Pressure on Ukraine Mounts – The Dispatch

• President Donald Trump on Wednesday blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for prolonging the Russo-Ukrainian war, following Zelensky’s rejection of a U.S. proposal to cede Crimea to Russia as part of a peace plan. “It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that make it so difficult to settle this War,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, falsely claiming that Ukraine had “handed over” Crimea in 2014 “without a shot being fired.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff canceled plans to attend a meeting with top Ukrainian and British diplomats in London on Wednesday, citing scheduling conflicts. 
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday denied speculation that the U.S. had offered to unilaterally lower tariffs on Chinese goods. But, he added: “I don’t think either side believes that the current tariff levels are sustainable, so I would not be surprised if they went down in a mutual way.” President Donald Trump also continued to soften his rhetoric on China Wednesday, saying that he believed a “fair deal” was within reach. Beijing currently faces a combined tariff rate of 145 percent, while U.S. exports to China are subject to a 125 percent duty. 
• A New Jersey wildfire that began on Tuesday rapidly spread to 13,250 acres on Wednesday, threatening more than 1,ooo structures. Fire officials said that the blaze, which could become the state’s largest in more than 20 years, had been 50 percent contained as of Wednesday night. An estimated 5,000 people were forced to evacuate as a result of the fire, which was fueled by high wind and low humidity. On Wednesday, acting New Jersey Gov. Tahesha Way declared a state of emergency.
• A dozen states sued the Trump administration Wednesday over its tariff policies in the U.S. Court of International Trade, alleging that President Trump lacks the authority to enact sweeping tariffs. Led by Arizona and Oregon, the states argued that Congress alone has the authority to impose the duties, and that the president can invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in the event of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad. “These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” the 12 attorneys general, all Democrats, claimed in the lawsuit.
• Trump on Wednesday signed a number of executive orders aimed at realigning the White House’s education policies with his administration’s priorities. The directives directed federal agencies to strengthen reporting requirements for universities that received foreign donations over $250,000, sought to spur accreditation bodies to ensure that universities complied with federal law related to diversity-promotion efforts, and ordered the federal government to investigate school-discipline policies, among other initiatives. 
• Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election in 2026. Durbin, 80, was elected to the Senate in 1996, making him the fifth-most senior lawmaker in the upper chamber. Illinois is expected to be a safe blue seat in 2026, and Durbin’s exit is likely to set off a competitive Democratic primary. 

Around 1 a.m. local time today, families across Kyiv awoke to sirens signaling incoming Russian missiles and drones. By sunrise, the bombardment had injured 70 people and killed at least nine, becoming one of the deadliest attacks on Ukraine’s capital city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. 

Hours before the strike, the White House was blaming Ukraine for disrupting the peace process. “I think Russia is ready,” President Donald Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday, indicating that the Kremlin is “easier to deal with” than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance laid out Washington’s steepest demands of Ukraine to date, calling on the war-torn country to accept an agreement that freezes the conflict along its current frontlines, recognizes Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and prohibits Ukraine from joining NATO in the future.

Moscow hailed the latest American proposal, which would effectively endorse Russia’s occupation of nearly 20 percent of Ukraine. “The U.S. continues its mediation efforts, and we certainly welcome them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, according to Russian state media. “Nuanced discussions of proposals for a resolution are essential to bridge differences.” 

Vance’s pitch followed Zelensky’s insistence hours earlier that Ukraine, in accordance with international norms and its own constitution, wouldn’t accept Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea. Moscow ordered an invasion of the peninsula in 2014 and, shortly afterward, annexed it as part of the Russian Federation. The international community quickly decried the incursion as illegal, and—with the exception of a handful of countries including Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea—continues to reject Russia’s claim over the economically and strategically important region. That international community includes the U.S.—for now. “The U.S. government recognizes Crimea is part of Ukraine,” the State Department website currently states, “it does not and will not recognize the purported annexation of Crimea.”

Yet Zelensky’s red line provoked an irate reaction from the American president, who accused his Ukrainian counterpart of prolonging the “killing field” in his country. “It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes [sic] it so difficult to settle this War,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace, or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff unexpectedly pulled out of a summit in London to discuss a Ukraine-backed 30-day truce, citing scheduling conflicts. Last week, Rubio said Washington would walk away from its efforts to broker a deal “within days” barring progress in ceasefire talks. 

