What happened

The U.S. is allowing a sanctioned Russian “shadow fleet” tanker to deliver oil to Cuba, President Donald Trump said Sunday, effectively breaking his de facto blockade. “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with that, whether it’s Russia or not,” he told reporters on Air Force One.

Who said what

Trump’s administration has gone after Cuba “more aggressively than any U.S. government in recent history,” The Associated Press said. The oil blockade was “an effort to force regime change,” but it has had “devastating effects” on civilians, “leaving many desperate.” The delivery of the roughly 730,000 barrels of oil on the Anatoly Kolodkin tanker will “reduce pressure” on Havana as it faces “a looming economic collapse,” The New York Times said. It was “unclear why the White House” is allowing the tanker to reach the island, but the decision “avoids a potential thorny confrontation with Russia just off the coast of Florida.”

Trump’s Cabinet was “limited in what it could legally do to stop the tanker,” The Washington Post said. “Seizing or boarding a Russian vessel while simultaneously managing an active military conflict in Iran” would also “pour fuel on already volatile energy markets,” Brett Erickson with Obsidian Risk Advisors told the Post.

What next?

The Anatoly Kolodkin was expected to dock in Cuba by Monday morning. Erickson told Reuters that the “two and a half weeks of oil” on the Kolodkin “can be extended to about a month in total.” The 730,000 barrels “buys them time” in Havana, University of Texas oil expert Jorge Piñón told the Times. “But this is not a magic wand.”

What happened

The Justice Department has agreed to pay Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, about $1.2 million to settle Flynn’s claims he was wrongfully prosecuted for his role in the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, according to court papers filed Wednesday, which didn’t disclose the settlement amount, and news organizations. The Justice Department and Flynn both “hailed the agreement in separate statements, hinting at the cooperative nature of the settlement,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The settlement is the “latest turn in the long-running legal saga involving Flynn,” The Associated Press said. He twice pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador on Trump’s behalf, but then tried to withdraw his plea. Trump ended that case by pardoning Flynn in November 2020, after losing his reelection bid, and Flynn filed a $50 million malicious prosecution claim in 2023. A federal judge dismissed that suit in 2024, but Trump’s Justice Department revived it and entered settlement talks last summer.

The payout will “likely fuel questions as to whether Flynn received a favorable outcome due to his continued vocal support for President Trump,” ABC News said. It was an “extraordinary example,” the Times said, of how the Trump Justice Department “has sought to use the legal system to punish the president’s enemies and reward his allies and supporters” while trying to “erase the effect of some of the prominent criminal cases” against him and them.

What next?

Trump has demanded that the Justice Department pay him $230 million for the two prosecutions he faced before winning re-election in 2024. His administration has “also taken steps to undo criminal convictions the government had secured against Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro,” The Washington Post said.

“Just a few weeks ago, Nato marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with fresh pledges of solidarity and assistance,” said The Daily Telegraph. Today, that war “risks becoming the forgotten conflict”.

Advanced US-made weapons that Kyiv's allies could have bought to help it deflect Russian attacks are being fired at cheap Iranian drones instead – depleting supplies that could take years to restock. European leaders are distracted by threats to their allies in the Gulf region, and the potential shocks to their economies.

Feeding the war machine

To cap Kyiv's dismay, Donald Trump has suspended sanctions on Russian oil, said the Daily Mail. The deal – apparently struck during an hour-long call with Vladimir Putin – should “curb rising prices” on US forecourts, but at what cost to Europe's security? It was recently reported that Moscow might be forced to slash its non-military spending by 10%, owing to the spiralling cost of its war in Ukraine and the impact of sanctions. Now it can feed its “bloody war machine” with billions in extra oil revenues instead.

The war presents “political opportunities” for Russia too, said Mark Galeotti in The Sunday Times. Trump's broadsides against Keir Starmer, and Madrid's fury at Berlin for not backing it in the face of his attacks, have great propaganda value. The Kremlin is also looking at this as a case study for just how united Europe is likely to be against future challenges, “especially as America pivots away”. Still, any glee in Moscow will have been tempered by Washington's decision to strike Iran while nuclear talks were ongoing. This caught Moscow off-guard, and dented its confidence in its ability to read the US president.

‘Extremely triggered’

Tehran is not just an ally of Moscow, said Cathy Young on The Bulwark. It has also been a role model for it – showing the possibility of surviving both Western sanctions and popular discontent. Now the Americans have killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Putin has again been exposed as unable, or unwilling, to help an ally in trouble – a humiliating outcome for a man who liked to pose as the “leader of global resistance to Western hegemony”.

Events in Iran may shake Putin in other ways, too: he is said to be “extremely triggered” by the assassinations of dictators elsewhere. And while Ukraine being pushed down the agenda would be a win for him, this war could also leave Trump too busy to force Kyiv into a bad peace deal with Russia. Similarly, if the war drags on, it might boost Putin, or cost the Republicans the midterms, and so empower Kyiv's allies in Washington. In the fog of war, future-gazing is a mug's game.

Even though it has long been known that Russia engages in censorship of its citizens, recent experiments in Moscow are raising fears that the Russian government is augmenting its information blockade. This new era of censorship, which involves blacking out internet communications other than approved websites, has raised concerns in Russia and among outside observers.

‘Severely limit what people can see’

Throughout March, people in Moscow have “found themselves without connectivity on their phones” due to internet outages created by the Kremlin, said NBC News. These blackouts have “disrupted the daily lives of millions of residents and hit businesses that rely on mobile internet,” though the Russian government has repeatedly said this is being done in the name of security due to threats from the war in Ukraine.

Certain “websites and apps, including government portals and banking services, may remain accessible through ‘whitelists,’” said Business Insider, as the Kremlin may allow “certain services to keep operating even while broader internet access is restricted.” Beyond government portals, some of the sites on these Russian whitelists may also include “state media outlets and Russian homegrown apps such as Max, a messaging platform controlled by the government,” said The Wall Street Journal.

This effort to control internet access is not new: Russia has been “honing and testing similar infrastructure for the past year,” said the Journal. Many officials believe these rolling blackouts will “likely be in place until the end of the war.” This comes as Russians are already “contending with rising inflation and economic strain more than four years into the war in Ukraine.”

‘Massive headache’

As the Kremlin continues to clamp down harder, many Russians, particularly those in the workforce, say they are having trouble going about their lives. The outages are a “massive headache,” Dmitry, a consultant in Moscow, said to The Guardian. “I’m having trouble ordering a taxi, sending work emails or even just messaging my family.” The blackouts are also “slamming businesses that rely on cellphone internet,” said The Associated Press.

Muscovites who run “cafes, restaurants and shops that rely on mobile internet have suffered massive losses as customers have been unable to pay for the services,” said the AP. Many of the city’s ATMs and parking meters that “rely on cellphone internet stopped working,” further complicating Moscow life. Businesses in the city “lost between 3 and 5 billion rubles [$38 million to $63 million] in five days of shutdowns.” However, businesses with “broadband access and residents with broadband at home have not been affected.”

Many are turning to more low-tech options, with Russians buying old-school technology like walkie-talkies and pagers. Sales of walkie-talkies “increased by 27%, sales of pagers for communication with clients and staff by 73%, and landline telephones by about a quarter,” said Russian news outlet RBC. Muscovites are also looking for less high-tech ways to navigate the area. “Sales of road maps increased by 170% in physical units, foldable maps by 70% and Moscow maps by 20%.”

Russia’s plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space could be “catastrophic”, a Canadian military leader has warned on Ukrinform.

Moscow’s reported ambitions “appear quite alarming”, said Brigadier General Christopher Horner, commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Frying electronics 

Satellite warfare has been a threat for some years and the latest “devastating” development is the “possibility of Russia detonating a nuclear weapon in space”, said the Daily Mail.

In 2024 the US believed the Kremlin was developing an “anti-satellite missile tipped with a nuclear warhead for a potential surprise attack in low orbit”. Simulated blast tests by nuclear experts at the Pentagon have suggested that such an attack would destroy thousands of Western satellites.

Satellite networks are “critical to everything from banks synchronising their transactions to navigation tasks that ranged from guiding planes and ships to ensuring a pizza delivery driver finds the right address”.

An anti-satellite nuke would “combine a physical attack that would ripple outwards, destroying more satellites”, with the nuclear component being “used to fry their electronics”, said The Associated Press.

