Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow supports US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war, expressing hope it will be implemented. Speaking at a regional summit in Tajikistan, Putin said Russia is ready to back any peaceful effort to stop the bloodshed.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi have hailed their countries’ recent trade deal as transformative, saying the partnership has already begun to bear fruit.
The United Kingdom and India signed a trade agreement in July aimed at reducing tariffs on goods from textiles to whisky, cars and spices and allowing more market access for businesses. The stated goal is to boost trade by a further 25.5 billion pounds ($34bn) by 2040.
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Starmer met Modi on Thursday in Mumbai, where the British prime minister and more than 100 leaders from the UK’s business, culture and university sectors were wrapping up a two-day trade mission to India.
“In the three months since we actually signed that (trade deal) … we’ve seen a 6-billion-pound boost in trade and investment, that’s on top of the increased numbers over the last year already,” Starmer told business leaders from both countries at the India-UK CEO Forum in Mumbai.
Both countries are seeking to realign their trading relationships in the wake of tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump’s administration.
In August, the US slapped 50 percent tariffs on goods from India in response to New Delhi’s trade with Russia, specifically its imports of Russian oil, while the UK, which secured a trade deal with Washington in May, has also been hit with tariffs, albeit at much lower rates.
Modi told the forum on Thursday that he was confident the two countries would double their trade from the current $56bn before their target to do so.
Starmer’s visit “reflects the new energy and broad vision” in the partnership, Modi said after talks with the British prime minister.
“India’s dynamism and the UK’s expertise together create a unique synergy,” Modi said, speaking in Hindi.
Starmer said the focus of his visit was doubling down on the potential of the trade deal, expected to take effect within a year.
“This is just the start,” Starmer later told a fintech conference. “It’s time to invest in the United Kingdom, invest in this relationship and invest in our shared future.”
A statement by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the two sides agreed to set up a connectivity and innovation centre and a joint centre for AI, and unveiled a critical minerals industry guild to bolster supply chains and promote green technologies.
Earlier, Starmer’s office said 64 Indian companies would collectively invest 1.3bn pounds ($1.73bn) in the UK, without elaborating.
Despite the cordiality on display in Mumbai, the two countries are not aligned on some key issues, including the Russia-Ukraine war.
After Modi wished Russian President Vladimir Putin a happy birthday on Tuesday, Starmer joked to reporters that he would not be doing the same, given Britain’s strong backing for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia over its invasion.
Asked if he raised with Modi concerns about India buying Russian oil, Starmer said they did discuss it and looked particularly at ways to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which he said was “the outcome that we both want”.
The UK says it respects India’s strategic independence and can work with countries even if their views may differ on certain issues.
In an early indication of that strategy and a bid for closer defence ties, the UK said it had signed a 350 million pound ($465m) contract to supply the Indian army with lightweight multi-role missiles built in Northern Ireland, and the next phase of a deal, worth an initial 250 million pounds ($332m), includes collaboration on electric-powered engines for naval ships.
For decades, India has been dependent on Moscow for much of its military hardware. And Western sanctions levied against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine have pushed the country into a deeper trading partnership with India.
In August, India hit back at the US and European Union over sanctions, tariffs and threats it faced from them due to its purchase of Russian oil amid the war on Ukraine.
“Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at the time.
But Jaiswal also directly pushed back against suggestions from the US and EU that India – in buying large volumes of Russian crude – had acted in a way that broke with the West’s own behaviour.
“In fact, India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict,” Jaiswal said, referring to Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On his first visit to India since becoming the United Kingdom’s prime minister last year, Keir Starmer has met with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, alongside a caravan of British business and cultural leaders.
In particular, Starmer wants to know more about India’s mammoth digital ID system – which logs the world’s largest population, with more than 1.3 billion cards issued – two weeks after announcing a controversial digital ID system for the UK.
Starmer hailed India’s ID system as a “massive success” as he defended that announcement, which has been met with criticism from rights groups.
During his trade-centric visit to Mumbai, Starmer also held a meeting with Nandan Nilekani, cofounder and chair of Indian tech services group Infosys, who headed the government body which delivered the ID database more than a decade ago.
So, why is Starmer so interested in India’s ID system? What are the concerns in the UK? And what can London learn from mistakes made in New Delhi?
Starmer has pitched the new digital ID, to be known as a “Brit Card”, at the core of his plans to tackle irregular migration and exploitative work practices in the UK.
A digital ID system “will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure”, Starmer said last month.
In addition to verifying that a person is permitted to work in the UK, the Brit Card will also offer citizens “countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly”, he said.
While ID cards have long been common in other Western European countries, the UK has a history of strong resistance towards them.
