The India-Pakistan conflict was taking a dramatic turn for the worse, pitching the nuclear-armed neighbors into a dangerous spiral of tit-for-tat strikes.

Then, out of the blue, US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US had brokered an end to the fighting.

On his Truth Social platform, he made the surprise announcement that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire – all the more unexpected as, just days before, Vice President JD Vance had insisted the conflict was “fundamentally, none of our business.”

Already, this was an emotionally charged conflict, sparked by the shocking terror attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month – in which 26 people, mainly tourists, were shot dead by rampaging gunmen.

To make matters worse, in the Indian airstrikes that followed, Pakistan claimed to have shot down five Indian air force jets in what would be a stinging blow for the Indian military.

Damaged vehicles in Rehari, Jammu, India-administered Kashmir, following Pakistan’s military operation on May 10.

Members of the media film the inside of a building after it was hit by an Indian strike in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, on May 7.

Still, the escalating attacks deep inside Indian and Pakistani territory seem to have focused minds in Washington, which has clearly pressured both sides to step back from the brink.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he and Vance had spoken to the political and military leadership in India and Pakistan to secure agreement before the situation deteriorated further.

Just hours before the ceasefire announcement, India had struck Pakistani military bases provoking a furious retaliation from Pakistan, which launched rockets, artillery and drone strikes on dozens of locations in India, provoking growing nationalistic calls for retribution.

There are conflicting accounts of how the ceasefire was negotiated. While Islamabad praised US involvement, New Delhi downplayed it – keen to portray the ceasefire as a victory and saying that the neighbors had worked together “directly” on the truce.

Whatever the US role was exactly, the White House was frankly pushing on an open door – it is in neither India’s nor Pakistan’s interest for the conflict to continue.

The truce is also exactly the kind of quick deal Trump hoped he could broker elsewhere, such as in Ukraine, where conflict with Russia has been dragging on for nearly three and a half years.

In comparison, the intense fighting between India and Pakistan seems to be over after just three and a half days.

But this Trump truce may not herald a lasting peace.

Even a few hours into the ceasefire, reports emerged of violations in the form of explosions in Indian-administered Kashmir and allegations of ongoing cross border attacks. This may settle down as the truce takes root.

But there is a bigger problem too: the US-brokered ceasefire agreement will not go anywhere near addressing the fundamental grievances fueling the decades-long dispute over the status of Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan and has a separatist, independent movement.

The latest confrontation over Kashmir may be coming to a end, but it is likely to return with a vengeance.

India and Pakistan agreed to an immediate ceasefire on Saturday, unexpectedly halting the worst fighting in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors, just when their tit-for-tat strikes appeared to be spiraling out of control.

Although US President Donald Trump was the first to announce the ceasefire and claimed credit for it, India and Pakistan have offered contradictory accounts about the extent of US involvement in the agreement.

Just hours after the announcement there have been reports of violations from both sides.

Here’s what you need to know.

How did the truce come about?

Just before 8 a.m. ET, about 5 p.m. in India and Pakistan, Trump announced the ceasefire in a post on Truth Social.

“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE,” Trump said, congratulating the leaders of both countries for “using common sense and great intelligence.”

Soon after, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that India and Pakistan had not only agreed to a ceasefire, but also “to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.” Rubio said that the ceasefire came after he and Vice President JD Vance spent the past two days speaking with senior officials from both countries.

A minute later, Pakistan confirmed the ceasefire was effective immediately. Indian confirmation came soon after.

India’s Ministry of Information said the agreement was worked out “directly between the two countries,” downplaying US involvement and contradicting Trump’s claim. The ministry also said there was “no decision” to hold further talks.

But Pakistani officials have heaped praise on Washington.

“We thank President Trump for his leadership and proactive role for peace in the region,” said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Why the differing accounts?

It should not be surprising that these bitter rivals have given contradictory accounts of how the ceasefire was reached.

India, which views itself as an ascendant superpower, has long been resistant to international mediation, whereas Pakistan, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid, tends to welcome it, analysts say.

