Category World News

Montreal, Canada – It happened in early January. But for many Canadians, Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he planned to resign as Canada’s prime minister already feels like a lifetime ago.

That’s because, in the weeks since, the country has been upended by a series of unprecedented shifts coming from south of the border.

Canada is facing the prospect of a prolonged trade war with the United States, and US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex the country, fuelling widespread anger and uncertainty.

Now, as Trudeau is set to formally step down on Friday – clearing the way for new Liberal Party chief Mark Carney to take over as prime minister – experts say the outgoing leader’s handling of the recent upheaval will be remembered positively.

“He did a tremendous job on the way out,” said Charles-Etienne Beaudry, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa.

“He worked harder than ever to deal with the Trump tariff threats, to communicate to Canadians, to do strong speeches … [and] to organise the response,” Beaudry told Al Jazeera.

“And this will be remembered in his legacy as something great. It shows great character.”

Pressure to step down

Trudeau’s decision to resign came after months of pressure from within his own Liberal Party and growing public anger over his government’s record.

After nearly a decade in power, the prime minister had borne the brunt of Canadians’ frustrations with affordability and a deepening housing crisis, and his party’s poll numbers were at historic lows.

Liberal lawmakers were calling for him to step down to give them a better chance in the 2025 federal election, but Trudeau had largely rebuffed those calls, saying he planned to see the party through the next vote.

Trump’s tariff threats upped the pressure, however, as did the shock resignation of Trudeau’s longtime deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, in mid-December.

On January 6, Trudeau said he would step down once the Liberals chose their next leader.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” he said in his resignation speech from Ottawa.

Stewart Prest, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, said the sense at that time was that Trudeau “had overstayed his welcome”.

“As with any politician, Trudeau had acquired a fair share of baggage over time and people had settled on blaming him for a number of things,” said Prest, adding there also was a feeling that the government had lost touch with Canadians.

“Trudeau was a beleaguered leader.”

Strong response

But that changed once he announced his plan to resign, Prest told Al Jazeera.

Suddenly unburdened from having to counter attacks from the Conservative opposition or withstand pressure from his own party, the prime minister became the face of Canada’s “polite but uncompromising resistance” to Trump, Prest explained.

“It seems that Trudeau found a new life and a new voice to speak on behalf of Canadians … and in defence of Canadians, in very uncompromising language but language that is still distinctly Canadian,” he said.

“He [was] able to stand up for what really matters rather than constantly worrying about the narrow political calculus of the day.”

Indeed, as Trump’s unprecedented attacks against Canada spurred anxiety, Trudeau stressed the need for Canadians to remain united.

In speech after speech, he pledged support for workers and businesses who will bear the brunt of US tariffs and promised strong countermeasures, including billions of dollars in retaliatory levies on American goods.

He also unequivocally rejected Trump’s push to make Canada into the 51st US state.

“I’m sure many of you are anxious,” Trudeau told Canadians in an address on February 1, just days before 25-percent US tariffs were first set to come into effect. “But I want you to know that we are all in this together.”

Beaudry at the University of Ottawa said that speech was one of many that positioned Trudeau as a “reassuring figure” at a pivotal moment for Canada. “A strong finish is important, and he knew it,” the professor said.

“He’s got some strength of character that not everybody has.”

Trudeau ‘at his best’

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s resignation – coupled with the threats from Trump and the Liberal leadership race – helped renew enthusiasm in his party.

The Liberals have bounced back in the polls and are now expected to be in a close fight against the Conservatives in the next election, which could happen as early as next month.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit polling and research group, said the Canada-US crisis ultimately played to Trudeau’s strengths.

She drew parallels to the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the prime minister was able to deliver a reassuring message to Canadians at a frightening and uncertain time.

“What we’ve seen from Trudeau in the last two months has been some of him at his best,” Kurl told Al Jazeera, adding that the outgoing prime minister is seen as someone who reacts well in a crisis. “That has to do again with the way he communicates to Canadians.”

Polls show a majority of people across Canada have welcomed his government’s response to the Trump administration as well.

An Angus Reid poll from early March, for example, showed that 66 percent of people supported a blanket 25-percent retaliatory levy on American goods.

And while Trudeau continues to have his detractors – and his nine years in government produced a mixed legacy overall – the experts said his final weeks as prime minister will be viewed favourably.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Since the dawn of his rule 25 years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his public relations team have carefully sculpted his image as that of a strong, stern macho man.

