WORLD BRIEFING: May 31, 2024

A Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money criminal trial. Judge Juan Merchan set a sentencing hearing for July 11. Prosecutors accused Trump of taking part in an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and an unlawful plan to suppress negative information, which included concealing a hush money payment to an adult film star. A felony conviction of a former president or party frontrunner is unprecedented, but Trump can still run for office. The former president called the jury’s decision a “disgrace” and said the “real verdict” will come during the presidential election on November 5. President Joe Biden said on social media his 2024 rival can only be defeated at the ballot box. - CNN

As jurors deliberated in former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Wednesday, Trump and his son Don Jr. convened in a private area of the courthouse to scoff candy and joke about writing nasty tweets. In a video posted to TikTok, the pair reveled in the “mean tweets” they had been devising together among a bed of candy, soda and snacks. Don Jr. ended the 17-second video telling the camera “stay tuned — it's going to be a doozy. - Daily Beast

Europe has only a fraction of the air defence capabilities needed to protect its eastern flank, according to Nato’s own internal calculations, laying bare the scale of the continent’s vulnerabilities. Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack. One senior Nato diplomat said the ability to defend against missiles and air strikes was “a major part of the plan to defend eastern Europe from invasion”, adding: “And right now, we don’t have that.” Nato foreign ministers will gather in Prague on Thursday for two days of talks aimed at preparing for a summit of the alliance’s leaders in Washington in July, where beefing up European defence will be a central topic. Some European leaders and military officials have said that Russia could have the capability to attack a Nato member state by the end of the decade. - FT

President Joe Biden has given Ukraine the go-ahead to use American weaponry to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, underscored that the U.S. policy calling on Ukraine not to use American-provided ATACMS or long-range missiles and other munitions to strike offensively inside Russia has not changed. Biden’s directive allows for U.S.-supplied weapons to be used for “counterfire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” one official said. The move comes as Ukrainian officials have stepped up calls on the U.S. administration to allow its forces to defend itself against attacks originating from Russian territory. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Russian border. - AP

The African National Congress looked set to lose the parliamentary majority it has held for 30 years, partial election results, opens new tabon Thursday showed, as voters punished the former liberation movement for years of decline in South Africa. While the party of the late Nelson Mandela looked likely to remain the largest political force, such an outcome would push it into a coalition with other parties for the first time in the country's post-apartheid history. With results in from 42.1% of polling stations, the ANC had garnered 42.7% of votes in Wednesday's poll. It won 57.5% of votes in the previous election in 2019. Were that trend to hold, the ANC would likely struggle to cobble together a majority through alliances with small parties, leaving it a potential choice between three bitter rivals. “The ANC is in a trilemma," said political analyst Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh. - Al Jazeera

The US is close to signing a new bilateral security pact with Ukraine in a signal of support aiming to assuage Kyiv after “tense” relations that some Ukrainian officials say have hit their lowest ebb since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The agreement would be the most significant in a series of deals Ukraine has struck with Nato countries that lays out commitments on long-term support, including military training, intelligence sharing and economic assistance. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s frustration with Joe Biden was laid bare this week, when the Ukrainian president rebuked his US counterpart in unusually blunt terms, saying Biden’s plan to attend a Democratic fundraiser rather than Ukraine’s peace summit on June 15-16 was “not a strong decision”. One Zelenskyy-appointed senior government official who spoke to the Financial Times about the US-Ukraine relationship said: “We are farther apart than ever since the war started. It is very, very tense.” However days before the peace summit, Zelenskyy and Biden are expected to sign a bilateral security agreement on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Italy next month, US officials told the FT.

More than a dozen current and former Ukrainian officials and G7 country diplomats in Kyiv who spoke to the FT point to a clutch of contentious issues with the Biden administration. These include Congress’s six-month delay in approving US military assistance; the expected lack of substantive progress towards Nato membership for Ukraine at the alliance’s Washington summit in July; the Biden administration’s prohibition on Kyiv’s use of American-supplied weapons inside Russia; and Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. Ukrainian attacks on two radar systems that form part of Moscow’s nuclear warning system over the past week have been a particular point of conflict with Washington, which is worried that it may provoke Moscow and further escalate the war. Other points of concern relate to diverging strategies on how Ukraine can achieve victory and what that victory might look like, as well as Zelenskyy’s little explained removal of top government and military officials the US had worked closely with. - FT