Ukraine and Europe Reject Trump’s ‘Final Offer’
Well, that was to be expected: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not accept President Trump’s “final offer” for peace, which was exceedingly favorable to the Russians. Ukraine will not recognize Crimea as Russian territory as part of the deal, our In Brief reports. “There is nothing to talk about. It is against our Constitution,” Zelenskyy said yesterday.
The White House clarified that America would recognize Crimea as Russian territory, not that Ukraine must. But if reclaiming Crimea for Ukraine is a nonnegotiable ambition for Zelenskyy, then victory truly is well out of his reach.
This is an impossible situation, as each side has announced redlines that are well beyond the other side’s redlines. Exactly how to resolve it, only God knows. However, the entire conflict is certainly rapidly advancing a number of biblical prophecies. And President Trump’s efforts to single-handedly resolve it are doing so even more.
Trump upset at Zelenskyy for wrecking peace talks: The president responded, “He can have peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country.” On Truth Social, he called Ukraine’s president “the man with ‘no cards to play.’”
In the Oval Office yesterday President Trump said, “I will say that I think Russia is ready” to do a deal. “I think we have a deal with Russia. We have to have a deal with Zelenskyy.”
The Trumpet has been warning of this type of one-sided “peace deal” ever since Trump promised years ago to end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” if he returned as president. He was telegraphing his intentions all along. Nevertheless:
Europe is shocked—shocked! “When details of the Trump plan leaked yesterday, there was shock and outrage on a scale we have rarely seen before,” EuroIntelligence reported. Leaders called the proposal a betrayal of Ukraine. They insist on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inclusion in negotiations and dismiss Trump’s claim of an imminent deal as unrealistic.
- French President Emmanuel Macron’s office: “Europe will insist on full respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity in any peace agreement. No compromises on sovereignty.”
- Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski: “Ukraine has no reason to surrender.”
- German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer reiterated that no decisions can be made without Ukraine and Europe. Starmer is pushing for a European-led peacekeeping force.
- Matthias Döpfner, a deeply influential publisher in Germany, called the plan a total capitulation for both Ukraine and Europe and said it should not even be discussed.
- The EU, led by figures like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, rejected sanction relief for Russia without a comprehensive peace deal. Kallas accused the U.S. of “backing down” to Russia.
The prophesied Atlantic rift was already widening over President Trump’s criticisms of NATO, his insistence that Europe defend itself, and his tough trade policy. His proposal for how to resolve the Ukraine war is making it even wider.
Papal transition exposes Vatican scandals: Some of the Catholic Church’s most important and transformative popes have come at a moment of crisis. The next pope could be one of these. This weekend’s Spectator carries the article “The Extraordinary Scale of the Crisis Facing the Next Pope,” by veteran Vatican watcher Damien Thompson. The next pope “will face challenges that dwarf those that confronted any incoming pope in living memory,” he wrote. “The church is mired in doctrinal confusion; its structures of government are fragmented; sexual scandals have been hushed up at the highest level; and it is staring into a financial abyss.”
This transition period is shining a bright light on Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the papal camerlengo organizing the funeral and the conclave that will elect the next pope. This resurfaces scandals the church has worked hard to forget:
- Farrell was close friends with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from the priesthood in 2019 after years of sexual abuse of young men. Farrell shared a house with McCarrick yet claimed to know nothing.
- Farrell was ordained as a priest of the Legionaries of Christ, founded by Marcail Maciel—who assaulted at least 60 minors, mainly boys, and had six children with three different women. Farrell was a prominent member of the group, yet once the abuse was revealed Farrell claimed to have rarely met Maciel.
Thompson wrote:
The cardinal-electors will not be able to escape the ghost of Theodore McCarrick. He was for many years the church’s chief fundraiser, securing hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and making secretive disbursements to bishops everywhere. Many knew of his reputation and said nothing. They include cardinals who will be voting in the Sistine Chapel next month—and their enemies will use it against them.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a possible next pope, also has ties to recent scandals. Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, frequently criticizes Parolin, blaming him for the church’s deal with the Chinese Communist Party.
Thompson wrote that Parolin “was secretary of state when his employees laundered eye-watering sums of money to fund disastrous investments, such as the purchase of a former Harrods warehouse in Knightsbridge that cost the Vatican £120 million.” Parolin and Pope Francis are accused of setting up others to take the fall for the scandal. Archbishop Peña Parra testified in a related lawsuit last year in which he admitted to signing off on a fake $5 million invoice. “You said that I was not honest. I accept that,” he told the court. Thompson wrote:
This financial skulduggery by Francis’s closest associates—and, before him, those of Popes John Paul and Benedict—was motivated partly by panic over Vatican finances. …
There are perhaps a dozen other scandals which swirled through the Vatican when Francis was pope that have never been fully investigated, if at all. For years, everyone in Rome has been saying: “It will all come out when he dies.” Dealing with the fallout will be left to the next supreme pontiff.
So fraught is this issue and others facing the next pope that, Thompson speculates, some may not even want the job.
