Archive May 20, 2025

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, May 20:

Fighting

• With peace talks on the horizon, Russia currently controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to ask for Ukrainian forces to retreat from four regions of Ukraine during peace talks.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out withdrawing troops from parts of eastern and southern Ukraine currently under Kyiv’s control in an interview with The Kyiv Independent.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Telegram it seized the village of Marine, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, and Novoolenivka village in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the claims.

Ceasefire talks

• United States President Donald Trump said Moscow and Kyiv “will immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire and an end to their war” following a phone call with Putin that lasted for more than two and a half hours on Monday night.
• Following the call, Putin told reporters that Russia is “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord, defining a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, [and] the timing of a possible peace agreement”.
• Putin repeated his oft-spoken point that any ceasefire would need to also address the “root causes of the crisis”, a reference to Ukraine’s potential entry into NATO.
• Zelenskyy said in a statement that Ukraine remains committed to peace talks, but Russia needs to also demonstrate its readiness to engage in meaningful dialogue. He also said the US is needed, saying: “It is crucial for all of us that the United States does not distance itself from the talks and the pursuit of peace, because the only one who benefits from that is Putin.” Moscow and Kyiv are also in talks about a major prisoner exchange, following a phone call on Monday, according to Zelenskyy.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European Union leaders told Trump they are ready to put more pressure and sanctions on Moscow. “Europe will increase the pressure on Moscow through sanctions. This is what we agreed upon with @POTUS after his conversation with Putin,” Merz said on X.
• Germany has joined Denmark in calling on China to exert its influence on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
• “China supports all efforts aimed at achieving peace,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday, adding Beijing “hoped that the parties concerned will carry on with the dialogue and negotiation”.
• Pope Leo XIV is interested in hosting talks between Russia and Ukraine, Trump said, a suggestion that was welcomed by US and European leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who said Italy is “ready to do its part to facilitate contacts and work for peace”. The Vatican did not confirm any such offer by the pope.

Economy

• Finland’s Ministry of Defence said it will use about 90 million euros ($101.35m) in proceeds from frozen Russian assets to buy ammunition for Ukraine. About $300bn of Russian assets have been frozen across the EU since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• The EU is expected to lower the current $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil as far as $50 per barrel as part of its new sanctions package this week, the Reuters news agency reported, citing EU officials.
• Poland seized 5 million metric tonnes of tyres for civilian Boeing aircraft bound for Russia in violation of international sanctions.

Islamabad, Pakistan – On May 9, 2023, thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets across major cities, targeting both public and private properties, especially those affiliated with the powerful Pakistani military.

Among the targets were the army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the residence of a top military commander in Lahore, which was set ablaze, and several other installations and monuments.

The demonstrators, supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), were protesting the arrest of their leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was detained at the Islamabad High Court on corruption charges.

Though Khan was released in less than 48 hours, the protests marked an unprecedented challenge to the military’s dominance, which has long been regarded as the most powerful and influential entity in Pakistan, wielding its authority in most spheres.

Almost exactly two years later, on May 11, 2025, thousands once again took to the streets, but this time in celebration – and praise – of the military.

India and Pakistan have each claimed wins in their brief but intense military clashes last week, during which they launched attacks on each other’s facilities on a scale unseen since their 1971 war.

What is clearer is the domestic impact of the near-war in Pakistan: a sharp surge in support for the military, which is viewed as having defended the country against Indian aggression.

A Gallup Pakistan survey conducted between May 11 and 15 showed that 96 percent of more than 500 respondents believed Pakistan had won the conflict.

Initial data and survey trends shared exclusively with Al Jazeera showed 82 percent rated the military’s performance as “very good”, with fewer than 1 percent expressing disapproval. Most significantly, 92 percent said their opinion of the military improved as a result of the conflict.

‘Black Day’ to ‘The Day of the Righteous Battle’

On May 11, a day after United States President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, cities across Pakistan were filled with people riding cars and motorbikes, honking horns and playing patriotic songs. They were waving the national flag and posters praising the military, particularly its chief, General Syed Asim Munir.

There was jubilation in the air, and relief. For four days before that, Pakistan had been locked in a tense military confrontation with archrival India, the latest chapter of a conflict that analysts say has long served as the principal raison d’être for the country’s military.

On May 7, more than two weeks after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, India, blaming Islamabad for the attack, launched missiles at multiple sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children.

Over the following three days, the two nuclear-armed nations launched missiles, drones and artillery at each other, bringing 1.6 billion people in the subcontinent to the brink of a full-fledged war.

After the ceasefire was announced, Pakistan’s government declared May 10 as “The Day of Righteous Battle”. This was a stark contrast to May 9, 2023, which the government had described as a “Black Day”, because of the violence unleashed by Khan’s supporters against public and private infrastructure.

Six days after the ceasefire, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed the military’s actions as a “golden chapter in military history”.

“This is a victory of the Armed Forces of Pakistan as well as the self-reliant, proud and dignified Pakistani nation. The entire nation is standing by the armed forces like a wall made of lead,” Sharif said in a statement, in a reference to the name of the operation against India, “Bunyan Marsoos“, an Arabic phrase meaning “a structure made of lead”.

