Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Donald Trump of repeating disinformation, a day after the US president falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.

Zelensky’s comments were part of what is shaping up to be far the most public exchange of accusations between Kyiv and Washington since the full-scale war started nearly three years ago.

Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky pushed back on several unfounded claims the US president made on Tuesday, while reinforcing Ukraine’s position that no deal on ending the war could be done without it.

“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.

US and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday, a meeting from which Kyiv was excluded.

The two sides agreed to appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war and said they were working to reestablish diplomatic channels.

Zelensky said that while any country has the right to discuss bilateral issues with Saudi Arabia, the fact that the US held direct talks with Russia “helped Putin out of his long isolation.” Russia has been banished from the global stage since the war began.

It was Kyiv’s complaint about being shut out of the talks that sparked Trump’s tirade of falsehoods on Tuesday.

Speaking late on Tuesday, Trump said: “Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited. Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”

The incorrect claim that Ukraine somehow started the war has long been repeated by the Kremlin and its supporters. The conflict began in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula, and began sponsoring pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow then launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, attacking its smaller neighbor at night, sending tanks across the border, bombing Ukrainian cities and sending special forces into Kyiv to assassinate Zelensky.

Zelensky hits back

But Trump did not stop at questioning who started the war in Ukraine. Repeating another line often pushed by the Kremlin, Trump appeared to question Zelensky’s legitimacy.

“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, incorrectly claiming that Zelensky’s approval rating was “at 4%.”

Zelensky won more than 73% of the vote in the second round of the 2019 presidential election. While his mandate was meant to end last May, a new election was not held because Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of the country. The martial law prohibits elections.

Speaking on Wednesday, Zelensky specifically said the claim that his approval rating was at 4% comes from Russia, and that Kyiv has some evidence that the numbers were discussed between the US and Russia.

He pointed to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) earlier this month which showed that while his popularity dropped significantly since the early days of the war, his approval rate has never dropped below 50% and currently stands at 57%.

Romania’s foreign minister said he had not come under pressure from US President Donald Trump’s envoy to lift restrictions on social media influencer Andrew Tate, who faces human trafficking charges, despite them discussing the case.

The Financial Times reported on Monday, citing sources, that US officials had brought up the case of Tate and his brother Tristan, both former kickboxers with dual US and British citizenship, in a phone call to the Romanian government.

It said Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell followed up with Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference. A source told the FT a request was made to return the brothers’ passports and allow them to travel while they wait for court proceedings to conclude.

The brothers are banned from leaving Romania pending a criminal investigation on accusations of forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. They have denied all wrongdoing.

Tate, the highest profile suspect facing trial for human trafficking in Romania, was banned from almost all social media platforms before Trump’s now adviser Elon Musk took over X and reinstated his account.

Hurezeanu told Euronews late on Tuesday he had had an informal chat with Grenell in a hallway during the Munich conference. Hurezeanu cited Grenell as saying he remained interested in the fate of the Tate brothers.

“I did not perceive this statement as pressure, just a repeat of a known stance,” Hurezeanu said.

“I don’t know what pressures of another nature were made before or after but what I discussed with Mr. Grenell was cordial, informal, brief, non-binding and I certainly did not detect any form of pressure.”

A first criminal case against Tate and his brother failed in December when a Bucharest court decided not to start the trial, citing flaws in the indictment.

A Romanian court lifted a house arrest order against Tate in January, replacing it with a lighter preventative measure. In October, a court ruled he should get back luxury cars worth about 4 million euros ($4.43 million) that were seized by prosecutors, pending the investigations.

In Munich last week US Vice President JD Vance took a swipe at European governments for what he described as their censorship of free speech and their political opponents and specifically mentioned the cancellation of Romania’s presidential election based on what he said was flimsy evidence.

Romania’s top court ordered a rerun of the vote following suspicion of Russian interference in favor of the unexpected first round winner, the pro-Russian far-right Calin Georgescu. Russia denied any interference in Romania’s election campaigns.

