Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the latest in the Ukraine-Russia war, Israeli airstrikes on Yemen, and the ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Malaysia.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he is holding off on placing new sanctions on Moscow in order to preserve the Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations. Instead, he told reporters at the White House that he would give it “about two weeks” to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about ending the war or just stringing the United States along.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the latest in the Ukraine-Russia war, Israeli airstrikes on Yemen, and the ASEAN-GCC-China summit in Malaysia.

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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he is holding off on placing new sanctions on Moscow in order to preserve the Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations. Instead, he told reporters at the White House that he would give it “about two weeks” to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about ending the war or just stringing the United States along.

“We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not, and if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently,” Trump said.

Though Trump has often sided with Russia and accused Ukraine of prolonging the war, he has grown more critical of Putin in recent days in the face of stalemated peace talks and Moscow’s continued attacks on Ukraine.

Russia launched a brutal drone barrage against Ukraine over the weekend, striking a series of cities and killing at least 12 people on Sunday night alone. The onslaught appeared to anger Trump. Putin is “playing with fire!” Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, warning that “really bad things” would have happened to Russia if it weren’t for him. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and prime minister and a key Putin ally who........

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