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EU announces sanctions against violent Israel settlers

The EU has agreed sanctions on violent Israeli settlers, ending a years-long deadlock over the issue but still taking only a “baby step” according to one MEP. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said on Monday: “Violence and extremism carry consequences.” But there was still no consensus among the 27 member states on more hard-hitting trade sanctions. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the EU was “sanctioning the main Israeli organisations guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonisation of the West Bank, as well as their leaders”. “These most serious and intolerable acts must cease without delay,” he wrote on social media. The full list of names has not been published following Monday’s agreement in principle but is understood not to include two extremist Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The pair were put under UK sanctions last June for their “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”. The deadlock was broken after Hungary’s new pro-EU government lifted its veto on the sanctions, which had been blocked by the previous prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The EU would also sanction leading Hamas figures, Kallas said. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said the EU had chosen in “an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis”. The measures against a small number of settlers fall short of what some member states wanted. France and Sweden have called for tariffs on imported products from illegal settlements. “We believe that the EU urgently needs to increase the pressure on Israel to halt its settlement policy and practices,” the two countries wrote in a joint paper. Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said putting tariffs on products from illegal settlements was “the most realistic proposal”. Banning products requires unanimity among the 27 member states, whereas tariffs can be imposed by a majority vote. Under the EU-Israel association agreement, goods from the occupied territories miss out on preferential terms but trade is not prohibited. Kallas, who is also a vice-president of the European Commission, said she could not issue a draft law to impose tariffs on goods from illegal settlements: “I raised this issue that member states wanted this proposal. I asked [for] this, but the proposal is not there. And I can’t draft it.” Barry Andrews, an Irish centrist MEP, who chairs the European parliament’s development committee, said EU foreign ministers had taken a “welcome (baby) step”. Writing on X he called for enforcement of labelling and banning of settler products, as well as ending research cooperation with Israel. He added: “Ultimately, only a review of the EU-Israel association agreement, with view to suspension, will have a major impact.” Amid surging violence in the West Bank and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, the EU is under renewed pressure to use its leverage to push Israel’s government to change course. Former senior EU diplomats and officials called last week for sanctions against all individuals and entities engaged in illegal settlements, including planners, lawyers, banks and other professionals involved in the proposed E1 settlement. The signatories say this illegal settlement of 3,400 illegal homes would cut the West Bank in two “and so wreck any prospects of a viable Palestinian state”. The declaration was signed by 452 former senior EU politicians, diplomats and officials, including two former prime ministers, Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium and Stefan Löfven of Sweden. Since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, Israeli settlers have pursued a growing campaign of violent intimidation against Palestinians in the West Bank with the aim of driving them from their land. According to UN figures, 230 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers last year.

Middle East crisis live: Trump says ceasefire is ‘on massive life support’ after rejecting Iran’s response to US peace proposal

Donald Trump is meeting with his national security team on Monday to discuss the way forward in his war against Iran, including the possibility of resuming military action, Axios is reporting citing three US officials. His vice-president JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, CIA director John Ratcliffe and other senior officials are expected to participate, per Axios’s report. It comes as Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier that the ceasefire was “on massive life support” and accused Tehran of reneging on an agreement to allow the US to remove its supply of enriched uranium. It followed his declaration that the latest Iranian proposal to end the war was “unacceptable” and “garbage”. Iran on Sunday rejected the US’s proposal, which it said “meant Iran’s surrender to Trump’s excessive demands”. But Trump also said in the Oval Office that he thought a diplomatic solution was still “very possible”. He also told reporters he had a plan to end the war. However, two US officials told Axios that Trump is leaning toward taking some form of military action against Iran to increase pressure on the regime and force concessions on its nuclear program. “He will tune them up a bit,” said one US official. “I think we all know where this is going,” said the second.

Why is Putin now talking about the war in Ukraine ‘coming to an end’?

