Russia says it will close Poland’s consulate in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania, after Warsaw decided to shut down the Russian consulate in Krakow.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the move on Friday.
This follows Poland ordering the Russian consulate in the southern city of Krakow to shut in May after authorities accused Moscow of orchestrating a fire that destroyed a Warsaw shopping centre last year.
The May 12, 2024, arson destroyed more than 1,000 shops at the Marywilska 44 centre, but no one was injured.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski accused Russian special services of involvement, saying there was evidence they had committed a “reprehensible act of sabotage” against the centre. Russia denied any involvement in the attack.
In May, Russia promised an “adequate response” to Poland’s move, and on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said it was “withdrawing consent for the functioning of the Consulate General of Poland in Kaliningrad from August 29”.
It also said Poland’s charge d’affaires in Russia was summoned and handed a formal note announcing the move, citing “unfriendly” and “unjustified” actions by the Polish government.
“This step was caused by the unfounded and hostile actions of the Polish side, expressed in the reduction of the Russian consular presence on the territory of Poland,” it added.
Strained ties
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Pawel Wronski said Russia’s decision to close the consulate was unjustified.
The possibility of this decision “was taken into account by the Foreign Ministry”, he told reporters on Friday. But he added that this “doesn’t mean that it is a legitimate decision”.
“Unlike Russia, Poland does not engage in sabotage, cyberattacks or conduct actions against the Russian state,” he said.
He added that Poland would “respond adequately” to the decision, without elaborating.
Diplomatic ties between Moscow and Warsaw have been historically strained and have frayed further over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Poland, a NATO and European Union member, is one of the main countries through which Western nations supply weapons and ammunition to Kyiv.
In May 2024, Poland imposed restrictions on the movements of Russian diplomats on its soil due to Moscow’s “involvement” in what it called a “hybrid war”.
Poland later ordered the closure of Russia’s consulate in Poznan and said it was willing to close the other consulates if acts of “terrorism” continued.
In January, Russia closed the Polish consulate in St Petersburg in retaliation.
The plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could rapidly deteriorate further unless more funding can be secured for critical assistance services, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Bangladesh has registered its biggest influx of Myanmar’s largest Muslim minority over the past 18 months since a mass exodus from an orchestrated campaign of death, rape and persecution nearly a decade ago by Myanmar’s military.
“There is a huge gap in terms of what we need and what resources are available. These funding gaps will affect the daily living of Rohingya refugees as they depend on humanitarian support on a daily basis for food, health and education,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
The humanitarian sector has been roiled by funding reductions from major donors, led by the United States under President Donald Trump and other Western countries, as they prioritise defence spending prompted by growing concerns over Russia and China.
Baloch added: “With the acute global funding crisis, the critical needs of both newly arrived refugees and those already present will be unmet, and essential services for the whole Rohingya refugee population are at risk of collapsing unless additional funds are secured.”
If not enough funding is secured, health services will be severely disrupted by September, and by December, essential food assistance will stop, said the UNHCR, which says that its appeal for $255m has only been 35 percent funded.
In March, the World Food Programme announced that “severe funding shortfalls” for Rohingya were forcing a cut in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6 per person.
More than one million Rohingya have been crammed into camps in southeastern Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Most fled the brutal crackdown in 2017 by Myanmar’s military, although some have been there for longer.
These camps cover an area of just 24 square kilometres (nine square miles) and have become “one of the world’s most densely populated places”, said Baloch.
Continued violence and persecution against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in mainly Buddhist Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, have kept forcing thousands to seek protection across the border in Bangladesh, according to the UNHCR. At least 150,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh over the past 18 months.
The Rohingya refugees also face institutionalised discrimination in Myanmar and most are denied citizenship.
“Targeted violence and persecution in Rakhine State and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar have continued to force thousands of Rohingya to seek protection in Bangladesh,” said Baloch. “This movement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, spread over months, is the largest from Myanmar since 2017, when some 750,000 fled the deadly violence in their native Rakhine State.”
Thousands of Bosnian Serbs participated in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, killing more than 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys in just three days. But only 54 people have ever been convicted. So why are so many killers walking free? Soraya Lennie has the details.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, says sanctions by the Trump administration aim to silence her for exposing genocide and calling out those who profit from it. She urges people to “stand united, denounce, and push back”.
United States President Donald Trump has announced that he will raise import tariffs on most Canadian goods to 35 percent, even though Canada has agreed to rescind its planned digital services tax as the US demanded.
This comes as Trump sends “tariff letters” to a host of countries this week, notifying them of planned US trade levies to take effect on August 1 if trade deals are not struck before then.