“India has never accepted mediation in any dispute, be it India-Pakistan or India-China, or any other,” said Dr. Aparna Panda, research fellow for India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC.

“Pakistan, on the other hand, has always sought international mediation so they will praise it,” she added, saying it is “the only way it can put pressure on India to discuss and resolve the Kashmir dispute.”

The fighting before Saturday’s ceasefire was marked by claims, counterclaims and disinformation from both sides. Now that the conflict has paused, both sides are ramping up their efforts to shape perceptions of what the fighting achieved and how it ended.

What happened Saturday?

The afternoon’s ceasefire is all the more surprising given the intensity of this morning’s fighting.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Pakistan said India had launched missiles at several of its key military bases. It said the strikes spanned from sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir to a military base close to its capital, Islamabad.

In response, Pakistan said it fired back at military air bases in India. “An eye for an eye,” its military said in a statement.

Hours later, explosions were reported in Indian-administered Kashmir, including Srinagar, the region’s largest city, and in the city of Jaamu. Sharif said Pakistan had delivered “a resounding reply” to Indian aggression.

After four days of direct military strikes on the other’s territory, many in the region feared that – in the absence of meaningful international pressure – the tit-for-tat strikes would continue to escalate.

What was the trigger for the crisis?

This round of fighting began in Kashmir, a disputed region that has been a flashpoint in India-Pakistan relations since both countries gained their independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations to emerge from the bloody partition of British India – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – both claim Kashmir in full, despite only controlling parts of it. Months after becoming independent, they fought the first of their three wars over the territory.

On April 26, gunmen opened fire on sightseers in a popular travel destination in the mountainous destination of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. At least 25 Indian citizens and one Nepali were killed in the massacre.

New Delhi immediately blamed Islamabad, accusing it of supporting “cross-border terrorism.” Pakistan has denied all involvement in the attack.

Two weeks after the Pahalgam massacre, India on Wednesday launched a series of strikes on Pakistan and the parts of Kashmir it holds, calling the attack “Operation Sindoor.”

The theater of conflict since then has been far broader than in previous rounds of fighting, with both sides striking deep into the other’s territory.

Why did the US get involved?

Just two days ago, JD Vance downplayed the potential for US influence as the India-Pakistan conflict spiralled.

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” Vance told Fox News on Thursday.

Vance’s about-face is a measure of how concerned the US – and the wider international community – became by the escalating conflict between the two nuclear powers.

Will the ceasefire hold?

Although India and Pakistan have stepped back from the brink for now, it remains to be seen whether the ceasefire will hold. Strong blasts were heard across the Srinagar in India-administered Kashmir just hours after the agreement was announced.

It’s a proposal that the Kremlin can neither reject nor accept, but one that may force it into an awkward choice, revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s true appetite for his brutal war of choice.

Europe’s leaders have grasped the nettle of whether peace talks over Ukraine can lead anywhere meaningful, to force Moscow into a pause in violence, precisely when it seems to seek to escalate assaults in the summer months ahead.

It also gives Europe’s largest army – Ukraine – just over 30 hours to prepare their frontline forces for perhaps a month of tense peace, and then hopefully weeks of serious negotiation, in which the borders of their country will be decided.

Ultimately, Ukraine, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland faced little choice: the Trump administration’s very public loss of patience – sometimes with Moscow, but also less justifiably with Kyiv – carried the risk of the White House simply “moving on.” That could lead to the United States dropping aid to Ukraine, together with their efforts for a peaceful solution – a potential disaster for European security.

The past week’s clear enormous diplomatic lifting by French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and of course Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, has put the White House in a position where it has had to back a direct European bid to take control of the outcome of the biggest war on the continent since the 1940s.

Europe is indeed forcing on Russia a proposal initially made by the US and Ukraine – the 30-day unconditional ceasefire first offered after a bilateral meeting in Saudi Arabia almost two months ago. But they are also forcing the White House to step up, monitor the truce, and then back tough consequences – Macron called them “massive sanctions” – if the initiative falls apart.

