Former central banker Mark Carney is tipped as the favourite to replace Canada's outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the ruling Liberal Party meets to choose a new leader.
Canada's Liberal Party will on Sunday announce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's successor as both party chief and head of the country's government in the midst of a trade war with the United States that could cripple the Canadian economy.
The next prime minister will have to negotiate with US President Donald Trump as he threatens additional tariffs on Canada and may soon face the opposition Conservatives in a general election.
Trudeau announced in January he would step down after more than nine years in power as his approval rating plummeted, forcing the ruling Liberal Party to run a quick contest to replace him.
"Is it ideal in a circumstance of bilateral crisis for us? I suppose not," said Drew Fagan, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. "But on the other hand, the process is playing out domestically as it should."
She left his government in December after Trudeau tried to replace her, and she criticised his government's spending policies.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Sunday he was hopeful a dispute with Canada over accusations of the deadly fentanyl opioid entering the U.S. across its northern border could be resolved by the end of March.
His comments on ABC News's "This Week" raise the possibility that tariffs due to be reimposed by U.S. President Donald Trump at the end of the month could be stayed further.
Hassett said the on-again, off-again tariffs that Trump was imposing on Canada were a reflection of the president's concerns over drug smuggling.
"We launched a drug war, not a trade war," he said. "We've got the drug war, which we're hopefully going to solve by the end of the month."
In reality, Canada is responsible for a minuscule proportion of drug smuggling into the United States and it wasn't immediately clear what progress Hassett was referring to.
Hassett, who directs the White House's National Economic Council, further muddied the waters over the administration's intentions when he referred later in the interview to America's "trade war."
Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff from California, who appeared after Hassett on ABC, called the adviser's comments "incomprehensible."
Wealthy Chinese investors are funneling tens of millions of dollars into private companies controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, using an arrangement that shields their identities from public view, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
The investments are being placed through special-purpose vehicles to avoid the ire of U.S authorities and companies wary of Chinese capital during a low-point in relations between the two countries, the report said, citing asset managers and investors involved in the transactions.
Three Chinese-backed asset managers told the Financial Times that they had sold more than $30 million of shares in SpaceX, xAI and Neuralink, three Musk-controlled private technology companies, to investors over the past two years.
The inflow of Chinese capital into Musk's business empire is primarily profit-driven and has little to do with technology transfer or influencing public policy, the people told the FT.
SpaceX, xAI and Neuralink did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk has long had contact with senior Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping.
Musk's electric vehicle (EV) company Tesla makes its Model 3 and Model Y cars in China and also exports its China-made EVs to markets including Europe, where sales plunged 45% in January.
Apart from Tesla, some of Musk's other ventures, including SpaceX and the social media platform X, which is banned in China, are viewed by Beijing as security risks.
There's something I need to say and I need to be blunt.
So let me start by saying I love Europe. Truly love Europe. I love visiting Europe, I love Europeans, I have European friends. I respect the relationship we've had for a really long time.
You Europeans do not respect Americans. You can protest and say, no, no, we love America. No, you don't. We know you look down on us. You think you're better than us. And in some ways you are. You know, you work 35 hours a week. You have longer vacations. You've got this magnificent culture. We get it. But any relationship in which one side doesn't respect the other can't last.
It's this thing where Ukraine comes to the White House and acts like it can tell us what we should do.
That's not what the relationship is.
This thing where somehow we're on the hook, including for countries that are not in NATO. That was never the deal. Ukraine is not part of NATO. We were never obligated to protect Ukraine.
Maybe that was something that Europe wants to do that. Great. Go. Europe should go protect Ukraine.
We have no NATO agreement with Ukraine. And this thing where Zelensky then goes and quotes all these other European leaders. They're with me, not with the United States. Great. Go, go, go work together.
We have 100,000 Americans being killed by the Chinese and Mexican fentanyl and methamphetamine mafias every year. Our kids are not learning to read. We have thousands of veterans with PTSD and are hurting. We have been at war in the Middle East for a quarter century. It's been 80 years since we bailed out Europe. You have your own militaries. You have your own nuclear weapons. I've been trying to be really indirect about this for years.
I've been trying to be soft peddling that you guys don't get it. Europeans do not get it. You guys think that this relationship is going to last forever. You think that because something's written down on a piece of paper, it's going to last forever. Americans have voted against this multiple times. This is not about what you think of Trump or like Trump. People on the left, on the right, they do not want to be in a nuclear war with Russia.
How can we explain this to you?
We do not want to continue to be in the Ukraine war. We want peace.
Our natural inclination is to actually not get involved in conflicts in Europe and Asia We didn't want to have to continue to intervene after World War II. I get it, but times have changed. We're ready to move on.
We bear a lot of responsibility for this. The United States bears a lot of responsibility for this.