It could “render low-Earth orbit unusable for satellites for as long as a year”, said Republican member of Congress Mike Turner, and the effects would be “devastating”. The US and its allies could be “vulnerable to economic upheaval” and “even a nuclear attack”. The scenario is “the Cuban Missile crisis in space”, said Turner.

Satellite killers

If Russia were to deploy such a “satellite-killing weapon”, it would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, The New York Times said in 2024. This kind of space weaponisation from Russia and China is “one of the primary reasons” the US Space Force was established, said AP.

Now countries are “scrambling to create their own rocket and space programmes to exploit commercial prospects and ensure they aren’t dependent on foreign satellites”, said Fortune.

The US Space Force was launched in 2019 to protect US interests in space and to defend its satellites from attacks by enemies. It’s “far smaller” than the US Army, Navy or Air Force, but it’s “growing”.

Meanwhile, Horner warned that Canada doesn’t have the “capability” to disable a potential Russian nuclear bomb in space. So “my only advice as a military officer is to put pressure” on Moscow so that they don’t follow through with the plan, because that would be an “incredibly terrible thing”.

“Vladimir Putin has not achieved his goals,” said a defiant Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a televised address marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The February 2022 invasion was meant to be a “short and successful military operation” that would “force Kyiv back into Moscow’s orbit” and “overturn the entire post-Cold War security architecture in Europe”, said the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. “It didn’t go to plan”, leaving Russia with an ever-mounting cost.

What did the commentators say?

As the conflict enters its fifth year, Russian victory seems as far away as ever and it has little to show for its estimated 1.2 million casualties, according to Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. The average pace of Russia’s progress has sometimes been as little as 15 metres per day, “slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century”.

Russia’s economy is finally starting to teeter. It faces a huge shortfall in oil revenues and has been forced to sell gold reserves to cover its budget deficit.

The West has always believed that domestic discontent as a result of the ongoing sanctions would “persuade Putin to abandon the war”, said Peter Rutland and Elizaveta Gaufman on The Conversation. This, in turn, was “based on the assumption that the legitimacy of Putinism rests on a social contract” that offers Russians stability and income in exchange for loyalty.

But this approach “tends to downplay the role of ideology”, which has been successfully exploited by the Kremlin to spin the war as an existential threat and maintain support for the president, according to data from Statista.

This narrative has also been deployed externally, towards Russia’s opponents. The idea emanating from the Kremlin that Ukraine’s front line faces “imminent collapse” is “an effort to coerce the West and Ukraine into capitulating to Russian demands that Russia cannot secure itself militarily”, said the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. This is a “false narrative”.

The West should “stop buying into Moscow’s bluff that Russia is invincible” and “use the Kremlin’s weaknesses and double down on its support for Ukraine to bring about real negotiations to end the war”, said Jana Kobzova and Leo Litra for the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The notion that ‘time is on the Russian side’ betrays a lack of strategic patience and, even more importantly, squandered opportunities to exploit Moscow’s growing structural vulnerabilities.”

What next?

“Standard economic theory suggests that deteriorating conditions should push the Kremlin towards negotiations on ending the war,” said The Economist. “A rational actor facing mounting costs seeks an exit.”

Yet there is little sign that Putin has any intention of yielding on his push for the “capitulation” of Ukraine, Russian political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya told The I Paper. If no peace deal can be struck, the war could even “escalate further”, with the possible involvement of China a “growing factor”, as well as fears of a “new nuclear race”, said The i Paper.

Russia can “probably continue waging war for the foreseeable future”, said The Economist, but every additional year “raises systemic risk: of fiscal crisis, of institutional breakdown, of damage so severe that no post-war policy can repair it”.

So the question for Western allies is “what kind of Russia will emerge” when its appetite for war finally fades, “and whether anyone has a plan for what comes next”.

Moscow is calling it “necro-propaganda” but intelligence services and chemical weapons experts from five European countries are united in their verdict: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed by a rare toxin found in some poison dart frogs.

Traces of epibatidine, a neurotoxin 200 times more potent than morphine, were found in samples taken from Navalny’s body after he died, two years ago, in a Siberian penal colony. Only the Russian government had “the means, the motive and the opportunity” to use such a poison on a prisoner, said Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

“Precise, deniable” and “grimly familiar”, said NBC, the use of poison to eliminate enemies “has become less a medieval cliché” than Russia’s current “geopolitical signature flourish”.

What is the history of Russia’s use of poison?

The Kremlin has long used rare poisons “to dispose of inconvenient people”, said The Independent. There are credible reports of a Soviet “poison programme” as far back as the 1920s. Poison was mainly used to eliminate internal opposition but, in 1978, the Western world was shocked by the London assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov with a ricin-filled pellet, fired from the tip of an umbrella on Waterloo Bridge.

In recent years, Russian military and security services have been implicated in a growing number of high-profile poison attacks overseas. In 2004, Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko, running against a Russian favourite, was left permanently disfigured by a dioxin attack. In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko died after drinking a cup of tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in a London hotel. And, in 2018, two Russian GRU agents were implicated in the novichok attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

Two years later, an attempt was made to kill Navalny with novichok during a flight to Moscow but he survived after his plane was diverted so he could be taken to hospital. This was, however, only a temporary reprieve for Vladimir Putin’s most vocal and effective critic.

Why is poison the Kremlin’s weapon of choice?

The advantage of toxins is “their deniability and terror”, said The Times. They send “a very clear message: ‘If you screw with us, terrible things will happen’”, a security source told the paper. Not only can the state kill but “it can do so without ever admitting it has done anything at all”.

The effects of epibatidine, the toxin said to be used in Navalny’s fatal poisoning, are “devastating’, said Sky News. It will cause “paralysis, respiratory arrest and an agonising death”. If the Kremlin “did choose to use such an exotic substance to silence a critic, it demonstrates an unusual level of ruthlessness”.

Will there be any consequences for Russia?

A group of European ministers have reported the results of their lab tests on the Navalny samples to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Russia claims “Western fabulists” are using a Russian citizen’s death to make “strident accusations” of assassination with “zero evidence”.

The “extraordinary announcement” about the frog poison at an international security conference in Munich was deliberately co-ordinated by the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands “to grab global headlines in much the same way as” Navalny's “actual death did”, said Sky News. “The intent was to make sure perpetrators cannot hide in the shadows.” Potential repercussions could include sanctions or even criminal prosecutions of individuals involved.

The hope is that this kind of “greater scrutiny“ will “deter the Kremlin” from poison attacks overseas. It is, “at the very least, evidence of a growing resolve amongst Nato allies” to stand up to Putin.

And, “in the short term, the main international consequence” will be “to make it impossible” for America’s European allies “to swallow any Trump peace plan for Ukraine that rewards Putin”, said The Independent. “Poison, it turns out, can be a boomerang.”

For thousands of years, humans have trained pigeons to race, deliver messages and “spy behind enemy lines”, said Bloomberg. “What would happen if people could bypass the training and steer their bird brains instead?”

A Russian neurotechnology company linked to Vladimir Putin’s daughter is claiming to do just that, said The Times. Scientists at Neiry have reportedly been implanting computer chips into the birds’ brains and strapping video cameras to their chests, trying to transform them into “living drones”.

There has been “no independent scientific verification” of the company’s claims – but in theory, the birds could be “adapted for military surveillance”.

Bio-drones

Under the project, codenamed PJN-1, neural chips are reportedly implanted into the birds’ brains, with flight paths controlled by remote operators. The Moscow-based company claims the birds can be steered by “stimulating their brains with electrodes to make them turn left or right”, said the paper.

Pigeons outperform traditional drones because animals “do not require battery swaps or frequent landings”, according to Neiry. They can fly up to 400km a day without a break, and can reach areas where drones would be restricted, the company says.

“Our current focus is pigeons, but different species may be used depending on the environment or payload,” said Alexander Panov, founder and chief executive. “For transporting heavier payloads we plan to use ravens.”

And there are other advantages to these bird-brained “bio-drones”, said Bloomberg. Drones may be “easier to control, can carry bigger loads and don’t need to eat or poop”. But birds are better suited to covert surveillance. A person is far more likely to notice a drone overhead than “one more pigeon flapping around”.

Remote-controlled assassins?

