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With the market selling off into the close today, it’s too early to write my usual “best five sectors” article. The risk of ranking changes is too high. I will make sure that an update will be posted before the markets open on Monday.

Instead, I want to build on this week’s RRG video analysis, where I examined the current strength of commodities and looked at growth, value, and size rotation.

You can see that video here.

Rotation Signals Commodities Springing Back to Life!

The synopsis of that analysis? Large-cap growth stocks are once again the preferred segment of the market. This underscores what’s happening right now — when the market is under pressure, investors usually flock to large-cap stocks. They’re familiar and supposedly less risky.

Cap-weighted vs Equal weight Sectors

Let’s dive deeper by comparing cap-weighted sectors with their equal-weighted counterparts. The two RRGs above illustrate these relationships. At first glance, most tails move in similar directions, though not necessarily in the same areas or quadrants. However, two sectors stand out in terms of divergent behavior: Staples and Financials.

RSPS (equal-weight Staples) has a short, southward-pointing tail inside the improving quadrant. On the other hand, XLP (cap-weighted Staples) is in the lagging quadrant but is picking up steam. For Financials, RSPF (equal-weight) weakens with a negative heading, while XLF (cap-weighted) rotates back towards the leading quadrant.

Cap-weighted vs Equal weight sectors on RRG

To simplify this analysis, I’ve created an RRG directly comparing cap-weighted to equal-weighted ETFs. This makes the trends crystal clear — cap-weighted sectors (dominated by large caps) are mostly moving with positive headings on the left side of the graph, either lagging or improving.

As our inputs are already ratios, we only want to know if that ratio is improving or deteriorating, so we use $one as the benchmark.

The Exceptions

There are a few notable exceptions to this trend:

Consumer Discretionary: A long tail moving from leading into weakening indicating.

Communication Services: Inside the leading quadrant but rolling over.

Technology: Just moved from leading to weakening.

For all three sectors, the dominant position of the larger names (mega caps) is fading and sector breadth is expanding.

These exceptions are particularly interesting because they represent some of the largest sectors in the market.

Large Cap vs Small Cap

Large- vs Small-Cap comparison on RRG

A similar exercise comparing large-cap and small-cap sectors reinforces the overall trend—large caps are generally outperforming. This comparison is even clearer, as these are real market CAO comparisons. In the first comparison above, there is only a weighting difference; all the stocks in these sectors are the same.

In this comparison, the constituents for the sectors are not the same, and they show the true difference between large- and small-cap stocks.

The only sector where small caps are about to take over is in Consumer Discretionary where we see a tail moving from leading towards, and almost crossing over into, weakening.

This aligns with the risk-off sentiment we’re seeing in the broader market.

S&P 500 Chart Analysis

To summarize, let’s examine the SPY chart. After hovering around this level for a few days, the market has tried—and failed—to break above 610 decisively. Friday saw a big down day, closing below the rising support line. This suggests more weakness ahead and underscores the expectation that the S&P 500 needs time to digest within a trading range.

What does that range look like? In my opinion, we’re probably looking at a lower boundary between 580 and 585 and an upper boundary between 610 and 615. The weekly chart still shows an intact uptrend, but it’s clear we need some sideways or corrective price action to digest the gains of the last year (or year and a half, depending on where you anchor the rally’s start).

The Big Picture

All in all, the overall uptrend in the S&P 500 remains intact. However, we need a bit more sideways or corrective price action to digest recent gains. Large caps generally outperform, with some interesting exceptions in mega-cap-dominated sectors.

As always in markets, it’s all relative — and right now, the relative strength favors the big boys.

#StayAlert and have a great weekend. –Julius

Business

Hasbro says it’s taking steps to offset China tariff effects

Toy and gaming giant Hasbro took an optimistic tone Thursday on the potential effect of Chinese tariffs on its business, as executives said the company is shifting manufacturing away from China.

Hasbro Chief Financial Officer Gina Goetter said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the toymaker’s 2025 guidance — which includes adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion to $1.15 billion, compared with $1.06 billion in 2024 — reflects the anticipated effect of U.S. tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada. It also reflects “mitigating actions we plan to take, including leveraging the strength of our supply chain and potential pricing,” the company said in a news release.

