Agricultural Science on Friday, would be rescheduled," Oloyede said, adding that most potentially affected candidates have been scheduled for Saturday.

System Failure Despite Quality Assurance Measures

The registrar described the incident as "an easily avoidable error by one or two persons" that overshadowed what should have been "our most successful UTME exercise."

Despite JAMB's extensive quality assurance mechanisms, which include numerous committees, in-house technical experts, and simulation testing, the error occurred during a patch update implemented after an initial issue was detected on April 25.

Oloyede emphasized that the problem was neither a glitch nor sabotage, but rather a failure by one service provider to properly upload patches to center servers during the first three to four days of the examination.

Top Officials and Experts Called In

Following widespread complaints after results were released on May 9, JAMB convened emergency meetings with education experts, stakeholders, and officials, including:

- Boniface Nworgu, an expert in psychometrics from Imo State

- Adenike Osofisan, a technical advisor from the Computer Professionals Council of Nigeria (CPN)

- Kabiru Isyaku, president of the Nigerian Academy of Education

- Representatives from parent-teacher associations and student organizations

- Chief External Examiners from the affected states

Former Aviation Minister Osita Chidoka from the Athena Centre also participated in reviewing candidate responses.

Registrar Takes Responsibility

Oloyede took personal responsibility for the failure, stating: "I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider, and I unreservedly apologise for it and the trauma that it has subjected affected Nigerians to, directly and indirectly."

He described the incident as "a significant setback for the Board's reputation" while affirming JAMB's commitment to transparency, fairness, and equity.

The registrar noted that outside the affected centers, the examination results followed normal patterns, with the highest score in 2025 (374) being the best in the last one-and-a-half decades, though overall performance was "sadly poorer than that of last year."

JAMB has pledged that all affected candidates will be given the opportunity to retake their examinations under fair conditions.

The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) reversed its recent downward trend yesterday, closing on a positive note as market capitalization increased by N314 billion amid strategic buying in Beta Glass and 39 other stocks.

The All-Share Index (ASI) gained 501.14 points, representing a growth of 0.46 percent to close at 108,762.61 points. Market capitalization rose correspondingly to close at N68.357 trillion.

The market's upward movement was driven by gains in medium and large capitalized stocks, including Beta Glass, Oando, Nigerian Breweries, Transnational Corporation (Transcorp), and Industrial and Medical Gases.

Market Analysts Project Continued Growth

Market analysts remain optimistic about the exchange's short-term outlook. Afrinvest Limited stated: "We expect the bourse to sustain the positive momentum, due to Q1 earnings-driven improved valuation of major tickers and muted activities in the primary market segment for fixed income papers this week."

Similarly, Vetiva Dealings and Brokerage noted: "The market looks like it's finding its footing again — investors are hunting for bargains, jumping on fundamentally sound names. If this steady flow of interest across different sectors keeps up, we could see prices climb further."

Top Gainers and Losers

Investor sentiment improved as measured by market breadth, with 40 stocks advancing while 24 declined.

Top Gainers:

- Chellaram and Oando led with 10 percent gains each, closing at N11.44 and N49.50 respectively

- Transcorp followed closely with a 9.99 percent increase, closing at N46.25

- Beta Glass rose 9.96 percent to close at N194.30

- Caverton Offshore Support Group climbed 9.85 percent to close at N3.68

Top Losers:

- Haldane McCall led decliners with a 9.85 percent drop, closing at N4.21

- Academy Press fell 7.33 percent to close at N4.30

- UPDC declined 6.25 percent to close at N3.00

- ABC Transports depreciated 6.13 percent to close at N2.91

- NPF Microfinance Bank dropped 5.14 percent to close at N2.03

Trading Volume Increases

The total trading volume rose by 20 percent to 498.48 million units valued at N10.782 billion, exchanged in 14,916 deals.

Tantalizer dominated the activity chart with 57.803 million shares valued at N131.323 million, followed by Access Holdings with 36.792 million shares worth N784.432 million. Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) traded 31.844 million shares valued at N2.191 billion, while Fidelity Bank and Nigerian Breweries traded 23.398 million and 21.033 million shares worth N470.486 million and N1.08 billion respectively.

Israel intensifies Gaza bombardment, kills 80 people, as Trump visits Gulf

Israeli military strikes killed at least 80 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, local health authorities said, in an intensification of the bombardment as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East.

