World Briefing: March 23, 2025

A Turkish court on Sunday jailed the mayor of Istanbul pending trial on corruption charges, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency, sidelining a potential contender in Turkey’s next presidential election and the top rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested at his home on Wednesday, four days before he was set to be named the presidential candidate of Turkey’s political opposition. He has denied the accusations against him, which Mr. Erdogan’s opponents have called a ploy to prevent a popular politician from running for president. The court ordered that Mr. Imamoglu be jailed on accusations of corruption pending a trial, the state-run news media said. State prosecutors have accused him of leading a criminal organization and overseeing bribery, bid rigging and other financial misdeeds at City Hall. Prosecutors also accused him of supporting terrorism through his political coordination with a pro-Kurdish group during local elections last year. The court has not yet ruled on whether he will be jailed for those accusations as well - NYT

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as “a posture and a pose” by Donald Trump’s special envoy. Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”. In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he “liked” the Russian president. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said. “He’s super smart.” Witkoff, who met Putin 10 days ago, said the Russian president had been “gracious” and “straight up” with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was “clearly touched by it”. During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was “a false country” and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian. Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces - BBC

At least three people were killed, including a five-year-old child, after Russia launched a barrage of drones targeting Kyiv overnight on Sunday, according to local Ukrainian officials and emergency services. The attack on the Ukrainian capital came ahead of ceasefire negotiations in Saudi Arabia in which Ukraine and Russia are expected to hold indirect US-mediated talks on Monday to discuss a pause in long-range attacks targeting energy facilities and civilian infrastructure. The Ukrainian delegation is expected to meet with US officials in Saudi Arabia a day ahead of the indirect talks, Ukrainian President Voldoymyr Zelensky said. Ukraine is planning to send technical teams to discuss the details of the partial ceasefire. Russia launched 147 drones across Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 97 and 25 others didn’t reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures. The attacks also struck Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Odesaand Donetsk regions - France 24

Israeli strikes across the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 19 overnight into Sunday, including a senior Hamas political leader and several women and children. The Israeli military also ordered people to evacuate from part of the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt. The military said it would soon operate against militants in the already heavily destroyed Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah and ordered people to evacuate on foot along a single route to Mawasi, a sprawling area of squalid tent camps. It was not immediately clear if the order signalled a renewed ground operation - Euronews

Pope Francis is set to be discharged from a Rome hospital on Sunday, ending his weeks-long stay for a prolonged respiratory illness. The 88-year-old pontiff was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital in Rome for bronchitis on Feb. 14, where his condition worsened as he battled a severe case of double pneumonia that doctors multiple times warned had put him in critical danger. The pope, who lost part of his lung in his youth, has long struggled with respiratory issues. Gemelli medical director Dr. Sergio Alfieri said on Saturday that the pope was well enough to continue his recovery, which Alfieri said would involve two months of rest, from his home at the Vatican. The Vatican also announced on Saturday that Pope Francis would make his first public appearance since his hospitalization on Sunday, when he is set to greet crowds outside Gemelli Hospital. - Politico

President Trump is undermining trust with key allies on the other side of the globe - with inexplicable decisions that are straining relationships with the Asian countries that the U.S. would rely on in the event of conflict with China or North Korea. Beijing was an early target of Trump’s latest tariff war, but the White House appears to be applying its aggressive stance on trade to the rest of the region as well. Washington has imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel from Australia, threatened them on cars from Japan and hinted that South Korea could be next target of U.S. tariffs. Seth Jones, president of the defense and security department of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says a trade war that punishes U.S. partners in the region threatens to weaken ties with Asian allies, possibly forcing them to reassess the reliability of U.S. security commitments. “Tariffs against the Australians, or current or future tariffs — particularly increases against the Japanese and South Koreans — would certainly not be helpful in contributing to a close partnership with those countries,” he says. In the current Trump term, “we are in uncharted territory,” says John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Japan and Koreas Program at the Center for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. “There is a profound sense of anxiety and I think a sense of urgency [in] countries like Japan, Australia, European states which have a stake in the Indo-Pacific, particularly the U.K.” Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, thinks Trump’s focus on trade and toughness on China indicates that “he cares about economic benefits” the U.S. could reap. “He doesn’t have strong issues with China’s authoritarian system,” he says. “He doesn’t really have issues with China’s regional aggression as long as those regional aggressions do not immediately threaten American interests.” - NPR

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