Zelensky to unveil ‘victory plan’ to Ukrainian lawmakers after presenting it to Western allies

WASHINGTON: Mass firings at multiple US government agencies have begun as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk accelerate their purge of America’s federal bureaucracy, union sources and employees familiar with the layoffs told Reuters on Thursday.
Termination emails have been sent in the past 48 hours to scores of government workers, mostly recently hired employees still on probation, at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the General Services Administration, which manages many federal buildings.
All probationary staff at the Office of Personnel Management, the human resources arm for the US government, were fired in a group call on Thursday and told to leave the agency’s headquarters in Washington by 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT), two sources told Reuters.
OPM officials also met with other government agencies on Thursday and advised them to lay off their probationary employees, with some exceptions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump and Tesla CEO Musk’s overhaul of the federal government appeared to be widening as Musk aides arrived for the first time at the federal tax-collecting agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and US embassies were told to prepare for staff cuts.
It was not immediately clear on Thursday how many domestic federal workers stood to lose their jobs in the first wave of layoffs. But the move fulfills Trump’s vow to reduce the size of the federal government and root out the “deep state,” a reference to bureaucrats he views as not sufficiently loyal to him.
“The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment with the Agency,” letters sent to at least 45 probationers at the SBA stated.
Reuters has seen a copy of the termination letter.
Letters to at least 160 recent hires at the Department of Education, also seen by Reuters, told them that their continued employment “would not be in the public interest.”
Trump, a Republican serving his second term, repeatedly called for the elimination of the Department of Education during his presidential campaign. On Wednesday, he called it a “con job” and said he wants it closed.
About 100 probationary employees received termination letters on Wednesday at the GSA, according to two people familiar with the firings.
One GSA employee, who said he had one month left until his probation period ended and had been receiving excellent performance reviews, was told this week he will be fired on Friday.
“Up until two weeks ago, this was an absolute dream job. Now it’s become an absolute nightmare because of what is going on. I have small children and a mortgage to pay,” the worker told Reuters.
According to government data, about 280,000 civilian government workers were hired less than two years ago, with most still on probation.
Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story, but a spokesperson for OPM said the firings were in line with new government policy.
“The Trump administration is encouraging agencies to use the probationary period as it was intended: as a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” the spokesperson said.
About 75,000 workers have signed up for the buyout, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. That is equal to 3 percent of the civilian workforce.
The deadline to take the offer expired on Wednesday evening. Asked why workers were not given extra time to consider the buyout so more would take it, Leavitt said, “I’m not so sure that we didn’t hit the numbers we wanted.”

Massive downsizing
Trump has tasked the South African-born Musk and his team at DOGE, a temporary government agency, to undertake a massive downsizing of the 2.3 million-strong civilian federal workforce.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has sent DOGE members into at least 16 government agencies, where they have gained access to computer systems with sensitive personnel and financial information, and sent workers home.
Gavin Kliger, a top staffer in DOGE, arrived at a new agency, the IRS, on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
It was the first time a Musk aide has entered the IRS, a longtime target of Republicans who claim without evidence that the Biden administration weaponized the agency to target small businesses and middle-class Americans with unnecessary audits.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has asked US embassies worldwide to prepare for staff cuts, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of the president’s effort to overhaul the US diplomatic corps.
Trump’s overhaul of government has sown panic among thousands of federal workers in the US capital who fear they may be targeted next.
In a video call addressing the World Government Summit in Dubai on Thursday, Musk said, “We do need to delete entire agencies.”
Trump has pressed ahead with the effort despite a barrage of lawsuits from labor unions and Democratic attorneys general and criticism, including from several Republican budget experts, that the initiative is ideologically driven.
Trump has defended the effort, saying the federal government is too bloated and that too much money is lost to waste and fraud. While there is bipartisan agreement on the need for government reform, critics have questioned the blunt force approach of Musk, who has amassed extraordinary influence in the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.

