Category World News

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet key European allies as the United States ramps up pressure on Kyiv to agree to a peace plan designed to end the war with Russia.

Zelenskyy will meet British, French and German leaders in London on Monday to seek backing on defence and security, and to convene on the revised US peace plan.

Zelenskyy said the diplomatic consultations will address both immediate concerns as well as long-term funding for his war-battered country.

The Ukrainian leader will also meet NATO chief Mark Rutte, and EU leaders Antonio Costa and Ursula von der leyen in Brussels, as concerns grow that the US is trying to force Kyiv to accept unfavourable terms.

US President Donald Trump has appeared to adopt a “great powers” approach and to be drawn to accepting Russian narratives in his self-appointed role as the ultimate mediator in the war, which erupted four years ago with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A 28-point plan drawn up by Trump’s advisers that was leaked last month was widely criticised as a virtual “Russian wishlist”.

Ukrainian officials then worked with European allies to try to develop a new deal, which was then shared with the US.

‘He isn’t ready’

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner took a revised plan to Moscow last week. They then held several days of talks with Ukrainian officials in Miami, which ended on Saturday with no breakthrough.

The biggest sticking point is understood to be a requirement that Ukraine cede control of its eastern Donbas region to Russia, which currently illegally occupies most but not all of the territory.

Trump has previously chastised Zelenskyy for refusing to give up Donbas. Ukraine and its European allies have balked at the idea of handing over land to the aggressor.

Trump expressed concern on Sunday as he asserted that Zelenskyy had not read the latest plan.

“Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it. His people love it. But he isn’t ready.”

Ukraine is facing one of the toughest phases of the nearly four-year war, with Russian forces advancing in the east and intensified attacks causing widespread power outages across cities and towns.

Zelenskyy called the discussions in Miami constructive but not easy.

The Ukrainian leader’s top negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said on Monday that he would brief the president about his team’s dialogue with US officials and receive all documents related to the peace plan.

US officials said they are in the final stage of reaching an agreement. But there has so far been little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign a peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly expressed approval for the latest plan. Last week, he stated that aspects of the proposal were unworkable, despite the document reportedly heavily favouring Moscow.

Russia has, however, welcomed a new national security strategy issued last week by the Trump administration, stating it is largely in line with Moscow’s vision.

Syrians are celebrating the anniversary of the overthrow of the al-Assad dynasty’s repressive 50-year rule.

The country heralded the end of Bashar al-Assad’s reign on Monday. However, Syria is left facing a significant challenge to heal following 14 years of civil war.

Al-Assad’s downfall came as a shock, even to the rebels who unseated him.

In late November 2024, groups in the country’s northwest – led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel group whose then leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is now the country’s interim president – launched an offensive on the city of Aleppo, aiming to recapture it from the al-Assad government’s forces.

They were startled when the Syrian army collapsed with little resistance, first in Aleppo, then in the key cities of Hama and Homs. That left the road to Damascus open.

Meanwhile, rebel groups in the south mobilised to mount their own push towards the capital.

The rebels seized Damascus on December 8, while al-Assad was whisked away by Russian forces. He remains in exile in Moscow.

However, his longtime ally did not intervene militarily to defend him. Instead, Moscow has established ties with Syria’s new rulers, while maintaining its military bases on the coast.

The Syrian war that erupted in 2011 killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, driving about five million into neighbouring countries as refugees.

The United Nations refugee agency said on Monday that some 1.2 million refugees, along with 1.9 million internally displaced people, had returned home since al-Assad was toppled, but warned that a decline in global funding for UN programmes and aid agencies could deter others.

China’s annual trade surplus in goods has topped $1 trillion for the first time, with plunging exports to the United States amid a tariff war more than compensated for by shipments to other markets, new data shows.

Figures released by China’s General Administration of Customs on Monday showed the trade surplus for the first 11 months of the year hit $1.08 trillion in November, as exports climbed 5.9 percent year-on-year that month, reversing a 1.1 percent decline the month prior.

The leap came despite a continued slump in exports to the US, which fell 28.6 percent to $33.8bn last month, the data showed.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a bitter trade war involving hefty tariffs during the second administration of US President Donald Trump, forcing Chinese exporters to pivot to other markets – although the leaders of the world’s two largest economies agreed to pause the hostilities during a meeting in South Korea in October.

“China’s trade surplus this year has already surpassed last year’s level, and we expect it to widen further next year,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics wrote in a note.

Huang said the weakness in exports to the US was “more than offset by shipments to other markets”.

Exports were “likely to remain resilient”, Huang added, due to trade rerouting and rising price competitiveness for Chinese goods, as deflation pushed down its real effective exchange rate.

French warnings over surplus

Exports have proven critical to China’s economy as it grapples with a debt crisis in the property sector and sluggish domestic spending, impacting its growth.

But China’s towering trade surplus has rankled leading Western trading partners, with French President Emmanuel Macron the latest to threaten action if the imbalance is not addressed.

Macron, fresh from a state visit to China, in an interview with the French newspaper Les Echos on Sunday, warned that Europe could follow the US in imposing tariffs on Beijing if the surplus were not reduced in the coming months.

Exports to the European Union grew by an annual 14.8 percent last month, while shipments to Australia rose 35.8 percent. Meanwhile, the fast-growing Southeast Asian economies took in 8.2 percent more goods over the same period.

That boosted China’s trade surplus to $111.68bn in November, the highest since June, from $90.07bn recorded the previous month, and above a forecast of $100.2bn.

Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note that November’s rebound of export growth had helped to “mitigate the weak domestic demand”, amid a slowdown in economic momentum being partly driven by weakness in the property sector.