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US could hit Russia with more sanctions over Ukraine war, but also wants Europe to increase pressure

Trump’s decision to hit Russia with sanctions capped a tumultuous week with respect to the administration’s Ukraine policy.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has prepared additional sanctions it could use to target key areas of Russia’s economy if President Vladimir Putin continues to delay ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter, Reuters reported.

U.S. officials have also told European counterparts that they support the EU using frozen Russian assets to buy U.S. weapons for Kyiv, and Washington has held nascent internal conversations about leveraging Russian assets held in the U.S. to support Ukraine’s war effort, two U.S. officials said.

While it is not clear whether Washington will actually carry out any of those moves in the immediate term, it shows there is a well-developed toolkit within the administration to up the ante further after Trump imposed sanctions on Russia on Wednesday for the first time since returning to office in January.

Trump has positioned himself as a global peacemaker, but has admitted that trying to end Russia’s more-than-three-year war in neighboring Ukraine has proven harder than he had anticipated.

His meeting with Putin in Alaska in August failed to make progress. Trump told reporters in Doha on Saturday that he would not meet with Putin again unless a peace deal appeared likely. “I’m not going to be wasting my time,” Trump said.

European allies — buffeted by Trump’s swings between accommodation and anger toward Putin — hope he keeps increasing pressure on Moscow.

One senior U.S. official told Reuters that he would like to see European nations make the next big Russia move, which could be additional sanctions or tariffs. A separate source with knowledge of internal administration dynamics said Trump was likely to hit pause for a few weeks and gauge Russia’s reaction to Wednesday’s sanctions announcement.

Those sanctions took aim at oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft. The moves spiked oil prices by more than $2 and sent major Chinese and Indian buyers of Russian crude looking for alternatives.

Trump said on Saturday that when he meets with President Xi Jinping on Thursday, China’s purchases of Russian oil may be discussed. But China is cutting back “very substantially” on Russian oil and “India is cutting back completely,” Trump told reporters.

Some of the additional sanctions prepared by the United States target Russia’s banking sector and the infrastructure used to get oil to market, said a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.

Last week, Ukrainian officials proposed new sanctions that the U.S. could levy, said one source with knowledge of those conversations. Their ideas included measures to cut off all Russian banks from the dollar-based system with U.S. counterparts, two sources said. It is not clear, however, whether Ukraine’s specific requests are being seriously considered by U.S. officials, Reuters reported.

Some U.S. senators are renewing a push to get a long-stalled bipartisan sanctions bill over the line. The person with knowledge of internal administration dynamics said Trump is open to endorsing the package. The source warned, though, that such an endorsement is unlikely this month.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, said on Friday he believes his country, the United States and Ukraine are close to a diplomatic solution to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Halyna Yusypiuk, Ukrainian Embassy spokesperson in Washington, said the recent sanctions decision was appreciated, but did not otherwise comment.

“Dismantling Russia’s war machine is the most humane way to bring this war to an end,” Yusypiuk wrote in an email.

Trump’s decision to hit Russia with sanctions capped a tumultuous week with respect to the administration’s Ukraine policy.

Trump spoke with Putin last week and then announced the pair planned to meet in Budapest, catching Ukraine off guard.

A day later Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington, where U.S. officials pressed Zelenskiy to give up territory in the Donbas region as part of a lopsided land swap to end the war. Zelenskiy pushed back, and Trump left the meeting with the position that the conflict should be frozen at its frontlines.

Then last weekend Russia sent a diplomatic note to Washington reiterating previous peace terms. A few days later Trump told reporters the planned meeting with Putin was off because “it just didn’t feel right to me.”

Speaking to CNN on Friday after arriving in Washington for talks with U.S. officials, Dmitriev said a meeting between Trump and Putin had not been cancelled, as the U.S. president described it, and that the two leaders will likely meet at a later date.

Two U.S. officials argued privately that, in hindsight, Trump’s abortive plan to meet with Putin was likely the fruit of irrational exuberance. After sealing a ceasefire in Gaza, those officials said, Trump overestimated the degree he could use momentum from one diplomatic success to broker another one.

Trump ultimately decided to slap Russia with sanctions during a Wednesday meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a senior White House official said.