Iranian authorities have accused a British couple detained in the country since January of spying, state media reported Tuesday.

Mizanonline.ir, a news website affiliated with the country’s judiciary, cited Asghar Jahangir, a spokesman for the judiciary as saying that the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence forces incarcerated the couple, a man and a woman, while in the southern city of Kerman at the time.

They are accused of spying and having links to intelligence agencies of “hostile countries” and collecting information from several Iranian provinces, according to Jahangir who didn’t provide further details.

The report didn’t name the couple, however, a family statement released Saturday through the UK Foreign Office identified them as Craig and Lindsay Foreman, saying their situation was distressing and causing “significant concern.”

A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign Office said Tuesday: “We are deeply concerned by reports that two British nationals have been charged with espionage in Iran. We continue to raise this case directly with the Iranian authorities.

“We are providing them with consular assistance and remain in close contact with their family members.”

The two were reportedly traveling around the world on motorbikes when they were detained in January. British media, citing social media posts, reported that they had crossed into Iran from Armenia on Dec. 30 and were planning to enter Pakistan next.

The British ambassador to Iran, Hugo Shorter, met the two in Kerman on Wednesday in the presence of officials from Iran’s justice department and the governor’s office.

Iran has a history of detaining and releasing western nationals on security charges. The country has long been accused of holding those with Western ties as prisoners to be used as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West. Iran denies those accusations.

A British journalist living in Brazil has been missing in the South American country for nearly two weeks, according to an association of foreign correspondents.

Charlotte Peet, 32, last contacted a friend in Rio de Janeiro on February 8, according to a Tuesday statement from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in Brazil (ACIE).

Texting over WhatsApp, Peet asked the friend for a place to stay, saying she was in São Paulo and was planning to head to Rio, the statement said.

“The friend, unable to host her, later learned from Peet’s family that they had lost contact with her,” the statement continued.

ACIE’s statement says Peet’s disappearance was reported to Brazilian police on February 17. After an initial review by the Tourist Assistance Police in Rio, the case was transferred to São Paulo’s homicide and personal protection division (DHPP), which handles missing persons cases, it added.

“ACIE and its board of directors appeal to the competent authorities to intensify the search in order to find the British journalist as soon as possible,” ACIE added.

Peet lived in Brazil as a correspondent “more two years ago,” wrote ACIE. After a brief return to the United Kingdom, she moved back to Brazil in November 2024.

Peet writes on her LinkedIn profile that she is fluent in Portuguese, and her online portfolio shows that she has freelanced in Brazil for several publications over the course of her career.

Since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, Israel has engaged in an increasingly militarized campaign that it says targets West Bank militants, employing tactics like airstrikes that were once nearly unheard of there.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a major campaign – “Operation Iron Wall” – focused on the northern West Bank last month.

That operation, Israel’s defense minister said last month, was explicitly applying the lessons of Israel’s “repeated raids in Gaza.” Israel’s war in Gaza has destroyed around 90% of housing units, according to the United Nations.

The West Bank operation has displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians in the northern West Bank from their homes, according to the United Nations.

“The Israeli military are doing this under pretext of security and fighting terrorism,” he said. It is a “purely political” operation, he alleged, to satisfy hardliners in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In November, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who is in charge of Jewish settlements in the West Bank – ordered preparations for the annexation of the settlements, saying that US President Donald Trump’s victory “brings an important opportunity for the state of Israel.”

Palestinians want the West Bank, as well as Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem, for a future independent state. Jewish settlements there are considered illegal under international law.

Israel launched Operation Iron Wall two days after the Gaza ceasefire began, saying it was aimed at eliminating “terrorists and terror infrastructure” and at “ensuring terrorism does not return” following its completion. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its soldiers were operating in Tulkarem to “neutralize terrorist infrastructure.” It said that its clearing operations would enable “freedom of movement within the camp area, thereby enhancing operational flexibility for forces to effectively thwart terrorism in the region.”

The Israeli military also said Tuesday it had arrested 25 people in the northern West Bank it says were suspected of “involvement in terrorist activity across the area.”

“During the activity, the troops collected findings and weapons used by the enemy,” the military added.

‘Spillover’ of Gaza war

Israel’s military operation in the West Bank that started in the Jenin refugee camp last month has since expanded to the Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and El Far’a refugee camps, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

He alleged that Israeli forces had raided houses in the middle of the night. Many properties in the Nur Shams camp had been extensively damaged, he said, and water and electricity in both camps had been cut off.

UNRWA warned that the forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the northern West Bank had been escalating at an “alarming pace.”

The agency said the West Bank had suffered 38 airstrikes this year alone, with advanced weaponry and controlled detonations becoming more commonplace, marking a “spillover of the war in Gaza.”

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa on Tuesday directed urgent humanitarian aid and shelter for “Palestinian people forcibly displaced” by Israeli forces in the “northern West Bank, particularly in the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams” until “Israeli forces withdraw from the targeted areas.”

The suspicion this was personal always lingered. But there was hope the greater good of both the US and Ukraine would win out.

The past 24 hours has seen US President Donald Trump’s slow-burn, apparent dislike for his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, belch out into the open. And with it comes a real and new uncertainty about the future of Ukraine, and more widely the security of Europe.

Last week, Trump hinted he felt Zelensky’s poll numbers were low and he would have to face elections, but Tuesday night he dug deeper, falsely stating the wartime leader was at 4 per cent favorability and Ukraine had started the war.

This is pretty close to Kremlin talking points. Moscow has been at pains to incorrectly suggest Ukraine’s imminent joining of NATO was behind its unprovoked attack in 2022, and that Zelensky is illegitimate as Ukraine has not undertaken the immense challenge of running elections in wartime.

Zelensky has for months flattered Trump as one who can bring peace through strength. Kyiv knew the Trump team’s rhetoric on the campaign trail spelt a likely sea change for Ukraine, but held out hope, with European allies, that Trump would seek to avoid an Kabul Airport Moment of collapse in security on the continent, and keep Russia back.

In the background, lingered the risk their contentious relationship in Trump’s first term – when Zelensky didn’t give Trump what he wanted in a “perfect” phone call that led to impeachment – was a dark, inescapable cloud that would hang over their future interactions. Now that cloud has loudly broken and Ukraine is getting wet.

Zelensky has tempered his remarks about Trump living in a “disinformation space” by adding he has great respect for this US president and the American people. But Trump sought no such caveats, even adding the “dictator” needed to move fast to save Ukraine and was on a “gravy train.”

Twice in five days this White House has dubbed European democratic leaders tyrants, falsely, while declining to mention the Kremlin’s authoritarian record in the same speech. US Vice President JD Vance at the weekend in Munich said Europe’s most democratic US allies were afraid of their voters. Now Trump says Russia’s greatest adversary is himself a “dictator” on the make. Putin’s army of propagandists are being outwritten on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The existential dilemma now for Ukraine is whether it even has the luxury of choice between its wartime president and its main military backer, the United States. Is enough left intact of either?

Zelensky is now the subject of withering posts by the world’s most powerful man, who is parroting a regular supply of Kremlin talking points stemming from somewhere yet unknown, altering the course of the largest war in Europe since the 1940s.

The Trump administration’s financial support for Ukraine – without which its survival is truly in doubt – is now endangered. Trump has repeatedly referred – falsely – to how Ukraine’s aid is “MISSING,” and somehow that Zelensky is on a “gravy train.” He is preparing a narrative for the American people that probably ends in the aid itself being curtailed.