Russian television and Kremlin photographers have shown him wearing a judo uniform while throwing his opponents to the ground, playing hockey and scoring goals, horse-riding bare-chested, hunting, fishing and swimming.

What the ex-colonel with the KGB, the Soviet Union’s main intelligence agency, has almost never done in public was don a military uniform – despite his status of Russia’s commander-in-chief.

Not until Wednesday, when Putin was seen wearing green camouflage at a command post in the western region of Kursk next to Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov.

The first signal was that Putin was putting an end to one of the most humiliating developments of the Russian-Ukrainian war and his leadership.

Last August, Ukrainian forces occupied several hundred square kilometres in Kursk making the largest occupied town, the district centre of Sudzha, their “capital” for 215 days.

It was the first time a foreign power occupied a piece of Russia’s European side since World War II – after Putin’s promises to “take Kyiv within three days”.

In 1969, Chinese forces briefly seized an island on the Ussuri river during a seven-month conflict between Moscow and Beijing.

Earlier this week, Russian forces with a little bit of brotherly help from elite North Korean troops pushed them out of Sudzha.

But Ukrainian forces still control half a dozen villages and farms in the westernmost part of Kursk that lies next to the border.

Putin visited Kursk for the first time since the occupation. His military garb’s symbolism went beyond the Kursk humiliation.

Some observers have interpreted Putin’s fashion choice as a silent yet firm “no” to the ceasefire deal the United States and Ukraine agreed upon after talks in Riyadh on Tuesday.

But to a Russian observer, Putin’s fashion choice was a non-verbal message about an “alternative” to the talks.

“Either Russia’s demands [on Ukraine] are accepted or the president is taking another form, another emanation of his position, i.e. the position of the supreme commander as the direct head of the armed forces of a nation at war,” analyst Andrey Pinchuk wrote in an op-ed for the pro-Kremlin Tsargrad television channel’s website.

Another occasion when Putin wore something that resembled a military uniform was in September 2022, when he was seen wearing a navy jacket during military and navy drills in Russia’s Pacific provinces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov specifically pointed out that Putin’s choice of attire was related only to the “cold and windy weather”.

A year earlier, Peskov said that despite his commander-in-chief’s title, Putin “didn’t have to wear a military uniform” even if he attends drills.

In Kyiv, a Ukrainian psychologist believed the uniform was meant to emphasise “how indifferent he is to all these peace initiatives and how he is determined to fight on and win” in Ukraine, said Svitlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists in the Ukrainian capital.

“In response to a truce proposal, Putin for the first time donned a military uniform … What’s interesting is why he, all of a sudden, needed such an amplification, the doubling of his message,” she asked rhetorically.

She suggested that the uniform was too large and drowned Putin, who turned 72 last October and looked tired in the military gear.

“This is what’s called an excessive signal,” she said.

A Ukrainian war veteran agreed.

“Honestly, he looked like a rat. Which he is, hiding in the bunker and ordering the killing of women and little children,” Karen Ovsepyan, who demobilised after suffering a serious injury near the eastern town of Avdiivka in 2022, told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainians met Putin’s brief makeover with black humour.

Comedian Yuri Velikiy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former colleague with District 95, a comedic troupe that propelled the future leader to stardom, challenged his Instagram subscribers to “find 10 differences” between Putin and a photo of a small-framed Russian prisoner of war in a poorly fitting, oversize uniform.

Another joke suggested that emaciated Putin looked like a “cheap Chinese knockoff” of his former self during Kremlin photo-ops.

And after all, Putin simply envies Zelenskyy, who made green fatigues his trademark attire, and “cosplays him”, said Kyiv-based political analyst Vyacheslav Likhachev.

The uniform also shows that Putin can get rid of his usual bespoke suits to poke fun at US President Donald Trump and his February 28 Oval Office spat with Zelenskyy over the latter’s decision to don fatigues.

Putin wants to “stress that here, in the trenches, in the clouds of powder smoke, the [Russian] motherland’s destiny is determined, not in some faraway Riyadh or the Oval Office,” Likhachev said.

But on a more serious note, Putin’s look also emphasised the importance of liberating Kursk before Moscow and Washington begin peace talks.

“It’s understandable how important it is to liberate the Kursk region before the talks begin – even if all the areas occupied by Ukrainian forces can’t be actually liberated,” Likhachev said.

Putin has for years nurtured the idea of seeing Ukraine subjugated, according to a Ukrainian official who held long talks with him on several occasions.

“He is tough and he behaves like he has this almost divine power, over Ukraine in particular,” Yuri Vitrenko, who met Putin while heading Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-controlled energy company, told this reporter in 2021.