Vladimir Putin suggested that the war in Ukraine may be “coming to an end” on Saturday – comments that raise the question of why the Russian president might want to turn the spotlight on to a possible end to the war now given how the fighting is evolving. Russia is losing battlefield momentum After Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, Moscow had been gradually taking Ukrainian territory. Though the Russian attacks were slow, grinding and costly in terms of casualties, they had created a sense that Ukraine was slowly but inevitably losing. But that has changed. Ukraine’s recapture of Kupiansk in December – claimed by Moscow to have been taken a month earlier – surprised even western military experts. An agreement that prevented the invaders from using the Starlink satellite internet service in February – and Russia’s own curtailing of Telegram, also widely used for communication – helped Ukraine reverse territorial losses in Zaporizhzhia region of about 100 square miles. In April, according to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia lost control of 45 square miles of Ukraine. It was the first time Russia had suffered a net loss of territory since August 2024 (the month of Ukraine’s surprise attack into Russia’s Kursk region), and comes after the invaders made negligible gains in February and March. A slow-motion victory for Moscow no longer looks certain. Russian casualties may exceed replacements Ukraine says that for the past five months it has killed or wounded more Russian soldiers than are being recruited. Though the figures are hard to verify, Ukraine bases its statistics on combat footage. It said its military killed or wounded about 35,000 Russian soldiers a month in March and April, overwhelmingly from drone strikes. Russian recruitment levels, meanwhile, have dipped to about 800 to 1,000 a day in 2026 (24,000 to 30,000 a month), according to economist Janis Kluge, based on an analysis of regional budget data. That would be in line with former president Dmitry Medvedev, head of Russia’s recruitment commission, who said “more than 80,000” signed up in the first quarter. There is also no immediate sign that Putin has the appetite to launch a second public mobilisation, after the social unrest caused by the first in September 2022. Ukrainian refinery attacks expose Russia to a fall in the oil price Russia’s economy was faltering early in 2026, but the sudden hike in oil prices prompted by Donald Trump’s attack on Iran has prompted a recovery. Oil export earnings, critical for the Russian treasury, were $19bn (£14bn) in March, up from $9.8bn in February – the highest monthly figure since autumn 2023, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. However, recent long-range missile and drone attacks by Ukraine on Russian oil export terminals at Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic, two of 14 refineries or terminals Ukraine says it bombed in April, have slashed export volumes. Daily exports fell from 5.2m barrels a day to 3.5m, according to Sergey Vakulenko from the Carnegie Foundation. For now, the higher oil price is more than enough to offset estimated falls in Russian exports, Vakulenko concluded, but that could rapidly change if the US and Iran reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz and oil prices tumble. Ukraine is becoming a missile and drone superpower At first, after Ukraine was invaded, it was heavily reliant on western military equipment and training. Once, Kyiv placed heavy hopes on western F-16 fighters to try to achieve a breakthrough – and on US Patriot air defence systems to protect its skies. Gradually, it became clear that western stockpiles were running short, prompting Ukraine to invest more in its own knowhow and equipment. Success has been demonstrated by the deep strikes on Russian oil infrastructure – which include three drone attacks in the past fortnight on a refinery in Perm, 930 miles from the frontline. The arrival of cheap interceptors on the frontline in early spring has given Ukraine fresh hope it can knock out all but the faster Russian missiles as Patriot missile stocks become scarce. Ukraine said its interceptors, including Sting from Wild Hornets, shot down 33,000 drones during March, double the month before. It has begun to export the technology to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, all countries attacked by Iran in the spring. Russia even feared Ukraine could target its Red Square victory parade over the weekend, prompting Zelenskyy to issue a decree saying he would allow the event to proceed. Putin may hope to reignite dormant White House interest Russia’s main effort has, for some time, been diplomatic. Putin had, and continues to hope, that he can persuade Trump to force Zelenskyy into giving up the rest of Donetsk province to make up for stalling frontline progress. It was this offer that Putin made at the Alaska summit in August and, while the US considered it, Trump did not force it on Ukraine. Despite Putin’s comments at the weekend, and a suggestion that he could work with former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder as a mediator, there is no sign that Russia’s maximalist demands have eased. Last week, key Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, said peace talks could not start until Ukraine withdrew from all of Donetsk. Trump has been distracted by the Iran crisis, but Putin may be hoping to re-engage the White House with fresh language, if nothing else.