Rival toymaker Mattel previously said it could increase the prices of toys such as Hot Wheels and Barbie in response to tariffs. President Donald Trump imposed 10% tariffs on China in early February and is set to add 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in March after pausing their initial implementation for 30 days.

Hasbro is on track to cut the volume of U.S. toys and games that originate from China from 50% to less than 40% over the next two years, Goetter said. Hasbro does not source from Canada and has “minimal” imports from Mexico, she said.

“Really, it’s a China story for us,” Goetter said.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said on the call that even when accounting for tariffs, the toymaker expects “flattish” performance from the broader industry this year, with trading cards and building blocks leading the way. The company’s licensing business, he added, is one of its biggest margin drivers and will not be affected much by tariffs.

“It’s relatively [unexposed] to some of the tariff drama that’s going on right now,” Cocks said.

Hasbro also on Thursday announced a licensing collaboration with Mattel to create Play-Doh versions of Mattel’s Barbie dolls.

“Play-Doh Barbie allows children to unlock their inner fashion designer, creating Play-Doh fashions with amazing ruffles, bows and realistic fabric textures, all made with every kid’s favorite dough for a never-before-seen creativity experience,” Cocks said.

Shares of Hasbro gained roughly 10% in morning trading Thursday.

Here’s how Hasbro performed in the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 46 cents adjusted vs. 34 cents expected

Revenue: $1.1 billion vs. $1.03 billion expected

Fourth-quarter revenue fell 15% from $1.29 billion during the same quarter in 2023. Full-year 2024 revenue came in at $4.14 billion, down 17% from $5 billion in 2023.

The company partially attributed the numbers to its divestiture from its eOne film and TV business, which it sold to Lionsgate in December 2023. When excluding the divestiture, the company said, full-year revenue declined 7%.

Hasbro’s digital and licensed gaming revenue increased 35% to $132 million in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2023. For full-year 2024, Hasbro’s digital and licensed gaming revenue increased 22% to $471.7 million. Mobile game Monopoly Go! contributed $112 million in 2024 revenue.

Hasbro reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $26.5 million, or a loss of 25 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $1.06 billion, or a loss of $7.64 per share, during the fourth quarter of 2023.

Adjusting for costs associated with restructuring and the eOne divestiture, among other one-time items, Hasbro reported fourth-quarter earnings of 46 cents per share, topping Wall Street expectations.

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Business

CEOs want workers back in offices—this company is giving workers a $10,000 raise to do it

Cameo wants workers back in the office more often, and it’s paying them each $10,000 to show up.

Starting this week, workers at the celebrity video-greeting app are reporting into the company’s Chicago headquarters Monday through Thursday. In exchange, the roughly two dozen eligible employees can expect a $10,000 annual raise, free lunch, free parking and access to an onsite gym.

″‘Roll out the red carpet’ is our first corporate value, and we really felt like we wanted to make HQ a perk, not a punishment,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis tells CNBC Make It. “We know we’re asking more out of you to give up the flexibility, and we wanted to compensate you for it.”

Many workers say they’d take a pay cut to be able to keep working from home. Cameo is hoping the inverse will be true.

Galanis and his leadership team landed on a $10,000 annual raise because the sum is “meaningful for everybody,” especially junior employees: “That might be the difference between them being able to get an apartment in the city or having to take the train because they live with their parents in the suburbs.”

Cameo currently has 50 employees, including 26 in Chicago and others around the U.S. and internationally, though most remote workers are concentrated in New York and Los Angeles. The new benefit doesn’t apply to workers outside of Chicago, though “if they wanted to move to Chicagoland, we would give them a [relocation benefit] and they’d be eligible,” Galanis says.

Cameo’s Chicago headquarters opened during the summer of 2024, but leaders never set a schedule of when they expected employees to be in. Without it, workers generally reported to the office two to three times in the middle of the week, Galanis says.

The new four-day policy was announced to staff a month ago. Galanis is reluctant to call it a mandate but says “there wasn’t an ability to opt out.”

“If you live in Chicagoland, you are four days a week in-office — there wasn’t an option on that. And in exchange, we give you a $10,000 raise.”

“If you wanted to move, you could do that” and not be subject to the in-office expectation, Galanis says.

Galanis says none of Cameo’s employees quit the company or moved away from Chicago following the policy announcement. A few outside of Chicago have indicated possibly moving closer to headquarters given the new perks.