“And I would not expect any kind of mercy or any kind of reciprocity or any kind of modern-world values from him,” he said months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022.

It took Putin two days to respond to the US-Ukrainian offer of a ceasefire – and the answer sounded like a “yes” shrouded in layers of doubts and counter-conditions.

“We agree with the proposal to cease hostilities, but we have to keep in mind that the ceasefire must be aimed at a long-lasting peace and it must look at the root causes of the crisis,” Putin told a news conference on Thursday night.

He then suggested that Kyiv stop mobilising and training its troops and the West stop supplying arms to them.

“And what shall we do with the Ukrainian forces remaining in the Kursk region?” he said. “We are in favour of [the ceasefire], but there are nuances,” he concluded.

Protesters are awaiting the most recent ruling in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment over his brief-lived martial law order in South Korea’s top court. Rob McBride from Al Jazeera examines what is happening.

Carlos Alcaraz defeated Francisco Cerundolo to reach the quarterfinals of the event, which would have ended the youngest American since 2004. The Spaniard will now face Jack Draper in the final round.

Ben Shelton, 22, had made headlines for his home-grown run when Draper, a British player, won in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5.

Alcaraz, the 13th-seeded player, will face the 13th-seeded Draper, who has won 16 matches while 6-3, 7-6, (4) over Cerundolo.

Alcaraz rallied from 1-4 down to win the tiebreaker on a different cold, windy night in the California desert, keeping his title defense alive with a break and two love service holds to put his bid into contention for third straight Indian Wells wins.

In each of his first three games with the baton, Alcaraz was required to save break points. But he got the first break of the match with a deft volley just like he was serving the first set after holding the game a lurgously for 4-3.

After sliding to pop a drop-volley winner over the top of the net for set point, Alcaraz drilled a powerful forehand that Cerundolo was awestruck by.

However, Cerundolo was the one to break out in the second, surviving with 4-1 after converting his ninth break point.

However, he was unable to hold off the world number three, who had a 5-2 lead in the tiebreaker for victory.

Alcaraz, who appeared less at ease in the windy conditions than he did the day before, said, “It was really difficult for me to start the match.”

In the first set, Alcaraz said, “He had a lot of chances.” “I’m just happy that I managed to save all of them and get rid of the one I already had.”

“I didn’t hit the ball as clearly as yesterday, but I just did what I had to, and that’s what it’s all about.”

After taking one break of serve, Draper rallied from 0-3 down in a second-set slugfest.

Five double-faults, with one resulting in Draper getting a break for 6-5 in the second, were made by Shelton’s 32 unforced errors.

In a wild, wind-blown final set, Daniil Medvedev, who had previously finished second to Alcaraz, rallied from a break down to defeat Arthur Fils 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (9/ 7).

The world number six defeated Tallon Griekspoor to reach the semifinals against Denmark’s Holger Rune, who won 7-5, 6-6, and 6-3.

In the third set of a compelling fight that was momentarily paused due to gusting winds that sent towels and trash cans flying on Stadium Court, Medvedev, a six-time Grand Slam champion, lost to 20-year-old Fils 2-4.

In contrast to Medvedev’s formidable defensive abilities, France’s Fils had displayed admirable maturity.

He quickly overcame his first set of forced errors to win the second, and he kept his composure as he won the game with a comfortable victory.

Medvedev, however, held his ground and won with a long backhand volley from Fils, who had forced the tiebreaker.

In order to maintain his bid for a first title since 2023, Medvedev, who had only won one of his previous nine third-set tiebreakers, delivered a leap of pure joy with the win in 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Medvedev said, “I lost a lot of tight matches this year where I could have won or perhaps should have won.” I’ve lost a lot of tight matches where the balance is a little 50-50, and the tighter the tighter the match becomes.

“I was happy that I was able to cross the line because he had a lead in the third period and saved some match points.” I’m happy to win, just.

Rune, who won the Paris Masters final over Novak Djokovic in 2022, is another young gun that Medvedev faces.

Rune has struggled frequently since, but after dropping the first set, the 43-year-old Dutchman who had defeated Alexander Zverev in the second round, he dominated.

Madison Keys then extended her winning streak to 16 matches, defeating wild-card seed Belinda Bencic 6-1, 6-1, to reach the women’s semifinals.

The Australian Open champion needed only 65 minutes to complete her rematch with top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka, who defeated Liudmila Samsonova 6-2, 6-3, later.