Our people, our administrations, our think tanks told Zelensky and told the Europeans that we were loyal to that alliance, that we were going to stick with them. No, the American people are not on board with that. Again, the left has traditionally been against those kinds of military entanglements. Now the right is, but a lot of the left is too. A lot of Democrats, a lot of liberals. I would love an orderly transition here, but the behavior that we're seeing coming out of European leaders and out of Zelensky just now in the Oval Office suggests that the relationship is over. We'll reset the relationship afterwards.
We're going to have a trade. We're going to visit each other. It's great. But this thing of this entitlement, I don't think Europeans understand how angry it makes us. I don't think Europeans really understand how much Americans want to deal with our problems. We go to Europe. You have universal healthcare. You work 35 hours a week. You retire at a young age. You don't work nearly as hard as we do in the United States. You have many more benefits in Large part because we pay for all of your security or a large part of it. And in return, we just get disrespect, entitlement, like your children.
This is a dysfunctional relationship. It needs to end. It needs to change. Maybe there's a transition period something, but this has gone too far. I think that the anger that you saw in the White House with Trump in advance with Zelensky holding his arms, rolling his eyes, acting like he was telling us what the deal was. No, that's not a Republican, Democrat, whatever thing. That is not how we're going to be treated by people that we're helping.
So it's time to grow up. It's time for the relationship to change.
Three years of war have created Europe’s largest displacement crisis since World War II, forcing millions of Ukrainians from their homes.
Over a third of Ukraine’s population has been forcibly displaced due to the war, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Kayla Zhu, shows the number of Ukrainian refugees recorded in the 10 countries that have received the most refugees.
Data comes from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR refers to refugees as all individuals who left Ukraine due to the war.
Latest data for Russia is as of June 2024. United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Czechia data is as of December 2024. Romania, Germany, Poland, Italy, and Spain as of January 2025, and Slovakia as of February 2025.
Which European Country Has the Most Ukrainian Refugees?
Below, we show the 10 European countries hosting the largest number of Ukrainian refugees, based on the latest available data.
Since the start of the war, around 6.9 million Ukrainians have been displaced globally, with about 5 million finding refuge in the top 10 host countries in Europe.
Germany (1.24 million), Russia (1.22 million), and Poland (998,000) have received the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees.
Smaller countries like Czechia (390,000), Slovakia (164,000), and Moldova (128,000) have also provided significant support, demonstrating the broad impact of Ukraine’s refugee crisis across Europe.
Many of these countries have implemented temporary protection measures, granting refugees access to housing, healthcare, and employment opportunities.
However, the strain on resources has led to challenges in some regions, including housing shortages and increased rents and competition for affordable housing.
For example, one study found that the influx of Ukrainian refugees into Poland led to a 0.72–0.74% increase in housing rents for every 1% increase in a city’s population due to the inflow of refugees.
To learn more about the Russia-Ukraine war, check out this graphic that visualizes the 10 largest donors of aid to Ukraine.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni made headlines after suggesting that NATO’s Article 5 should be extended to Ukraine even if it doesn’t formally join the bloc.
In her words, “Extending the same coverage that NATO countries have to Ukraine would certainly be much more effective (than dispatching peacekeepers), while being something different from NATO's membership.”
What she didn’t mention is that Ukraine already kinda has these guarantees from some NATO countries, including Italy.
They were agreed to with Italy, the US, UK, France, Germany, Poland, and others throughout the course of the past year, which readers can confirm through each of the preceding hyperlinks that redirect to the full text of their respective pacts from official government sources. The common thread between them is that they all promise to resume their existing level of military-technical cooperation with Ukraine (ex: intelligence, arms, logistics, etc.) if another conflict breaks out after this one inevitably ends.
This is essentially the same as NATO’s Article 5, which obligates members to assist those of their allies that come under attack, albeit as each of them “deems necessary”. Although the use of armed force is mentioned, it’s ultimately left to individual members to decide whether to employ this option. Ukraine has arguably enjoyed the benefits of this principle for the past three years despite not being a NATO member since it’s received everything other than troops from the alliance as explained above.
Considering that Article 5 always left the option of armed force up to each individual member, which remains the case with each of the bilateral “security guarantees” that Ukraine reached with some of them over the past year, Meloni’s dramatic proposal doesn’t actually amount to anything new. It’s only newsworthy since Article 5 is commonly associated in the public imagination with employing armed force upon the request of those allies that come under attack, but this has always been a misperception.
The reason why Russia has consistently opposed Ukraine’s formal membership into NATO is because policymakers believe that this could increase the pressure upon the bloc to directly intervene in its support if Ukraine were to provoke Russia into cross-border kinetic action after joining. That could in turn immediately prompt a Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis or even World War III, the latter of which might break out by miscalculation, both of which Russia obviously prefers to avoid.
