SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
alexander lukashenko
Trump Invites Putin, Netanyahu to Join Peace Panel Mocked as ‘Board of Billionaires and War Criminals’
"This is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats," said one critic. "It has zero legitimacy."
Jan 19, 2026
Criticism of President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" mounted Monday after the White House invited controversial figures—including two leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes—to join the body tasked with supporting the management and reconstruction of Gaza.
Among Trump's latest invitees to the board are Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lukashenko has repressively ruled Belarus for over 30 years and supports Putin's ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine, for which the Russian president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. Netanyahu is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Trump—who has bombed 10 countries over his two terms in office—will chair the organization, whose executive board will also include former British leader and alleged war criminal Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank President Ajay Banga, billionaire businessman Marc Rowan, real estate investor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner—who has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and others.
"As if the people of Gaza have not suffered enough," Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said on Bluesky. "But Blair’s inclusion confirms the obvious—this is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats. It has zero legitimacy."
Leaders of countries including Argentina, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Turkey were also invited to join the board. So was the European Union, with whom US relations are strained over issues including Trump's tariffs and threats to invade Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory and NATO member.
Countries seeking permanent Board of Peace membership will be required to pay a $1 billion fee. A US official told the Associated Press that the fee would go toward reconstructing the obliterated Palestinian strip following more than two years of Israel's genocidal assault and siege.
There are no Palestinians on the board.
A separate National Committee for the Administration of Gaza—a 12-member technocratic body led by Palestinian official Ali Shaath and tasked with managing day-to-day affairs in the strip—held its inaugural meeting last week in Cairo as Witkoff said that Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza had begun.
While Trump's invitation letters to prospective Board of Peace members said the body will “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict," critics panned the panel as a vanity project for Trump, who fancies himself a grand peacemaker despite having bombed seven countries in the first year of his second term.
"I hope he can find time to attend Board of Peace meetings between meetings about invasions of Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada, and Minneapolis," University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said of Trump in a Bluesky post.
Former US State Department diplomat Aaron David Miller told the Washington Post Monday, “The Board of Peace is a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth."
"The Board of Peace is not going to be able to solve the conflict in Sudan. It is not going to do what American mediators and Europeans couldn’t do with respect to getting a ceasefire in Ukraine," he continued.
"We need on-the-ground diplomacy, not the performative creation of committees and bringing large numbers of countries and individuals into a process in which most of them will have no role," Miller added. "You need Trump. You need Netanyahu. You need Hamas’s internal and external leadership, and you need the Qataris and the Turks.”
On Monday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich condemned the Board of Peace.
“It is time to explain to the president that his plan is bad for the state of Israel and to cancel it,” Smotrich said during a ceremony to inaugurate the new Yatziv apartheid settlement in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Gaza is ours, its future will affect our future more than anyone else’s. We will take responsibility for what happens there, impose military administration, and complete the mission.”
This, after Netanyahu said earlier in a rare public rebuke of Trump that the board “was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”
Nearly a year ago, Trump also said that the US would "own" Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East." He later clarified that he meant the "voluntary" transfer of Palestinians, which critics said amounted to a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
The White House also reportedly circulated a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into a high-tech hub replete with a "Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands" development and an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone."
Palestinians have largely been highly skeptical of the Board of Peace.
"When I read the names of the peace council members, I felt this was not a plan that prioritizes the interests of Gaza's residents," Sameh Abu Marsa, a forcibly displaced Palestinian living in a refugee camp in Gaza City, told Xinhua Monday. "It looks more like a new form of international mandate, with decisions made externally and without participation from people on the ground."
"These names suggest political deals rather than genuine peace," he added.
Khaled Elgindy, a Palestinian scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said on X Saturday that "tellingly, there is not a single reference to Palestinians, their rights, interests, or even a future [Palestinian] state—none of which are a priority for Blair, Trump, or the so-called Board of Peace."
Others noted the continuing dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel restricts the entry of aid, as well as Israel's more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 465 Palestinians have been killed and 1,287 wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10.
"How can we talk about a peace council while Israel's violations continue here?" asked Khan Younis resident Abdul Raouf Awad.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Russian Officials Say Wagner Mutineer Prigozhin Was Passenger in Fatal Plane Crash
Suspicions quickly turned to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying that "there's not much that happens in Russia" without his involvement.
Aug 23, 2023
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the billionaire head of the Wagner Group mercenary firm who recently led an aborted rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin—an erstwhile close ally—was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed on Wednesday north of Moscow, according to Russian officials and media.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry said there were no survivors among the 10 passengers aboard the Embraer Legacy 600 private business jet, which reportedly belonged to Prigozhin and was en route from St. Petersburg to Moscow when it crashed in the Tver region more than 60 miles north of Moscow.
Rosaviation, Russia's civil aviation regulator, confirmed that Prigozhin was on the passenger list—but it remains unclear whether he was actually aboard the doomed jet.
The fate of the 61-year-old oligarch—once known as "Putin's chef" because the Russian president ate at his restaurants and contracted his catering business—has confounded observers since he led his Wagner mercenaries in a short-lived mutiny in which they captured and briefly occupied the city of Rostov-on-Don in June.
Prigozhin then ordered his men to march on Moscow to seek "revenge," accusing Russian military leaders of killing his troops during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Wagner forces played a critical role in Russia's battlefield successes and suffered heavy losses—especially among prisoners who volunteered to fight in exchange for their freedom.