Putin is in a ‘weaker position than ever before’, says EU’s Kallas – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is “in a weaker position than he has been ever before,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas suggested, after talks among the bloc’s foreign ministers over the latest suggestions that the Russian war against Ukraine could be nearing an end (16:45). Kallas said Ukraine is now “in a much better position than a year ago,” as “the dynamics of the war are changing” (16:30). Separately, she urged for all accession negotiation clusters between the EU and Ukraine to be opened by summer (16:32), which she later specified as August (16:40). In other news, Several European leaders dismissed the idea that the Kremlin-friendly former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could serve as a European mediator in peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine (10:11, 10:37, 11:24, 14:17). EU foreign ministers adopted new sanctions against individuals and entities in Russia or occupied Ukrainian territories over “systematic unlawful deportation of Ukrainian childrem” (13:48), and additional sanctions on Israeli settlers (15:44). Polish prosecutors are investigating how a former justice minister wanted on multiple criminal charges managed to flee to the US from Hungary, where the former prime minister Viktor Orbán had granted him political asylum (12:10, 17:32). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Britain is failing to protect victims of modern slavery | Letter

Your article (Modern slavery at record levels in UK and expected to worsen, report warns, 5 May)( reflects a deeply troubling reality also seen by the UK’s modern slavery helpline. Cases of exploitation climbed to their highest level on record with a 41% increase in 2025, according to a recent helpline report. As a consortium of leading anti-slavery organisations has warned, the UK is failing to keep pace with the scale of exploitation, leaving too many victims without protection and too many perpetrators beyond reach. The UK is increasingly becoming a low‑risk, high-reward environment for traffickers and exploiters. A shared vision for the next decade sets out practical steps: stronger corporate accountability, a more effective criminal justice response, a survivor‑centred system and a coordinated national strategy to tackle child exploitation. This is not about incremental reform but a coordinated, system-wide shift backed by political will and sustained investment. The picture is bleak, but not without hope. With decisive leadership, the UK can move beyond mismanaging modern slavery to ending it. Andrew Wallis CEO, Unseen • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Evacuated US and French MV Hondius passengers test positive for hantavirus

A French woman and an American national evacuated from the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive for the virus, as the complex operation to repatriate those onboard continued on Monday. The French woman was one of five French passengers who disembarked from the ship in Tenerife on Sunday before being flown to a hospital in Paris. The French health minister, Stéphanie Rist, said the woman was in a serious condition on Monday. Rist said the woman had started to feel very unwell on Sunday night and “tests came back positive”. Rist told France Inter radio: “Unfortunately, her symptoms worsened overnight.” She is being treated in a specialised infectious diseases unit of a hospital in Paris. An American passenger who was flown to Nebraska along with 16 others on Sunday evening also tested positive but had no symptoms. The US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had tested positive for the Andes strain – the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans – and another had “mild symptoms”. Personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks began escorting the travellers from ship to shore in Tenerife in the Canary Islands on Sunday, in an effort that was continuing on Monday. More than 100 people of 23 nationalities are being evacuated in less than 48 hours, in an operation described by Spanish authorities as “complex” and “unprecedented”. Spain’s health ministry said on Monday that “all possible measures had been adopted from the start in order to cut possible chains of transmission”, adding that passengers underwent a health check and had their temperatures taken when the ship arrived off Tenerife on Sunday. It also said the French woman who had developed a fever on the evacuation flight had not had a high temperature when she was examined onboard the MV Hondius. Three passengers from the MV Hondius – a Dutch couple and a German woman – have died and others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, from where the ship departed in April. But health officials have said the risk for global public health is low and have played down comparisons with the Covid-19 pandemic. Rist said 22 French nationals had been identified as having come into potential contact with the virus, including eight people who had travelled on a 25 April flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam. The Dutch woman who died was on the flight to Johannesburg and later briefly boarded a flight to Amsterdam but disembarked before takeoff. Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already left the ship, plus anyone who may have come into contact with them. The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, was due to hold a meeting of medical advisers and ministers on Monday afternoon to follow the issue. The French government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, told BFMTV that it was important not to spread a sense of “panic”. She said: “We’re following the situation with the greatest vigilance, on the basis that it is a virus that we know, that a 42-day isolation period has been decided and the objective remains the same: protecting the French people.” The repatriation operation had evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, said the Spanish health minister, Mónica García. Of the 54 people who remained aboard – 22 passengers and 32 crew - 28 will disembark today and evacuate on two flights to the Netherlands. The MV Hondius will then depart for the Netherlands with the 26 crew members on Monday evening. A separate flight that was intended to fly passengers back to Australia was abandoned because of timing problems. The six passengers who were due to travel on it – four Australians, one Briton who is resident in Australia, and a New Zealand national – will instead return home via one of the Netherlands flights. The captain of the MV Hondius has praised the crew and passengers for their behaviour on the ship. “I’ve decided to take this time to thank every single guest and crew member onboard here, as well as our colleagues back home,” Jan Dobrogowski said in a video message. “The past few weeks have been extremely challenging to us all. What touched me the most, what moved me the most, was your patience, your discipline, and also [the] kindness that you showed to each other throughout.” Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel on Sunday to reach the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife. They boarded Spanish army buses and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy before boarding their repatriation flights. The World Health Organization recommends a 42-day quarantine and “active follow-up”, including daily checks for symptoms such as fever, the UN body’s lead for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in Geneva.