So why doesn’t Zelensky, who has spent half of his six years in power fighting a war he did not initially believe was going to happen, just call a vote and be done with talk of his legitimacy? Elections in Ukraine have been tough in the past two decades, even in peacetime. Russia has sought to meddle, in 2004 stealing the vote and sparking huge protests that unseated its proxy candidate who stole the vote.

In wartime, elections are suspended during martial law. A ceasefire, proposed also by Trump’s team, could lead to this being suspended, and allowing soldiers to vote. But what of the millions of Ukrainians abroad as refugees? What of the electoral reform and emergency legislation needed for a legitimate, modern vote? Should it be rushed to get a quick result, or labored over to reach the full, gold standards of international legitimacy? What if a Russian drone assault or missiles derail the voting day? Everything could go wrong and almost certainly will.

The result would irrevocably be shrouded in doubt, further damaging the mandate Zelensky is falsely accused of lacking, or empowering an alternative who would also lack full legitimacy. It would sow chaos on the front lines, at the kitchen tables and in the coffee shops of Kyiv, and in the Ukrainian diaspora around Europe. This is exactly what the Kremlin wants: political torment to add to Kyiv’s woes across the front line.

It is becoming harder to divine Trump’s motives. You cannot bluff when it comes to geopolitical security and NATO; your opponents will hear weakness in an alliance, and not fear you more as you strike a hard negotiating pose against your own allies. You cannot force a flawed peace upon a country fearing for the survival of its own borders and people. You cannot undermine a wartime leader and not expect his troops to also falter on the front lines. Only one strategic interest has been served by Trump’s radical rewriting of the global order in the past fortnight. And it is that of the one adversary NATO was founded to confront.

Israel’s Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Wednesday that it had received the “heart-shattering news” that Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir, are among the four dead hostages expected to be released from Gaza on Thursday.

The body of Oded Lifshitz is also expected to be released on the same day, in what will be the first handover of dead hostages since the ceasefire deal with Hamas went into effect in January.

“This news cuts like a knife through our hearts, the families’ hearts and the hearts of people all over the world,” the forum said in a statement. “It is with great sadness that we received the news of the return of Shiri, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, along with Oded Lifshitz, who were kidnapped alive and will return deceased for eternal rest in Israel.”

But the announcement of the names was overshadowed by the Bibas family’s anger at the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, which they said had released the names without their approval.

The forum later released a statement at the request of the Bibas family asking the public not to “eulogize our loved ones until there is a confirmation after final identification.”

“This is a serious mistake in the conduct of the IDF liaison officers towards the Bibas family, which resulted from an unfortunate human error,” the source said.

Ahead of tomorrow’s releases, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “my own heart is torn,” in a video address posted online Wednesday evening.

“Tomorrow will be a very difficult day for the state of Israel. A wrenching day, a day of grief. We are bringing home four of our beloved hostages, deceased,” he said.

Netanyahu added: “We are grieving, we are in pain, but we are also determined to ensure that such a thing never happens again.”

The Bibas children, Kfir and Ariel, were just nine months and four years old, respectively, when they were kidnapped in October 2023. Their family has become one of the most recognizable victims of the October 7 terror attacks.

Lifshitz was 83 years old when he and his wife Yocheved were kidnapped from their home in kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023. Yocheved was one of two hostages released by Hamas later that month, while Oded remained in captivity.

The forum said in a statement Wednesday that “along with the heavy sorrow, their return for burial creates certainty for their loved ones and closes the agonizing circle of uncertainty that has lasted for 502 days.”

“There are another 69 abductees being held captive by Hamas, for whom there is still no release date,” the forum said, adding that decision-makers should “expedite” the negotiations.

Lifshitz’s family said in a statement that “these are not easy times for us, after we were informed that our beloved Oded is on the list of the hostages who will return to Israel tomorrow, after being kidnapped alive from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz.”

“For 502 days we hoped and prayed for a different ending, but until we receive absolute certainty, our journey will not end, and even after that we will continue to fight until the last hostage is returned,” the statement added.