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Day: August 18, 2025
Ukrainian president hopes ‘joint strength with America, with our European friends, will force Russia into a real peace’ as he joins leaders from Europe in Washington for crucial summit with Donald Trump
Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared “Russia must end this war” as he arrived in Washington DC ahead of a crucial talks with Donald Trump over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Zelenskyy met European leaders in Brussels earlier on Sunday and reiterated Ukraine’s stance on land swaps, saying on X: “Ukraine’s constitution makes it impossible to give up or trade land. Since the territorial issue is so important, it should be discussed only by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at the trilateral – Ukraine, the US, Russia. So far, Russia gives no sign this will happen, and if Russia refuses, new sanctions must follow.”
Ahead of Monday’s peace talks in the US, Emmanuel Macron said that in order to have a “lasting peace deal for Ukraine, Ukraine needs a strong army”. He added that European allies want “Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be respected” and that “Ukraine must be represented in any talks on Ukraine’s future”. The French president also said that “our goal for tomorrow’s talks is to present a united front between Ukraine and its European allies”. The Washington talks will also be attended by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte.
Zelenskyy has hailed the decision to offer security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal as he prepared to meet Trump. “Security guarantees, as a result of our joint work, must really be very practical, delivering protection on land, in the air and at sea, and must be developed with Europe’s participation,” the Ukrainian president said.
In announcing his visit to Washington, Keir Starmer praised Trump for his “efforts to end Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine”. At the same time, the British PM reasserted Europe’s red lines, saying the “path to peace” could not be decided without Zelenskyy and that Russia should be “squeezed” with further sanctions. Starmer has deliberately sought to position himself as a leader who can get along with Trump while consistently stressing the red lines over any peace plan.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Russia and Ukraine were both “going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war. In interviews on Sunday Rubio said the talks in Alaska had “made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement – but there remains some big areas of disagreement”. “We’re still a long ways off,” Rubio added. “We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We’re not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made and towards one.” He declined to go into specific areas of agreement or disagreement.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Putin had agreed that the US and European allies could offer Ukraine a Nato-style, “Article 5-like” security guarantee as part of an eventual deal to end the war. Witkoff added that Russia had agreed to unspecified concessions on five Ukrainian regions central to the war, particularly the eastern Donetsk province. “We agreed to robust security guarantees that I would describe as gamechanging,” he said.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to international organisations in Vienna, said early on Monday that Russia agreed that any future peace agreement must provide security guarantees to Kyiv, but added that Russia “has equal right to expect that Moscow will also get efficient security guarantees”.
European Union council president Antonio Costa said he “welcomed the United States’ willingness to participate in providing security guarantees to Ukraine”. He said: “Transatlantic unity is paramount at this moment to achieve a sustainable peace in Ukraine.”
Whistleblower warns UK’s top AI research body in danger of collapse due to threats over funding and new direction
When the UK government announced the creation of the Alan Turing Institute in 2014 it promised a “fitting memorial” to the renowned computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer.
More than a decade on, Britain’s leading AI institute is in turmoil as staff warn it may be in danger of collapse and ministers demand a shift in focus to defence and security work.
Former defence secretary allowed to take role as chair of Cambridge Aerospace, as long as he avoids defence matters
The parliamentary standards body has been criticised for clearing Grant Shapps, a former Conservative defence secretary, to join a defence startup as long as he promises not to work on defence matters.
In a ruling that drew scorn from political ethics experts, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which monitors and advises on the revolving door between Westminster and the business sector, gave Shapps the green light to become the chair of Cambridge Aerospace.
Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images
- Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn drew backlash when he said he wanted the company to be “AI-first.”
- von Ahn said he “did not give enough context” when he laid out his plan in April.
- He said the language learning platform does not plan to lay off any full-time staff because of AI.
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said his language learning platform does not intend to lay off any full-time employees because of AI.
“We’ve never laid off any full-time employees. We don’t plan to,” von Ahn told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday.
von Ahn said Duolingo relies on contractors for “temporary tasks,” and that their numbers go “up and down depending on needs.” He added that the work done by Duolingo’s engineers will likely change in the next five years because of AI.
“They may not be doing some rote tasks anymore. What will probably happen is that one person will be able to accomplish more, rather than having fewer people,” von Ahn told the Times.
Duolingo did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In April, von Ahn drew backlash online after he published a staff memo about making Duolingo an “AI-first” company on LinkedIn. von Ahn wrote in his memo that the company could not afford to “wait until the technology is 100% perfect.” Duolingo has to “move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality,” he added.
In his memo, von Ahn said Duolingo would pursue five “constructive constraints” to achieve this goal. The constraints included a gradual reduction in contractors to “do work that AI can handle” and increasing head count only “if a team cannot automate more of their work.” In 2024, Duolingo said it laid off 10% of its contractors, partly because of AI.
von Ahn told the Times that the backlash arose because he “did not give enough context” when he published the memo.
“This was on me,” von Ahn said.
“Internally, this was not controversial. Externally, as a publicly traded company, some people assume that it’s just for profit. Or that we’re trying to lay off humans,” he added. “That was not the intent at all.”
von Ahn said in his interview that Duolingo has been encouraging AI use through a weekly activity they call “f-r-A-I-days.” During the activity, Duolingo teams are allowed to “experiment on how to get more efficient to use AI,” he added.
The rise of AI has fuelled increased fears that more jobs will be destroyed, rather than created.
In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs in the next five years. Amodei previously said in March that AI, and not software engineers, could be “writing essentially all of the code” in 12 months.
Paul Graham, the founder of startup incubator Y Combinator, said earlier this month that AI is “good at scutwork” and will not replace every job. He added said that while low-level programming jobs are “already disappearing,” top-notch programmers are still being paid high salaries.
“So I think the best general advice for protecting oneself from AI is to do something so well that you’re operating way above the level of scutwork,” Graham wrote in an X post on August 5.
Read the original article on Business Insider