Russian president makes threats in first visit since Ukrainian incursion as world waits for Kremlin’s reaction to ceasefire proposal

• Trump hints at financial repercussions if Russia rejects Ukraine ceasefire

French European Affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, said the European Union could go further in its response to US tariffs, though a trade war was in no-one’s interest, Reuters reported.

“We have the means to go further, if we want,” Haddad told TF1 TV.

The EU has its Trojan horses and Nato’s cornerstone has crumbled. But European allies, including the UK, are bound by an urgent shared purpose

Moscow’s immense military mobilisation is clearly not aimed just at Ukraine. Unless Vladimir Putin accepts a ceasefire with meaningful security guarantees there will be no end in sight to the war. If anything, we could see the extension of Russia’s aggression beyond Ukraine. The bleak reality is that Europe still faces an unprecedented threat and notwithstanding signs of progress for Ukraine at talks in Jeddah, we face it alone.

Worse, we now have to confront it with the US working against us. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump appear to share a plan: a Vichy-like regime in Ukraine and a European continent split into spheres of influence, which Russia, the US (and perhaps China) can colonise and prey upon. Most European publics sense this. A critical mass of European leaders gets it too. They are beginning to act.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

US betrayal of Ukraine is the rehearsal for a grander bargain with Moscow and an assault on continental solidarity

A prime time current affairs programme; a discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “He’s doing excellent things,” says a firebrand politician on the panel, before listing White House actions that have belittled Volodymyr Zelenskyy and weakened his battlefield position – military aid suspended; satellite communications obstructed; intelligence withheld. “Do we support this?” It is a rhetorical question.

“We support it all. Absolutely,” the celebrity host responds. “We are thrilled by everything Trump is doing.”

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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They played Red Square, launched MTV Russia and got driven home from a gay club by the police. But the freedoms witnessed by Pet Shop Boys have been crushed. Singer Neil Tennant relives those heady days – and calls for a revolution

The journalist Andrey Sapozhnikov of Novaya Gazeta Europe, the independent Russian newspaper that now operates from Latvia in order to avoid censorship by Putin’s regime, recently asked Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys: “You have been actively commenting on Russian politics since 2013 and the Pussy Riot case, and you are arguably one of the most engaged western artists in relation to the Russian context today. Why do you care so deeply about what is happening specifically in Russia?” Here is his reply, which the Guardian is publishing in English.

I have been interested in Russia since reading a book when I was a young boy about the 1917 revolutions. It fascinated me that the Russian empire was replaced by another empire, the Soviet Union, which unleashed a lot of energy but rapidly became a brutal dictatorship under Stalin, a 20th-century Ivan the Terrible. Since then I have read a lot about Soviet culture, particularly the work and struggles of Shostakovich and Prokofiev and other artists, writers, musicians. This interest fed into the lyrics I wrote. For instance My October Symphony, or indeed our first hit single, West End Girls: “In every city, in every nation / From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station.”

Călin Georgescu, a Russia-friendly populist, won first round of election before result was annulled

• Europe live – latest updates

Romania’s top court has upheld a decision to ban presidential election frontrunner Călin Georgescu from standing in a rerun of the vote in May, sparking protest in Bucharest and leaving the country’s far-right parties four days to find a candidate.

Georgescu, an anti-EU, Moscow-friendly populist, surged from almost nowhere to win the first round of the country’s presidential election last year, but the result was annulled by Romania’s top court because of suspected Russian interference.

Russia's foreign minister has dismissed the prospect of a place for Europe at talks between the US and Russia to end the fighting in Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference alongside his Serbian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov said: 'If they are going to weasel out some cunning ideas about freezing the conflict, while actually intending – as is their custom, nature and habit – to continue the war, then why should we invite them at all?'

European leaders have been unnerved by the willingness of Donald Trump, the US president, to engage the Kremlin directly over Ukraine and have been attempting to find a place for themselves in the talks

• Europe live – latest updates

The parents of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny joined hundreds of mourners at their son's grave on Sunday to mark the anniversary of his death. Navalny died aged 47 on 16 February last year while being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a ‘special regime’

• Alexei Navalny supporters visit grave on first anniversary of his death