Medics said most of the dead, including women and children, were killed in a barrage of Israeli airstrikes on houses in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza.

Later on Wednesday, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to people in several districts in Gaza City, forcing thousands of Palestinians to leave their shelters.

The areas threatened by the evacuation warnings included several schools and the largest Shifa Hospital, according to a map published by the Israeli army.

Witnesses and medics said shortly after the evacuation orders Israeli planes carried several airstrikes against targets within Gaza City.

"Some victims are still on the road and under the rubble where rescue and civil emergency teams can't reach (them)," the health ministry statement said.

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Israel's military had no immediate comment. It said it was trying to verify the reports.

Reuters television footage showed residents returning to the ruins of their homes. Some sifted through the remains of walls and furniture, looking for documents and belongings.

"They fired two rockets, they told us the house of Moqbel (had been hit)," said Hadi Moqbel, who lost relatives in the attack in Jabalia. "We came running, we saw body parts on the ground, children killed, the woman killed and a baby killed - his head was exploded like a flower. He was two months old."

Israeli press reports on Wednesday cited security officials as saying they believed Hamas military leader Mohammad Sinwar and other senior officials had been killed in a strike on Tuesday on what the Israeli military described as a command and control bunker under the European Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

There was no confirmation by the Israeli military or Hamas. On Wednesday, witnesses and medics said an Israeli airstrike hit a bulldozer that approached the area of the strike at the European Hospital, wounding several people.

Late on Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed militant group allied with Hamas, fired rockets from Gaza towards Israel. Shortly before Israel hit back, its military issued evacuation orders to residents in the area of Jabalia and nearby Beit Lahiya.

TRUMP VISIT

Palestinians hope Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will provide pressure for a reduction of violence. Hamas on Monday released Edan Alexander, the last known living American hostage it had been holding.

Trump said in Riyadh on Tuesday that more hostages would follow Alexander and that the people of Gaza deserved a better future. He is not visiting Israel during his Middle East trip.

Ceasefire efforts have faltered. Hamas talked to the United States and Egyptian and Qatari mediators to arrange Alexander's release, and Israel has sent a team to Doha to begin a new round of talks.

On Tuesday, Trump's special envoys Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler met hostage families in Tel Aviv and said they saw a better chance of an agreement for the hostages' release following the deal over Alexander.

Hamas said on Wednesday the continued attacks indicated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to "escalate the aggression and massacres against civilians to undermine those (ceasefire) efforts". Israel has blamed Hamas for the continuing war.

The U.S. has presented a plan to reopen humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza using private contractors. Israel, which imposed a total blockade of supplies going into Gaza from March 2, has endorsed the plan but it has been rejected by the United Nations and international aid agencies.

Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's military campaign has killed more than 52,900 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It has left Gaza on the brink of famine, aid groups and international agencies say.

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kremlin names delegation for Ukraine talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin late on Wednesday named the country’s delegation for proposed talks with Ukraine, expected to take place in Istanbul the next day.

The team will be led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who headed Moscow’s side during negotiations with Kiev in 2022. The delegation also includes Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin and the head of Russia’s military intelligence, Igor Kostyukov.

Apart from the negotiators themselves, Putin unveiled a team of experts who will also participate. It is composed of several senior military and civil officials, as well as diplomats.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian media reports indicated the country’s leader Vladimir Zelensky was set to travel to Istanbul alongside several top officials, including his head of office Andrey Yermak, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga. The exact composition of the negotiating team, however, is expected to be determined by Zelensky on the spot.

Putin offered on Sunday to resume direct talks with Kiev, stating that only negotiations could lead to “some kind of new truce and a new ceasefire.”

“We are set on serious negotiations with Ukraine. Their aim is to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and to achieve a long-term lasting peace for a historical perspective,”the president said.

The offer got a mixed reaction from Ukraine and its supporters, who continued to insist that talks be preceded by at least a 30-day truce. After the proposal was backed by US President Donald Trump, however, Zelensky proclaimed his readiness to negotiate with the Russian president “personally” in Istanbul.

The Kremlin announcement of its team was met with apparent disappointment in Kiev. Zelensky’s aide Mikhail Podoliak launched a personal attack on Medinsky, claiming the Russian official was not the right figure to discuss unspecified “fundamental issues.”