How will the Vatican respond to these challenges? “The Roman Catholic Church has a 2,000-year legacy of responding to major crises, with lethal and effective results,” wrote Brad Macdonald in 2010. “History guarantees the Vatican will rebound—with more force than you could imagine!” His article “Beware! The Vatican Will Retaliate” shows what to expect next.
Not everybody sends their condolences: Israel’s reaction to Pope Francis’s death has been very telling. President Isaac Herzog was one of the first world leaders to publicly extend his sympathies. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to do so. The Israeli Foreign Ministry posted condolences on X but then removed the post without explanation; when asked by media about it, the Foreign Ministry said it was an internal mistake but didn’t elaborate why. While many countries, including the U.S. and UK, are sending their heads of state for the funeral on Saturday, Israel is sending only its ambassador to the Vatican, about the lowest level representation it could send.
Israel sent a beefier delegation to Pope Benedict’s funeral a few years ago. That means Israel showed more respect at the funeral of a former SS member than they are with Pope Francis.
Netanyahu’s government has good reason not to be lauding the late pope as a friend of Israel. Since Hamas launched its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Pope Francis had been, at best, making moral equivalence between Hamas’s attack and Israel’s counterattack—at worst, making Israel’s counterattack seem even worse than what Hamas did. In the pope’s recently published autobiography, he gave his blessing to an investigation on whether Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes.
However, the animosity between the Vatican and the State of Israel goes deeper than the Gaza war. Prophetically speaking, the Vatican and the nations of Israel are part of two different systems fundamentally at odds with each other. This division will soon lead to war. Our free book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy explains why.
U.S. anti-Semitism breaking records: 2024 marked the fourth record-breaking year in a row for anti-Semitic crimes in the U.S., Peter van Halteren reports. Anti-Israel hatred is increasing around the world.
Japan breaking from the U.S.: Our feature story this morning examines moves Japan is making to distance itself from the United States. “Japan is a major military power in its own right, pushing its military beyond its shores, and has little need for the U.S.,” Jacob Boren writes.
Lawfare continues: Yesterday, 12 Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York to block President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, arguing it is unconstitutional and economically destabilizing. The lawsuit contends that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs lacks legal authority. The states say only Congress holds the constitutional power to impose tariffs. They want a court order to declare the tariffs illegal and to prevent federal agencies from enforcing them. California had already filed a separate lawsuit on April 16 challenging the tariffs’ legality and their economic impact on the state’s ports and agriculture.
Beyond tariffs, the Trump administration faces multiple legal challenges. Fourteen states have refused to enforce Trump’s immigration-related orders, such as mass deportation policies. Five district judges have issued nationwide injunctions blocking executive orders, including those on birthright citizenship, transgender medical care and diversity training bans. Three lawsuits from civil rights groups, including the New Civil Liberties Alliance, target tariff authority. There have also been two tribal lawsuits in Montana and one small business coalition lawsuit to contest tariff legality.
The courts have been one of the chief weapons President Trump’s opponents have used against him. This tactic failed to keep him out of office, but it is still being used to slow him and stop him at every turn. In the end, prophecy suggests that the legal system will prove favorable to the president.
35 years of Hubble: The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated 35 years of being in orbit yesterday. To celebrate, NASA released five new images. I can’t explain the significance of Hubble any better than the European Space Agency did:
By extending Hubble’s operational life the telescope has made nearly 1.7 million observations, looking at approximately 55,000 astronomical targets. Hubble discoveries have resulted in over 22,000 papers and over 1.3 million citations as of February 2025. All the data collected by Hubble is archived and currently adds up to over 400 terabytes. …
Hubble’s long operational life has allowed astronomers to see astronomical changes spanning over three decades: seasonal variability on the planets in our solar system, black hole jets traveling at nearly the speed of light, stellar convulsions, asteroid collisions, expanding supernova bubbles and much more.
Hubble’s legacy is the bridge between our past and future knowledge of a universe that is unbelievably glorious, as well as rambunctious—with colliding galaxies, voracious black holes and relentless stellar fireworks.
The Hubble telescope has revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe. The ESA continues:
Among its long list of breakthroughs: Hubble’s deep fields unveiled myriad galaxies dating back to the early universe; precisely measured the universe’s expansion; found that supermassive black holes are common among galaxies; made the first measurement of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets ….
After three decades, Hubble remains a household word as the most well-recognized and celebrated scientific instrument in human history. Hubble’s discoveries and images have been nothing less than transformative for the public’s perception of the cosmos. …
A single Hubble snapshot can portray the universe as awesome, mysterious and beautiful—and at the same time chaotic, overwhelming and foreboding. These pictures have become iconic, seminal and timeless. They viscerally communicate the value of science: the awe and drive to seek understanding of our place in the cosmos.
Revelations about what exists out there are made all the more inspiring when you understand the purpose for which God created it all. This is revealed in the Bible. Read our free booklet Our Awesome Universe Potential.