EU preparing to offer key concession to UK in new post-Brexit agricultural deal

Brussels is preparing to offer Keir Starmer a key concession in talks over an agricultural deal, giving the beleaguered prime minister an important victory in his efforts to move closer to the EU. European officials have conceded that the UK can keep its ban on live animal exports as part of any joint deal on food and agricultural products, according to sources on both sides of the talks, even though the EU has not imposed such a ban. The carve-out will be a significant fillip for Starmer’s efforts to negotiate closer EU ties in a series of areas including emissions trading and youth mobility. The prime minister listed his prospective EU deal on Monday as one of three examples of his government’s progress, as he fights for his political career in the face of growing calls from his own MPs for him to quit. One British official said of the agricultural deal: “We’re confident on this and don’t think it’s going to be an issue but of course negotiations are ongoing.” The European Commission, which is leading the negotiations with the Cabinet Office, wouldn’t comment while talks were still ongoing. But one Brussels source pointed out that, according to a framework agreement signed by both parties last May, the UK can be exempted from EU regulations if the UK rules are stricter than the EU’s. European officials say because the ban would only apply to UK farmers, it would not negatively affect farmers in the EU. A government spokesperson said: “We have a strong track record of delivering for animal welfare and the EU has accepted that there needs to be a number of areas where we need to retain our own rules. “We are negotiating those now and won’t provide a running commentary on negotiations. What we will do is secure a deal that could be worth up to £5.1bn for the British economy and delivers the best outcome for the British people.” Starmer is hoping to sign an agricultural trade deal as one of three key elements of a new EU agreement to be announced at a summit this summer. He pinned significant political hopes on the deal as he tried to persuade Labour MPs to back him after the local elections last week. During a speech on Monday billed as a make-or-break moment in his premiership, Starmer said: “The last government was defined by breaking our relationship with Europe; this Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe.” So far, negotiations are mainly being held up by a standoff over whether European students should pay the same university tuition fees as part of a youth mobility scheme. An agricultural deal is expected to be easier to agree, though negotiators say there are important areas where the UK will want to opt out of EU rules. One such area is on the export of live animals, including cows, sheep and pigs, for fattening or slaughter. The EU is the world’s largest live farm animal exporter, but animal welfare campaigners say the practice causes overcrowding, exhaustion, dehydration and stress. Rishi Sunak’s government imposed a ban on such exports in 2024, in a move it said was “capitalising on a post-Brexit freedoms and bolstering the UK’s position as a world leader in animal welfare standards”. Lawyers and animal welfare experts said that without a specific carve-out, the UK would have to drop the ban altogether. Catherine Barnard, a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge, said: “There would need to be an express carve-out in the SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary] agreement. People in the UK care very much about this, so while in the EU the UK tried and failed to stop exports in the past.” David Bowles, the head of public affairs at the RSPCA, said: “It is vital – in the interests of these animals – that this successful ban is protected. An exemption is vital, and will help protect things like the prohibition of live exports, puppy imports, and bans on cages for farmed animals.” The UK has had to give way on other animal welfare rules during the negotiation process. The Guardian revealed last month the EU was likely to block ministers from enacting their pre-election commitment of banning the import of foie gras, and similarly will not allow the UK to ban fur imports. In a recent interview with the Guardian, the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, defended these compromises. “The prize is big,” she said. “We can talk about the detail, but the overall prize here is to bring down the barriers at the border.”