There’s plenty of precedent in attempts to control the minds of animals for military purposes. During the Cold War, the CIA tried to turn dogs into “remote-controlled canine assassins”, said The Times. It also inserted a microphone into a cat’s ear and a radio transmitter into its skull, “hoping to use it as a device to spy” on the Soviets.

Several countries, including China and the US, have also explored controlling birds through neural implants. Last year Chinese scientists “created cyborg bees” with brain controllers to direct their flight, said The Telegraph. And in January, Neiry unveiled “what it claimed was the world’s first rat connected to AI, allowing it to access online information and answer questions via a keyboard”.

Neiry says the birds are intended for peaceful purposes, to help with search and rescue operations and to monitor infrastructure. “We make every effort to ensure that our bio-drones are used exclusively for civilian purposes, with no concealed or secondary use,” the company said in a statement.

But experts warn the technology could “easily be adapted for military use”, said the paper. Russia already sends trained dolphins to guard its Black Sea naval base, and has reportedly “mounted Starlink terminals on horses to extend internet coverage along the front line”.

An investigation by T-Invariant, an independent anti-war outlet, found that Neiry had received about one billion roubles (almost £10 million) in funding, “much of it from Kremlin-linked sources”. The company has received funding “on a scale Russian neuroscience has never seen”, one neurologist told the outlet.

Brain implant technology has also advanced rapidly in recent years. Several companies are developing neural chips for humans to treat diseases and improve cognitive capabilities. Plus Russia has been expanding its drone capabilities in the war against Ukraine – a war keenly supported by Panov. He has “lamented what he called the ‘gentle style’ of Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine”, said The Telegraph. He has also described his “ultimate ambition” of creating the next human species after Homo sapiens: so-called Homo superior.

What happened

The U.S. on Thursday said it had agreed with Moscow to restart high-level military-to-military dialogue that was suspended shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The thawing of bilateral ties grew out of talks in Abu Dhabi on ending the war. Thursday also marked the end of New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

Who said what

The U.S. and Russian militaries have maintained an emergency deconfliction line throughout Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but “consistent military-to-military contact” is an “important factor in global stability and peace,” U.S. European Command said in a statement. The “resumption of regular dialogue” will also “enable Moscow to hold talks with Washington on security topics outside of the Ukraine conflict,” The Washington Post said.

The lapse of New START removes “last major guardrail constraining the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that together hold some 85% of the world’s warheads,” Axios said. U.S. and Russian envoys in Abu Dhabi had been “closing in on a deal to continue to observe” the treaty, but President Donald Trump cast “doubt on any formal extension.” Instead of “extending” New START, he said Thursday on social media, we should “work on a new, improved and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.”

What next?

Trump’s post “said nothing about Vladimir Putin’s offer to hold American and Russian arsenals at current levels temporarily, leaving open the possibility of a renewed arms race,” The New York Times said.

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After three decades of checking the global proliferation of nuclear weapons for both the United States and Russia, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) has come to its inevitable end. And that demise is sparking questions about what might fill the void the treaty leaves behind.

A continuation of earlier mutual arms control pacts, the New START Treaty represented the latest in more than half a century of U.S.-Russian cooperation to stem the tide of weapons of mass destruction — and its Thursday expiration marks the last of such endeavors. With no concrete plans for a similar nonproliferation pact to replace it, is the world now on the cusp of a Cold War-style atomic arms race?

What did the commentators say?

The dissolution of the New START Treaty, which regulated the amount of nuclear weapon-capable hardware deployed by both nations, comes at an “especially fraught time,” said Politico. Both Russia and China have been “expanding” their nuclear arsenals recently, and the Defense Department has launched a “series of internal meetings” to prepare for a “post-New START world.”

President Donald Trump, for his part, has “indicated that he would like a new deal” but said he “wanted it to include China.” But Chinese officials, said The New York Times, have “made clear they are not interested.” Broadly then, the treaty’s end signifies more than an expiration date, as multiple countries begin testing “new types and configurations of nuclear weapons” few could have envisioned when the Senate narrowly “ratified the New START treaty in 2010.”

Trump’s insistence that China be included in future antiproliferation treaties was “almost certainly a poison pill” intended to “stop any progress on renewing the existing treaty,” said The Atlantic. However hard two-party arms negotiations may be to achieve, “multilateral arms treaties are exponentially more difficult.” Complicating the situation further, Trump, in his second term, is surrounded by people who oppose most treaties as “annoying limitations on American power.”

The treaty’s end should “alarm everyone,” said Russian politician and former President Dmitry Medvedev, one of the original signatories to the 2010 deal. It is a “sobering comment” from someone whose “recent rhetoric has included nuclear threats,” said the BBC. Not only is the treaty’s expiration a “significant break in more than five decades of bilateral nuclear arms control,” said Chatham House, but by signaling a “move away from nuclear restraint,” the lapse ultimately makes the world a “more dangerous place.”

What next?

The loss of the New START Treaty is not only an end to “numeric limits” of nuclear arms but halts the “predictable flow of notifications, data exchanges, on-site inspections and other transparency mechanisms that reduced uncertainty and helped sustain predictability,” said Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies Professor Katarzyna Zysk to The Barents Observer. Absent that regularity, Russia will have to “plan against a U.S. force posture that is less observed,” leading to a “higher degree of uncertainty.”

The implicit message of allowing the treaty to lapse will be “received most clearly in Beijing,” said The Diplomat. While China’s nuclear arsenal is small in comparison to those amassed by the U.S. and Russia, the treaty’s end signals that “negotiated restraint among major powers is temporary and expendable.” Rather than curbing China’s atomic ambitions, the change only reinforces the “case for accelerating it in anticipation of a world without limits.”

The treaty’s end has also “sparked debate” among European leadership over “how to possibly shape” the continent’s nuclear defenses, said DW. In one outcome under consideration, the nuclear powers of France and the U.K. “extend their protection to other nations, such as Germany.”

If the White House thinks it “will be easy” to negotiate a “new ‘better’ treaty” now that this one has expired, “they are mistaken,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the arms control advocacy group Defense Priorities, at The Guardian. Trump may be the ultimate dealmaker,” but when it comes to nuclear proliferation, he would have been “better off hanging on to the agreement” he let lapse before “trying to get a better one.”

Delegations from the US, Ukraine and Russia have met together for the first time since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, buoying hopes of a peace deal despite continued sticking points over territory.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that talks overnight between Vladimir Putin and the US had been “substantive, constructive and very frank”, ahead of the two-day summit in Abu Dhabi. But despite the positive noises, Russia, which occupies about 20% of Ukraine, “is pushing for full control of the country’s eastern Donbas region as part of a deal”, something Kyiv has warned against, claiming that “ceding ground would embolden Moscow”, said The Times.

What did the commentators say?

US envoy Steve Witkoff said negotiations were “down to one issue”, suggesting an agreement was perhaps within reach. “I think we’ve got it down to one issue, and we have discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it’s solvable,” he said.

While Donald Trump and his colleagues “appear to believe Putin is ready and willing to agree to a ceasefire”, said CNBC, Ukraine remains sceptical, believing “Russia’s manpower advantage on the battlefield and incremental advances means it is willing to continue the war and is playing for time by drawing out talks”. Coupled with this “it isn’t clear that the meetings on Ukraine this week come with any new proposals beyond those that have already been rejected by Russia”, said Politico’s Felicia Schwartz.

From Ukraine’s perspective, “these first, trilateral talks are a kind of crunch time”, said Sarah Rainsford, the BBC’s Eastern Europe correspondent. “The focus will be US security guarantees for Ukraine – and, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy puts it, it’s a chance to see whether Moscow is really serious about peace or just playing games.”

The crux of that issue is that for Putin “deception is the default setting”, said The Hill’s Andrew Chakhoyan. “He does not negotiate – he manipulates.” As former Ukrainian commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi wrote in the New York Post: “Russia’s negotiators, like its generals, fight to exhaust, confuse and divide. Their aim is not peace but delay; not compromise in pursuit of accord but conquest through deception.”

“It feels like we've been here before: highly anticipated high-profile summits that change little on the ground in Ukraine,” said Sky News’s Sally Lockwood. “And yet – this time feels different.” The speed at which all three sides agreed to meet in the UAE means there is “a sense that neither side would have shown up without at least contemplating a compromise they might be willing to accept”.

What next?