In a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko—a close Putin ally who has allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine from his country—Prigozhin called off his coup attempt in exchange for safe passage to Belarus. However, Lukashenko said last month that Prigozhin and thousands of his fighters were still in Russia, while brushing off speculation that Putin would try to assassinate him.
"If you think Putin is so malicious and vindictive that he will wipe him out tomorrow... no, this will not happen," Lukashenko said at the time.
Earlier this week, Prigozhin published his first recruitment video since the mutiny, seeking soldiers of fortune to fight in African conflicts, including in Mali—where Wagner fighters, along with U.S.-backed government forces, are accused of committing widespread atrocities.
While the cause of Wednesday's plane crash remains unknown for now, speculation and suspicion of Putin's involvement came quickly, as the president vowed to severely punish what he called Wagner's "internal betrayal" and a "stab in the back of our country and our people."
U.S. President Joe Biden—a staunch supporter of Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion—told reporters after the crash that "there's not much that happens in Russia that Putin's not behind."
"But I don't know enough to know the answer," he added. "I've been working out for the last hour-and-a-half."
Numerous prominent Putin opponents have suffered mysterious and usually fatal poisonings, falls, and shootings over the years.
In a 2018 interview, Putin was asked if he knew how to forgive. "Yes, but not everything," the Russian leader replied. When asked what he could not forgive, Putin answered with one word: "Betrayal."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Putin Says 'First Batch' of Russian Nuclear Warheads Deployed in Belarus
"No matter what the political climate, Russia must work with the United States to control the risk that nuclear weapons will be used—and to eliminate them," says Global Zero. "Anything less means disaster for everyone."
Jun 16, 2023
Nearly 16 months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow has begun deploying "tactical" nuclear weapons in Belarus, confirming recent remarks from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
In what the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) called an "extremely dangerous escalation" that "risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences," Putin had announced the plan in late March.
"We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia, both that are three times more powerful than the ones used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Lukashenko told a Russian state television channel earlier this week, referencing the 1945 U.S. bombing of the Japanese cities. "Up to a million people would die immediately if, God forbid, this weapon were used."
Putin, who has said that Moscow will retain control over the Russian nukes in Belarus, addressed the deployment on Friday while speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
"As you know, we held talks with our union state, with President Lukashenko on deploying part of these tactical weapons to Belarusian territory," Putin said. "It has happened—the first nuclear warheads have been delivered to Belarusian territory. This is the first batch. We will complete this work by the end of this year."
In response to a question about the deployment, the Russian leader reportedly said that "this is a deterrence measure."
According to the BBC: "When asked by the forum's moderator about the possibility of using those weapons, he replied: 'Why should we threaten the whole world? I have already said that the use of extreme measures is possible in case there is a danger to Russian statehood.'"
Writing Friday for Responsible Statecraft, Greg Lane, a former senior executive in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations, argued that "Russia's goals here appear more political than military."
"First, and as it relates to the war in the Ukraine, he wants to again highlight his own unpredictability, specifically his willingness to escalate the conflict if certain red lines are crossed," Lane wrote. "Highlighting the possibility of a nuclear exchange over the war in the Ukraine also serves a second political goal for Moscow, which is to find and exploit wedge issues that can be used to influence European public opinion."
"Perhaps most importantly for the Kremlin, however, is that the re-stationing of nuclear weapons in Belarus marks real and measurable progress in Putin's effort to reconstitute a 'Greater Russia,'" Lane added. "With the debacle of his so-called 'special military operation' and the now extreme improbability that the Ukrainians would ever voluntarily join such a union, the Russian president needs to be able to identify some success in making Russia great again."
TASS reported that Russia's embassy in Washington D.C. said that Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov met with U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy on Friday and "topical issues of the bilateral agenda were discussed."
Asked about Putin's statements on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that "we'll continue to monitor the situation very closely and very carefully. We have no reason to adjust our own nuclear posture. We don't see any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon."
Noting U.S. President Joe Biden's comments earlier this week about the American commitment to defending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Blinken stressed, "That is our north star and we're very focused on that."
"As for Belarus itself, this is just another example of Lukashenko making irresponsible, provocative choices to cede control of Belarus' sovereignty against the will of the Belarusian people," the top U.S. diplomat said.
Blinken's remarks aligned with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's Thursday response to Lukashenko announcing the arrival of Russian nukes.
According to The Associated Press, Stoltenberg told journalists in Brussels that "we are, of course, closely monitoring what Russia is doing. So far, we haven't seen any changes in the nuclear posture that requires any changes in our posture."
"Russia's nuclear rhetoric and messaging is reckless and dangerous... Russia must know that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," he added, noting that "Russia has invested heavily in new modern nuclear capabilities and also deployed more nuclear capabilities, including close to NATO borders, for instance, in the high north."
The AP pointed out that "Biden and his NATO counterparts are gathering for a summit on July 11-12 in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Belarus border."
Of the world's nine nuclear-armed nations, Russia has the largest stockpile, followed by the United States; the other seven countries have far fewer. None of them support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
"No matter what the political climate, Russia must work with the United States to control the risk that nuclear weapons will be used—and to eliminate them," Global Zero, a campaign to abolish nukes, tweeted Thursday. "Anything less means disaster for everyone."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular