Blog

KYIV, Ukraine — The Americans arrived on a train that the Ukrainians called the “peace express.” Yet nothing about the process of ending the war with Russia has been fast or direct, and there is no sign that will change anytime soon.

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner went to Ukraine on Sunday fresh off a trip to Moscow bearing what President Donald Trump said was a proposal to end nearly five years of war.

But the Trump administration itself, consumed by its war with Iran, had allowed the peace process to enter such a deep freeze that the trip was just a preliminary step — talks about how to resume talks. And President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said it appeared that the war would continue at least into what analysts say could be a devastating winter for the country.

“It’s a very, very hard problem, but we’re going to try,” Kushner said of negotiations to end the war. “And I think if we can achieve that, it’d be an incredible thing. That doesn’t mean we will achieve it, but it’s very important to try.”

Kushner said “new ideas” were presented to Zelensky in a series of discussions Sunday. He gave no details and also declined to give a timeline for reaching any potential settlement.

The Ukrainian leader offered little more detail about the talks with the Americans. “All the possibilities” for resuming negotiations were discussed, he said at a news conference after the meetings, as were “several genuinely new ideas.”

When pressed on when further talks would be held, the responses from Witkoff, Kushner, and Zelensky seemed to follow a pattern: “Soon” or “hopefully soon.”

Ukrainian officials had been saying before the Americans arrived that they expected negotiations to resume in earnest later this month, after Russian parliamentary elections but before the U.S. midterms.

Those talks, if they happen, would be held alongside an escalation in the air war between Moscow and Kyiv, and a Russian push to accelerate its slow territorial gains in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The war, analysts say, is likely to get only uglier in the months to come, as Russia seeks a knockout wintertime blow against Ukraine and the two sides try to gain the upper hand in eventual settlement negotiations.

While it remains to be seen if peace negotiations can be revived after a six-month lull, the visit by Witkoff and Kushner was meaningful for Ukraine because it finally brought the two Americans out of a Moscow bubble.

The envoys’ visit to Kyiv, which ended late Sunday, was their first after several trips to Russia. It gave the Ukrainians the chance to show, and not just tell, as they try to make their case and ensure that the Trump administration does not revert to clearly favoring Russia in talks, as it did earlier in the process.

The Ukrainians started serving up symbolism before the envoys even reached Kyiv. A refined meal was laid out on the train ride for Witkoff, a known gourmand, and Kushner. It included a selection of Crimean Tatar dishes, highlighting Ukraine’s ties to the peninsula that Russia illegally annexed more than a decade ago.

Upon arrival, Zelensky greeted the envoys on the landmark Sophia Square, whose display of tributes to fallen soldiers is impossible to ignore, then brought them into the historic cathedral, a symbol of Ukrainian national identity.

Zelensky’s negotiator later wore a joke T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Kyiv Regime” — poking fun at the sneering term used by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to refer to Ukraine’s government.

Zelensky offered jokes, too, in telling Witkoff and Kushner to “come more often,” since the Kremlin agreed to temporarily halt during their trip what have been especially intense all-day strikes on Kyiv.

For many Ukrainians, that was the best and only anticipated result, at least in the near term.

“Thank you dear Steve and thank you dear Jared for giving us this afternoon without air-raid alerts,” a Kyiv tour guide, Dmytro Soloviov, said with a touch of sarcasm while leading a walking tour of the city’s architecture.

Yana Vilimetova, a procurement manager, said Ukrainians would use the brief respite to recharge a little. It felt like Groundhog Day to many — another flurry initiated by the Americans, with little expectation of any change in Putin’s determination to continue fighting.

“We’ll just sleep for three days without strikes, reset our mental health during these days, and that’s it,” Vilimetova said.

While no one expects a lasting ceasefire anytime soon, a placard on the dining car table in the U.S. envoys’ train offered a hopeful thought.

“Peace,” it read, “arrives on time.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

President Donald Trump appeared to suggest on Sunday that New Mexico should be renamed “New America,” prompting swift backlash from the state’s Democratic leaders over his latest effort to put an American stamp on geographic names.

On social media, Trump shared an image of a map of New Mexico with the word “Mexico” crossed out with a red X and replaced with “America.” The White House reshared the image shortly after on its official X account.

The president posted again several hours later, with what appeared to be an artificial intelligence video of him placing a label with the word “America” over “Mexico” on a “Welcome to New Mexico” road sign.

Trump has no legal authority to rename any state, which in New Mexico’s case is written into its Constitution. Any proposed change would have to originate within the state, a prospect that New Mexico’s Democratic leaders rejected forcefully Sunday.

“New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote on social media.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury was more blunt: “Oh hell no!” she wrote on X, adding, “Our state’s name carries generations of history, culture, and family — and it belongs to us.”

The origins of New Mexico’s name predate the founding of the United States. In the 16th century, Mexicans called the territory north and west of the Rio Grande “New Mexico,” according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The state’s name is also written into Article 1 of its Constitution: “The name of this state is New Mexico, and its boundaries are as follows,” the first page reads.