The timing of these talks “is especially significant as Ukraine faces its harshest winter of the war, with widespread power outages caused by Russian strikes on energy infrastructure”, said Modern Diplomacy. But while these conditions “add urgency to negotiations” they also “fuel Ukrainian scepticism about Russia’s stated interest in peace”.

Along with the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, separate economic discussions between Moscow and Washington are also planned, signalling parallel diplomatic tracks.

It’s there where the US can really turn the screw. “The first step to defeating Russian cognitive warfare is simple: stop playing by Russia’s dirty rules,” said The Hill’s Chakhoyan. “Stop accepting Putin’s framing.” Putin lies “because his only path to victory runs through Washington’s self-deterrence and Europe’s indecisiveness. The greatest lie of all is that we have no choice but to accept it.”

Nato is mulling a joint operation to defend the Arctic from future Russian and Chinese aggression – and to neutralise US ambition.

Britain, Germany and France have discussed a possible “Arctic Sentry” mission, echoing two similar Nato initiatives launched last year: Baltic Sentry (in response to underseas cable sabotage) and Eastern Sentry (following Russian drone incursions). This would be in addition to Denmark’s “Operation Arctic Endurance” in Nuuk where Britain, Canada and 10 other European nations have already sent a handful of troops to join that reconnaissance force in the Greenland capital.

The hope is to placate Donald Trump, who has repeatedly used claims of a growing threat of Russian and Chinese ships to justify his desire to seize Greenland. But whether a Nato mission could feasibly protect the mineral-rich Arctic – or whether the threat is as severe as the president claims – is a different question altogether.

What did the commentators say?

Nato should “double down” on Arctic security and “do what we’ve done in other areas”, said Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. The Arctic is “the gateway for Russia’s Northern Fleet to be able to threaten” the UK, Europe, the US and Canada, she told the BBC while visiting British forces in northern Norway. “Transatlantic security depends on our Arctic security.”

She envisages the mission as covering “the high north”, including Greenland, Iceland, Finland and the increasingly busy shipping lanes. It would look like “coordinated exercises, operations and intelligence sharing”, she said, similar to the ongoing Baltic and Eastern Sentry missions.

Those are “considered big successes”, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). While the waters around Greenland “aren’t full of Russian and Chinese ships right now, that could change as Arctic ice melts and new sea lanes open up”.

Russian and Chinese vessels aren’t out there “studying the seals and the polar bears”, said Nato’s supreme allied commander in Europe, Alexus Grynkewich. But there are “many practical obstacles” to an Arctic Sentry operation, said RFE/RL. Nato has only about 40 ice-breaker vessels in total – fewer than Russia. Hundreds of such ships would be needed “to cover such a vast area”. Apart from Nordic countries and Canada, there are few troops with experience of operating “in harsh Arctic conditions”.

The Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry were also “formulated to tackle specific threats”, said The Telegraph. In the case of Greenland, the threats “are not as clear-cut”. Germany has “floated the idea of sending at least 5,000 troops” to Greenland, effectively a “tripwire” to stall a Russian or Chinese invasion.

But that wouldn’t “significantly contribute to regional security”, because any threat to Greenland is “unlikely to be a ground invasion”. Mass deployment would also “suck vast resources away from other priorities”, such as a potential peacekeeping force in Ukraine or protecting Nato’s eastern flank from Russia. It “would simply be seen as a costly public relations project” designed to placate Trump. He “appears obsessed with the purported presence of Russian and Chinese ships” near the island. Security experts do not agree.

Indeed, there’s “hardly any military activity” by Russia and China in Greenland, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, told Politico.

Seven of the eight Arctic countries that are Nato members (Russia is the eighth) are cooperating more and more; the fact that other countries are “becoming more interested is a good thing”, Eide said. But the focus is “still more on Russia’s live threat to the European high north than a future threat to Greenland”.

What next?

One potential Arctic Sentry scenario could be “Europeans handling air and sea surveillance” of what is known as the GIUK gap – the area between Greenland and Ireland/the UK – while the US “increases its troop presence in Greenland”, said RFE/RL. The 1951 treaty between the US and Denmark that allows unlimited US presence on the island is still valid. Denmark would have to consent, but that is “likely to be given”.

The EU is also considering using a rearmament scheme to build a continental ice-breaker to deploy to the region alongside Nato warships, according to The Telegraph. But the most likely Arctic Sentry scenario would “focus on the intelligence aspect of security”, which is seen as “a vital way of securing the Arctic”.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte is “expected to put some security proposals” to Trump: a “toolbox” of ideas on how European nations could protect Greenland. Talks on Arctic Sentry are “at the earliest stages of planning”, but hopefully “at least one of the proposals will be enough” to deter Trump.

Today, an estimated 900 to 1,500 tankers – perhaps one in five in the world – are part of the global “shadow fleet”, defined by the International Maritime Organisation as “ships that are engaged in illegal operations for the purposes of circumventing sanctions, evading compliance with safety or environmental regulations, avoiding insurance costs or engaging in other illegal activities”.

While such ships have long been used to transport oil from sanction-hit nations such as Venezuela and Iran, their numbers expanded rapidly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when Moscow built up a clandestine network of hundreds of vessels. About half of the world’s shadow fleet vessels transport Russian oil; about 20% carry Iranian oil; Venezuela is the next biggest market. The shadow fleet transported some 3.7 billion barrels of oil in 2025, accounting for 6% to 7% of annual global crude-oil flows, according to the trade intelligence analyst Kpler.

How did Russia build up its fleet?

US, G7 and EU restrictions on Russian oil exports were introduced in December 2022, notably in the form of a price cap on Russian crude (initially set at $60 per barrel) designed to hit Russia’s economy while ensuring that the sanctions wouldn’t raise global oil prices. This banned Western shipping services, insurance and brokerage for Russian oil exports sold at any price above that cap; until this point Russia was highly dependent on all three.

In their place, tankers approaching their end of life were purchased by Russia, or by intermediaries, often using shell companies in opaque jurisdictions. In a period of 12 months, Greek owners sold 127 vessels worth $4 billion. Shipping specialists based in London helped facilitate the sales. These ships have been used to move Russian oil to Asia, primarily China and India, while preventing Asian buyers from being hit with Western sanctions. The oil is usually sold at a price above the price cap (now $47.60 per barrel) but below the going market rate (roughly $58-$62).

How do ships evade detection?

Ownership is disguised. The vessels often change their names, and their registrations. They are usually registered under flags of convenience (in states such as Gabon, Cameroon, or the Cook Islands, which maintain open ship registries with minimal oversight) or under false flags. The ships frequently turn off their tracking systems to “go dark”, or they digitally manipulate their location data. Oil can be pumped between vessels in remote areas of open ocean far from typical trading routes. This makes it difficult for monitoring bodies to trace the cargo back to Russia. And because Western insurers are forbidden from insuring them, tankers often operate with dubious Russian insurance, or no insurance at all.

What dangers do the ships pose?

They provide an economic lifeline to Putin’s Russia, allowing it to continue selling oil at near-market prices and fund its war effort. It is estimated that some 70% of Russia’s seaborne crude exports use the shadow fleet. In addition, because most shadow tankers are old, cheaply maintained, inadequately insured, and sometimes turn off their tracking systems, they raise the risk of accidents and spills. The environmental impact could potentially be huge: many tankers carry at least a million barrels of crude. If one of these “floating rust buckets” causes a billion-dollar oil spill, says Michelle Wiese Bockmann – an intelligence analyst at Windward AI – “good luck with trying to find somebody responsible to pick up any cost”: the costs will fall on the affected coastal state. Furthermore, Russia seems to have “weaponised” parts of its shadow fleet.

How have they been weaponised?

Some tankers have been implicated in damage to key infrastructure – perhaps because of poor seamanship, but potentially owing to deliberate acts of sabotage. In late December, Finnish police detained a cargo vessel, the Fitburg, which was sailing from St Petersburg to Haifa in Israel, and was accused of damaging an undersea telecoms cable in the Baltic by dragging its anchor over it. The Boracay, a Russia-linked ship, is suspected of having launched the drones that overflew two airports in Denmark (Copenhagen and Aalborg) last September, closing both down.

What can be done?