It’s unclear whether abandoning the peace process means the U.S. would also abandon its military support for Ukraine. Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden committed $1.25 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but weapons and ammunition from that package are now running low; Trump has yet to approve additional security assistance to the war-torn country. And Ukraine is quickly depleting its weapons stores as it seeks to repel intensified Russian offensive operations in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions. “For several days, almost a week, we have observed almost a doubling of the number of enemy attacks in all main directions,” Ukraine’s commander in chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, told a Ukrainian newspaper earlier this month. 

In Kursk, a Russian region where Ukrainian forces have controlled pockets of territory since launching a surprise offensive in August, Russian forces continue to gain ground. On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have retaken the village of Oleshnya—one of the last communities still under Kyiv’s control. Fighting also continues in the neighboring Russian region of Belgorod, where Ukrainian forces launched a quiet incursion in late March. 

Meanwhile, one of Ukraine’s key demands—the return of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children taken by Russian forces—remains largely unaddressed. Moscow began transferring children into Russian-occupied Ukraine and the Russian Federation following its 2014 invasion of Crimea, but since 2022, it has significantly ratcheted up its forced relocation of Ukrainian youths. According to Ukraine’s Children of War database, at least 19,500 children have been taken into Russian-controlled areas since the start of the full-scale invasion, though Yale University’s tracker estimates that the true figure is closer to 35,000. 

According to rescued children, the practice, which Moscow describes as humanitarian evacuations, involves the systematic reprogramming of abductees to reject their Ukrainian nationality. They’re not allowed to speak Ukrainian and are reportedly told their parents have abandoned them. Some of the older captives are even put through military training and forced to the frontlines. 

The mass kidnappings served as the basis of the International Criminal Court’s case against Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Ukrainian officials hope that bringing renewed attention to the abuses will allow for their return to be included as a stipulation in any forthcoming agreement with Moscow. In an interview last month, Zelensky said bringing home Ukraine’s children remained his country’s “number one” priority in any peace deal negotiations. 

In the meantime, Ukraine is seeking an immediate, unconditional ceasefire as the first step toward a more durable truce. The plan is in line with a U.S. proposal from March calling for a 30-day pause on all land, air, and sea hostilities. Russia rejected the American pitch for a full ceasefire and continues to waver or outright violate other, more pared-down agreements to halt attacks on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea. 

But Ukrainian officials remain reluctant to enter into a deal that permanently prevents them from joining NATO or securing other security guarantees, fearing that doing so would give Russia the opportunity to rearm, regroup, and reinvade at a later date. “If Russia opts for a limited pause, Ukraine will respond in kind,” Ukrainian Economic Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Wednesday. “Our people will not accept a frozen conflict disguised as peace. We will never recognize the occupation of Crimea. And if NATO membership is not granted, Ukraine will require binding security guarantees—ones strong enough to deter future aggression, and clear enough to ensure lasting peace.”

“Ukraine is ready to negotiate,” she added, “but not to surrender.”

• Hours after his family gathered for the Passover Seder earlier this month, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was forced to flee his home due to an arson attack. In a new piece for the New York Times, he recounted the experience and lessons to be gleaned from it. “The devastation was shocking, and to me, it did not appear to be an accident. The damage was too extreme. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the middle of our home. As I looked around in horror, I found myself picturing where each of my kids and our guests sat the previous evening as we prayed and recounted the story of our ancestors escaping bondage thousands of years ago. As we moved our family to a secure location, I began receiving updates from the Pennsylvania State Police on what had happened: I was told with certainty that the fire was a deliberate, targeted attack by an arsonist,” he wrote. “This level of violence has to stop. It is our shared responsibility to do better. As elected leaders, we have an additional responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity. To not just call out what’s right and what’s wrong but also to do the hard work of bringing people together to find common ground in a world that’s constantly trying to divide us.”

Reuters: Chechnya Leader’s Son, 17, Becomes Head of Chechen Security Council

Los Angeles Times: ‘It Is Time for You to Leave’: DHS Mistakenly Sends Notices to U.S. Citizens

Axios: Musk vs. Bessent Dispute Erupted Into West Wing Shouting Match

Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got into a heated shouting match in earshot of President Trump and other officials in the White House last week during a dispute about the IRS, two witnesses and three sources briefed on the matter tell Axios.

“It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” one witness said of the argument last Thursday.

Julien Baker, an indie singer-songwriter and one-third of Boygenius, just released Send a Prayer My Way, a collaboration with the artist TORRES. We know it’s early to say, but the album is shaping up to be one of our favorites of the year. Yeehaw!

Do you think that restoring Ukrainian control over the Crimean Peninsula is an achievable goal?