President Donald Trump has renewed his threat to cut “Democrat programmes” as the United States government shutdown heads into its fifteenth day without resolution.
“The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we’re closing up programmes that are Democrat programmes that we were opposed to… and they’re never going to come back in many cases,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, according to ABC News.
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Trump said a list of programmes may be released as soon as Friday, although he did not provide further details in his remarks. He said that “Republican programmes” would be safe.
Trump has already used the government shutdown to pause or cut $28bn in federal funding for infrastructure and energy projects in Democrat-leaning states like California, Illinois and New York.
The White House has also started making cuts to the federal workforce. About 4,200 employees from eight government departments and agencies received “reduction-in-force notices” on Friday, according to CNBC.
Major cuts were made at the Treasury Department, the Health and Human Services Department, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some programmes on the chopping block included those historically supported by Republicans as well as Democrats. They included the entire staff of the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which works with low-income communities, according to CNBC.
There are about 2.25 million civilian federal employees, according to the Congressional Budget Office, of whom some 60 percent work in the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.
Approximately 750,000 federal employees have been on furlough since the shutdown began two weeks ago, while “essential” workers have continued working without pay until they can be reimbursed when the shutdown ends.
The White House says it will take the unusual move of reallocating $8bn in existing funds to keep paying military and coastguard personnel throughout the shutdown, although historically, they also work without pay.
The Senate remains deadlocked over a government spending bill needed to end the shutdown.
A Republican-backed spending bill, which would have extended government funding to November 21, on Monday failed in a vote of 49 to 45, broadly down party lines.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stripped the mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, of Ukrainian citizenship over allegations that he possesses a Russian passport.
The Ukrainian leader has instead appointed a military administration to run the country’s biggest port city on the Black Sea, with a population of about 1 million.
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“The Ukrainian citizenship of the mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, has been suspended,” Ukraine’s SBU security service announced on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday, citing a decree signed by Zelenskyy.
The SBU accused the mayor of “possessing a valid international passport from the aggressor country”.
Ukraine prohibits its citizens from also holding citizenship in Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the move against Trukhanov could see him deported from the country.
In a post on social media, Zelenskyy said he had held a meeting with the head of the SBU, which had reported on “countering Russian agent networks and collaborators in the front-line and border regions, as well as in the south of our country”.
The SBU chief “confirmed… the fact that certain individuals hold Russian citizenship – relevant decisions regarding them have been prepared. I have signed the decree”, Zelenskyy said.
I held a meeting on the security situation in some of our regions – these are matters of principle.
Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Maliuk reported on countering Russian agent networks and collaborators in the frontline and border regions, as well as in the south… pic.twitter.com/MxKyKjPYc9
“Far too many security issues in Odesa have remained unanswered for far too long,” the president also said, according to reports, without providing specific details.
A former member of parliament, Trukhanov has been the mayor of Odesa since 2014. He has consistently denied accusations of holding Russian citizenship, an allegation that has dogged him throughout his political career.
“I have never received a Russian passport. I am a Ukrainian citizen,” Trukhanov stressed in a video message posted on Telegram following the announcement of his citizenship revocation.
Trukhanov said he would “continue to perform the duties of elected mayor” as long as possible and that he would take the case to court.
Images of a Russian passport allegedly belonging to Trukhanov have been shared widely on social media in Ukraine.
SBU says: pic.twitter.com/fcRe8acOgo
Once considered a politician with pro-Russian leanings, Trukhanov pivoted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and has publicly condemned Moscow while focusing on defending Odesa and aiding the Ukrainian army.
A source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency that Zelenskyy had also removed the Ukrainian citizenships of two other people.
Local media outlet The Kyiv Independent identified the two as Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Ukrainian politician and now alleged Russian collaborator Oleg Tsaryov.
Polunin, who sports a large tattoo of Putin on his chest, was born in southern Ukraine but obtained Russian citizenship in 2018. He supported Russia’s 2022 invasion and, earlier in 2014, backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea, where he lived and worked.
Islamabad, Pakistan – When Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, visited Kabul in April and met his Afghan Taliban counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, analysts viewed the occasion as marking a reset of relations amid the increasing hostilities between the two former allies.
Subsequent meetings between the two in May and August, brokered by China, reinforced that sentiment.
