Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London.
I'm Tim Franks.
We're beginning with a war in Ukraine and the clear sense of urgency
that the Trump administration has injected
into trying to end the conflict begun by Russia back in 2014
and then dramatically worsened three years ago with its full scale invasion.
After weeks of US Pressure on Ukraine,
the message from Washington is
that it's now for Russia to respond favorably to the latest initiative.
And quickly note
that after those talks in Saudi Arabia between senior American and Ukrainian diplomats,
the joint communique spoke of an immediate 30 day ceasefire
and an immediate resumption of US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine,
as well as, and this, we're told will be as soon as possible,
a deal between Washington and Kyiv on the extraction of Ukrainian minerals.
Now, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
has been urging Moscow to agree to that month long cessation of hostilities.
The shooting needs to stop, he said.
Mr. Rubio raised the possibility that further down the track,