Now the Kremlin’s previous answer of “we need to talk about the nuances” is not enough. It needs to agree, dispute, or ignore the proposal. It is likely it will, as we have seen in the past, contrive a complex fudge of a response.

Russia might agree to the pause, but then engineer a spike in violence it can accuse the Ukrainians of initiating. Or to dispute certain elements of the proposal – for instance, fighting back only against Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk or Belgorod regions – causing the White House to question whether they should angrily reject the Kremlin’s partial adherence to the truce. Moscow might choose to entirely ignore the proposal, and deploy their magical card of a Trump-Putin phone call to reshuffle the deck from which they’ve been dealt a difficult hand.

This is the most significant diplomatic moment of the war, perhaps the most important declaration of the conflict yet, and certainly the most important 36 hours since Putin faced a rebellion from his top aide Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023. Time is a serious problem: something that has to last 30 days must be built in 30 hours.

Gigantic questions remain for Ukraine and its allies as to how this ceasefire comes into effect. Can Kyiv order its forces to not fight back in self-defense? If the US is to monitor the truce, as Macron suggested, does it have the capabilities in place, in adequate quality and quantity, to study hundreds of miles of violent frontlines? Precise evidence of Moscow’s infractions will be key to helping Ukraine and Europe respond to the inevitable wave of Russian misinformation and recrimination that may accompany a truce.

The cost for Kyiv and Europe of the next month could be significant. Ukraine could lose ground as its troops soften their responses to Russian assaults during a ceasefire. The White House might emerge from the process and again swing back on its pendulum to a place where it believes Zelensky is the problem. Europe’s unity – on display remarkably today in Kyiv, and backed by over a dozen other countries from New Zealand to Canada – can only worsen from its current peak, especially if American support for Ukraine ebbs.

But the cost of doing nothing – as was the case in the Europe of the 1930s – was higher. Trump losing patience with perhaps the most complex item on his portfolio would likely be damaging for Kyiv, more than for Moscow. Putin having another two months to pick away at Kyiv’s frontlines would leave Zelensky facing another ghastly winter.

Ukraine and its European allies seek clarity from this proposal on whether Putin wants any kind of peace at all. The path they have chosen to get there is in itself unclear, and deeply fraught with potholes of Putin’s manipulation.

Listening to the heads of Europe’s five largest militaries in Kyiv Saturday, it appeared most had made their mind up that Putin does not want peace and won’t genuinely contemplate a month of it. These five leaders face a tricky few weeks of establishing that fact, and then the messy persuasion of Trump that he must take an even tougher position on Russia than his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The path ahead that Europe’s leaders appear to envisage is of a worsening of the war – where Putin violates a ceasefire, is hit with “massive sanctions,” and Europe must escalate its military backing for Ukraine. They do not appear to think the Kremlin wants the war to stop. The weeks ahead are designed, it seems, for a future in which they must prove to Trump he is being misled, and drag his White House permanently and irrefutably into their camp.

Pope Leo XIV indicated on Saturday that his papacy will follow closely in the footsteps of the late Pope Francis, telling church cardinals that they should take up that “precious legacy” and identifying artificial intelligence as a main challenge for working people and “human dignity.”

Pope Leo, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, was elected Thursday, becoming the first US-born pope to the surprise and delight of many Catholics across the Americas.

In his first formal meeting with cardinals, which began with a standing ovation, the new pontiff said he chose his papal name to continue down the path of Pope Leo XIII, who addressed “the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

Pope Leo XIII ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 1878 until his death in 1903 and is remembered as a pope of Catholic social teaching. He wrote a famous open letter to all Catholics in 1891, called “Rerum Novarum” (“Of Revolutionary Change”), which reflected on the destruction wrought by the Industrial Revolution on the lives of workers.

“In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” the new American pontiff said Saturday, speaking in fluent Italian.

Wearing the white robes of the papacy, he strongly signaled to the cardinals that his leadership will build upon Pope Francis’ church reforms and legacy of social justice.

“It has been clearly seen in the example of so many of my predecessors, and most recently by Pope Francis himself, with his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house,” Pope Leo told the gathering. “Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.”