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But a deadly weekend of clashes along the countries’ porous border has put those diplomatic overtures on hold. Islamabad says it killed more than 200 Taliban fighters; the Taliban government says 58 Pakistani soldiers were killed. The death toll on both sides underscores how fragile the détente earlier in the year was.
Pakistan, which has been grappling with a dramatic surge in attacks – especially in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where dozens of military personnel have died – accuses the Taliban of giving sanctuary to armed groups that launch cross-border attacks.
The Taliban denies those charges. But on Thursday night, Kabul was rocked by explosions and gunfire. Pakistan neither confirmed nor denied involvement, but the Taliban government said Pakistan had been behind the attacks in Kabul and in an eastern Afghan province, and promised retaliation.
Fighting flared again on Saturday night. Pakistan acknowledged that the clashes left at least 23 of its soldiers dead and another 29 injured, and said its forces had taken control of more than 21 posts on Afghan territory. Kabul has not confirmed the Taliban’s casualty figures.
That immediate military escalation has passed, but the clashes have evoked parallels with Pakistan’s tense new equation with its eastern neighbour, India, after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the killing of 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in April.
Like the Taliban’s position on anti-Pakistan armed groups ostensibly operating from Afghan soil, Islamabad, too, rejected any link with the attackers in Indian-administered Kashmir. But just as Islamabad has long accused the Taliban of sheltering groups that attack Pakistan, India has, for decades, alleged that Pakistan supports and sponsors “terrorist” groups that target its territory.
Now, some analysts say, Pakistan is trying to establish a “new normal” with the Taliban, by making clear that future attacks on its soil could invite retribution inside Afghanistan. The stance mirrors a position India’s Narendra Modi government took against Pakistan in April, and that Islamabad protested against at the time.
India launched strikes inside Pakistani territory in May, resulting in a four-day-long conflict, with both sides using missiles, drones and artillery to attack each other.
This shifting landscape between Pakistan and Afghanistan suggests, analysts say, that while the fighting over the weekend might have eased, tensions are likely to simmer in the coming weeks, and a lasting breakthrough remains elusive.
Trigger behind the border clashes
Out of the various armed groups reportedly operating from Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities regard the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the biggest threat. The TTP emerged in 2007 amid the United States-led, so-called “war on terror”, and has for years waged an armed campaign against Islamabad.
It seeks to implement strict Islamic law, has demanded the release of imprisoned members, and calls for a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s former tribal areas with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The TTP is independent of Afghanistan’s Taliban, but the two groups are ideologically aligned.
Islamabad blames Kabul for allowing sanctuary for the TTP, as well as other groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
TTP attacks have increased sharply since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, and numbers highlight the increasing trend.
“Our data show that the TTP engaged in at least 600 attacks against, or clashes with, security forces in the past year alone. Its activity in 2025 so far already exceeds that seen in all of 2024,” a recent report by the US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project said.
In the last few days, several attacks have killed more than two dozen Pakistani soldiers, including officers, with the latest such incident on October 8.
Regional powers – including China, Iran and Russia – have repeatedly urged the Taliban to eliminate the TTP and other armed groups operating from Afghanistan. That call was renewed at the Moscow Format consultation in early October, which was also attended by Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister.
Abdul Basit, a scholar of militancy and a research fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said he expects more diplomacy in the coming days, led by countries that have strong ties with both the Taliban and Pakistan, such as Gulf nations or China.
“I think it is plausible that Islamabad and Kabul will hold another round of meetings in some third country to re-engage in dialogue, but I believe that tensions will continue to simmer, sometimes going up or sometimes going down. We certainly cannot rule out another round of hostilities at the border,” he told Al Jazeera.
Seema Ilahi Baloch, a former Pakistani ambassador who has been involved in informal Pakistan-Afghanistan talks in the past, said that Islamabad had so far failed to persuade the Taliban to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for attacks against Pakistan.
“Both sides must realise that such conflicts undermine bilateral cooperation and negatively impact regional stability,” she said. “China, which has influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, can be the interlocutor to mend fences between the two through diplomacy,” she added.
(Al Jazeera)
Islamabad’s new normal?
Still, analysts say it is becoming increasingly difficult for Pakistan’s officials to ignore the mounting death toll in the country from attacks that Islamabad alleges have originated in Afghanistan.
