Ukraine says it is poised to sign minerals deal with the US

As both parties finalized the details of their deal, Ukraine is expected to sign a long-awaited minerals deal with the United States, according to Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.

US President Donald Trump has referred to the agreement as “money back” for the US’s wartime aid, which would see Washington and Kyiv work together to develop Ukraine’s mineral resources.

On Wednesday, Shmygal said on national TV, “This is truly a good, equal, and beneficial international agreement on joint investments in the development and recovery of Ukraine.”

He continued, “I hope the agreement will be signed in the near future, within the next 24 hours, and we will take the first step.”

Washington did not respond right away.

Negotiations between Ukraine and the US were supposed to be done a few weeks ago, but a tense exchange between Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House temporarily slowed things down.

According to Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, who is a White House correspondent, “It seems there are still some details to work out.” However, that agreement is anticipated to be signed in the coming 24 hours.

Joint fund

Any agreement to stop Russia’s three-year invasion has been pushed by Ukraine for security guarantees.

In the event of a ceasefire, the Trump administration has argued that strengthening US business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russian aggression.

If the deal included any security guarantees for Ukraine, it was unclear.

According to a senior source in the Ukrainian presidency, the agreement will not be related to any “debts” for previous aid Kyiv has received, creating a “50/50” joint fund for Kyiv and Washington, according to the AFP news agency.

It guarantees the parties’ equality. To support reconstruction, a new investment fund will be established. Both the United States and us are anticipated to contribute, the statement continued.

According to a draft draft of the agreement, Washington will be credited with contributing to the joint fund when it provides new military aid.

However, the draft does not specify how the joint fund’s revenues will be spent, who receives benefits, or who controls spending decisions.

According to the draft, the United States or other designated parties will have preferential access to new permits, licenses, and potential investment opportunities in the field of Ukrainian natural resources, according to the draft. Existing agreements are not included.

Sources with knowledge of the situation claimed earlier this month that the deal would include Ukraine’s most valuable asset, which had been stated in earlier iterations of the negotiations.

Kashmir attack: How India might strike Pakistan – what history tells us

Pakistan said on Wednesday that it had “credible intelligence” that India might launch a military strike against it within the next few days.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led a series of security meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, adding to speculation of an impending Indian military operation against its archrival, after the April 22 attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir in which 26 people were killed.

Since the attack, barely existent relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours have nosedived further, with the countries scaling back diplomatic engagement, suspending their participation in bilateral treaties and effectively expelling each other’s citizens.

The subcontinent is on edge. But how imminent is an Indian military response to the Pahalgam killings, and what might it look like? Here’s what history tells us:

What happened?

Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a televised statement early on Wednesday that Islamabad had “credible intelligence” that India was planning to take military action against Pakistan in the “next 24 to 36 hours”.

Tarar added that this action would be India’s response on the “pretext of baseless and concocted allegations of involvement” in Pahalgam. While India has alleged Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attack, Islamabad has denied this claim.

India and Pakistan each administer parts of Kashmir, but both countries claim the territory in full.

Tarar’s statement came a day after Modi gave the Indian military “complete operational freedom” to respond to the Pahalgam attack in a closed-door meeting with the country’s security leaders, multiple news agencies reported, citing anonymous senior government sources.

On Wednesday, Modi chaired a Cabinet Committee on Security meeting, the second such meeting since the Pahalgam attack, state-run Doordarshan television reported.

Meanwhile, as the neighbours continued to exchange gunfire along the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, other world leaders stepped up diplomacy to calm tensions.

“We are reaching out to both parties, and telling … them to not escalate the situation,” a United States state department spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday, quoting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is expected to speak to the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan.

Also on Tuesday, the spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he had spoken to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, offering his help in “de-escalation”.

What military action could India take?

While it is unclear what course of action India could take, it has in the past used a range of military tactics. Here are some of them:

Covert military operations

By design, they aren’t announced – and aren’t confirmed. But over the decades, India and Pakistan have each launched multiple covert raids into territory controlled by the other, targeting military posts, killing soldiers – and on occasion beheading the enemy’s troops.

These strikes are often carried out as a retaliatory step by a military unit whose personnel were themselves previously attacked, as a form of retribution.

But such raids are never confirmed: The idea is to send the other country a message but not force it to respond, thereby containing the risk of escalation. Public announcements lead to domestic pressure on governments to hit back.

Publicised ‘surgical strikes’

Sometimes, though, the idea is not to send subtle messages – but to embarrass the other country by making an attack public. It also doesn’t hurt politically.

India has in the past carried out so-called surgical strikes against specific, chosen targets across the LoC – most recently in 2016.

