This presidency places authoritarian ambition above all – and now the people of Ukraine are paying the price

To see the true face of Donald Trump, look no further than Ukraine. Laid bare in his handling of that issue are not only his myriad weaknesses, but also the danger he poses to his own country and the wider world – to say nothing of the battered people of Ukraine itself.

Don’t be fooled by the mild, vaguely theatrical rebuke Trump issued to Vladimir Putin on Thursday after Moscow unleashed a deadly wave of drone strikes on Kyiv, killing 12 and injuring dozens: “ Vladimir, STOP! ” Pay attention instead to the fact that, in the nearly 100 days since Trump took office, the US has essentially switched sides in the battle between Putin’s Russia and democratic Ukraine, backing the invaders against the invaded.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

100 days of Trump’s presidency, with Jonathan Freedland and guests. On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Hugh Brasher, the London Marathon race director, certainly thinks so but the Ugandan faces stiff competition from Eliud Kipchoge and Tamirat Tola

Earlier this year Jacob Kiplimo produced a performance so staggering that it sent the jaws of even seasoned track and field watchers crashing to the floor. It came on the streets of Barcelona, where the 24-year-old Ugandan covered 13.1 miles in 56min 42sec – a half marathon time 48 seconds quicker than anyone else in history.

Little more than two months later, Kiplimo is in London for his full marathon debut and the noise has only grown louder. Could he break the world record on Sunday? Could he even become the first man to break two hours in an official race? It is speculation that the event director, Hugh Brasher, is more than happy to stoke.

Irish trainer sends 21 runners to Sandown in final-day attempt to overhaul rival in gripping championship duel

Dan Skelton has been an immovable object at the top of the National Hunt trainers’ table since the opening day of the 2024-25 season on 4 May last year but, when he comes up against the irresistible force of Willie Mullins’s stable at Sandown on Saturday, the betting market sees only one winner.

Mullins is top-priced at 1-6 to retain the title he won for the first time last year, and while stranger things happen in racing on a fairly regular basis – a 1-9 shot was beaten in a two-horse race at Fakenham less than a month ago – even Skelton has seemed slightly resigned to his probable fate in the run-up to this weekend’s decisive card.

In a statement, the 86-year-old director of the critical and box-office flop said the book confirms his feeling that ‘art can never be constrained’

Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s $120m passion project, was neither a box office nor a critical success on release last year. Largely funded by the sale of Coppola’s own vineyards, the sci-fi epic starring Adam Driver took around $14m at the global box office amid unconvinced reviews and rumours of abnormal on-set behaviour by its director.

A marketing campaign attempted to leverage bad critical notices by flagging that previous works by Coppola now acclaimed as masterpieces – including Apocalypse Now and The Godfather – had been dismissed by critics at the time. But this backfired after it emerged all of the sniffy historical reviews had been fabricated.

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A new season doesn’t need to mean a completely new wardrobe. From ballet shoes that last to secondhand shirts, these updates will fit effortlessly into your current lineup

• 15 colourful pick-me-ups to elevate your everyday

Spring feels like the perfect time to blow away the cobwebs – in life and in your wardrobe. After a winter of wool and heavy boots , the time is ripe for shaking up your look with a warm(er) weather update.

That doesn’t mean buying a whole new wardrobe: one of the things I enjoy about getting older is developing a wardrobe for each season that comes back year on year. Put clothes away between seasons: some items that make their way back out of storage were everyday favourites before then, while others may not have felt right for some time but now – lucky for you – they feel right once again. There’s something extra-fun about falling back in love with something from your own wardrobe.

This drama about dancers could have been as fun as Fame in tutus. Instead, it is a jarring, cringe-inducing mess. Wait till you see Simon Callow as an evil billionaire!

At first, Étoile looks as if it’s shaping up to be Fame in pointe shoes. One character even knowingly quotes the “This is where you start paying, in sweat” speech. This would be fine – great, even, because who didn’t love the quintessential 80s series about the high-energy kids from New York City’s High School of the Performing Legwarmers? The problem is that, as the new venture from Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino progresses, it doesn’t seem to be sure what it is. Apart from Whimsical with a capital W, an attitude that rarely works out well for anyone.

The setup is simple. Two dance companies – Le Ballet National in Paris and the Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York City – are struggling after Covid and assorted other modern pressures such as anti-elitist attitudes and everybody’s terrible attention spans. So what if they swapped their top dancers and choreographers and launched a huge publicity campaign about it so everyone abandoned YouTube and became interested in ballet instead?

Mark Cohen’s photographs of his daily walks in New York show the world viewed from the height of a child – revealing fresh threats, thrills and perspectives

The UK’s first national trail was established to help secure a right to roam. To mark its anniversary, our writer takes on a particularly wild section

High on the ridges of the Pennines, somewhere between the waters of Malham Tarn in the Yorkshire Dales and Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish Borders, a 31-year-old woman stands amid a group of mainly male walkers. She’s wearing bell-bottom jeans, a fitted long-sleeve top and an Alice band to keep her hair out of her face in the prevailing westerly wind. Her name is Joyce Neville and the year is 1952. She’s in the middle of a walk along a proposed national trail – the Pennine Way

Joyce had seen an advert for this self-described “Pioneer Walk” in the Sunday newspapers a few months earlier. It was placed by the writer and campaigner Tom Stephenson who was requesting “accomplished walkers, fit and over 18” to take part in a 15-day hike on the “long green trail” he was suggesting be created in Britain (inspired by the US’s 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail). Few women wore jeans back then, according to Joyce’s notes (which were passed on to me by Paddy Dillon, author of Cicerone’s Walking the Pennine Way guidebook), and the whole trip cost just £25.