Speaking to reporters on his way to Mumbai this week, Starmer said he hopes, however, that digital IDs, which will become mandatory by 2029, will gain public confidence because of the convenience they will be able to provide.
“I don’t know how many times the rest of you have had to look in the bottom drawer for three bills when you want to get your kids into school or apply for this or apply for that – drives me to frustration,” he said. “I do think that we could gain a significant advantage.”
However, rights groups have strongly criticised the proposal of digital IDs, which, they say, would infringe on people’s right to privacy – and more than 2.2 million people have signed a petition opposing the introduction.
The petition describes the Brit Card as a “step towards mass surveillance and digital control”, and adds that “no one should be forced to register with a state-controlled ID system.”
India’s digital ID system, Aadhaar, is much bigger and far more detailed than the one the UK is planning. New Delhi stores people’s fingerprints, eye scans, photos, home addresses and phone numbers, and its system processes about 80 million authentications each day.
By comparison, the UK’s proposed digital ID system will be much narrower in scope, focusing on basic identity verification, without collecting biometric data like fingerprints or iris scans.
Under Aadhaar, every Indian citizen receives a 12-digit number that aims to replace many paper documents. All adults and children more than the age of five must provide biometric information.
The system is used to verify identities when people open bank accounts or apply for a new SIM card for their mobile phones, for example. The system has also aimed to streamline the disbursement of government benefits, giving the holder instant proof of identity and access to basic services.
Launched in 2009, the Indian government has issued more than 1.3 billion cards and claims to have saved nearly $10bn in administration costs. Some critics say that is an overstatement, however.
UK officials have made it clear that they do not wish to replicate the Aadhaar system – rather, to learn from how it has been implemented.
A government spokesperson denied that the system would store biometric data of holders, adding that “one of the core priorities is inclusivity and that’s what the British consultation will be about.”
India’s Aadhaar has suffered several mass data leaks, at times exposing the personal information belonging to as much as 85 percent of the population and raising concerns about privacy.
At least three large-scale Aadhaar data leaks were reported in 2018, 2019 and 2022, with personal information put up for sale on the dark web, including one from the government’s COVID-vaccination portal.
In January 2025, the Indian government allowed private companies to access Aadhaar’s databases for authentication purposes. To gain access, private companies must apply and be vetted by the government. Critics have opposed this access to behavioural and biometric data.
“The core problem with Aadhaar was conceptual – centralisation of digital ID and accompanying biometric information should be avoided,” said Vrinda Bhandari, a Supreme Court lawyer with a focus on digital rights and privacy. “More importantly, it should never be linked or seeded into other databases.”
Public confidence is low. A survey conducted earlier this year by civic-tech company LocalCircles revealed that 87 percent of Indian citizens believe elements of their personal data are already in the public domain or on compromised databases. That number is a rise from 72 percent in 2022.
The government body, Unique Identification Authority of India, which issues Aadhaar cards, maintains that personal data is secure. But India does not yet have a robust data protection law in practice, so critics say there is no way to be sure of this.
“The creation of a digital ID architecture requires strong legal and data privacy protections,” said Bhandari. “Without this supporting law and the surrounding complaints infrastructure, citizens are forced to fight expensive legal battles in courts.”
The reliance on Aadhaar has also led to greater hardship for some of the country’s most marginalised and poorest citizens, denying them medical care or food rations, critics say.
Technical problems have often halted the payment of pensions when fingerprints don’t match or internet connectivity has stalled, with researchers claiming that Aadhaar has often made welfare delivery more difficult, not easier.
India’s Supreme Court approved Aadhaar’s use for welfare and taxes but restricted its use by private companies or in education in 2018, following a case lodged by civil society groups. This year’s access to the system for private groups was made possible by policy changes which introduced government vetting into the process.
Furthermore, critics argue, India’s digital ID system has created an “architecture of surveillance” without strong enough safeguards.
Yes. In 2019, Kenya attempted to build a national digital ID system that closely followed India’s Aadhaar model.
The government launched the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), also called Huduma Namba, to streamline government services and fight fraud. Its design drew heavily from the Aadhaar framework.
But the project quickly faced pushback from civil society groups, who argued that it was fraught with privacy and exclusion flaws, with no adequate legal safeguards to protect citizens. In 2020, these groups lodged a case against the introduction of the system in the High Court in Nairobi, which halted the rollout.
The following year, Kenya passed its Data Protection Act, which created a legal framework for collecting, storing, and processing personal data, and later rebranded its system as “Maisha Namba”, promising stronger oversight of how citizens’ biometric and personal data would be stored and used. Various legal challenges, which argue that gaps in safety have not been adequately addressed, however, are ongoing.