Then, after armed fighters killed 17 Indian soldiers in Uri, Indian-administered Kashmir, special forces of the Indian Army crossed the de facto border to attack “launch pads” from where, New Delhi alleged, “terrorists” were planning to strike India again. “The operations were basically focused to ensure that these terrorists do not succeed in their design of infiltration and carrying out destruction and endangering the lives of citizens of our country,” Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, then the director-general of military operations for the Indian Army, said in a public statement, revealing the raid.

India claimed that the surgical strike had killed dozens of fighters, though independent analysts believe the toll was likely much lower.

Aerial strikes

In February 2019, a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir, weeks before national elections in the country. This attack was claimed by the Jaish-e-Muhammad, an armed group based in Pakistan.

Amid an outpouring of rage, the Indian Air Force launched an aerial raid into Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India claimed it had struck hideouts of “terrorists” and killed several dozen fighters.

Pakistan insisted that Indian jets only hit a forested region, and did not kill any fighters. Islamabad claimed it scrambled jets that chased Indian planes back across the LoC.

But a day later, Indian and Pakistani fighter jets again engaged in a dogfight – this one ending with Pakistan downing an Indian plane inside territory it controls. An Indian fighter pilot was captured, and returned a few days later.

Attempts at taking over Pakistan-controlled land

Over the past few years, there have been growing calls in India that New Delhi should take back Pakistan-administered Kashmir. That chorus has only sharpened in recent days after the Pahalgam attack, with even leaders of the opposition Congress Party goading the Modi government to take back that territory.

While retaking Pakistan-administered Kashmir remains a policy objective of every Indian government, the closely matched military capabilities of both sides make such an endeavour unlikely.

Still, India has a track record of successfully taking disputed territory from Pakistan.

In 1984, the Indian Army and Indian Air Force launched Operation Meghdoot, in which they rapidly captured the Siachen glacier in the Himalayas, blocking the Pakistan Army from accessing key passes. One of the world’s largest non-polar glaciers, Siachin has since been the planet’s highest battleground, with Indian and Pakistani military outposts positioned against each other.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, the Indian Navy announced that it had carried out test missile strikes.

“Indian Navy ships undertook successful multiple anti-ship firings to revalidate and demonstrate readiness of platforms, systems and crew for long range precision offensive strike,” the navy said in a statement on April 27.

“Indian Navy stands combat ready, credible and future ready in safeguarding the nation’s maritime interests anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”

Many analysts have suggested that the trials were a show of strength, pointing to the Indian Navy’s ability to strike Pakistani territory if ordered to do so.

A full-blown military conflict

India and Pakistan have gone to war four times in the 78 years of their independent existence. Three of these armed conflicts have been over Kashmir.

Two months after the British colonial government left the subcontinent in August 1947 after carving it up into India and Pakistan, the neighbours fought their first war over Kashmir, then ruled by a king.

Pakistani militias invaded Kashmir to try and take control. The king, Hari Singh, pleaded with India for help. New Delhi agreed, and joined the war against Pakistan, but on the condition that Singh sign an instrument of accession, merging Kashmir with India. The king agreed.

The war finally ended on January 1, 1949, with a ceasefire agreement. India and Pakistan have both held parts of Kashmir since then.

In 1965, a clash between their border forces escalated into a full-blown war. Pakistani forces crossed the ceasefire line into Indian-administered Kashmir, while Indian forces crossed the international border into Pakistan’s Lahore and launched attacks. After thousands of casualties on both sides, a United Nations Security Council resolution helped the neighbours end the war.

In 1971, Pakistan and India were embroiled in an armed conflict over East Pakistan, where Indian forces helped liberate the territory, leading to the establishment of Bangladesh. In 1972, the two countries signed the Simla Agreement, which established the LoC.

Putin responds to Trump’s Ukraine ceasefire plan with a three-day offer

Two ceasefire proposals have been released in the past week from Washington, Moscow, and Europe, all of which contradict each other this month.

On April 17, US President Donald Trump’s administration announced its proposal to Ukraine, describing it as “the final offer from the United States to both sides.”

On April 23, Ukraine countered its own proposal, which was supported by European officials, but US Secretary of State Marco Rubio allegedly canceled a meeting to discuss it.

In honor of Victory Day on May 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin observed a three-day, unilateral ceasefire on May 9, in honor of its contribution to World War II’s victory.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, called Putin’s proposal “another attempt at manipulation,” claiming that “for some reason, everyone is supposed to wait until May 8 before ceasing fire – just to provide silence for his parade.”

Trump appeared to press hardest on Kyiv to put an end to hostilities, but Reuters reported that his proposal made significant concessions that the Europeans opposed.