Ukraine’s hypothetical NATO membership is assessed by Russia to be incomparably more dangerous than the Baltic States’ due to the former’s post-independence and Western-encouraged anti-Russian identity. The presence of such ethno-national radicals at the pinnacle of power in Kiev greatly raises the chances of them unilaterally provoking Russia into cross-border kinetic action in order to manipulate NATO, first and foremost its American leader, into either coercing Russia into concessions or waging war against it.
Nevertheless, it would still ultimately remain every member’s sovereign prerogative whether or not to support Ukraine with armed force, but public opinion in some of the European members might push their leaders to react in such a way that then escalates the crisis to the point of involving the US. For example, if the UK resorted to armed force in support of Ukraine per the way in which its leadership applies Article 5 in that scenario, then the US might feel compelled to protect it from Russian retaliation.
While the same dynamics would be present even in the case of countries reacting in the aforesaid way per their leaderships’ application of the “security guarantees” that they agreed to give Ukraine last year, there’d be much less pressure on them since it wouldn’t be through NATO. That applies even more to the US’ response to any allies unilaterally entering into a hot war with Russia outside of NATO’s ambit since it could argue that this wasn’t agreed upon so it’ll hang them out to dry to avoid World War III.
Returning to Meloni’s proposal, the most that she’ll likely manage to achieve is to assemble a “coalition of the willing” that would explicitly extend Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine with the knowledge of how this would be interpreted by the public, as in likely employing armed force in its support if requested. Poland already ruled out dispatching troops to Ukraine under any circumstances, though that could change after May’s presidential election, while Hungary and Slovakia are already dead-set against this.
Moreover, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared in early February that the US won’t extend Article 5’s mutual defense guarantees to any NATO country’s troops in Ukraine, which will likely deter many of them from considering Meloni’s proposal since they now know that America wouldn’t have their backs. Trump 2.0 has proven itself impervious to domestic and international pressure, the latter of which includes what it’s experiencing nowadays from its NATO allies, to risk war with Russia over Ukraine.
No realistic scenario therefore exists for expecting the US to intervene in anyone else’s support if they end up embroiled in a hot war with Russia, at least so long as Trump remains in office and provided that he’s succeeded by Vance or another like-minded member of his party. Even if the opposition returns to power, Trump plans to already lock in strategic resource deals with Russia before then in order to deter them from risking war with Russia over Ukraine due to how mutually detrimental that would be.
His planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” could also reshape global geopolitics by then too, thus leading to more pressure upon future administrations to responsibly manage relations with Russia no matter what so as ensure continued access to its strategic resources that the US needs for competing with China. Restoring and expanding the US’ complex interdependencies with Russia, which still exist in part to this day as proven by Russian uranium exports to the US, is Trump’s envisaged means towards the end of peace.
Reflecting on all the insight shared in this analysis, it can consequently be concluded that Meloni’s proposal isn’t anything new nor is it a game-changer, and it was likely shared to show that Italy shouldn’t be ignored amidst France, Germany, and Poland’s competition for leadership of post-conflict Europe. Ukraine already kinda has Article 5 guarantees from some NATO countries, but these won’t foreseeably manifest themselves through armed force so nothing serious is expected to come from this anyhow.
Some call it the end of the post-war order. Others, a grand realignment. Regardless of how it's defined, the Middle East faces a new paradigm: what happens when the US stops viewing Russia as a foe and instead as a potential partner, or at the very least, a neutral actor? American diplomats and analysts are still struggling to come to grips with this potentially historic shift.
When asked about a report that Israel was lobbying the Trump administration to let Russia keep its military bases in Syria, one career US diplomat in the region replied, “Well, that would be against our national interests?” They responded with silence when asked what would happen if the US president didn’t see it that way. Trump has said he wants to partner with Russia for “incredible opportunities”.
On Friday, Trump doubled down, saying he found it easier to deal with Russia than Ukraine, a country the US had been supplying arms and intelligence to until recently. Asked about Russia’s widespread attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, Trump said Putin was "doing what anybody else would do”.
The US view of Russia as a foe working against its interests has defined the Middle East since the end of WWII, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt courted Saudi Arabia for Gulf oil. In the following decades, the US worked to counter the Soviet Union across the region.
The US’s support for Israel in the 1973 War led to an eventual peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. In the process, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat evicted Soviet military advisors who had been welcomed by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Until December 2024, the United States viewed the toppled Syrian Assad dynasty as a vehicle for nefarious Russian power projection.
Trump’s allies looking to explain his outreach to Putin have said he is trying to break up a bloc of states, mainly Russia, Iran and China, from coordinating against the US. They add that Trump’s overtures echo the strategic diplomacy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger opening up to China in the 1970s.
Chas Freeman,a former US diplomat, whose career spanned almost three decades, told Middle East Eye it was a “false comparison”.
“A better analogy to Trump’s opening to Putin is Sadat going to Jerusalem.” Freeman is reliable on the subject considering he was the interpreter for Nixon’s trip.
In the Middle East, Trump’s bid to work with Putin may reflect his priorities and a geopolitical world view. Some of Trump’s confidants have raised the alarm about Turkey’s expanding influence.
Steve Bannon & Mike Flynn's worldview
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor whose podcast War Room has become required listening to those seeking to discern Trump’s world view, said recently that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was “one of the most dangerous leaders” in the world and wants to "re-establish the Ottoman Empire”.
Trump himself said that the collapse of the Assad government in Syria was merely an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey. Trump wants to withdraw US troops from northeastern Syria. According to Reuters, Israel has told the Trump administration one way to reduce Turkey’s influence in the country would be via Russia.
“Donald Trump wants to be out of Syria. I can imagine that Russia and Israel cooperate to limit Turkish influence there and Trump just says, ‘I don’t care. You guys deal with Turkey',” Robert Ford, the US’s former ambassador to Syria, told MEE.
Trump has selected traditional Republicans who have been hostile to Russia, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Mike Waltz. But career US diplomats and defence officials say their influence is limited. For example, Rubio sat silent as Vice President JD Vance challenged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last month. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s unconfirmed Middle East envoy, was the one tapped to meet Putin - speaking for roughly three hours -in Russia.
The gatekeepers to Trump’s selection of appointees are not diehard Russia hawks but those who believe the US should engage Moscow.
Officials looking to get into the White House have courted Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor who was ousted from his first administration over his discussions with the Russians. Trump said he offered Flynn "about ten jobs" in his new administration.
Can Russia broker a US-Iran deal?
Trump hasn’t revived ties with Russia for the Middle East - he wants a ceasefire in Ukraine - but there are areas in the region where Russia is trying to entice the White House.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin said that future talks between Russia and the US would include discussions on Iran's nuclear programme. Spokesman Dmitry Peskoa appeared to acknowledge a report that Russia offered to mediate between the Islamic Republic and the Trump administration.
Trump says he wants a diplomatic deal with Iran over its nuclear programme. On Friday, he said he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asking for talks. The Obama administration, which tried its own so-called reset with Russia, leaned on the Kremlin during the 2015 nuclear talks.
“Obama gave Russia a lot of concessions for its mediation in the 2015 nuclear deal,” Anna Borshchevskaya, a Russia expert at the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, told MEE. “In practice, Russia acted as Iran’s lawyer, watering down US concerns about Iranian nuclear proliferation.”
In fact, Russia played a key role for the US after the deal was signed, with Iran shipping excess uranium to Russia to ensure it couldn’t be used as a bomb. In return, Russia, which shares the Caspian Sea with Iran, reaped economic benefits, sealing a deal to construct a nuclear power plant.
Ford, however, cautioned that Russia’s utility to the US on nuclear talks might be limited. The Obama administration itself bypassed Russia and its European powers to negotiate directly with Iran during the talks.
“Kerry was meeting Zarif directly and then back-briefing the Europeans. I can’t imagine the US or Iranians would rely on the Russians. This is such a life and death matter for Tehran,” Ford said, referring to former Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 deal.
Freeman said he is skeptical a grand Russian-US rapprochement will materialize. "Things are rearranging themselves in very unpredictable ways. It's like a kaleidoscope. You bang two sides together, and no one knows what new pattern will be formed,” but he said that in the Middle East, what's likely is not “active cooperation, but American silence”.
Chasing Gulf money
If the war in Ukraine ends and Trump lifts sanctions on Russia, he could dent some of the Gulf states' economic activity.
The United Arab Emirates and Russia were deepening ties before the Biden administration slapped sanctions on Russia. But after that, the UAE became a hub for re-exporting sanctioned goods. Russia could stop paying Emirati middlemen and buy directly from the United States if Trump ends the sanctions.
Borshchevskaya said that Russia could also look to make up lost ground in its weapons sales to the Gulf states if Trump lifts sanctions. Even during the war, the Arab Gulf talked to Russia about arms sales. Russian arms manufacturers displayed their goods alongside the US at the UAE’s arms expos in recent years.
US officials who spoke with MEE said they believe the US’s advantage over Russia in the oil-rich Gulf makes it a tough competition. Countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia are deeply wired into US air defence systems, such as the Patriots and THAADS.
Meanwhile, the UAE is deepening its cooperation with the US in high-tech sectors like AI, where Russia struggles to compete.
Even as Trump riles Europe, he is courting the Gulf region. On Friday he announced that Saudi Arabia would be his first trip abroad as president after Riyadh agreed to invest $1 trillion in American companies over a four-year period. “They’ve agreed to do that, so I’m going to be going there… probably over the next month and a half.”