New Mexico’s two Democratic senators also pushed back on Trump’s post. “Three things I will always call by their actual names …,” Sen. Martin Heinrich wrote on X, before listing the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario, and New Mexico.

On the day Trump returned to office last year, he signed an executive order directing the federal government to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The name “has a beautiful ring,” the president said that month.

Last month, amid an escalating trade fight with Canada, Trump signed another executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. Days before signing the order, the president had posted an image of a map with Lake Ontario crossed out with a red X, as well as an AI video of himself replacing a Lake Ontario sign with “Lake America.”

Those executive orders, however, dealt with geographic features, not the legal name of a state. The changes were carried out through the federal Geographic Names Information System and apply only to federal usage, including on maps and documents, but they do not bind state and local governments or private mapmakers.

Rhode Island offers a recent example of how different the process for changing the legal name of a state can be. In June 2020, amid nationwide protests over systemic racism after the killing of George Floyd, the state moved to drop “and Providence Plantations” from its formal name. Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, ordered the phrase be removed from executive-branch documents and websites while acknowledging that changing the state’s official name required voters to amend the Rhode Island Constitution. Voters approved the change that fall.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

OTTAWA, Ontario — After more than two weeks of finger-pointing, threats, and patronizing insults between longtime trading partners, Canada’s latest retaliatory tariffs against the United States are set to take effect just after midnight Eastern time Tuesday.

Polls show that Canadians strongly back Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to end trade talks with Washington last month and to hit back with tariffs on about $20 billion in U.S. products entering Canada. But there is also concern over what might happen next. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened another round of U.S. tariffs if Canada follows through on its plan.

Some in Canadian industry say they are inclined to take Trump at his word, at least on this threat.

People in the Trump administration “are willing to hurt themselves, their own sectors and industries, in pursuit of their goal, however misguided I think it is,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’​ Association of Canada. “So they may escalate. I hope that we don’t end up in a tit-for-tat situation. We’re going to run out of runway.”

Carney announced Canada’s new tariffs after he pulled Canadian negotiators out of talks in Washington last month — an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stave off 50% U.S. tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian exports and to reduce or eliminate tariffs of up to 50% on Canadian steel, aluminum, and automobiles.

The Trump administration said the tariffs it imposed last month were in part a response to retaliatory tariffs Canada placed last year on some U.S. imports, particularly autos. U.S. officials have repeatedly noted that only China and Canada retaliated against the United States since Trump began upending global trade.

At a news conference after a sternly worded speech announcing the tariffs, Carney declared that Canada had been attacked by the United States and that the two countries are now “at war.”

Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rejected that framing, arguing that Canada is too small an economic power to battle the United States. “I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who’s 13 times larger than you are,” Bessent said on CNBC.

On Friday, Trump escalated his trade rhetoric even further. He said that he might “end all trade with Canada” and other countries that have trade surpluses with the United States.

Separately, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Carney had shut down the talks to gain “political leverage” at home, not because of what the U.S. side had offered.

As last week went on, Carney made it clear that he was in no hurry to return to negotiations and was focused instead on diversifying Canada’s trade and expanding its domestic economy.

“At the appropriate time, the conversation will happen,” he said. “But the most important thing we can do is not to spend all our time waiting by the phone, waiting for a call, refreshing on social media to see what’s coming across.”

Many of the U.S. items that will soon face Canadian tariffs of 15%, 25%, or 50% mirror the Canadian exports that are now met with 50% U.S. tariffs, particularly clothing and wood products. Canada revised the list to remove dozens of fish products after the Canadian fishing industry said that tight cross-border integration meant that its members would also be harmed.

Canadian officials have suggested that many targeted items come from states where voters supported Trump, though some political analysts question how much pressure that will actually bring on the White House. The list also includes items with little bearing on the Canadian economy, including the metal bands that attach erasers to pencils, migratory bird identification bands, and fish egg incubators.

Trump has not imposed tariffs on some of Canada’s largest exports, including oil and gas and many minerals, and has exempted many products with enough North American content to move duty-free under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Auto parts, for example, are subject to a 25% tariff but generally cross the border without incurring it.

As a result, Canada’s overall average tariff rate remains low compared with what most other countries face, and the majority of its trade, by dollar value, is still duty-free.

After the talks collapsed, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on autos and auto parts in January, apparently without the USMCA exemption — a move most analysts believe would be devastating for Canada’s auto industry. Trump has not taken formal steps toward carrying out the threat, though some in Canada speculate that rather than target new products or raise existing tariff rates, the Trump administration may instead strip away the USMCA exemption for many goods.

Volpe said that auto parts makers were not intimidated. He said that last year when the Trump administration proposed collecting tariffs on Canadian auto parts “they understood that it would shut down the auto industry in a week.”

He added: “Ultimately, I think they will back off that. But if they don’t, they can have at it.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.