What has Trump announced for Canada?
In late June, Trump threatened to end trade talks with Canada over its plans to push ahead with a new digital services tax, which would hit US technology companies financially. The US president said it was “a direct and blatant attack on our Country”. Canada quickly agreed to withdraw the tax.
But, in a letter released on his social media platform on Thursday this week, Trump nevertheless told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that a new 35 percent tariff – an increase from the 25 percent rate originally imposed in March – would go into effect on August 1 and would rise if Canada retaliated with new tariffs of its own.
What do the US and Canada trade?
Canada is America’s second-largest trading partner, after Mexico. In 2024, Canada bought $349.4bn of US goods and exported $412.7bn, according to US Census Bureau data. The upshot is that Canada runs a $63.3bn trade surplus with the US.
Canada’s key exports to the US include oil and mineral fuels, cars and auto parts, as well as industrial machinery and nuclear reactors. On the other hand, it imports large amounts of transportation equipment, industrial chemicals and manufacturing technology from the US.
US President Donald Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney talk during the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada, on June 16, 2025 [Amber Bracken/Reuters]
What US tariffs does Canada already face?
In his inaugural address after taking over the US presidency on January 20, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods and a 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy resources, claiming that Canada had a “growing footprint” in the production of fentanyl, a highly addictive and often deadly opioid drug.
He claimed Canada was not doing enough to prevent the flow of fentanyl into the US.
Those tariffs were paused for 30 days following assurances from Canada that appropriate action would be taken to curb the flow of fentanyl, but were then reimposed in early March after Trump declared that Canada had failed to do enough. They are now rising again, to 35 percent.
Canada, the biggest foreign supplier of steel and aluminium to the US, was also badly hit by Trump’s separate 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminium, which he imposed globally in March. Trump doubled that for all countries to 50 percent in June, saying the measure would protect and bolster the US metals sector.
In March, Trump also announced a separate 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. He said this would “take back” money from foreign countries that have been “taking our jobs” and “our wealth”.
Sectoral tariffs, on things like cars and industrial metals, are separate from country-wide levies.
For his part, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described the auto tax move as a “direct attack” on Canadian workers.
Until the start of Trump’s second term as US president in January this year, Canada had enjoyed years of free trade relations with the US. It is understood that Mark Carney is still trying to find ways to satisfy Trump so that a 2018 free-trade deal between the US, Mexico and Canada (USMCA) – agreed during Trump’s first term in office – can be put back on track.
USMCA came into force on July 1, 2020, replacing the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It is supposed to be reviewed every six years, and since Trump returned to office, it has been blighted by disputes and non-compliance issues. Some trade commentators have suggested the agreement won’t be extended next summer.
Trump’s Canada announcement this week also came after officials in Ottawa denounced yet another separate US plan to impose a 50 percent import tariff on copper earlier this week. Canada is one of the largest suppliers of the metal to the United States.
Why is Trump levying all these tariffs on Canada?
The Trump administration claims its tariffs on Canada are designed to force Ottawa to crack down on fentanyl smuggling into the US, despite only a modest flow of the drug over the border. Trump has also expressed frustration with his country’s trade deficit with Canada, which largely reflects oil purchases.
“I must mention that the flow of Fentanyl is hardly the only challenge we have with Canada, which has many Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter.
Besides more than 20 similar letters to other US trade partners so far this week, Trump says he will soon announce new tariffs for the European Union, too. As with Canada’s letter, Trump has promised to implement these new import levies from August 1.
Do Trump’s justifications for tariffs on Canada hold water?
Canadian government data shows that less than 0.1 percent of all seizures of fentanyl entering the US, from 2022-2024, were made at the Canadian border.
Almost all of rest was confiscated at the US border with Mexico. Carney has also publicly committed to “stop the scourge of fentanyl” in North America, and said his government wants to work alongside the US to protect communities in both countries.
Throughout the current trade negotiations with the United States, the Canadian government has steadfastly defended our workers and businesses. We will continue to do so as we work towards the revised deadline of August 1.
Canada has made vital progress to stop the scourge…
Instead, in his first speech as prime minister, Carney said he believed that “the Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country”.
He has had to push back on Trump’s taunts of making Canada the “51st state of America”. Indeed, Carney predicated his recent election win on the idea that Canada should keep its “elbows up”, as he put it.
During a meeting with Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, in May, Carney said: “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign these last several months, it’s not for sale – won’t be for sale – ever.”
In recent months, Carney has also been strengthening ties with the United Kingdom and the EU in a bid to diversify its exports from the US.