Remote workers can also take part in Cameo’s Team Week, launched this summer, where they can be flown to Chicago once a month for a defined week when “everybody’s in,” Galanis says. Since the company covers flights, accommodations and some meals, he says, “if you take advantage of that every month, it’s effectively the same thing as the raise that the Chicagoland folks got.”

Galanis says he’d be in the office five days a week if he could, but recognizes workers have come to appreciate the “flexibility that our employees have earned.”

“We’re hoping Friday can be a flex day,” he says, where workers can take care of doctor’s appointments and other personal needs.

Leaders won’t be tracking attendance. “We’re adults here,” Galanis says, noting that workers who need to step out for personal matters like appointments should just let their manager know ahead of time.

Galanis is hopeful the move will re-energize creativity and speed at the company, and that staff see he’s accessible as a CEO. “Now they see me every day,” he says. “We’re walking around, we’re having lunch together. Some intern can come in and say, ‘Steven, why haven’t we ever done this before?’”

Ultimately, “what we’re really trying to do is maximize the amount of in-person time that our team is getting with each other, and to make sure that we’re able to move at the speed of pop culture,” Galanis says.

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Business

Amazon surpasses Walmart in revenue for the first time

Amazon has dethroned Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever.

Amazon said earlier this month that it brought in $187.8 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter. That beat Walmart’s sales for the period, which came in at $180.5 billion, the company reported on Thursday.

Since 2012, Walmart has held the distinction of being the top revenue generator each quarter, a title it gained after overtaking oil giant Exxon Mobil.

Walmart still leads the way in annual sales, though Amazon is gaining ground. Walmart is projected to reel in $708.7 billion in the fiscal year ahead while Amazon’s full-year revenue for 2025 is expected to reach $700.8 billion, according to FactSet.

Amazon’s core retail unit remains its biggest revenue generator, but its top line is also being fueled by its massive cloud computing, advertising and seller services businesses. Third-party seller services, which includes commissions and fees collected by Amazon on fulfillment and shipping, advertising and customer support, accounted for 24.5% of the company’s total sales last year. Amazon Web Services was responsible for nearly 17%.

Walmart has looked to its chief rival for ways to sustain sales growth. The company operates a third-party marketplace and offers sellers fulfillment services, although both businesses are a fraction of the size of Amazon’s. Walmart has also launched an advertising business and a loyalty program for shoppers, called Walmart+, that competes with Amazon Prime.

— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.

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Business

Meta approves plan for bigger executive bonuses following 5% layoffs

Executives at Meta stand to get bigger bonuses this year.

The company said in a corporate filing Thursday that it had approved “an increase in the target bonus percentage” for its annual bonus plan for executives. Meta’s named executive officers could earn a bonus of 200% of their base salary under the new plan, up from the 75% they earned previously, according to the filing.

The updated bonus plan doesn’t apply to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the filing noted.

A committee for Meta’s board of directors approved the change on Feb.13 after determining that the “target total cash compensation” for its executives “was at or below the 15th percentile of the target total cash compensation of executives holding similar positions” at peer companies.

“Following this increase, the target total cash compensation for the named executive officers (other than the CEO) falls at approximately the 50th percentile of the Peer Group Target Cash Compensation,” the filing said.

The disclosure of the new executive bonus plan comes a week after Meta began laying off 5% of its overall workforce. The company had previously said this would impact its lowest performers.

Meta also slashed its annual distribution of stock options by about 10% for thousands of employees, according to a report published Thursday by the Financial Times. The report noted that the stock option reduction may differ based on where the workers live and their position at the company.

Meta shares are up more than 47% over the past year and closed Thursday at $694.84, underscoring investor enthusiasm over the social media company’s growing sales in the digital advertising market and the potential for its artificial intelligence investments to eventually generate big returns.

The company said in January that its fourth-quarter revenue grew 21% year over year to $48.39 billion.

Meta did not reply to a request for comment.

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Business

SEC dropping crypto lawsuit, Coinbase says

The largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange said Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission would drop its lawsuit against it, a signal that the Trump administration plans to take a friendlier approach to the broader crypto industry.