“No, of course not, that’s not the format. The president can’t meet, especially with Medinsky – the status won’t be entirely clear,”Podoliak stated.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin, Trump to skip Ukraine's peace talks that Russian leader proposed

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putinindicated they would not attend what could be the first direct peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in three years on Thursday, with the Kremlin sending instead a group of experienced technocrats.

Putin on Sunday proposed direct negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday "without any preconditions". Late on Wednesday, the Kremlin said the delegation would include presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky and Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin - but Putin's name was not on the list.

After the Kremlin's delegation announcement, a U.S. official said Trump, who is on a three-nation tour of the Middle East, would not attend. The U.S. leader had said earlier that he was considering the option to participate.

While Putin had never confirmed he would attend in person, the absence of the Russian and U.S. presidents lowers the expectations for a major breakthrough in the war that Russia started in February 2022.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had challenged Putin to attend the talks "if he's not afraid," in an apparent contest to show Trump who wants peace more, Ukraine or Russia.

While the Kyiv leader was on his way to Turkey late on Wednesday, a Ukrainian official said, he had said he would take part in the talks only if Putin attended.

In his nightly video address on Wednesday Zelenskiy said that Ukraine would decide on its steps for peace talks in Turkey once there was clarity on Putin's participation.

"The answers to all questions about this war – why it started, why it continues – all these answers are in Moscow," Zelenskiy said. "How the war will end depends on the world."

Trump wants the two sides to sign up to a 30-day ceasefire to pause Europe's biggest land war since World War Two, and a Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday there could also be discussions about a huge prisoner of war exchange.

Zelenskiy backs an immediate 30-day ceasefire, but Putin has said he first wants to start talks at which the details of such a ceasefire could be discussed.

MORE SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA?

Trump, who is growing increasingly frustrated with both Russia and Ukraine as he tries to push them towards a peace settlement, said he was "always considering" secondary sanctions against Moscow if he thought it was blocking the process.

U.S. officials have spoken about possible financial sanctions as well as potential secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.

The U.S. delegation to Turkey included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said early on Thursday he had met with Rubio to share Zelenskiy's peace vision and "coordinate positions during this critical week."

Medinsky and Fomin, part of the Russian delegation, took part in the last set of negotiations between the two sides in the first weeks of the war. Other senior military and intelligence officials were also part of the Thursday delegation.

Direct talks between negotiators from Ukraine and Russia last took place in Istanbul in March 2022, a month after Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what he calls a "special military operation" to root out neo-Nazis.

Ukraine and its allies say the invasion was an unprovoked, imperial-style land grab.

With Russian forces grinding forward in Ukraine and now controlling about a fifth of the country, the Kremlin chief has offered few, if any, concessions so far. In his proposal at the weekend, he said that the talks in Turkey would be aimed at a durable peace.

He specifically mentioned the 2022 talks and the failed draft deal.

Under that deal, among others, Ukraine would have agreed to permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, and other nations including Belarus, Canada, Germany, Israel, Poland and Turkey, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

But officials in Kyiv say agreeing to Ukrainian neutrality is a red line they will not cross.

RT/Reuters

You must have read the news that philanthropist Bill Gates plans to give away his wealth within the next 20 years. His charity foundation, which has been making various interventions in global public health, now has till December 31, 2045, to spend down about $200bn to facilitate health and human development. Even more fascinating is that Bill Gates wants the money to offset some of the imbalances caused by the Donald Trump administration’s abrupt cutbacks to health and development agencies, such as USAID and PEPFAR. Many of us are familiar with the Biblical narrative of a rich young ruler who came up to Jesus to ask what he needed to do to secure eternal life. He was asked to give up his wealth and follow the Saviour. We were told that the young ruler “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions”. Few things in the world can be as hard for the truly rich to give up as their wealth. It must be relatively easier to give from little than to shrink the vast reserves of riches by as much as an inch.

Bill Gates is not only giving money to the world sorely in need of capital to develop, but it is also impressive how much he has committed to learning about issues of health and development in the world. In the interview he gave to the New York Times, he came across as having studied the scale of the problem well enough. This is a man seeking to attain eternal life by helping the most vulnerable people in the world to live.

