UN secretary general has said UN faces ‘imminent financial collapse’ due to unpaid contributions from member states

The Trump administration has started the process to transfer $725m to the United Nations, a congressional notification seen by Reuters ⁠showed – a move aid experts said ⁠was a welcome step towards paying ​billions in dues owed.

There was no immediate response from Washington DC to questions about the reasons for the payment from an administration that has slashed funding to many UN agencies and blasted the global body for not living up to ⁠its potential.

Audio recording of US vice-president apparently made at New York fundraiser and shared with Canadian Press

Leaked audio from a private event has reportedly captured the US vice-president, JD Vance, mocking Canada for apparently capitulating in a trade deal and taunting the prime minister, Mark Carney, for trying to “out-tough” Donald Trump.

The recording, which was reportedly made at a fundraiser and shared with the Canadian Press, comes in the last stretch of a difficult negotiation in which the US president has threatened to impose 50% tariffs on Canada.

Courier network carried millions of dollars in cash to Lebanon on commercial flights, treasury department says

The US treasury department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 people it says formed a courier network that smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah by carrying cash onboard commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) said the network allowed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group,to obtain foreign currency and dodge sanctions outside the formal banking system. The treasury department linked the operation to a scheme once associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.

The Trump administration’s ‘America first’ approach has contributed to the scale of the crisis now unfolding in one of the world’s poorest countries

For months health experts have warned that the scale of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could surpass the one that swept west Africa in 2014-16. This week, the authorities in the DRC announced that a grim milestone has already been passed: at least 2,325 people have died from the virus, making it the deadliest of the country’s 17 outbreaks and the fastest-growing in history.

There is no effective vaccine against Bundibugyo – a rare strain of the virus that spread fatally undetected during the spring, often being misdiagnosed as malaria or typhoid. In contrast to neighbouring Uganda, which succeeded in eliminating an outbreak, multiple factors are combining to let the disease rip through the DRC. The worst-affected region is contested by armed groups, and a context of population displacement and chronic insecurity has made monitoring and surveillance more difficult. Ebola treatment centres have been attacked as a result of misinformation and community distrust.

She made the statement during a debate when asked about potential threats to US national security in South China Sea

• US politics live – latest updates

Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea threaten US national security, Republican fill-in senator Darline Graham hesitated. “I’m just going to be honest here,” she told Tuesday night’s debate audience. “I’m – not that informed on national security, so – but I do support the military.”

Gasps, and boos, rolled through the opera house hosting the only debate before next week’s Republican runoff – a race to succeed her brother, Lindsey Graham, who was one of the Senate’s most committed rightwing foreign policy hawks before his sudden passing in July. She did not retreat.

Poll after poll shows the same thing. The American people know that the current economic system is rigged

The media pundits have written article after article desperately trying to understand why progressive candidates, despite being heavily outspent, keep defeating establishment Democrats in primaries around the country. Well, the answer is not complicated.

Whether it is a corrupt campaign finance system, unprecedented income and wealth inequality, a broken and wildly expensive healthcare system, the enormous threats posed by AI or an immoral and destructive foreign policy, progressives are talking about the real issues facing working families. And they are providing real solutions. Establishment Democrats are not.

As chief US diplomat, Rubio could do great good. His pandering and neglect are a disgrace we shouldn’t ignore

Viewed from the state department in Washington DC, the world is on fire – but record heatwaves are not to blame. The unresolved Iran war has badly burned Donald Trump. His military campaign conclusively failed, energy and food prices are still rising, and a Republican rout in November’s midterm elections looms. Humiliatingly, Israel this week flatly rejected his latest Gaza peace proposals, days after Trump congratulated himself on a “historic breakthrough”. In Europe, Russia’s attacks on Nato allies grow increasingly brazen, threatening a wider escalation. The Ukraine war, which Trump vowed to end, is now well into its fifth year, with civilians on both sides caught in the killing fields. And these are just the bigger firestorms. There are plenty more.

Rarely has the need for effective, professional diplomacy been more pressing. So step forward Marco Rubio, US secretary of state and chief American diplomat. These are challenges that, if successfully tackled, could propel the 55-year-old son of Cuban immigrants and the former US senator for Florida into pole position in the 2028 Republican presidential nomination race. Here is a chance for Rubio to defy critics who dismiss him as a lickspittle and Trump dogsbody, and transform himself into respected global statesman. His boss mocked him as “little Marco” and a “loser” when they were election rivals in 2016. (Rubio called him a conman.) Now is Rubio’s opportunity to go big, be brave and prove he’s a winner.

During President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent visit to Serbia, he was asked whether Belgrade could continue to count on Ukraine’s position on Kosova. Zelenskyy reaffirmed that position, saying that Ukraine respects Serbia’s territorial integrity and international law and that its stance on Kosova’s “unilateral declaration of independence” remains unchanged.

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Zelenskyy’s Kosovo comments in Belgrade prompt flag removal in Prishtina

For many Kosovars, who have stood firmly with Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, this is difficult to understand. There is particular pain in hearing President Zelenskyy appear to dismiss what Kosovars endured—when it is precisely that memory of war, displacement, and atrocities that made Kosova one of Ukraine’s most instinctive supporters.

The danger of “unilateral”

There is a big problem with the way Kosova is being discussed by President Zelenskyy. Describing its independence simply as a “unilateral declaration” removes everything that matters about how Kosova actually became independent.