The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), an Islamabad-based think tank, put the number of deaths of Pakistan’s security personnel at more than 2,400 in the first three quarters of this year, which is on track to become the deadliest year in a decade.
Basit said that Islamabad is trying to define a new normal in which any attack believed to have originated in Afghanistan – whether by the TTP or another group – will carry a cost for Kabul.
“Any attack which emanates from Afghanistan will be responded [to] with [the] same ferocity on their territory, with Pakistan implying that Afghan Taliban are facilitating such attacks in Pakistan, and thus are legitimate targets,” he said.
Basit acknowledged that Pakistan’s new approach appears similar to what New Delhi adopted against Islamabad after the April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, but said there was a key difference. Regardless of the casualties on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during the past weekend’s clashes, the military asymmetry between the two sides is significant, unlike the scenario between India and Pakistan.
He pointed to Pakistan’s ability to hit back against India’s attacks in May: Pakistan was able to shoot down several Indian jets in the process. The Taliban, however, though battle-hardened fighters who have a long history of repelling foreign powers, do not have the equipment and training that Pakistan’s professional army does. “There is a difference,” Basit said.
Aamer Raza, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Peshawar, said there was a growing feeling within Pakistani policy circles that patience with Afghanistan was wearing thin in the Pakistani establishment.
“Although some engagement is inevitable, major breakthroughs shouldn’t immediately be expected. With Pakistan’s clear superiority in air and projectile warfare, even in the last clashes, it could have inflicted greater damage on Afghanistan, but it largely refrained,” he told Al Jazeera.
After the weekend clashes, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the first time, also questioned the legitimacy of the Taliban government itself, even though Islamabad was the movement’s chief patron for a quarter of a century.
Pakistan demanded “concrete and verifiable actions against these terrorist elements by the Taliban regime” and urged a more inclusive government. “We also hope that one day, the Afghan people would be emancipated, and they would be governed by a true representative government,” the statement read.
Baloch, the diplomat, downplayed that language, suggesting that Islamabad was merely calling for elections in Afghanistan.
Basit, however, argued that the wording was significant. “This language of the statement also hints that Pakistan might be open to the idea of throwing its support behind anti-Taliban groups if the current regime continues to ignore Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns,” he said.
The New Delhi factor
The weekend’s clashes also coincided with Muttaqi’s first visit to India. He is, in fact, the first senior Taliban leader to travel to New Delhi since the group took control of Afghanistan four years ago.
Muttaqi received a temporary United Nations-sanctions exemption to travel for a week, from October 9 to 16, and met Indian Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar.
Afghanistan’s interim foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi is visiting India from October 9 to 16 for his maiden visit to the country after the Taliban took over the country in August 2021 [Elke Scholiers/Getty Images]
Kabul’s moves towards New Delhi also represent the culmination of months of diplomacy that Pakistan has watched closely.
From the mid-1990s until a few years ago, India viewed the Taliban as a proxy for Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, and accused the group and its allies of deadly attacks on its diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.
But since the group returned to power in Afghanistan, and amid rising Taliban-Pakistan tensions, India has engaged in a series of outreach efforts with Kabul’s new leaders, leading to Muttaqi’s visit.
Islamabad continues to allege that New Delhi is fomenting trouble in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, and that some groups are funded or supported by New Delhi from Afghan territory, charges that India has consistently rejected.
Now, with tensions on both its western and eastern fronts, Islamabad needs to stay cautious, said Baloch, the former ambassador.
“No country can afford to open war fronts on all its borders, and that goes for Pakistan also,” she said.
Meanwhile, some analysts have questioned Pakistan’s posture of neither accepting responsibility for last Thursday’s explosions in Afghanistan, nor denying a role.
This could damage Pakistan’s credibility if groups based in Afghanistan attack Pakistan again, suggested Fahad Nabeel, who leads the Islamabad-based research consultancy Geopolitical Insights.
“The main question will be why Pakistani officials did not claim responsibility for the past alleged strikes [in Afghanistan, in response to attacks in Pakistan]. If Pakistan merely uses the terrorism-threat narrative, critics will ask why it did not take such actions in the past decade,” Nabeel told Al Jazeera.