Imprisoned ex-premier Khan, who has been in jail since August 2023, also issued a statement through his lawyers, saying the military needs public support more than ever.

“The morale of the nation becomes the strength of the armed forces. That is why I’ve consistently emphasised that we must not isolate our people, and we must breathe life back into our justice system,” Khan said, according to a message posted on his account on X, the social media platform, on May 13.

Though released soon after his arrest in May 2023, Khan was arrested again in August 2023 and remains in custody, along with his wife, Bushra Bibi.

‘Reverence turned to fear’

Since Pakistan’s independence from British colonial rule in August 1947, its military – especially the army – has remained the most dominant force in the country.

Maria Rashid, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, said the military has long portrayed itself as “the saviour and defender of Pakistan’s physical borders but also its ideological frontiers”.

This dominance has been cemented by four military coups and decades of direct and indirect rule. Before retiring after his six-year-long tenure, former Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in his farewell address, conceded in 2022 that Pakistan’s military had meddled in politics for decades. He also promised that in the future, the army would steer clear of interfering in Pakistan’s democratic sphere.

Yet the military’s stranglehold over the public’s goodwill has been tested in recent years.

When Imran Khan first became prime minister in 2018, the former cricket star turned-philanthropist-turned politician spoke of how his government and the army were “on one page”.

But like many of his predecessors, that relationship soured. In April 2022, Khan was ousted via a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Yet, unlike previous leaders, Khan fought back publicly, accusing the military and the US of directly engineering his removal. The military and the US have both vehemently and repeatedly denied those allegations.

His confrontations with the military escalated, including after General Munir assumed leadership in November 2022. Khan and the PTI launched a campaign of defiance, leading to dozens of criminal cases, including sedition against him and his colleagues.

The May 9 riots in 2023 triggered a sweeping crackdown against the PTI. Thousands of party workers were arrested by the police, with more than 100 subsequently tried in military courts, many receiving prison sentences.

While the military has faced allegations of domestic repression before, Rashid said that the backlash after Khan’s ouster was unprecedented.

“It was a fall from grace, and it was vocal. It also coincided with the rise of social media, where the military found it difficult to control narratives,” she said.

“If earlier, there was reverence for the military, lately, it has been just fear,” she added.

‘Indispensable military’

The Pakistani military’s centrality has also been shaped by repeated wars with India – in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999 – primarily over Kashmir, which both nations claim in full but control only parts of.

For Muhammad Badar Alam, a political analyst, the sense of a perpetual threat posed by India is “one of the fundamental factors” that gave the military a prominent position in society, politics and governance.

Since their last conventional war in 1999, India has accused Pakistan of fomenting violence and “terrorism” on its soil by supporting violent elements, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan denies the charges, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris.

The last quarter of a century has seen multiple attacks inside India, especially the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which more than 160 people died, which India said was planned and executed by armed groups in Pakistan.

Islamabad acknowledged that the perpetrators of the attack might have been Pakistani, but rejected India’s allegations that its government or military had any role in the assault on Mumbai.

Ties between India and Pakistan nosedived further following the rise to power of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014.

Since then, India has responded to armed attacks on its soil by striking inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2016, 2019 and now, in 2025.

Lahore-based Alam told Al Jazeera that Modi’s hardened stance has helped the Pakistani military justify its power.

“As long as the threat from the east exists, the military remains indispensable,” he said.

‘War of perception?’

Both sides have made contradictory claims about the recent four-day conflict. Pakistan reported shooting down five Indian fighter jets and emphasised the significance of the US-led ceasefire. Trump urged a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, an issue India insists can only be resolved through bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan, without third-party involvement.

India claimed deep strikes into Pakistani territory, targeting both alleged hideouts of armed groups and military installations.

Islamabad-based political commentator Arifa Noor said that a conflict with a “next-door neighbour” does rally the citizenry around the state and its armed forces, and this is as true of Pakistan as it is of any other country.

Noor added that while there is no doubt the military in Pakistan is enjoying a groundswell of goodwill, it might be too early to conclusively identify the impact of this on domestic politics.

“Punjab, being on the border, saw the most visible support. But provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan might view it differently,” she said.

Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have seen sustained violence. Critics there accuse the military of human rights abuses and enforced disappearances – allegations the Pakistani military denies.

Alam, echoing Noor’s view, also says the outpouring of public support was primarily visible in Punjab, as well as other urban areas of the country.

Alam also said that with Imran Khan still in jail, it is unclear how much the military’s image has changed in the eyes of the former prime minister’s core supporters.

Will popularity surge last?

Analysts warn that despite the “rally around the flag” effect that becomes pronounced in times of international tension, public support for leaders and institutions is typically short-lived.

Niloufer Siddiqui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Albany in New York state, told Al Jazeera that it is unclear how long the military will receive an approval bump from the current crisis. Much, she said, could depend on “Indian rhetoric and whether it continues to be inflammatory”.

Siddiqui further added that it will also depend on the type of rhetoric in which the PTI, which previously was a harsh critic of the military, chooses to engage going forward.