The national ID systems in other countries, including the Philippines, Morocco and Ethiopia, are also modelled on Aadhaar.
In the UK, rights groups have raised concerns about Starmer’s Brit Card plan. Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, a UK-based civil liberties and privacy advocacy organisation, warned that the system would “make Britain less free” and create “a domestic mass surveillance infrastructure that will likely sprawl from citizenship to benefits, tax, health, possibly even internet data and more”.
Addressing these concerns in September when the ID system was announced, the UK’s culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said ministers had “no intention of pursuing a dystopian mess”.
On Thursday, Modi and Starmer were hoping to capitalise on their July free-trade agreement. Aiming to turbocharge commercial links, the UK delegation included more than 100 leaders from British businesses and universities.
Under the trade agreement signed in July, India and the UK agreed to cut tariffs on goods ranging from textiles and whisky to cars in order to double trade to $120bn by 2030.
“India’s dynamism and the UK’s expertise together create a unique synergy,” Modi said, after talks with the British prime minister on Thursday, adding that the industry leaders accompanying Starmer “reflect the new energy and broad vision” in the partnership.
Starmer said: “When we leave India tonight, I expect that we will have secured major new investments creating thousands of high-skilled jobs in the sectors of the future.”
Ultimately, the two countries announced a string of new agreements on Thursday.
A statement by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the two sides had agreed to set up an India-UK connectivity and innovation centre and a joint centre for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), and unveiled a critical minerals industry guild to bring together businesses and researchers and to coordinate the safe mining and processing of minerals.
An official handout from the UK government noted that 64 Indian companies would collectively invest 1.3 billion pounds ($1.73bn) in the UK.
“The UK-India trade deal is already unlocking growth, and today’s announcements mark the beginning of a new era of collaboration between our two nations,” Starmer said.
London and New Delhi do not see eye to eye on all issues, however.
One major bone of contention is Russia’s invasion of and ongoing war in Ukraine. The UK, as part of NATO, has taken a strong position against Moscow, imposing sanctions and sending weapons to Kyiv. India avoids condemning Russia, however, and has continued to buy Russian oil – part of the reason United States President Donald Trump said he was imposing 50 percent trade tariffs on India earlier this year.
Indian officials describe their position towards Russia as a policy of strategic autonomy, while British and European leaders view it as a major point of divergence within their broader partnership.
Another area of tension is Khalistan-related activism in the UK. India has repeatedly raised concerns about Sikh separatist groups operating from British soil, especially after the 2023 vandalism of the Indian High Commission in London.
In 2023, a BBC documentary that portrayed Modi in an unflattering light was denounced by Indian officials as “anti-India propaganda”.
At the same time, tensions between India and Canada – a member of the UK’s Five Eyes intelligence alliance – deepened after Ottawa alleged Indian involvement in the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Thousands of students rallied in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, after a Gaza ceasefire deal was announced, expressing solidarity with Palestinians and urging action to support those affected by the war.
United States President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Illinois is slated to face legal scrutiny at a pivotal court hearing.
On Thursday, US District Judge April Perry will hear arguments over a request to block the deployment of Illinois and Texas Guard members, a day after a small number of troops began protecting federal property in the Chicago area.
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Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and local officials strongly oppose the use of the Guard.
An “element” of the 200 Texas Guard troops that were sent to Illinois started working in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a US Northern Command spokesperson, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details not made public.
The spokesperson did not say where specifically the troops were sent.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
The Guard members are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command.
Chicago and Illinois on Monday filed a lawsuit to stop the deployments, calling them unnecessary and illegal.
Trump, meanwhile, has portrayed Chicago as a lawless “hellhole” of crime, though statistics show a significant recent drop in crime.
In a court filing in the lawsuit, the city and state say protests at a temporary ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement”.
“The President is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions the President dislikes.”
The Republican president said Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor Pritzker, both Democrats, should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.
Also Thursday, a panel of judges in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building.
State and city leaders insist troops are neither wanted nor needed there.
US District Judge Karin J Immergut on Sunday granted Oregon and California a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment of Guard troops to Portland. Trump had mobilised California troops for Portland just hours after Immergut first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.
The administration has yet to appeal that order to the 9th Circuit.
Immergut, whom Trump appointed during his first term, rejected the president’s assertions that troops were needed to protect Portland and immigration facilities, saying “it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in the city”.
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws.
However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and a small number this week began assisting law enforcement in Memphis, Tennessee.
Those troops are part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to fight crime in the city.
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – A cautious relief seems to hover over central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah as people stand outside their tents, talking to each other about the ceasefire that is set to come into force after approval by the Israeli cabinet.