The US, the UK and EU can impose sanctions on specific vessels and on companies that deal with them. These mean that the ships can’t be insured in these jurisdictions, and that service and port bans can be imposed. However, it’s a game of “whack-a-mole”: the ships are usually renamed and reflagged. Besides, it doesn’t stop them sailing. Freedom of navigation is a core principle of international law, and the appetite of coastal countries to intervene – risking Russia’s wrath – is limited. A Russian jet was sent to escort one tanker challenged by Estonian forces last May. However, recent developments are making it harder for the shadow fleet.

And what are those?

Since December, six Russian shadow vessels appear to have been attacked by the Ukrainians, using naval drones – mostly in the Black Sea, but in one case even in the Mediterranean, off Libya. The ships were all disabled but not sunk. The second development is that the US has shown a willingness to seize all shadow shipping moving to and from Venezuela. More than 40 shadow fleet vessels involved in trade with Venezuela have been reflagged to Russia in the past six months, in an apparent attempt to gain Kremlin protection from American seizure. The Marinera, previously sailing under a false Guyanese flag, changed both name and flag while fleeing Venezuela, but that failed to stop US forces from seizing it. Four other vessels, including the M/T Sophia, also reflagged as Russian, have been seized. The UK has hinted that it too might confiscate sanctioned vessels.

What happened

The U.S. military and Coast Guard on Wednesday seized two oil tankers in separate operations aimed at controlling the flow of oil out of Venezuela. U.S. special forces boarded the Marinera near Iceland after a weekslong chase across the Atlantic that included the tanker changing its name from Bella 1 and its flag from Guyana to Russia. The U.S. also commandeered another “shadow fleet” tanker, the Sophia, in the Caribbean Sea, alleging unspecified “illicit activities.”

Who said what

The seizure of the Marinera drew condemnation from China, the main customer for Venezuela’s sanctioned oil, and Russia, which had added the empty tanker to its Maritime Register of Shipping after the Coast Guard started pursuing it in December. “Adding to the stakes,” The Wall Street Journal said, a “Russian navy ship and submarine began escorting the ship” days ago.

The Trump administration said it had legal authority to board the Marinera because it was flying a false flag. The ship’s “embrace of the Russian flag is part of a broader trend in which so-called shadow tanker vessels have sought the imprimatur of Russian protection,” The New York Times said. “For years, aged shadow vessels” have “provided a lifeline to states like Venezuela, Iran and Russia,” but it appears the “shadow fleet is stepping out of the shadows” as “Western nations have stepped up enforcement against the illicit oil trade around the globe.”

What next?

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday that the Trump administration will allow sanctioned Venezuelan oil to flow again, but only to U.S. refineries, with the sales “done by the U.S. government and deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government.”

The UK and France have agreed to deploy troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia, as part of a broader package of security guarantees aimed at preventing a repeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion nearly four years ago.

After talks in Paris, Keir Starmer said both countries will, in the event of a ceasefire, “establish military hubs across Ukraine” and build protected weapon facilities “to support Ukraine’s defensive needs”.

Their agreement – along with wider security guarantees from the Coalition of the Willing – has the backing of the Trump administration. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “huge step forward”. But Russia has previously rejected any idea of a “reassurance force” in Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

The announcement from Starmer and Emmanuel Macron is “not a magic wand”, said Bel Trew in The Independent. “But it is a key moment.” France and Britain have, according to Zelenskyy, already “worked out in detail” the “force deployment”, including numbers, weapons components required.

Perhaps to reassure a wary French public, Macron said that “these are not forces that will be engaged in combat” but rather deployed “away from the contact line” to provide the necessary “reassurance”.

“This does seem at first glance to be a well-developed framework for ending the conflict in Ukraine,” said Eliot Wilson in The Spectator. But one of the most “obvious problems” is that “it is not at all clear that the UK and France have the military resources available to do what they say”.

There are “deep divisions” over increased defence spending in France and “the British army is the smallest it has been since the 1790s”. About 7,500 UK personnel are already deployed internationally and “resources for our leadership of the Nato Multinational Battlegroup in Estonia are stretched”. Given this, “where will we find ‘boots on the ground’ for Ukraine?”

Then there is the lack of public appetite for a prolonged military intervention overseas. On this, Starmer “begins from a stronger position than almost any of his counterparts” in the EU, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. UK voters are “among the most pro-Ukraine in Europe”: a recent YouGov poll of voters in six European countries found 56% of Brits support sending peacekeepers to Ukraine, compared to 40% in France and Italy and 36% in Poland. That “speaks to the strength of this consensus – albeit one yet to be tested by events”.

What next?

Of all the wider security guarantees agreed in Paris, the “binding commitment to support Ukraine in the case of future armed attack” is the one most “riddled with questions”, said Euronews. Each Coalition of the Willing government “would have to convince their parliaments, many of which are paralysed by political deadlock, to agree to an exceptionally consequential commitment”.

Then there is Putin, who has shown “no sign” that he is “willing to countenance any of this”, said Politico. This week’s potentially game-changing breakthrough does, however, “thrust the ball further into his court”.

“Overall, it feels like last year was the prologue and this year is the first chapter, one in which the storylines can really get some momentum behind them,” said Russh.

The magazine was describing horoscope forecasts for the coming year, but it could just as easily have been talking about how politics and the global economy will be shaping up in 2026.

Last year, The Week accurately predicted Donald Trump’s tariffs, the first signs of an AI stock market bubble, the rise of the far-right in the UK and Europe, and a ceasefire in Gaza. So what could 2026 have in store?

Politics

UK local and devolved elections in May are being seen as a make-or-break moment for Keir Starmer and the Labour government.

Squeezed from the right by Reform UK and from the left by a revived Green Party and the new Your Party (as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland), it is already looking like being a torrid night of results for Labour. Across the board, the party faces “potential collapse” and, for the first time in a century, losing control of its Welsh heartland, said Parli-Training. Were that to happen, Starmer could be forced out of Downing Street by the summer, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood among the favourites to replace him.

US midterm elections are also looking pretty bleak for the incumbent Republicans. With Donald Trump’s approval ratings continuing to fall, Democrats have opened up a double-digit lead in voting intention for the congressional races in November, said the Marist Poll.

“Everywhere Republicans look, they see big political trouble,” said Axios, with poll after poll showing support among swing voters down “on just about everything Republicans do, other than fighting crime and shutting the southwest border”.

In Europe, all eyes will be on the Hungarian parliamentary election in April, where Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule could end. Elsewhere, global research firm BMI sees a “greater likelihood of victories by the centre-right/right-wing opposition” in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, “while Israel could also see a political shift”.

The opaque process to select the next UN Secretary-General also takes place over the coming year, with the successful candidate formally taking up their post on 1 January 2027. Among those already declared or expected to throw their hat in the ring is Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jacinda Ardern, former PM of New Zealand, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Economics

Following a bumpy year in which Trump’s tariff war played havoc with trade but markets continued to post record returns driven by AI investment, the outlook for the global economy in 2026 remains “dim”.

That is the assessment of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, which “makes for sobering reading”, said Love Money. Growth is forecast at 3.2% next year, with “much of the drag” stemming from “US tariffs and the wider shift towards protectionism, which is sapping international trade, undermining confidence, and rattling markets”.

Interest rates (in the US, UK and elsewhere) are expected to continue to fall, however, while fears persist that this is the year the AI bubble could finally burst. Analysis from financial services firm Wedbush, reported by Investing.com, predicts tech stocks will be “up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI Revolution hits its stride”.

“Don’t count on the AI bubble popping immediately – but don’t count it out, either,” said Mashable, with chip maker Nvidia’s next quarterly earnings report, due in January, being a key moment to watch out for.

Conflicts

Despite repeated attempts to agree an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, fighting continues to rage in what is now Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.

With Kremlin forces making slow but steady gains but at a terrible cost to life, the “arithmetic of attrition suggests that 2026 will bring either glacial progress, a conflict frozen from exhaustion, or some sort of deal”, said The Economist. “Two other scenarios are possible: a Ukrainian frontline or political collapse, aided by Kremlin subversion; or Russia’s economy buckling as aerial attacks shut down its oil industry”, but “either of the two would have massive consequences for Europe, and the world”.

Other conflict hotspots include India/Pakistan following a deadly skirmish in 2025, Congo/Rwanda, and the ongoing civil war in Sudan. Tensions are mounting between China and Taiwan, although 2027 is seen as the more likely date for an invasion as it marks the centenary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Donald Trump continues to threaten conflict against Venezuela but if he is persuaded to back down, manages to maintain the Gaza ceasefire and negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine, he could be in the running for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize announced in October.

