Volodymyr Zelensky will meet JD Vance in Munich today for talks on how to end the war in Ukraine. The US vice president told The Wall Street Journal that Moscow could face harsher sanctions if Vladimir Putin fails to agree to a peace deal that guarantees Ukraine’s “sovereign independence”, adding that sending American troops to Ukraine is “still on the table”. British goods could be hit with tariffs of up to 21% on exports to the US after Donald Trump pledged to impose levies on “every country” with which America has a trade deficit. Trump’s senior trade counsellor, Peter Navarro, didn’t mention the UK specifically, but said the EU’s VAT regime, which is essentially the same as Britain’s, was the “poster child” for unfair trade. A kayaker has survived being briefly swallowed by a whale off the coast of Chile. Adrián Simancas was on the water with his father when the hungry humpback surfaced and engulfed him, before quickly spitting him back out. Simancas, who was unharmed, says he thinks the whale was “just curious”. Watch the full video here.

The end of Pax Americana?

Donald Trump’s overture to Vladimir Putin on Ukraine has the “terrifying echo of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938”, says Anthony Beevor in Engelsberg Ideas. Before the negotiations have even begun, and without garnering any concessions from Moscow, the US president has already ruled out Ukraine joining Nato and effectively conceded the loss of all the territory seized by Russia since 2014. He appears determined to ignore Allied leaders, even Nato, splitting the West and “casting European defence adrift”. In Trump’s Washington, there is no mention of the unprovoked invasion and the consequent war crimes, including deliberate attacks on civilians, looting, rape, “random torture of prisoners” including castrations, and the kidnapping of Ukrainian children for “brainwashing as Russians”. To draw a veil over such horrors is not realpolitik. It is the most flagrant example of “might is right” since World War Two.

Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean must surely now admit that the foremost alliance of the past century is cooked, says Gerard Baker in The Times. What we’re starting to see is Trump’s wider strategic thinking. He views foreign relations through a “great power framework” in which America keeps the peace not through alliances but by “sheer competing muscle”. The soft power of foreign aid is a luxury a single superpower can afford, goes this thinking, but in today’s multipolar great power competition it’s an indulgence. China and Russia have advanced by focusing narrowly on their self-interest, so why should the US go on being ripped off by its allies? It’s an unsentimental approach, but hardly unprecedented. As Lord Palmerston said of Britain in the 19th century: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

🪖🇪🇺 Trump forcing Europe to defend itself may end up making war more likely, says Thomas Fazi in UnHerd. Not because it leaves the continent vulnerable, but because it will embolden European hawks, particularly those in Poland, Estonia and Lithuania who fear Russia most. At present, it’s laughable to say Moscow poses an existential threat to Europe. If Putin starts to see a major military buildup on his border, not so much.