In a release it titled ‘Righting a major wrong,’ the exchange, Coinbase, said SEC staff had agreed in principle to dismiss a suit filed during the Biden administration. The suit accused Coinbase of acting as an unregistered securities broker.

The agency must still vote to formally drop the suit.

A representative for the SEC declined to comment on Coinbase’s announcement.

‘I think it is a really important signal that a small group of activists in the prior administration who tried to unlawfully attack this industry — we are able to turn page on that and finally get regulatory clarity in America,’ Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in an interview on CNBC on Friday morning.

Coinbase shares were up 5% in premarket trading. Bitcoin prices were up 1%.

The move to drop the suit would serve to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign commitment to roll back the strict enforcement of the crypto industry that occurred under then-President Joe Biden. Trump has promised to make the United States the ‘crypto capital of the world,’ and has launched his own meme coin.

In its original suit, the SEC said Coinbase’s alleged actions were depriving investors of ‘critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC.’

“You simply can’t ignore the rules because you don’t like them or because you’d prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great,” Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said at the time.

To date, the SEC has not categorized bitcoin as a security. The crypto industry has long complained that, under former Chair Gary Gensler, the agency took an overly critical posture toward the industry while failing to provide clear ‘rules of the road’ and work with it to develop a means for it to operate legally.

Lawsuits against two other exchanges, Binance and Kraken, are still pending.

‘We tried to ‘come in and register’ but it turned out it was a fake offer, as every crypto company discovered,’ Armstrong wrote in a separate post on X on Friday, referring to the Biden administration’s previous actions concerning the crypto industry.

‘Regulators are supposed to enforce the law, but they can’t make up new laws on the spot if they don’t like the current ones, or weaponize a lack of clarity in the law.’

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Editor's pick

Arab leaders to gather for postwar Gaza proposal to counter Trump’s ‘Riviera’ plan

Arab leaders are set to meet in Saudi Arabia on Friday for the first time to formulate a response to US President Donald Trump’s plan for the US to take ownership of Gaza, expel its Palestinian population and turn it into a Middle Eastern “Riviera.”

The meeting – including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf Arab nations – will take place ahead of a larger Arab summit on March 4, Saudi Arabia said. A meeting of Islamic countries is expected to follow, according to the Egyptian foreign ministry.

Originally announced by Egypt in early February as an “emergency summit,” the gathering will take place five weeks after Trump first floated his plan, showing the struggle among Arab states to craft a unified stance.

Conflicting details have emerged about the Arab plan.

A report published in Egypt’s state-run Al Ahram Weekly said Cairo was proposing a 10-to-20-year plan to rebuild Gaza with Gulf Arab funding, while excluding Hamas from governing the enclave and allowing its 2.1 million Palestinian residents to remain.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Wednesday claimed that his country could fully rebuild Gaza in three years to a state that is “better than it was before,” without saying how he plans to achieve that. If a permanent ceasefire is reached in Gaza in the coming months, that would mean the vision could be completed before the end of Trump’s presidential term.

Most assessments suggest that a complete reconstruction of the enclave would take much longer.

The World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations said in a joint statement Tuesday that, according to their estimates, a return of essential services alone, including health, education, as well as the clearing of rubble, would take three years. The full rebuilding of the devastated enclave would need 10 years and cost more than $50 billion, with housing alone estimated to cost $15 billion. The Egyptian prime minister said that his country’s plan takes those assessments into consideration.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government and real estate developers in the country have been eyeing a role in the rebuilding process, which could come with contracts worth billions of dollars.

“We have experience, and we have applied it (before) in Egypt,” Madbouly said in a news conference in Egypt’s new administrative capital. “The capability to rebuild the (Gaza) Strip and executing it in way that will make it better than it was before the destruction – truly three years is an acceptable timeline to do this.”

Trump said on Wednesday that he had not yet seen the Egyptian plan.

‘Long and complex journey’

Despite urgency from Arab countries to present Trump with a convincing counterproposal, rebuilding Gaza is a “long and complex” journey, the World Bank, EU and UN said.

It will likely need to address governance and finance with international backing –contentious issues that could be difficult to resolve.

Any reconstruction effort would be futile if a fragile ceasefire in Gaza fails, plunging the territory back to war.

A source familiar with the reconstruction plans said that funding could include public and private donations, likely from the EU and Gulf Arab countries, adding that there could be an international donor conference for Gaza in April.