London-based Rashid, who is also the author of Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army, said the big question for Pakistanis going forward would be whether they could draw a distinction between the military’s role at the borders and its involvement in domestic politics.

“We need to be able to call out the involvement of Pakistan Army in politics, but, at the same time, acknowledge that their performance at the border is praiseworthy at this moment,” she said.

Alam, meanwhile, said that the military, too, had lessons to learn from the crisis with India.

With his successor, Donald Trump, he added his voice to those who accuse him of lying to the public while he was in office, with the diagnosis of former US President Joe Biden raising new questions about whether he deceived the public about his health.

In light of recent scrutiny of the former president’s physical and mental health during his tenure, President Trump questioned the timing of Biden’s advanced cancer diagnosis during a press conference on Monday.

Trump addressed reporters at the White House, “I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago.”

Why did it take so long, exactly? It takes a long time to accomplish this. In response to Biden’s cancer’s advanced stage, Trump continued, “It can take years to get this level of danger.”

“Look, it’s a very sad situation, I feel very badly about it,” he said. And I believe that inquiry should be conducted into what transpired.

Trump added that Biden’s doctors were “not telling the facts” when they had been seeing him in office.

He responded, “That’s a big problem.”

The former president was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, according to Biden’s office’s statement from Sunday.

According to the statement, Biden was diagnosed on Friday after showing “increasing urinary symptoms” and that his and his family were considering treatment options.

According to the statement, doctors gave Biden’s cancer a score of 9 on the Gleason classification system, which typically ranks prostate cancer between 6 and 10 based on its aggressiveness.

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, late-stage prostate cancer has an average five-year survival rate of 28%.

Biden thanked well-wishers earlier on Monday for their encouragement and support.

On social media, Biden wrote, “Cancer touches us all.

Jill and I have discovered that our bonds are strongest when things go wrong, just like so many of you. I appreciate you loving and supporting us.

We are all affected by cancer. Jill and I have discovered that our bonds are strongest when things go wrong, just like so many of you. I appreciate you loving and supporting us. pic. twitter.com/oSS1vGIiwU

Before the release of a new book detailing the alleged cover-up of his physical and mental deterioration by his inner circle, Biden’s health was already under renewed scrutiny as a result of the news of his cancer diagnosis.

The original Sin, which was written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, contains numerous damning accounts of Biden’s alleged decline, including an incident where the then-president allegedly refused to recognize Hollywood actor George Clooney at a 2024 fundraiser.

Trump drew a connection between the former president’s cancer and the alleged concealment of his mental illness in his remarks on Biden’s diagnosis on Monday.

According to Trump, “if you take a look, it’s the same doctor who said Joe was cognitively fine and there was nothing wrong with him.”

Someone will need to speak to his doctor, he said, adding that there are things going on that the general public wasn’t aware of.

Some doctors have publicly refuted Biden’s office’s claim that his cancer diagnosis had to have spread over a long period of time.

For example, even with the most aggressive form, it can take 5-7 years before it becomes metastatic, according to Steven Quay, a pathologist who heads the biopharmaceutical business, Atossa Therapeutics.

It would be improper for this patient to appear in May 2025 and receive a first diagnosis of metastatic disease, “Meaning.” The American people were ignorant throughout his White House tenure, and it is highly likely that he had prostate cancer in his possession.

It would have been confirmed by a blood test known as a prostate-specific antigen (PSA), according to Howard P. Forman, a professor of radiology at Yale University.

Prior to this diagnosis, “Gleason grade 9 would have experienced an elevated PSA level.” And he must have previously undergone numerous PSA tests. This is strange, Forman wrote in an X post.

However, according to Peter Nelson, an oncologist at the Seattle Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, prostate cancer can develop and spread quickly in a matter of days. However, it can typically persist for years before spreading to other areas of the body.

According to Nelson, “prostate cancer can develop and then spread in a very short time span, say one to two years,” according to Nelson.

“So it is likely that a man of his age and position could have his cancer progress and progress without being discovered. This is definitely occurring, Nelson said, not something that happens frequently.

Although Biden has “very likely” had cancer for years, according to Daniel W. Lin, a prostate cancer expert at UW Medicine in Washington state, it is possible he didn’t have a PSA test.

Many medical organizations do not recommend PSA testing after 70 or 75 years of age, but others do so based on life expectancy or state of health rather than age cut-points, according to Lin told Al Jazeera. “There are screening controversies with the use of PSA,” Lin said.

Lin added that Biden might have a more uncommon form of cancer that the test couldn’t find.

“This circumstance is not overly uncommon, but it is. Additionally, he noted that high-grade cancers, like former President Biden’s case, are more prevalent when this happens.

He does not fall into this category, according to the odds, but it can definitely happen.

The Vancouver Prostate Centre’s director, Peter Black, said Biden’s cancer wouldn’t have been detected until tests showed it was undiagnosed, which would be his best guess for the apparently unanticipated diagnosis.

According to Black, “my best guess is that he has had a PSA done every year for a long time because that is what you would expect from a US senator/vice president/president,” according to Black.