Russian officials and state media took a triumphant tone Thursday after President Donald Trump jettisoned three years of US policy and announced he would likely meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal in the almost three-year war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said he would not accept any negotiations about Ukraine that do not include his country in the talks. European governments also demanded a seat at the table.
Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Zelensky, as well as European governments, in any peace talks. The Ukrainian leader recently described that prospect as “very dangerous.”
Putin has been ostracized by the West since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, and in 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader alleging war crimes.
Trump’s announcement created a major diplomatic upheaval that could herald a watershed moment for Ukraine and Europe.

Russia rejoices at Putin’s spotlight role
Russian officials and state-backed media sounded triumphant after Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin that lasted more than an hour.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the “position of the current (US) administration is much more appealing.”
The deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said in an online statement: “The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself.”
Senior lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said the call “will go down in the history of world politics and diplomacy.”
“I am sure that in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and London they are now reading Trump’s lengthy statement on his conversation with Putin with horror and cannot believe their eyes,” Pushkov wrote on his messaging app.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said in an opinion column: “The US finally hurt Zelensky for real,” adding that Trump had found “common ground” with Putin.

“This means that the formula ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ — a sacred cow for Zelensky, the European Union and the previous US administration — no longer exists. Moreover, the opinion of Kyiv and Brussels (the European Union) is of no interest to Trump at all,” it added.
The pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda went even further and published a column stating in the headline that “Trump signed Zelensky’s death sentence.”
“The myth of Russia as a ‘pariah’ in global politics, carefully inflated by Western propaganda, has burst with a bang,” the column said.
 

Zelensky won’t accept talks without Ukraine
In his first comments to journalists since Trump held individual calls first with Putin and then Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader conceded that it was “not very pleasant” that the American president spoke first to Putin. But he said the main issue was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan.”
“We cannot accept it, as an independent country, any agreements (made) without us,” Zelensky said as he visited a nuclear power plant in western Ukraine.
During the conversation with Trump on Wednesday, Zelensky said, the US president told him he wanted to speak to both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the same time.
“He never mentioned in a conversation that Putin and Russia was a priority. We, today, trust these words. For us it is very important to preserve the support of the United States of America,” Zelensky said.

Alarm bells ring in Europe and NATO
Trump appears ready to make a deal over the heads of Ukraine and European governments.
He also effectively dashed Ukraine’s hopes of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was an “irreversible” step, or getting back the parts of its territory captured so far by the Russian army. Russia currently occupies close to 20 percent of the country.
The US administration’s approach to a potential settlement is notably close to Moscow’s vision of how the war should end. That has caused alarm and tension within the 32-nation NATO alliance and 27-nation European Union.
Some European governments that fear their countries could also be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs were alarmed by Washington’s new course, saying they must be part of negotiations.
“Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote Wednesday on social media.

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said: “It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans. You need the Ukrainians.”
Others balked at Trump’s overtures and poured cold water on his upbeat outlook.
“Just as Putin has no intention of stopping hostilities even during potential talks, we must maintain Western unity and increase support … to Ukraine, and political and economic pressure on Russia,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said. “Our actions must show that we are not changing course.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was right for Trump to speak to Putin, and Scholz noted that he had done so himself as recently as November. He said “a dictated peace” would never win European support.
“We also will not accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of American and European security,” Scholz said. “Only one person would benefit from that: President Putin.”
 

A Ukrainian soldier is resigned to Trump and Putin talking
A soldier from Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade fighting in the eastern Donetsk region said it was normal for Trump and Putin to speak to each other.
“If dialogue is one way to influence the situation, then let them talk — but let it be meaningful enough for us to feel the results of those talks,” the soldier said, insisting on anonymity due to security risks for her family in occupied Ukrainian territory.
But she was skeptical about the negotiations, given the incompatible demands tabled in the past by Russia and Ukraine.
“The conditions are unacceptable for everyone. What we propose doesn’t work for them, and what they propose is unacceptable for us,” she said. “That’s why I, like probably every soldier here, believe this can only be resolved by force.”
A Ukrainian army officer, who said he’s in touch with more than 40 brigades, said the troops he regularly speaks with don’t want a peace deal at any price even as they are desperate for more Western military aid.
“The stock we currently have, in terms of ammunition, is enough to last two or three weeks, maybe a month,” he told The Associated Press, asking that his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
“We definitely cannot deal with it on our own,” he added.