On the pitch and out of this world

Fresh from winning the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize, Trump will be looking to use the 2026 men’s football World Cup – this year jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico – to push his Maga agenda even further.

Sixteen venues across the continent will host the biggest-ever edition of the tournament, with the number of teams increasing from 32 to 48 and the tally of games upped from 64 to 104. While it is still six months until the first ball is kicked, sports statistics platform Opta Analyst has crunched the numbers and predicted that Euro 2024 champions Spain are the most likely to win the Jules Rimet trophy, followed by France, England, Argentina and Germany.

Before that, there is the small matter of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics taking place in February.

A little further from home, the Nasa-led Artemis II mission will attempt the first manned orbit of the Moon in over half a century. The four-person crew will embark on a 10-day flight to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, said the BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

Originally planned for April 2026, the mission could now launch as early as 5 February. And while it “won’t land on the lunar surface” it will take astronauts 5,000 nautical miles past the Moon and “further into space than any human has gone before”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised both eyebrows and hopes across Eastern Europe this week after offering a surprising concession in the fraught negotiations to end Russia’s ongoing invasion. He told reporters on Tuesday that he would be willing to pull troops from parts of the contested Donbas region that Ukraine shares with Russia to establish an internationally monitored demilitarized zone, so long as Moscow does the same with the territory it controls in the area. Donbas, Zelenskyy said, is the “most difficult point” in negotiations to end the war between both nations.

‘Thorny territorial disputes’

Zelenskyy’s openness to a Donbas demilitarized zone comes as part of a “revised 20-point peace plan” crafted by American and Ukrainian negotiators that “covers a broad range of issues,” The New York Times said. The blueprint outlines everything from “potential territorial arrangements” to “security guarantees” and plans for rebuilding areas damaged in the war. Zelenskyy’s Donbas comments are the “closest” the Ukrainian leader has come to addressing the “thorny territorial disputes” that have “repeatedly derailed peace talks” in the region. Russia, which occupies the majority of the Donbas region, has “insisted that Ukraine relinquish” what remaining territory it controls in the area in an “ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected,” said The Associated Press.

Donbas has emerged as one of the “chief sticking points” in the current peace plan, with Kyiv afraid that “surrendering fortified positions” across the region might help Russia to “stage further attacks,” The Wall Street Journal said. The United States has pushed for a “compromise” over the area by encouraging the development of a “free economic zone” in the demilitarized territory.

In his remarks Tuesday, Zelenskyy “stressed that Ukraine is against the withdrawal,” Politico said. But “there are two options,” said Zelenskyy: “Either the war continues, or something will have to be decided regarding all potential economic zones.” The significance of his concession notwithstanding, it remains “difficult to imagine Russia accepting such terms,” considering how controlling the contested region has been “one of its main war objectives,” said Le Monde.

Referendum and nuclear problem

Beyond tactical fears of renewed Russian aggression in the region, Ukraine must also contend with “humanitarian concerns related to the relocation of residents” and the risk of a “serious blow to national morale” should it give up significant territory, the Times said. Accordingly, any demilitarized zone will need to be “approved by Ukrainians through a referendum.” The proposed peace plan also calls for a “joint U.S.-Ukrainian-Russian management” of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, “Europe’s largest,” currently under Russian control, said CBS News. Zelenskyy has stressed, however, that Ukraine “doesn’t want any Russian oversight of the facility.”

It is “now up to the Russian Federation to respond to this proposed agreement,” said Le Monde. To that end, Zelenskyy predicted, Moscow will be “ready to accept a plan in any case.”

“They can’t say to President Trump: ‘Listen, we’re against a peaceful settlement,’” Zelenskyy explained at his press briefing. “If they try to block everything, President Trump will then have to arm us heavily, while imposing every possible sanction on them.” In response to Ukraine’s apparent territorial flexibility, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of top Russian businessmen that a “partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out,” said Russia's Kommersant newspaper, per Reuters. “In essence,” said the news service, “Putin wants the whole of Donbas” but is open to other territorial swaps “outside that area.”

EU leaders have chosen to raise €90 billion in joint debt to fund the Ukrainian war effort for the next two years after German-led proposals for a “reparations loan” secured against frozen Russian assets fell apart in the face of internal dissent.

Notably, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia will not participate in the joint debt scheme, meaning an “EU of 27 member states turned into a gang of 24” at the summit in Brussels last night, said Politico.

What did the commentators say?

Europe has undoubtedly shown commitment to Ukraine, but the decision “hardly sends an unequivocal message”, said the Financial Times. A “failure to find the cash” at all would have been a “terrible indictment of European weakness” when it “desperately needed to show resolve”.

But the bloc “blinked” when it came to the sterner step of using seized Russian assets to do so. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz “forcefully advocated” for the “reparations loan”, which he had framed as “the only option”, said Euronews.

But it was Belgian PM Bart De Wever who clearly came out on top. With the majority of the frozen Russian funds held by Belgium-based financial services firm Euroclear, De Wever “played hardball”, refusing to accept a deal that could “leave his country exposed to Russian retaliation”. His demands for unlimited protection from any legal complications arising from the use of the assets made the proposal “unpalatable for the rest” of the EU countries.

The joint debt arrangement means there is no guarantee that the funds will ever be paid back. The loan would be “interest-free” and Kyiv would pay it back with “reparations cash from Moscow”. However, it is “by no means guaranteed Russia will ever pay reparations for its invasion and the loan is likely going to become a grant”.

“Arguably, it didn’t need to be so messy,” said Politico. Ukraine’s European allies “have the resources to beat Putin if they really want to”. The EU’s financial position as an “economic superpower” is already strong compared to Russia, with the bloc’s combined GDP standing at €18 trillion against Russia’s €2 trillion.

What’s concerning “for Ukraine’s allies” is the dwindling support among the public in Europe’s biggest economies for Ukraine and its war effort. French and German respondents to a Politico poll “were even more reluctant to keep financing Ukraine than people in the United States”. By deciding on the €90 billion loan deal, “Europe’s leaders opted for the easiest answer this week. And even that was almost too hard.”

What next?

The defeat of the Merz plan in favour of the joint debt funding arrangement was undoubtedly a “fumble”, but from Ukraine’s perspective “there is little difference in the outcome”, said the Financial Times. The loan and the likelihood of it never being paid back relieves any further pressure on Ukraine’s “already aggravated finances”.

As for the Russian assets, EU leaders emphasised that the frozen funds “will remain immobilised and the union reserves its right to make use of them to repay the loan”. But in the meantime, it seems more likely that “successive EU budgets will absorb the cost”.

Russia’s demographic decline, turbocharged by the war in Ukraine, has given birth to “one of the world’s most extreme natalism campaigns – and one of the weirdest”, said The Atlantic.

The country’s fertility rate was 1.4 births per woman in 2023, according to the most recent UN statistics. That’s well below the 2.1 replacement rate and 20% lower than in 2015. And since then, an estimated quarter of a million Russian men have been killed in Ukraine. “Last year, deaths outpaced births by more than half a million.”

The state has been trying everything to encourage Russian women to have more children, from awarding pregnancy payouts and increasing maternal support to restricting access to abortions and stigmatising childlessness. The Ministry of Education is considering ways to create “conditions for romantic relations” in schools, and pink banners around Moscow ask women: “Still haven’t given birth?”

But, said The Atlantic, “if this is supposed to make them want to procreate, it doesn’t seem to be working”.

‘Much-diminished pool’

For more than 25 years, Vladimir Putin has been grappling with “his country’s declining and ageing population”, said The Independent. Russia actually recorded its lowest birth rate in 1999, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The birth rate was growing, along with the country’s “economic prosperity”, at the start of this century. And then, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, its federal statistics service started including the peninsula’s population in its data, too. But now “those hard-won gains are crumbling against a backdrop of financial uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men, and opposition to immigration”.

Russia is trying new restrictions to halt the backslide, from banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” to outlawing LGBTQ activism. But the post-Soviet cohort is already small, and hundreds of thousands of men have either been killed in Ukraine or have fled abroad to avoid military service. “You’ve got a much-diminished pool of potential fathers in a diminished pool of potential mothers,” Jenny Mathers, a Russian politics lecturer at the University of Aberystwyth told The Independent.