Trump acknowledged that Russia actually owned the four provincial divisions it has partially conquered, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson.

Before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in January 2014. According to the UN Charter, Kaja Kallas, the head of international affairs, has stated that Europe will not tolerate violent annexations of land.

sanctions, weapons, and NATO membership are divided.

Additionally, Trump’s plan left those guarantees to “an ad hoc group of European states plus willing non-European states,” leaving Ukraine with no post-war guarantees.

The US should be included in the guarantor states, according to the Ukrainian-European counterproposal, which suggested halting all territorial negotiations until after a ceasefire.

There were other disagreements as well.

Russia’s demands that Ukraine not join NATO and that Western sanctions against Russia be lifted immediately were accepted by the US.

According to the European-Ukrainian counterproposal, sanctions “may be gradually eased once a sustainable peace is achieved and resumed in the event of a peace agreement’s breach.”

Additionally, it stated that there would be “no restrictions on the Ukrainian Defence Forces” and “no restrictions on the presence, possession, and conduct of friendly foreign forces on Ukrainian territory.”

Russian officials have repeatedly rejected both of these assertions, saying that Ukraine must reduce its own military to a token force and that it will never accept NATO- and European forces on Ukrainian soil.

The Trump administration’s outlook is fundamentally different from the EU’s.

On April 16, Kaja Kallas, vice president of the European Commission, told journalists: “If you want the killing to stop, you should put pressure on Russia, who actually commits the crime.

Trump, in contrast, halted all military ties with Ukraine in March to pressure Kyiv into finding peace. Russian forces pushed Ukrainian troops out of the majority of the land in the Kursk region of Russia during this week.

The US’s Rubio reportedly canceled the meeting, according to The Washington Post, so the country’s defense and foreign ministers decided to not meet with their British and French counterparts when they presented their peace plan in London on April 23.

Russia attacks Kyiv.

The following day, Putin launched a massive attack on Kyiv, injuring dozens and killing 12 civilians.

Russia launched a deadly airstrike on Kyiv while claiming to seek peace. This is a mockery of peace, not a quest for it. Russia, whose war goals have not changed, is the real obstacle, Kallas asserted.

“The Russian strikes on Kyiv have me offended. Trump expressed regret on his social media platform Truth Social in a egregious act of impatience toward Putin on a rare instance of timing that was necessary.

He threatened Putin with sanctions two days later when he met with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome.

Putin “has no reason to have fired missiles at civilian targets, cities, and towns over the past few days,” he wrote. It makes me wonder if he doesn’t want to end the war, that he is simply trying to manipulate me and needs to be handled differently through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions”?

According to Zelenskyy, “Meetings in the Vatican and Rome demonstrated that our partners are aware of what is happening,” referring to what he claimed was Russian deception.

Meanwhile, Putin’s forces claimed that Kursk’s entire evacuation on Saturday had “created the conditions for further successful actions of the Russian Armed Forces.”

Russian and North Korean officials praised the military support the North Korean forces had offered in Kursk, a fact that they had refuted ever since that assistance first started in November.

Russian commander of the military, Valery Gerasimov, claimed on Saturday that North Korea had offered “significant assistance.”

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, praised the strategic cooperation agreement between Russia and North Korea on its effectiveness on May 1 and said Russia would give in to the military assistance as needed.

Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, stated that the Kursk operation was a “sacred mission to further strengthen the strong friendship and solidarity” between Russia and North Korea, and the Central Military Commission of North Korea also officially acknowledged the cooperation for the first time on Monday.

Russian actions and statements, in fact, suggested that Moscow was establishing itself along its border with NATO and the European Union.

Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu complained about the rearmament of Poland and the Baltic states in particular in an interview last week. “In the past year, the military forces of NATO countries deployed near Russia’s western borders have increased by nearly 2.5 times.

Reparations for empire: What the new pope owes to Africa

In his time as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, late Pope Francis, who became known as a vocal advocate for the oppressed, the oppressed, and the marginalized, had a strong interest in Africa.

He frequently discussed the continent’s problems and advantages while demonstrating a strong commitment to it throughout his papacy. In speeches and statements, he consistently called for peace and reconciliation between African countries and stressed the importance of respecting and upholding the continent’s rich cultural diversity and local traditions. He also consistently called for the exploitation of African resources and people. During his 12-year tenure, he visited 10 African nations, each of which received a lot of media coverage and recognition as an opportunity to highlight the significance of Africa for both his Church and the world.

After all, Africa is the region where the Catholic population is growing the quickest, so Francis had plenty of reason to concentrate his attention there. Just 9.6 million Christians lived on the continent in 1900, or roughly 9.6 million. Around 750 million Christians live in Africa as of 2025. Around 281 million people worldwide, or 20% of the total, are Catholics.