He went on to ask the other senior church leaders to renew their commitment to the pivotal Second Vatican Council, which enacted sweeping church reforms in the 1960s. The modernizing reforms included allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin for the first time.

Setting out that vision on Saturday, Leo said the church should be guided by a missionary focus, “growth in collegiality and synodality,” courageous dialogue with the contemporary world and “loving care for the least and the rejected.”

He also suggested that he will approach the weighty office with humility and fraternity.

“You, dear cardinals, are the closest collaborators of the pope. This has proved a great comfort to me in accepting a yoke clearly far beyond my own limited powers, as it would be for any of us,” Leo added.

“Your presence reminds me that the Lord, who has entrusted me with this mission, will not leave me alone in bearing its responsibility,” he said, also specifically thanking Dean of the College of Cardinals Giovanni Battista Re and the Camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, who was responsible for shepherding the church through the papal transition.

Pope Leo will appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica for a second time on Sunday to greet crowds of people in the square below. His installation Mass will take place the following week on Sunday, May 18.

Around 160,000 people in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region were warned to stay inside on Saturday after a fire at an industrial estate caused a toxic cloud of chlorine over a wide area, emergency services said.

The blaze at a swimming pool cleaning products company started at 2.20 a.m. local time (8:20 p.m. Friday ET) in Vilanova i la Geltru, a town 48 kilometers (30 miles) south of Barcelona and caused a huge plume of chlorine smoke over the area.

“If you are in the zone that is affected do not leave your home or your place of work,” the Civil Protection service said on social media site X.

No one has been hurt in the fire, Catalan emergency services said on Saturday, but residents in five towns were sent a message on their mobile phones telling them to remain inside.

“It is very difficult for chlorine to catch fire but when it does so it is very hard to put it out,” the owner of the industrial property, Jorge Vinuales Alonso, told local radio station Rac1.

He said the cause of the fire might have been a lithium battery.

Trains which were due to pass through the area were held up, roads were blocked and other events were canceled.

The fire was under control, Civil Protection spokesperson Joan Ramon Cabello told the TVE television channel.

The leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland have arrived in Kyiv for meetings with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a symbol of a united European position to publicly pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Friedrich Merz, the new German Chancellor, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk arrived together Saturday morning at Kyiv’s main railway station, where they were met by Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak.

The meetings are a sign of a renewed diplomatic urgency aimed at achieving a ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, which is grinding on despite US efforts to broker peace.

“There is much work to be done and many issues to discuss. This war must be ended with a just peace. Moscow must be forced to agree to a ceasefire,” Yermak wrote on his Telegram channel.

The first stop for the European leaders was Kyiv’s Independence Square where they stood to honor fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukraine, supported by the Europeans, has been calling for an immediate unconditional 30-day ceasefire, something that US President Donald Trump is also demanding.

Russia has so far refused to commit, saying it supports the idea of a 30-day ceasefire in principle but insists there are what it calls “nuances” that need addressing first.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in an interview with ABC News on Saturday suggested that one of these “nuances” was putting a halt to the supply of US and European weapons to Ukraine.

Putin has often spoken about the need to address what he calls “root causes” – which are taken to mean, among others, the eastward expansion of NATO.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump wrote that “if the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” adding to a sense he is growing frustrated with Russian stalling.

The inauguration of Trump in January ushered in a complete change in the US’ diplomatic focus on the war, with Ukraine and key allies fearful of a significant tilt in US policy towards Moscow.

European leaders have convened a series of meetings in response, aimed both at showing the US that Europe can do more to support Ukraine militarily, as well as providing a single voice urging the US president not to take Russia’s side in the war.

“A just and lasting peace begins with a full and unconditional ceasefire. That is the proposal we are advancing with the United States,” French President Macron wrote on his X account Saturday morning.

“Ukraine accepted [the ceasefire proposal] on March 11. Russia, however, delays, sets preconditions, plays for time, and continues its war of invasion. If Moscow continues to obstruct, we will step up the pressure—together, as Europeans and in close coordination with the United States. We welcome President Trump’s call to move forward in this direction,” Macron added.