The plan could also fall through if Israel, which controlled Gaza’s border long before Hamas’ October 2023 attack, refuses to cooperate. So far, it has backed Trump’s plan to de-populate Gaza, and its defense ministry this week announced plans to launch a “Directorate for the Voluntary Departure of Gaza Residents” to facilitate, it says, Gazans who wish to emigrate.

Hamas and Israel reached an agreement last month for the first phase of a truce that could culminate in permanent ceasefire. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday that talks will start on a potential second phase of the truce – two weeks after they were due to begin.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority said on Thursday it was prepared to govern Gaza after the war, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected. The PA isn’t expected to participate in the Saudi meeting on Friday.

Hamas has sent conflicting messages on what role it sees for itself in Gaza after the war. Over the weekend, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan sent a defiant message, saying during an interview in Qatar that the group would decide for itself who will govern Gaza. But this week, Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson, said the group is not “clinging to power.”

Egypt’s state-backed Al Qahera News reported Saturday that Egypt is working to form a temporary committee to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza.

Meanwhile, Qatar said that Palestinians should decide who governs them in the future.

The UAE is one of the few Arab nations that has expressed willingness to consider a role in postwar Gaza at the invitation of a reformed Palestinian Authority and with a commitment from Israel for a future Palestinian state. It has rejected Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians.

But Hamas has warned that it will treat anyone that takes Israel’s place in Gaza as it treats Israel, calling on regional states not to become “agents” for Israel.

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Editor's pick

Commercial airlines warned as Chinese navy holds live fire exercise off Australia

Airlines have been contacted by Australia’s air traffic control agency warning them of reports of live fire off the country’s east coast where a Chinese navy task group has been operating, the agency and Australian officials said.

A People’s Liberation Army Navy frigate, cruiser and replenishment vessel last week entered Australia’s maritime approaches, and travelled down Australia’s east coast this week, monitored by the navies and air forces of Australia and New Zealand.

“The Civil Aviation Authority and Airservices Australia are aware of reports of live firing in international waters,” air traffic control agency Airservices Australia said in a statement on Friday.

“As a precaution, we have advised airlines with flights planned in the area,” it added.
Qantas and its low-cost arm Jetstar are monitoring the airspace and have temporarily adjusted some flights across the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the live fire involved the Chinese task group and it was an evolving situation.

“It is, as I understand it, operating in international waters,” she said in an ABC television interview on Friday.

“We will be discussing this with the Chinese, and we already have at officials level, in relation to the notice given and the transparency, that has been provided in relation to these exercises, particularly the live fire exercises.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported China had notified Australian authorities on Friday they would hold an exercise off the coast of New South Wales state.

Defense Minister Richard Marles did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Editor's pick

As Trump loses patience with Ukraine, Russia’s biggest backer sees a ‘window for peace’

A “window for peace is opening” in Ukraine, China’s top diplomat told a meeting of G20 foreign ministers on Thursday, as the Trump administration ramps up its push to end the war in close coordination with Russia.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the gathering in South Africa, the first high-level talks between the two close partners since US President Donald Trump upended America’s stance on the conflict this month with a sweeping pivot toward Moscow.

That’s seen top Trump officials hold bilateral talks with Moscow over Kyiv’s head and launch a barrage of criticism against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with a senior American official warning on Thursday that the US is losing patience with Kyiv.

The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, which was not attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came as the breakneck diplomacy has left Europe and China on the sidelines and raised questions about a shifting balance of power in a fraught geopolitical landscape.

China “supports all efforts dedicated to peace, including the recent consensus reached between the US and Russia,” Wang told counterparts at the gathering in Johannesburg.

A “window for peace is opening” on the war, he added.

The war and US relations were among subjects discussed between the top Chinese diplomat and Lavrov on the meeting sidelines, a Russian readout said. The two sides – which have tightened their relations during the war – also praised their growing cooperation.

On Ukraine, both countries appeared to agree that it was necessary to address the conflict’s “root causes” – an apparent veiled reference to NATO – with Russia’s readout attributing this sentiment to Wang and China’s attributing this to Lavrov.

Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago in an uninterrupted onslaught that has killed tens of thousands and displaced about 10 million people. The invasion has also laid waste to Ukrainian cities and drawn allegations of war crimes by Moscow’s forces, which are entrenched in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Even though Russia invaded its neighbor, Beijing and Moscow have blamed NATO expansion as the cause of the conflict – part of their broader shared opposition to the US system of alliances they see as positioned against their interests.

Lavrov earlier this week praised Trump for being what he described as “the first Western leader” to acknowledge publicly that the “cause of the Ukrainian conflict was the efforts … to expand NATO.”

Russia has long claimed that expansion of the US-led defense alliance put its security under threat, necessitating its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That claim has been dismissed by Western leaders as a bogus justification for launching its war.

The sharp shift in US positioning on the conflict was underscored Thursday as Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz described the US president’s “frustration” with Zelensky following a meeting between the Ukrainian leader and the US’ Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog in Kyiv.

“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with President Zelensky — the fact that — that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered,” Waltz told a news briefing in Washington, referencing an economic deal that the Trump administration has so far been unsuccessful in convincing Kyiv to accept.

“I think he eventually will get to that point, and I hope so very quickly,” Waltz said, echoing comments he made before the Kellogg-Zelensky meeting, urging the Ukrainian leader to “sign the deal.”

Trump-Zelensky rift

Waltz’s comments came amid what has been a deepening rift between Trump and Zelensky that has cast more uncertainty over how Ukraine’s interests would be represented in future talks on ending the war.

Trump ramped up his long-standing criticism of Ukraine’s leader in recent days, parroting Kremlin rhetoric that wrongly accuses Kyiv of starting the war with Russia and questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy to lead since he suspended an election due to the invasion.

After Zelensky hit back, accusing the US president of being in a “disinformation space,” Trump escalated the fight on Wednesday, calling Zelensky “a Dictator without elections” in a scathing post on his platform Truth Social.

Following talks Thursday with envoy Kellogg, Zelensky appeared keen to stress Ukraine’s interest in maintaining strong US relations.

“General Kellogg’s meeting is one that restores hope, and we need strong agreements with America, agreements that will really work,” Zelensky said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people.

“Economy and security must always go hand in hand, and the details of the agreements matter: the better the details, the better the result.”

Kellogg and Zelensky’s team had discussed Ukraine’s prisoners of war, and “the need for a reliable and clear system of security guarantees so that the war does not return,” the Ukrainian president added.

The meeting followed a sit down earlier this month between Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.

In his comments Thursday, national security adviser Waltz defended Washington’s “shuttle diplomacy” approach to speak with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts separately.

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Editor's pick

More than 170 Venezuelan migrants deported to Guantanamo arrive home

A plane carrying more than 170 Venezuelan migrants who were held in Guantanamo Bay after being deported from the US arrived in Venezuela on Thursday.

The 177 were initially flown to Honduras for transfer to Venezuela, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The flight appeared to have nearly emptied out the naval base of migrants sent there as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on migration.

Questions have swirled over the legality of sending migrants to the base on Cuba – notorious for holding prisoners of the US-led “war on terror.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has alleged that Venezuelan migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay have ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, a criminal network that started in a Venezuelan prison.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement that it had requested the repatriation of Venezuelan nationals who were “unjustly taken to the Guantanamo naval base.”

President Nicholas Maduro said the group that arrived Thursday “are not criminals, they are not bad people, they were people who emigrated as a result of the [US] sanctions… in Venezuela we welcome them as a productive force, with a loving embrace.”

Senior Trump officials have said that Guantanamo Bay is reserved for the “worst of the worst,” but new court filings reveal that not all those who are being sent to the facility are considered to pose a “high threat.”

According to newly filed court declarations, 127 were considered high threat and being held in the base’s maximum-security prison, while 51 were low-to-medium threat and are being held at a migrant operations center. All were from Venezuela.

On Wednesday a group of Venezuelans shielded from deportation under a form of humanitarian relief filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to revoke those protections.

Earlier this month, the DHS ended what’s known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in a string of moves to strip temporary protections for certain migrants.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided not to grant an extension of TPS, reversing a decision made by Biden’s DHS and leaving some 600,000 people in limbo.

Protections for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans are set to expire in April, opening them up for deportation. Around 250,000 Venezuelans are expected to lose them in September.

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