UK slavery reparations must be top issue at Commonwealth summit, says former Caribbean leader

It is “inconceivable” that reparatory justice from Britain for the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans will not be “front and centre” of the next Commonwealth leaders’ meeting, the former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines has said. Ralph Gonsalves was in Jamaica to discuss the next steps of the “alive and growing” movement to advocate for reparations for hundreds of years of chattel slavery. The opposition leader was recently appointed an elder and adviser for the Repair Campaign, a social movement for reparatory justice founded by the Irish telecoms tycoon Denis O’Brien. Gonsalves was instrumental in setting up the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) reparations commission to support Caribbean governments’ call for recognition of the lasting legacy of colonialism and enslavement, and for reparative justice from former colonisers. He said the leaders of the 56-country Commonwealth grouping, which includes 33 Caribbean and African nations, could not ignore the strong momentum towards a reparations resolution. Between the 15th and 19th centuries more than 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped, forcibly transported to the Americas and sold into slavery. The issue dominated headlines during the last Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm), held in October 2024, when the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, resisted pressure from member states to include reparations in the summit’s agenda. Gonsalves said: “In the light of what transpired last time at Chogm, and the progress which has been made since then, and the activist agenda for the reparations movement, both in the Caribbean and Africa … it would be absolutely inconceivable that you wouldn’t have this being front and centre of the summit.” In March this year, the UK was one of several European countries that abstained from voting for a UN general assembly landmark resolution that described chattel slavery as the gravest crime against humanity. The resolution was passed after an overwhelming majority of 123 nations voted in its favour, with only the US, Israel and Argentina voting against it. Before the Commonwealth meeting in Antigua and Barbuda in November, a series of milestone events will be held across the Caribbean, Africa and the UK, Gonsalves said. Ghana, which led the March UN resolution, will host a reparations conference in June to agree coordinated next steps for the global movement. He added that, in the run-up to a Caribbean leaders’ meeting in St Lucia in July, the prime ministerial reparations subcommittee, chaired by the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is likely to meet to agree updates to Caricom’s 10-point plan for reparatory justice. Gonsalves said that across the region there was a strong commitment to addressing the legacies of colonialism. On Saturday, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who also played a key role in setting up Caricom’s reparatory commission, announced that she would rename Nelson Island in honour of indentured immigrants from India, who were sent there by Britain between 1866 and 1917, in what she described as an “unjust and inhumane system” of human trafficking. Gonsalves said Persad-Bissessar had done “very good work” during her first term. “She was then chair of Caricom when I took the matter of reparatory justice to heads in 2013, 2014, and she supported it fully,” he said. “I expect her to continue that support in her second term because it’s a matter on which she has spoken, not just with passion, but more importantly with commitment, and I don’t think that that commitment has waned.” During his visit to Jamaica, Gonsalves met the country’s culture and gender minister, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, who is leading its reparation movement. Last year Caricom backed Jamaica’s decision to petition King Charles – its head of state – to request legal advice on reparations from the judicial committee of the privy council, the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth nations. Gonsalves said he hoped the king would support the Caribbean and Africa. He said: “To quote the current head of the Commonwealth, King Charles, this issue, reparations, is one whose time has come for a serious conversation. “Now, I don’t know what side of the conversation he would end up on. Knowing him, I am satisfied that he would come [down] on the side of the conversation which is in the interest of the bulk of the people in the Commonwealth, and which will be a progressive direction.”