Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the White House for talks with Donald Trump on ending the war and a potential minerals deal. The agreement would grant America access to rare Ukrainian minerals; Mr Zelensky wants security guarantees in return. The talks follow tense exchanges, with Mr Trump recently calling Mr Zelensky a “dictator” and the Ukrainian leader accusing him of falling for Russian disinformation.
Russia launched a drone attack on Ukraine overnight, the country’s air force said. Three people were killed and seven injured in Donetsk, a city in the east, while strikes wounded civilians and damaged buildings in Sumy and Kharkiv, in the north. Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also came under heavy attack.
Anneliese Dodds, Britain’s international development minister, resigned over Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to fund a £6bn defence budget increase by slashing foreign aid. The move would cut aid spending from 0.5% to 0.3% of GNI. Ms Dodds accused Sir Keir of copying Mr Trump’s USAID cuts and warned it would harm Britain’s “reputation”.
The value of Bitcoin plunged during early trading in Asia amid a deepening cryptocurrency sell-off. Bitcoin’s price has fallen by more than 25% since touching an all-time high of $109,241 on January 20th. Traders have been disappointed by Mr Trump’s inaction on cryptocurrency. The president had vowed to implement several pro-crypto policies.
Clashes with the police broke out in Athens as hundreds of thousands of Greeks rallied on the second anniversary of the country’s deadliest train crash, which killed 57 people near Tempi, in central Greece. A general strike halted air, sea and rail transport. Protesters accuse the government of a cover-up. Parliament will debate political responsibility for the disaster next week.
Russia’s security service said it arrested two church figures accused of plotting to kill Tikhon Shevkunov, a senior Orthodox cleric and alleged confidant of Mr Putin. The FSB said that the men had been working with Ukrainian intelligence, and were reportedly planning to plant a bomb in a monastery. Russian authorities released videos of their confessions. Ukraine has not commented.
Citigroup, an American bank, mistakenly credited a client’s account with $81trn instead of $280 last April due to a manual input error, the Financial Times reported. The mistake, caught 90 minutes later, did not result in any funds leaving the bank. The incident raises concerns over the bank’s risk management practices. It has struggled to fix longstanding operational issues.
Figure of the day: $42bn, TSMC’s planned capital expenditures for 2025, a 41% increase from the previous year. Read the full story.
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