However, Nabeel said that he did not see major parallels between India’s response to the April attack and Pakistan’s recent approach towards the Taliban. “The only commonalities,” he said, lay in both India and Pakistan accusing its neighbours, Pakistan and Afghanistan, of not doing enough to stop UN-sanctioned individuals and groups from using their soil to attack others.
Singapore-based Basit said that Pakistan’s air strikes during Muttaqi’s visit were likely intended to send a message: that “Islamabad will not hesitate to use force if it perceives collusion between Kabul and New Delhi to undermine Pakistani security”.
However, like Baloch, Basit also acknowledged the limits of that posture. “No country can afford a two-front war,” he said.
Basit also said that bigger questions about Islamabad’s approach remained unanswered.
“What really is the end game here?” he asked.
“Are these strikes going to change the calculus of [the] Afghan Taliban to pushing them into action against the TTP, or will it drive them to forge a closer nexus with [the] TTP?” he asked.
Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 15, 2025:
Fighting
Russian forces launched powerful glide bombs and drones against Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in overnight attacks, hitting the city’s main hospital, wounding seven people, and forcing the evacuation of 50 patients, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces have taken control of the village of Balahan in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
A convoy of United Nations vehicles carrying aid supplies came under fire from Russian forces near the town of Bilozerka in the Kherson region, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, describing the attack as “utterly unacceptable”. There were no injuries in the attack on four UN trucks, two of which were set on fire by remote-controlled drones.
Local authorities have ordered the evacuation of families from dozens of villages near the all-but-destroyed northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, citing the “worsening security situation”.
Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, said that a total of 409 families with 601 children were told to leave 27 localities. Another official in the affected area later told public broadcaster Suspilne that the list of localities to be evacuated by families had been expanded to 40.
Russia will be able to deploy about 2 million military reservists to fight in Ukraine if needed under amendments to a law likely to be backed by the Russian parliament, according to reports.
Power outages were reported in the Ukrainian capital and other regions late on Tuesday due to a network overload and the aftermath of Russian attacks, the Kyiv City State Administration said. Power was cut in three central Kyiv districts on the west bank of the Dnipro River running through the city. Ukrenergo, which operates Ukraine’s high-voltage lines, said that lingering problems from Russian attacks on the country’s energy system had triggered outages in regions across northern, central and southeastern Ukraine.
Work is to begin this week to restore external power links to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which has been running on emergency diesel generators for three weeks. Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organisation based in Vienna, told the Russian state news agency RIA that it was “vital to agree on a local ceasefire in areas where the repair work is to be carried out”.
Military aid
NATO defence ministers will meet on Wednesday to try to drum up more military support for Ukraine amid a sharp drop in deliveries of weapons and ammunition to the war-ravaged country in recent months.
European military aid to Ukraine declined sharply this summer, despite a recent NATO initiative in which member countries bought US weapons and transferred them to Kyiv, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said.
The United Kingdom has delivered more than 85,000 military drones to Ukraine over the last six months, Secretary of State for Defence John Healey has said, according to the Press Association.
German Federal Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil said his country would continue to “financially secure Ukraine’s defence capabilities for the next few years”, while also working with the US to “massively increase pressure on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to end his brutal war of aggression”.
Politics and diplomacy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stripped the mayor of the port city of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, of his Ukrainian citizenship after it was discovered he held Russian citizenship. Trukhanov could now face deportation. Trukhanov denied the claim, saying, “I am a citizen of Ukraine”, and said he would challenge the decision in Ukraine’s Supreme Court and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights.
Zelenskyy said he would appoint a military administration to govern Odesa, citing unresolved security concerns. Ukraine prohibits dual citizenship with Russia, and Trukhanov has long faced allegations of holding both.
A Kyiv government source told the AFP news agency that Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin had also been stripped of citizenship. Polunin has been a vocal supporter of the Russian president. Pro-Kremlin politician Oleg Tsaryov, who survived an assassination attempt in 2023, was also among those who had their Ukrainian citizenship revoked, according to AFP.
United States President Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Russian leader Putin in advance of a planned visit by Zelenskyy to Washington, DC, later this week. “I don’t know why he continues with this war,” Trump said of Putin.
Zelenskyy is set to meet Trump in Washington, DC, on Friday, where the two will discuss Ukraine’s air defence and long-range strike capabilities.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said she was focusing on Russian attacks on her country’s energy grid in talks this week with US officials.