Russia also handled the Covid-19 pandemic disastrously. “Or rather, we didn’t handle it at all,” a demographer told exiled Russian journalists, said Meduza. “Russia ended up among the top 10 countries in the world for excess mortality.”

‘Madcap plan’

“In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin views Russia’s demographic crisis,” Putin recently addressed the inaugural meeting of a demographic council, said Novaya Gazeta. “Families with three or more children should become the norm, the natural way of life in our country,” the president said.

The deputy prime minister announced a new federal register that will allow authorities to track pregnant women and “monitor the demographic situation”.

One Russian politician has even suggested that couples should be barred from social media at night to encourage them to have sex, said The Mirror. Regional MP Mikhail Ivanov’s “madcap plan” for “digital abstinence” would see the Russian state switch off access to social media from 11pm to 2am every night.

Despite all of this, the Kremlin’s own polling suggests that almost 40% of Russian women of childbearing age don’t plan to have children in the next five years, said The Atlantic. And “none of these interventions addresses an underlying reason” why Russian women don’t want children: the war in Ukraine. “Many women are depressed, lonely, and afraid. Every day, the war makes more of them widows.”

Putin’s biggest problem “won’t be solved” by incentivising pregnancy. “He’s created a society that Russians no longer want to bring children into.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher this weekend as the UK and the EU attempt to win concessions from the US over a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

Depending on how the next few days play out, “in the very best scenario there could eventually be peace in Ukraine”, said The Times. But in the worst-case scenario for the UK and the EU, “President Trump cuts Ukraine and Europe loose and sides with Moscow in his desire to bring the conflict to an end at any price”.

Yesterday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “extremely frustrated with both sides of this war”, and he is “sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting”. In essence, “the transatlantic relationship feels very fragile right now,” a senior government source told The Times. “Anything could happen.”

What did the commentators say?

Despite Trump’s frustrations, “signs of a potential compromise are emerging”, said Politico’s London Playbook. The US and Ukraine are now talking about Kyiv withdrawing its troops from the Donbas region in order to create a “free economic zone” which would also be protected from Russian forces. “Ukraine seems willing to engage on this, but says it will only withdraw if it receives meaningful security guarantees.”

But reports of a demilitarised zone (DMZ) such as this “must be taken with a pinch of salt”, said UnHerd’s Wolfgang Munchau. “There are some suggestions that a DMZ would be a dealbreaker for Russia, like Nato Article 5 security guarantees for Ukraine.” Equally, Trump’s tilt toward the Kremlin in the National Security Strategy released by the White House last week has complicated negotiations. The US president “seems to want to stand equidistant between a democratic Europe and an autocratic Russia”, said The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. But “that evenhandedness between friend and foe makes no sense, strategically or morally – and it genuinely worries Europe.”

Trump “still views Ukraine as the weaker, more malleable party in the conflict”, two US government sources told Politico. “The Americans continue to act as though accepting Russia’s demand to hand over territory it has failed to occupy will bring peace,” said The Economist. But “all the evidence suggests Vladimir Putin sees it as a means to achieve Ukraine’s political subjugation”.

Indeed, many countries “remain concerned that a lopsided peace deal could work in Moscow’s favour, and prelude further aggression in Ukraine or against Nato’s long eastern flank”, said the National Security Journal’s Georgia Gillholy. European leaders “see little evidence that the Kremlin”, with more than 700,000 troops and its vast defence industry still geared for conflict, “is preparing for anything resembling a genuine de-escalation”.

What next?

According to officials from two of the countries involved, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff intends to take part in talks with national security officials from the UK and Europe this weekend.

One senior government source told The Times that developments in recent days had been “very significant” and that there was now at least a chance of achieving a unified “Western” set of proposals to present to Moscow.

But whether that means peace before Christmas is very much up in the air. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said ahead of the discussions this weekend that Moscow has not seen the revised peace plan – and that “when we see them, we may not like a lot of things, that’s how I sense it”.

European leaders struggling to address the years of bloodshed on the border with Russia reached a milestone agreement last week, starting the clock on plans to fully uncouple the European Union from Russian gas. Under the new agreement, European nations will end liquefied natural gas imports in the coming year, with long-term pipeline contracts closed by the end of 2027. Europe is “turning off the tap on Russian gas, forever,” said EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen on X. “We stand strong with Ukraine.”

‘Choke off’ funds for ‘Moscow’s war chest’

Today, Russian gas accounts for some 12% of EU gas imports — down from 45% in the years before Russia’s still-ongoing invasion of Ukraine. As part of the new agreement, member nations will not only transition away from existing Russian gas supplies, but must submit “national diversification plans outlining measures for diversifying their gas supplies and potential challenges” with the goal of meeting the 2027 deadline, the EU said in a press release. The governing body “seeks to choke off key funds feeding Moscow’s war chest” during its offensive against Ukraine, said Le Monde.

The agreement comes as part of the EU’s “REPowerEU Roadmap” to energy independence from Russia. This initiative has “shielded us from the worst energy crisis in decades” and “helped us to transition” from Russian gas and oil at “record speed,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement. Currently, the EU “sources the majority of its gas” from other suppliers “including the U.S.,” said The Wall Street Journal, as the bloc “remains committed to phasing out all remaining oil imports” from Russia as well.

Next year’s ban on liquefied natural gas comes a “year earlier than originally proposed” and is “in line with a ban on seaborne deliveries” previously approved by the European Commission, Bloomberg said. “We’re turning that page, and we’re turning it for good,” said von der Leyen.

Looming challenges from within

Predictably, Russia has responded to the EU agreement with criticism, claiming the move would “doom Europe to becoming less competitive” and “lead to higher prices for consumers,” said Reuters. But frustration over the new oil and gas rules hasn’t been limited to Moscow. Several EU member nations with close ties to Russia have also begun to publicly chafe at the agreement, which critics say was “wrongfully disguised” as an issue of trade policy in order to “circumvent the unanimous voting required for sanctions.”

“Accepting and implementing this Brussels order is impossible for Hungary,” said Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in a broadcast from his Facebook page. Slovakia has also “complained of the impact” on its national economy should it be forced to reject Russian fuel, said Radio Free Europe. Slovakia has “sufficient legal grounds to consider filing a lawsuit” against the agreement, said Prime Minister Robert Fico. Opposition lawmakers have countered that “such a step would disgrace Slovakia” and is “advancing Russian interests in Europe,” said The Slovak Spectator.

What happened

The Kremlin Sunday applauded President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy, saying its “adjustments” are “largely consistent with our vision.” The document, released Friday, seeks “strategic stability” with Russia, asserts U.S. dominance over Latin America and is sharply critical of the country’s traditional European allies, claiming Western Europe faces “civilizational erasure.”

Who said what

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response, delivered by spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, was “the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe,” Reuters said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “made only a passing reference to Russia” in a speech Saturday on the new U.S. military focus, Politico said, but he laid out a “more conciliatory approach to China’s armed forces,” the focus of recent national defense strategies. The Trump administration will “seek a stable peace, fair trade and respectful relations with China,” Hegseth said, including “respecting” Beijing’s “historic military buildup.”

The strategy “reinforces, in sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, Trump’s ‘America First’ philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas,” The Associated Press said. But the administration “in some respects, wants to have it both ways when it comes to foreign relations,” Politico said. For example, the document proposes “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Little of this is surprising,” Ishaan Tharoor said at The Washington Post, but the strategy starkly “underscored the depth of ideological vehemence within the White House” against the European Union and in favor of Europe’s far right. The continent’s immigration policies, “cratering” birthrates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” could make it “unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the document said, so it’s “far from obvious” that “certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.” Trump’s assessment of Europe sometimes “sounds like Putin talking about Europe,” Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesperson for Germany’s ruling alliance, told DW.

What next?

The U.S. “remains our most important ally” in NATO, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters, but Europe does “not need outside advice” on “freedom of expression or the organization of our free societies.”

“Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk posted on X. “Unless something has changed.”

Tusk was reacting to the new US National Security Strategy, which has landed in European capitals at the weekend “like a bucket of cold water”, said The Wall Street Journal. Hailed by Russia as aligning “in many ways” with “our vision”, the explosive 30-page document criticises the “unrealistic expectations” of “European officials” backing Ukraine. It also castigates the EU for “censorship of free speech”, praises the “growing influence of patriotic” political parties, and warns of the “civilizational erasure” of Europe.