Ordinarily, I am ambivalent about philanthropy. While I am not against charity, it appals me how the enterprise of giving can reinforce what it seeks to displace. The problem is worse in Nigeria, where faux philanthropy overtakes governance. The leaders who should provide basic amenities, public infrastructure, and a well-coordinated social safety net for the vulnerable will abjure their responsibilities and flaunt charity. You will see Governor So-and-so “empowering” this and that community by dashing them cartons of noodles or Keke Marwa or wheelbarrows! There is perhaps no word in the Nigerian lexicon that has been serially abused by our visionless leaders more than “empowerment”. What Nigerian leaders call “empowerment” is often an exhibition of the poverty of the people they have socially disenfranchised.

In the end, I took a few things away from reading about Bill Gates’ motivations for setting a 20-year clock for human development. One is his optimism that the world we live in can be better. You can see that ethic of hope in his conviction that longstanding problems like malaria can be permanently eliminated in Africa; that maternal mortality can be significantly reduced; that childhood mortality can become a thing of the past; and that the world can live far more prosperous lives. Years ago, I learned the value of hope from reading Olufemi Taiwo’s Africa Must Be Modern. In the book, he argues that hope necessarily propels society towards modernity and development.

Until then, hope was just an abstract idea for me. But reading through that book, I started to understand hope differently. Hope is what galvanises people even when the odds are demonstrably against them. From the field of science where people immerse themselves in experiments that might fail hundreds of times before they succeed to the arena of politics where leaders fight to pull their people from the brink of disaster and set them on the path of prosperity, the hope that what we are doing ultimately matters is what makes all the difference. Without hope, we cannot muster the self-discipline necessary for success. I am of the firm belief that our leaders’ lack of optimism about the ability of their country to make it is one of the reasons they imagine their actions are not consequential. Corrupt African leaders are not just mere thieves bent on despoiling their people; their wantonness expresses their deep cynicism about people’s chances. In his interview, Bill Gates seemed to express more hope for the future of poorer countries to live healthier and prosperous lives than you are likely to hear from their own leaders. He can afford to be detached from reality, but if the world changes, it is also because someone was naïve enough to be optimistic.

The second thing that struck me about Bill Gates’s commitment to alleviating poverty is his understanding of the subject, and that is why I think our renowned prosperity preacher, David Ibiyeomie, can learn something from him. Recently, a clip from a sermon he preached went viral. In the sermon, he proclaimed “God hates poverty” and “God hates poor people”. His subsequent attempts to clarify his message only further unfolded his mindset as someone who is superstitious about poverty. He proof-texts the Bible by overlooking every divine promise of reprieve for those who have been beaten by the hardships of life to select a few verses that support his prejudices. In a country where about 90 per cent (or more) of people live in the extreme conditions of multi-generational poverty and multi-dimensional poverty, it takes a lack of self-awareness to declare that even God hates poor people. If God hates poverty and the materially poor, then he must hate Africans!

Bill Gates, on the other hand, approaches poverty like a scientist. He sees the condition as a mere physiological one that can be treated if one rightly diagnoses it and applies the correct principles. One side is pessimistic and chooses to mythologise what is essentially a treatable condition; the other is optimistic enough to want to facilitate a world where capital investment and the principles of science can produce flourishing for humankind. The difference between the two is not merely the distinctions between “science” and “religion,” but about their respective moral visions. Please note that both religion and science are knowledge means that can be applied to engineer ethical solutions in the world. In the hands of a person who despairs about the fate of humans, the technologies of religion and science will produce nothing but death. The person who is invigorated with hope for humankind will apply principles from either science or religion to produce more life.

Finally, it is also ironic that the same Bill Gates, against whom some churches prayed during the COVID-19 pandemic, is also the person looking out for the good of the majority. It was funny, but churches, where pastors give annual prophecies, were blindsided by the global pandemic, while Bill Gates, who relied on scientific principles, accurately predicted its possibility years before it happened. I guess some of the preachers got envious because they gathered their ignorant flock and asked them to pray against Bill Gates as the “anti-Christ” or the “globalist”. Today, it is the same Bill Gates who is looking out for the good of the world. If Jesus were called to judge between the preachers who say we will be locked out of eternal life because of tithes and Bill Gates, who is demonstrating the ethics of generosity, empathy, and humanity, who do you think he would say practices true religion?

Punch