Hours before Trump’s latest letter, Carney posted a picture of himself with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on X, saying, “In the face of global trade challenges, the world is turning to reliable economic partners like Canada.”
In the face of global trade challenges, the world is turning to reliable economic partners like Canada. pic.twitter.com/KlsXJdhCSk
What was the Canadian digital tax row about?
The US is home to some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon and Meta. A new 3 percent digital services tax to be levied on tech companies deriving revenues from Canadian users, due to take effect in late June this year, could have cost those companies $2bn in additional taxes.
Trump called the new tax “a direct and blatant attack on our Country” in a Truth Social post in June. He added that the US would be “terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately”.
A few days after Trump suspended trade negotiations, Carney rescinded the tax in an effort to resume talks.
As such, Trump’s latest tariff letter to Carney has come in spite of what many had seen as a thawing of relations between the two leaders, who remain locked in trade negotiations.
How has Trump treated other countries?
So far this week, Trump has sent tariff letters to 23 heads of state, notifying them of new trade tariffs. On Wednesday, he told Brazil that he plans to impose a 50 percent tariff because of its “witch-hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro, who is accused of plotting a coup, refused to publicly concede the 2022 presidential election, which he lost to current President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. Trump was similarly indicted in relation to efforts to overturn his own election loss in 2020.
Elsewhere, Trump’s tariff letters reflect his administration’s failure to finalise dozens of trade agreements that he claimed would be easy to negotiate. Shortly after unveiling his April 2 “Liberation Day” trade levies, Trump announced a 90-day pause to try and work out these agreements.
But on Monday, the president was forced to extend this pause again until August 1. For the most part, Trump says he is trying to rebalance large trading deficits, whereby the US imports more than it exports. However, some targeted countries – including Brazil – have trade imbalances in the US’s favour rather than their own.
Other than Brazil, recipients of tariff letters on Wednesday included the Philippines, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Libya, Algeria and Iraq. They were notified of tariffs as high as 30 percent.
The rates Trump said would be imposed on Sri Lanka, Moldova, Iraq and Libya were lower than those he initially announced in early April. Tariffs on goods from the Philippines and Brunei were higher. The rate for goods from Algeria remained the same.
On Monday, he notified Japan, South Korea and a dozen other economies of tariffs ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent.
In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump said: “We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20 percent or 15 percent. We’ll work that out now.”
Currently, the global baseline minimum tariff rate for nearly all US trading partners is 10 percent.
How have markets reacted to the tariff letters?
While the White House unfurled a stream of tariff announcements this week, financial markets have generally shrugged off Trump’s threats. The S&P 500 – the stock market index tracking the performance of the 500 largest companies in the US – and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both closed at record highs on Thursday.
Experts say that recent gains in the S&P 500 suggest many investors think that Trump will ultimately back down on his tariff increases.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for a second time in two days on Friday, with the war in Ukraine the focal point of their huddle. They had met for 50 minutes on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Malaysia on Thursday.
While campaigning for re-election, US President Donald Trump had promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office.
But more than four months later, the prospects of a ceasefire appear as remote as ever, with Russia launching a fierce bombardment of Ukraine in recent days.
After the Thursday meeting, Rubio told reporters that Trump was “disappointed and frustrated that there’s not been more flexibility on the Russian side” to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
So has Trump’s view of the war changed – and what are his next options?
Has Trump’s position on Russia shifted?
Rubio’s comments come at a time when Trump has increasingly been publicly critical of Putin, after previously accusing Ukraine of not wanting peace.
“We get a lot of b******t thrown at us by Putin. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Since February, the US has held separate talks with Russia and Ukraine, and brokered direct talks between them in May in Istanbul for the first time since the early months of Russia’s full-fledged invasion in 2022.
But while Putin has offered brief pauses in fighting, he has not accepted the US proposal for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine has accepted that proposal. Russia argues that Ukraine could use the truce to remobilise troops and rearm itself.
When asked by reporters this week whether he would act on his frustration with Putin, Trump responded: “I wouldn’t be telling you. Don’t we want to have a little surprise?”
However, experts caution against concluding that Trump was ready to act tough against Russia.
“Western media is full of commentary on what it calls Trump‘s ‘changing stance’ on Putin. But as yet, there is no reason to think that anything has changed at all,” Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera.
“There is a wave of optimism across the world that this might finally lead to a change in US policy. But, on every previous occasion, this has not happened.”
Indeed, after the Thursday meeting between Rubio and Lavrov, both sides suggested that they were willing to continue to engage diplomatically.