Therefore, Francis’ successor must continue to maintain a firm focus on Africa as he is elected in a conclave starting on May 7. African Catholics will be anticipating more than just regular visits and complimentary speeches from their new leader as Africa quickly gains a major population center for the Church.

The Catholic Church and Africa have a complex relationship, despite its expanding appeal on the continent. The Church profited handsomely from Africans’ suffering for many years and has consequences that date back to the present.

The new Pope must address the role the Catholic Church played in the transatlantic slave trade and colonization of the continent if he is to continue building on Pope Francis’ legacy and show his commitment to Africa and Africans.

This exact point was made at a meeting with Bishop Paul Tighe, the Pontifical Council of Culture’s secretary, three years ago, in July 2022, by the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing (GCRH), a group of international reparations activists, scholars, artists, and activists from all over the world.

The coalition aimed to elicit a discussion with the Church about the significant, long-lasting harm that its extensive involvement in the transatlantic slave trade had caused to Africa and its entire diaspora at this meeting in Vatican City.

GCRH representatives gave the Church a detailed 15-page presentation that enumerated its past abuses in Africa to help a concerted healing process.

The Catholic Church’s crimes on Earth are no longer excused.

Portuguese monarchs sought the approval and assistance of the Roman Catholic Church’s Popes in order to advance their territorial ambitions in Africa from the beginning of the 15th century. In response to these royal requests, several pontiffs, who allegedly posed as the earthly representatives of Jesus Christ, issued papal bulls, or official public decrees, which approved of military operations in Africa and supported the ongoing enslavement of Africans. In the ostensible name of Jesus Christ, these bulls provided the moral and legal justification for African trafficking and enslavement, as well as for European imperialism and colonization in Africa. ​

The Church changed its focus to supporting colonization of the continent after the slave trade ended. For instance, it was crucial to the colonization of Zimbabwe, serving both as a beneficiary and a catalyst for its bloody successes.

Missionary initiatives aimed to bolster European dominance by converting “primitive” indigenous populations, which were frequently linked to colonial expansion. Two chaplains joined a “Pioneer Column force” that engaged in military conflict against African communities in 1890, leading to the colonization of Mashonaland in modern Zimbabwe. One of them was affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church and the other with the Anglican Church.

The Catholic Church immediately established mission stations on land that local communities had taken as collateral after Mashonaland’s conquest. Catholic missionaries eventually assumed a dual and frequently conflicting role. They established mission hospitals and schools in areas without such services, including St. Francis Xavier’s Kutama College and Gokomere High School, as well as moral and cultural justifications for violent European expansion. However, their support and participation in their colonial takeover did not completely negate the harm they had caused to the land and its people.

The enthusiastic support the Church offered western imperialists helped to erect a racial hierarchy that viewed Africans as inferior and legitimized white supremacy. The legacy of this once Church-approved racial hierarchy continues to shape social structures, governance, law enforcement, and economic opportunities for Africans living in diasporas across South America, Europe, and North America.

One of the enduring effects of these racial hierarchies that the Church actively helped build was the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 in the US, which led to the rise of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Outside the US, things aren’t much better. People of African descent in Brazil also “continue to endure multifaceted, deeply interconnected, and pervasive forms of systemic racism, as a result of colonialism and enslavement legacies,” according to Ashwini KP, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, in August 2024.

The Church must urgently take significant steps to compensate for its past iniquity and assist Africans in dealing with the continent’s and diaspora’s deadly consequences.

The Jesuits, a significant Catholic order, made a groundbreaking commitment to raise $100 million for the resurrected descendants of 272 ex-owners and to support racial reconciliation initiatives in March 2021. The pledge represents the most significant effort made by the Roman Catholic Church to confront its historical role in the enslavement of Africans, despite being significantly less than the $1 billion initially requested by the descendants.

The Vatican has always argued that any such actions should be managed decentralised, despite not explicitly opposing reparations for historical wrongs. However, the lack of significant progress on this front suggests a fresh approach is impermissibly needed.

The Vatican has approved a program called the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and GCRH that includes a full apology, formal reparations, and genuine healing processes. This echoes the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union’s (AU) annual demands for reparations.

The close relationship that Pope Francis had with Africans will be enhanced by the new Pope. He will go down in history as the Pope who finally made the Church a genuine friend of Africa and made up for its mistakes by starting a comprehensive global reparations initiative.

In the twenty-first century, African Catholics have become a significant source of the Church’s authority and influence. They want nothing less from the incoming leader.