Svyrydenko described the priorities of her visit to Washington, DC, as “energy, sanctions and the development of cooperation with the USA in new ways that can strengthen both our countries”.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had opened a criminal case against exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other prominent Kremlin critics, accusing them of plotting to violently seize power. The FSB said it was investigating all 22 members of the Russian Antiwar Committee – a group of Russian politicians, businesspeople, journalists, lawyers, artists and academics all based outside the country, who oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Regional security
Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski warned that Europe must be prepared for Russia to strike deep into the region, calling it “irresponsible” not to build defences such as a “drone wall” on its eastern flank.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has accused China of undermining the international rules-based order through its increasingly aggressive policies in Asia and its support for Russia.
Wadephul also criticised Russia, saying Moscow is testing NATO’s resolve, violating European Union and NATO airspace, spying on Germany’s critical infrastructure and seeking to influence public discourse with propaganda and disinformation.
Trump threatened trade penalties, including tariffs, against Spain, saying he was unhappy with its refusal to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and calling the move disrespectful to NATO.
Pro-Russian hackers brought down the German government’s public procurement portal, the Sddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported on Tuesday. The cyberattack rendered this important interface between the state and businesses inaccessible for almost a week, the report said.
Sweden will set up its first emergency grain stocks in the north of the country, a region that risks being isolated in a conflict, the government said. In its 2026 budget, Stockholm plans to invest 575 million kronor ($60m) to set up the grain reserves. Sweden revived its “total defence” strategy in 2015 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and more measures were introduced after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Trade
Russia’s war in Ukraine is bad for US businesses, which have heavily invested in Europe and whose profits are affected by the uncertainty that Moscow’s aggression creates, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said. Dombrovskis said that in 2023, US-owned assets in Europe were worth an estimated $19.2 trillion, or roughly 64 percent of all US corporate foreign assets globally.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at some of the best photos from the nations that confirmed their qualification on Wednesday for the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Qatar’s defender Assim Madibo, left, drops to the floor to celebrate with Qatar’s Spanish coach Julian Lopetegui after the FIFA World Cup 2026 Asian qualifier football match against the UAE [Karim Jaafar/AFP]Qatar’s players celebrate at the full-time whistle against UAE as they reached a World Cup final for the first time through the qualification route [Karim Jaafar/AFP]Qatar’s players celebrate their achievement with fans at Jassim bin Hamad Stadium in Doha [Karim Jaafar/AFP]South Africa fans celebrate after qualifying for the FIFA World Cup following their victory against Rwanda [Esa Alexander/Reuters]A South Africa fan holds a scarf with his national’s football team’s nickname, Bafana Bafana, on it [Esa Alexander/Reuters]Another South Africa fan made sure she dressed for a party as the team secured qualification for the 2026 finals [Esa Alexander/Reuters]South Africa’s Evidence Makgopa celebrates scoring their third goal against Rwanda with teammates, a strike that was enough to put one foot in the finals for Bafana Bafana [Esa Alexander/Reuters]England captain Harry Kane looks towards the fans after the team’s victory in the FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier match in Latvia clinched their place at the 2026 finals [Carl Recine/Getty Images]Ivory Coast celebrate qualifying for the World Cup following their win against Kenya at Alassane Ouattara Stadium, Abidjan, Ivory Coast [Luc Gnago/Reuters]A sea of orange will descend on the 2026 finals when Ivory Coast fans travel to support their team [Luc Gnago/Reuters]Saudi Arabia’s sport minister, Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, celebrates after Saudi Arabia qualified for the FIFA World Cup following their victory against Iraq [Reuters]Saudi Arabia players celebrate after qualifying for the FIFA World Cup at King Abdullah Sport City, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia [Reuters]Senegal’s Sadio Mane, left, celebrates with teammates after scoring his side’s first goal during their World Cup group B qualifying win against Mauritania [Misper Apawu/AP]Senegal’s supporters cheer during the World Cup group B qualifying match against Mauritania at the Stade Abdoulaye Wade in Dakar, Senegal [Misper Apawu/AP]A Senegal supporter supplies another example of the sights that will be on display at next year’s FIFA World Cup [Misper Apawu/AP]