Arming Ukraine to fight off Russia
In early July, the Trump administration announced a decision to “pause” arms supply to Kyiv. A week later, he reversed this decision.
“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They are getting hit very hard now,” said Trump on July 8.
On Thursday, Trump told NBC that these weapons would be sold to NATO, which will pay fully for them. NATO will then pass them on to Ukraine.
“We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, a hundred percent,” Trump told NBC, adding that the US will be sending Patriot missiles to the alliance.
Trump said this deal was agreed on during the NATO summit in The Hague in June.
Trump had also frozen aid to Ukraine in February, after a falling out with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a rancorous meeting in the White House. Trump accused Zelenskyy of talking the US into “spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won”.
Trump resumed the supplies weeks later. Between January 2022 and April 2025, the US has provided Ukraine with about $134bn in aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Trump’s MAGA [Make America Great Again] base has been critical of the funding that the US provides Ukraine.
Following Trump’s announcement that the US will resume sending weapons to Ukraine, several conservative Americans have responded with disappointment.
“I did not vote for this,” wrote Derrick Evans on X on July 8. Evans was one of Trump’s supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and was arrested, to be pardoned by Trump in January this year.
Conservative social media duo Keith and Kevin Hodge wrote on X on July 8: “Who in the hell is telling Trump that we need to send more weapons to Ukraine?”
Sanctioning Russia
When asked on July 8 about his interest in a Congress bill proposing additional sanctions on Russia, Trump responded, “I’m looking at it very strongly.”
Since the war in Ukraine started in 2022, the US and its allies have imposed at least 21,692 sanctions on Russian individuals, media organisations, and institutions across sectors such as the military, energy, aviation, shipbuilding and telecommunications.
However, while these sanctions have hit Russia’s economy, it has not collapsed the way some experts had predicted it would in the early months of the war.
In recent months, Zelenskyy has repeatedly requested his allies in the West to tighten sanctions on Russia, to put pressure on Putin to end the war.
Most recently, Zelenskyy posted on X on Friday following a Russian drone attack in Kharkiv: “Sanctions must be strengthened. We are expecting the adoption of a new sanctions package. Everything that will put pressure on Russia and stop it must be implemented as quickly as possible.”
A bipartisan Senate bill sponsored by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham aims to levy tariffs on countries that import oil, gas and uranium from Russia.
In 2023, crude petroleum, petroleum gas and refined petroleum constituted nearly 54 percent of total Russian exports, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).
According to the OEC, China and India buy a bulk of Russia’s oil and gas products.
In 2024, Russian oil accounted for 35 percent of India’s total crude imports and 19 percent of China’s oil imports. Turkiye also imports Russian oil, with as much as 58 percent of its refined petroleum imports sourced from Russia in 2023.
But the West has not weaned itself off Russia, either.
In 2024, European countries paid more than $700m to buy Russian uranium products, according to an analysis by Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, based on data from the European Union’s statistical office, Eurostat.
In late March this year, Trump expressed anger with Putin and threatened “secondary tariffs” on any country that buys Russian oil if a ceasefire deal is not reached, but these tariffs were not imposed.
“If a new sanctions bill does pass, and the United States does impose costs on Moscow for the first time during the current administration, this would be a radical departure from Trump’s consistent policy,” Giles said.
“It remains to be seen whether Trump will in fact allow this, or whether his deference to Putin will mean he continues to resist any possible countermeasures against Moscow.”
Walking away from the conflict
On April 18, US Secretary of State Rubio said his country might “move on” from the Russia-Ukraine war if a ceasefire deal is not brokered.
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters in Paris after talks between American, Ukrainian and European officials.
“Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on. It’s not our war. We have other priorities to focus on,” Rubio continued.
On the same day, Trump echoed Rubio’s statements to reporters. However, Trump did not say that he is ready to walk away from peace negotiations.
“Well, I don’t want to say that, but we want to see it end,” Trump said.
More diplomacy
The second day of talks between Rubio and Lavrov, however, suggests that the US has not given up on diplomacy yet.
Rubio told reporters on Thursday that the US and Russia have exchanged new ideas for peace in Ukraine. “I think it’s a new and a different approach,” Rubio said, without offering any details of what the “new approach” involved.
“I wouldn’t characterise it as something that guarantees a peace, but it’s a concept that, you know, that I’ll take back to the president,” Rubio added.
Following Rubio and Lavrov’s meeting on Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a news release that the US and Russia had “a substantive and frank exchange of views on the settlement in Ukraine” and will continue constructive dialogue.