Some people are celebrating, while others are worrying that this respite will prove brief and incomplete, like past ceasefires that Israel violated.
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This ceasefire has been touted by United States President Donald Trump as a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Israel has said it will cease bombing Gaza 24 hours after being approved by the Israeli cabinet, which is meeting on Thursday to discuss it.
Nasser al-Qernawi, 62, sat cradling his radio on the bed in his family’s shelter, patched together from plastic sheeting and a bit of blue tarp.
He has listened to it every day for the past two years, and seems almost in awe of the latest news he heard coming through it.
“Yesterday the news was tough, in the morning. But now, it’s better,” he said. “I feel it’s closer, but he didn’t say the word ‘peace’, Netanyahu didn’t. The others said the word ‘peace’, but he didn’t.
“So we’re still not sure what he’s thinking, but I think he’ll go with it… if Trump comes and he signs it, that’s it.”
Many hopes seem to be riding on Trump, either due to confidence in the US president’s diplomatic skills or to a deep distrust in the motivations and actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I have doubts about this, about 90 percent, because Netanyahu is a dirty traitor,” Khamis Othman, who has been displaced from Bureij camp, told Al Jazeera.
“He just thinks this is a winning card for executing his missions. The [Israelis could] take what is theirs and attack us again.”
In January, Hamas had released 33 Israeli and five Thai nationals who were held captive in Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal.
However, Israel unilaterally violated the ceasefire in mid-March, resuming its genocidal war on Gaza.
“If they truly cared about their captives,” Othman exclaimed, “they wouldn’t have attacked them along with the resistance fighters.”
Regardless, he seems at least willing to wait and see what happens next: “From what we last heard, they’re saying Friday is when it happens, so hopefully, on Friday, it’ll start.”
Ilham al-Zaanin (Umm Mahdi), 60, has been displaced with her five children and 10 grandchildren since the war began, and has mixed feelings about this announcement.
On the one hand, she told Al Jazeera, she is filled with relief that the bloodshed may now stop, yet on the other hand, she is mourning the fact that they cannot go back home.
Umm Mahdi and her family are from Beit Hanoon in the northernmost governorate of Gaza, a zone that will remain occupied by the Israeli army during the first phase of the ceasefire, so the family will be displaced, and she doesn’t know for how long.
“We went back to our house in Beit Hanoon during the [January] truce,” Umm Mahdi said. “Our home was gone, though, everything was gone. So we came back here and are staying with my husband’s family.
“Everything is destruction, loss … God compensate and help everyone; everyone has their own affliction … honestly, we’re hurting,” she said sadly.
The hurt is afflicting all generations in Gaza, her cousin Itidal al-Zaanin (Umm Mohammad) said, pointing to her grandchildren whose future, she fears, is already lost.
“My son’s children, instead of dreaming of what they want to be when they grow up or playing with toys, they’re walking around with knives, carrying heavy water jugs over long distances to sell.
“Some days they come and tell me and their mother about the human remains they see flung around after attacks … ‘Grandma we found them in pieces,’ they would tell me,” Umm Mohammad shook her head.
“Tomorrow we’ll be shocked by the real numbers of the martyrs and the wounded and the missing, those under the rubble,” Umm Mahdi said.
“Over these two years, I’ve seen everything imaginable, everything painful. We saw slaughter, death, trucks full of dead people, animal carts.”
Everyone who spoke to Al Jazeera expressed happiness and relief that, at the very least, the bloodshed would stop and some people would have an opportunity to return to their homes, or what remains of them.
Othman is going to wait and see.
“You hear it so often … there’s been an accomplishment, then it fails … optimism is something that sits in the shadows,” he said.
Umm Mahdi is also waiting to see: “[Israel] cannot be trusted. You see, in Lebanon, they bomb them every day. We hope that the mediators will intervene to preserve our safety.
Even in the best-case scenario, Umm Mohammad isn’t sure anything will be the same again.
“My sisters lost their children, and our homes were destroyed. Our lives and our whole future have been lost. There’s no true joy in our hearts, but at least the bloodshed stopped,” she said.
“We’ve been begging Arab nations, foreign countries and Muslims who share our faith for two years, but no one cared about us or our children, children who saw bodies torn apart near Al-Aqsa Hospital, and who saw children like them, martyrs.”
Al-Qernawi held on to his optimism about as tightly as he held his radio, which has kept him company in more ways than one through two years of genocide.
“People come to listen with me sometimes, my daughters, or our neighbours,” he said.
“God willing, people will go back to their homes. God willing, the war is over,” al-Qernawi insisted.
“The whole purpose of the war and resuming it was all about displacement.