World

Israeli attacks kill 31 Palestinians in Gaza, including children

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At least 31 Palestinians, including six children, were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis since early Saturday, according to medical sources cited by Al Jazeera.

The strikes came a day before Israel is scheduled to reopen the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday, marking the first reopening of the border crossing since May 2024.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since a United States-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10.

According to local health authorities, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 71,769 Palestinians and wounded 171,483 others since it began in October 2023. In Israel, at least 1,139 people were killed during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, with approximately 250 people taken captive.

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Guterres warns of UN’s ‘imminent financial collapse’

In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”

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The U.N. chief has told member states the organisation is at risk of “imminent financial collapse,” citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces the global body to return unspent money, a letter seen by Reuters on Friday showed.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly spoken about the organisation’s worsening liquidity crisis but this is his starkest warning yet, and it comes as its main contributor the U.S. is retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts.

“The crisis is deepening, threatening programme delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future,” Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28.

The U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies and refused to make mandatory payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.

U.S. President Donald Trump has described the U.N. as having “great potential” but said it is not fulfilling that, and he has launched a Board of Peace which some fear could undermine the older international body.

Founded in 1945, the U.N. has 193 member states and works to maintain international peace and security, promote human rights, foster social and economic development, and coordinate humanitarian aid.

In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”

He did not say which state or states he was referring to, and a U.N. spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Under U.N. rules, contributions depend on the size of the economy of each member state. The U.S. accounts for 22% of the core budget followed by China with 20%.

But by the end of 2025 there was a record $1.57 billion in outstanding dues, Guterres said, without naming the nations that owed them.

“Either all Member States honour their obligations to pay in full and on time – or Member States must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse,” he said.

U.N. officials say the U.S. currently owes $2.19 billion to the regular U.N. budget, another $1.88 billion for active peace-keeping missions and $528 million for past peace-keeping missions.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Guterres letter.

Guterres launched a reform task force last year, known as UN80, which seeks to cut costs and improve efficiency. To that end, states agreed to cut the 2026 budget by around 7% to $3.45 billion.

Still, Guterres warned in the letter that the organisation could run out of cash by July.

One of the problems is a rule now seen as antiquated whereby the global body has to credit back hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent dues to states each year.

“In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle expected to give back cash that does not exist,” said Guterres, referring to author Franz Kafka who wrote about oppressive bureaucratic processes.

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Man sprays U.S. lawmaker Ilhan Omar with liquid, disrupting Minnesota event

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Police arrested a man who sprayed Democratic U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar with a foul-smelling liquid in Minneapolis on Tuesday as she condemned the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Minnesota.

Omar, the frequent target of political insults from President Donald Trump, was uninjured. A security guard immediately grabbed the man and took him to the ground, according to a Reuters witness and video of the town hall event, Reuters reported.

Police said they arrested the man for third-degree assault.

In her remarks, Omar was criticizing ICE and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, demanding that Noem resign after the recent shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during Trump’s immigration enforcement surge.

“ICE cannot be reformed, it cannot be rehabilitated, we must abolish ICE for good, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said, to applause.

Moments later, a man seated in a front row stepped toward her and sprayed her with the contents of what police described as a syringe, telling Omar, “You must resign.”

Omar defiantly took a few steps toward him, with her hand raised, before he was subdued.

She continued her remarks after a short break, resisting associates’ urging to seek medical attention, saying she just needed a napkin. Her office later issued a statement saying she was OK.

Forensic scientists were gathering evidence at the scene, Minneapolis police said in a statement.

A Reuters witness said the liquid smelled of ammonia and caused minor throat irritation.

“I learned at a young age, you don’t give in to threats,” Omar told the audience, after refusing to suspend the event. “You look them in the face and you stand strong.”

Trump has repeatedly targeted Omar in public remarks and social media posts, also taking aim at her Somali nationality.

“Ilhan Omar is garbage,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting in December. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

Omar, 43, came to the United States as a 12-year-old girl and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.

On Tuesday, U.S. Capitol Police said its threat assessment cases rose in 2025 for the third year in a row, spiking nearly 58% from 2024.

In 2025, it investigated 14,938 instances of statements, behavior, and communications directed against members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol complex, it added, up from 9,474 in 2024.

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