It also plays directly into an argument Vladimir Putin has been making for years: if the West accepted Kosova, why should it reject what Russia has done in Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk?

Ukraine should be dismantling that argument, not inadvertently reinforcing it. Kosova’s declaration was unilateral in one narrow sense: Serbia did not consent. But Ukrainians should understand the problem with treating the aggressor’s consent as the decisive test.

Imagine telling a community in Ukraine devastated by Russian forces that Moscow must retain a permanent veto over the political settlement that determines its future.

Kosova’s path to independence

Kosova did not simply decide one day in 2008 to break away from Serbia. The declaration came at the end of a process that had lasted years. Kosova’s path to statehood came through the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, a federation that ultimately fragmented into seven independent states, and after years of systematic repression of Kosova’s overwhelmingly Albanian population. The culmination was the 1998–99 Kosova war.

Serbian and Yugoslav forces conducted a campaign of violence and forced displacement against Kosovar Albanians. Nearly 800,000 people were expelled from Kosova in a matter of months because of a violent ethnic cleansing campaign of the Serbian army against Kosovars.

Hundreds of thousands more were internally displaced. Thousands of civilians were killed, cities and villages burned, homes destroyed, and women subjected to sexual violence.

When the war ended in 1999, Kosova did not declare independence. Nor did Albania invade Kosova and annex it. Instead, Kosova was placed under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. For almost nine years, its institutions developed under international administration while its final status remained unresolved.

And then there were negotiations. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari to lead talks between Belgrade and Pristina over Kosova’s final status. After those negotiations failed to produce an agreement, Ahtisaari concluded that returning Kosova to Serbian rule was no longer a viable option and recommended internationally supervised independence.

This matters because Kosova’s declaration in February 2008 did not reject that international process. It embraced it. The declaration committed Kosova to implementing the Ahtisaari settlement and invited continued international involvement, including an EU rule-of-law mission and NATO’s security presence.

Call the final declaration unilateral if you wish. The process that produced it was anything but.

What the ICJ found

Even after independence, the issue was subjected to further international scrutiny. At Serbia’s initiative, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to examine the declaration. In 2010, the court concluded that Kosova’s declaration “did not violate international law.” It also found that it did not violate UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

None of this means Kosova’s path to independence was simple or uncontested. Clearly, it was not. But reducing this history to the word “unilateral” creates precisely the opening Russia needs to manufacture a parallel with Ukraine.

Crimea breaks the comparison

Putin has used Kosova for years to claim that the West created a precedent Russia merely followed: Kosova separated from Serbia without Belgrade’s consent, so why should Crimea be different? Because that is clearly where the similarity ends.

Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk were annexed following a Russian invasion. Moscow occupied Ukrainian territory, installed or backed proxy authorities, staged referendums under military occupation, and ultimately claimed Ukrainian land as its own.

Kosova emerged from an international process designed to resolve a conflict; Russia manufactured “independence” as an instrument of conquest. Ukraine should insist on that distinction every time Moscow invokes Kosova.

Ukraine understandably approaches Kosova cautiously. A country fighting for its territorial integrity is wary of anything that might appear to weaken that principle. But acknowledging the exceptional circumstances of Kosova does not weaken Ukraine’s argument. Treating Kosova and Crimea as comparable cases does.

Russia wants Kosova to be its precedent. Ukraine does not have to accept the premise. Ukraine, in fact, has a particular interest in explaining the difference, because Ukrainians know better than almost anyone what Russian-manufactured "self-determination” actually looks like. That is not Kosova’s story.

Kosova chose Ukraine first

There is also an irony here that is difficult for Kosovars to ignore. Kosova has stood with Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It imposed sanctions against Russia and Belarus, provided assistance to Ukraine, and offered refuge to Ukrainian journalists.

It did all of this without being recognized by Kyiv—Kosovars did not need recognition to know which side they were on.

Ukraine’s experience resonates deeply in Kosova. We know what it means to live through war and displacement. We also know what it means when a larger neighbor invokes history to argue that it has the right to determine your future.

That does not make the two cases identical—but it should make Ukrainians skeptical when Russia tries to turn Kosova into a justification for its own imperial project.

Kosovars did not expect President Zelenskyy to arrive in Belgrade and announce that Ukraine had suddenly changed its position on Kosova. But it is reasonable to expect Kyiv to revisit its approach to Kosova and to recognize the process by which Kosova came to be, a process that Ukraine’s closest allies today understood, supported, and ultimately recognized.

That requires abandoning a framing that reduces Kosova’s history to a “unilateral declaration” and inadvertently gives credibility to the parallel Russia has spent years trying to construct. For Kosovars, the hope is that a more honest understanding of that history will eventually lead Ukraine to reconsider recognition, too.

Not as a reward for Kosova’s support for Ukraine, but as the natural outcome of seeing Kosova on its own terms rather than through the precedent Moscow wants it to be.

Putin has spent years trying to make Kosova his precedent. Ukraine should take that argument away from him. Doing so would bring Kyiv closer to the position of the allies standing beside it today—and perhaps, in time, recognition would follow.

Nezir Sinani

Nezir Sinani is executive director of the B4Ukraine Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 civil society organizations pressing companies and financial institutions to stop enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine. A longtime Kosovar activist, his work is rooted in Kosova’s own experience of war and displacement.

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

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