Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the U.S. appreciated Ukraine’s willingness for a ceasefire, but the U.S. is trying to move beyond that. “What the Russians have said is ‘a 30-day ceasefire is not in our strategic interests.’ So we’ve tried to move beyond the obsession with the 30-day ceasefire and more on the, what would a long-term settlement look like?” he said.
He also said it was a “difficult decision” toin 2024 four months from Election Day to allow former Vice President Kamala Harris to challenge Trump. But, he added, making that move earlier as some critics had suggested “would(n’t) have mattered.”
The term appeasement refers to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s efforts in the 1930s to appease Adolf Hitler’s moves to annex land in Europe, which failed to prevent World War II.Trump has long dismissed the war in Ukraine as a waste of lives and American taxpayer money. Early in his presidency, Trump ordered. The two countries last week signed an agreement granting American access to Ukraine’s
— a return on investment, Trump suggested, that could pave the way for more U.S. aid.He has also said that Crimea, a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, “will stay with Russia.”
Biden said he worried that relations between the U.S. and Europe was eroding under Trump, with NATO member nations reconsidering whether they trust the U.S.
“Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America,” Biden told the BBC. The continent’s leaders, he added, were asking: “‘Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?’”Aside from the impractical nature of Israel’s proposals for distributing food, aid groups say Israel has yet to address how its new system would account for other needs, including health care and the repair of basic infrastructure, including water delivery.
“Humanitarian aid is more complex than food rations in a box that you pick up once a month,” said Gavin Kelleher, who worked in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Aid boxes can weigh more than 100 pounds, and transportation within Gaza is limited, in part because of shortages of fuel.Experts say Israel is concerned that if Hamas seizes aid, it will then make the population dependent on the armed group in order to access critical food supplies. It could use income from selling the aid to recruit more fighters, said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at two Israeli think tanks, the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute.
Palestinians struggle in a crowd as they try to receive donated food at a distribution center in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)Palestinians struggle in a crowd as they try to receive donated food at a distribution center in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)