Signalling a more isolationist approach to Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the document declares “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”.

What did the commentators say?

This “grenade” of a policy paper will have stunned European leaders by revealing “the depth of ideological vehemence within the White House”, said Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post.

The “pointed criticisms” of Europe, cast as “tough love advice”, stand in marked contrast to the document’s “approach to traditional US rivals”, said Daniel Michaels, David Luhnow and Max Colchester in The Wall Street Journal. Russia “isn’t mentioned a single time as a possible threat to US interests” and China, North Korea and the Middle East receive surprisingly little attention.

European leaders should “assume that the traditional trans-Atlantic relationship is dead,” Katja Bego from the Chatham House think tank told the paper. It’s “the mother of all wake-up calls for Europe”, historian Timothy Garton Ash added. “It essentially declares outright opposition to the European Union. It’s J.D. Vance’s notorious speech in Munich but on steroids and as official US policy.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has sought to downplay European concerns, conceding that “some” of the US criticism is “true”. Europe “has been underestimating its own power towards Russia,” she told a panel at the Doha Forum in Qatar this weekend. “We should be more self-confident.”

What next?

Since Trump’s return to the White House, “European leaders have kept up a remarkable performance of remaining calm amid his provocations, so far avoiding an open conflict that would sever transatlantic relations entirely”, said Tim Ross on Politico. But for centrists like Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, “the new Trump doctrine poses a challenge so existential that they may be forced to confront it head-on”.

But there’s a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Trump’s document. “By underplaying – and refraining from even referencing – the conventional threat Russia poses to transatlantic security”, it does nothing to “empower those nations that are working to take on greater defence responsibilities”, said Torrey Taussig, a director at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, on Atlantic Council.

Instead, this strategy paper “seeks to embolden” Europe’s “nationalist and populist parties”, who would probably “cut defence budgets and downplay the conventional threats”. In this sense, the document is an “own goal that undermines the administration’s stated objectives” of “shifting the burden of defence onto the shoulders of European allies”.

The spectre of Donald Trump looms large over the first state visit by Vladimir Putin to India since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.

Putin was met on arrival with a warm embrace by Narendra Modi and the two leaders are due to discuss deals over oil, arms, working visas and strengthened diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Following an opening press conference, two things “stood out”, said the BBC: first, a “conspicuous display of mutual respect”; and second, an “absence of any blockbuster announcement”.

The “need” for both countries right now is to boost “bilateral trade”, as Russia is “reeling” from Western sanctions and India is “facing 50% tariffs from Washington”.

What did the commentators say?

Modi continues to walk a diplomatic “tightrope” between Russia and the US, said Foreign Policy. Putin’s two-day visit is a stern “test” of how well India can “balance ties” with the two countries.

The summit comes at a “critical juncture” for both Russia and India, mostly due to the looming presence of the US, said The Guardian. Trump’s re-election has “upended years of closely nurtured US-India relations”, causing disruption with “inflammatory rhetoric” and “punishing” import tariffs. As a result, Delhi has been thrown “into a tailspin”.

Putin, too, is not in Trump’s good books. He has rejected the latest US-proposed peace plan for Ukraine, and is looking to bolster Russia’s recent battlefield advances that have “strengthened his hand” with diplomatic gains.

“The question of oil also looms large.” Modi has “insisted that India would continue to buy Russian oil” – Moscow supplies over 35% of India’s crude oil imports, compared to only around 2% before the war in Ukraine began. However, heavy US-imposed sanctions have led to a “notable slowdown” in this supply to appease Trump, not to mention India having “agreed to import more US oil and gas”.

“India is rolling out the red carpet for the Russian president”, undermining global efforts to cast him as an “international pariah”, said Bloomberg. India, though still wanting to maintain economic ties with the US, is looking to diversify and “gain more access to the Russian market”. Most likely, this week could see an agreement reached over the “shipment of marine products and agricultural goods”, both of which would be in India’s favour.

Russia’s interests are clear too. India, with a population of around 1.5 billion and the “fastest growing major economy” in the world, is a “hugely attractive market” for Russian goods and resources, said Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor.

Putin’s enthusiasm is plentiful. One “priority” is weapons sales, with reported deals on exporting “state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets and air defence systems”. Due to the war in Ukraine, Russia has also been hit with a labour shortage, and India presents itself as a “valuable source of skilled workers”. Most importantly, the main benefit is geopolitical: the Kremlin “enjoys demonstrating that Western efforts to isolate it over the war in Ukraine have failed”.

What next?

Any progression towards a peace deal in Ukraine would “give India more breathing room” with the US than it had six months ago. Then, Trump’s “ire” towards Modi “ran high” and he imposed additional 25% tariffs on the country, said The Wall Street Journal.

Putin is expected to offer “Russia’s latest arms” to “bolster the long-standing relationship” between them. Even if this were to fall through, the mere prospect of a summit shows that the relationship is on an “upswing”, according to one expert.

The latest Ukraine peace talks with Vladimir Putin have failed again to make a breakthrough, and Europe has begun to think the unthinkable. In the face of Russia’s increasing cyberattacks, sabotage and violations of its airspace, it’s making plans to be more aggressive – economically and militarily.

The European Commission is moving ahead with plans to further fund Ukraine, either with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets or a loan based on common borrowing. And, with Russian “drones and agents unleashing attacks across Nato countries”, Europe is “doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago”, said Politico. It’s “planning how to hit back”.

What did the commentators say?

Russian “hybrid attacks” on European countries – GPS jamming, drone-buzzing, election interference, ship or aircraft incursions – have been going on for years “but the sheer scale and frequency” right now is “unprecedented”, said Victor Jack and Laura Kayali on Politico. Such an aggressive testing of Europe’s limits has prompted calls for a step up in response, with ideas ranging from “joint offensive cyber operations” to “surprise Nato-led military exercises”.

Many diplomats – “particularly those from eastern European countries” – have “urged Nato to stop being merely reactive”, said Richard Milne in the Financial Times. We are thinking of “being more aggressive or more proactive”, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of Nato’s military committee, told Milne. “A pre-emptive strike” could even be considered a “defensive action”. The Russian foreign ministry swiftly called Dragone’s comments “extremely irresponsible” and a sign that Nato is “moving towards escalation”.

Nato has successfully countered hybrid attacks before. Its Baltic Sentry ship and air patrols stopped the cutting of undersea cables in 2023 and 2024 “by vessels linked to Russia’s shadow fleet”, said the FT’s Milne. But there are “still worries in the alliance” about such measures.

Putin “may see the EU and Nato as rivals or even enemies” but Europe “does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia”, said Jack and Kayali in Politico. “It has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare”.

“The ratcheting up of the Ukraine conflict into what is perceived as a European war is already well underway,” said Laura Tingle on ABC News. Though Putin has called it “laughable” that Russia could attack Europe, it’s “no laughing matter to a host of European political and military leaders”. The discourse “is all getting very alarming (or alarmist, depending on your perspective)”. It’s clear that “something has now been unleashed in Europe which is going to be hard to put back in the bottle”.

What next?

“Europe’s efforts to rearm” have publicly “moved into overdrive” but “behind the headlines lies a more uneven reality”, said Anna Conkling in the Brussels-based The Parliament magazine. Europe is still “split between countries rapidly expanding their militaries and those still constrained by years of underinvestment and fiscal fragility”.

Some states are powering ahead, while “others drag their feet”, risking a “two-speed defence model“ that could leave Europe “dangerously exposed”. This means “the buy-in of the largest countries” is “all the more important for Europe’s defence to reach a critical mass”.

What happened

Canada Monday became the first non-European Union country to join the EU’s $170 billion Security Action for Europe initiative, giving Canadian defense firms expanded access to the European market.

SAFE is “part of a major drive” to get the EU “ready to defend itself by 2030 amid fears of a Russian attack and doubts about U.S. protection,” Reuters said.

Who said what

“Welcome to SAFE, Canada!” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on social media. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country’s “participation in SAFE will fill key capability gaps, expand markets for Canadian suppliers and attract European defense investment into Canada.” In a joint statement, the EU and Canada called the agreement the “next step” in their “deepening cooperation” and “symbolic” of their “shared priorities.”

Carney’s pivot to Europe comes as Canada “looks to diversify its military spending away from the United States” after President Donald Trump’s “actions — including launching a trade war and suggesting Canada become the 51st U.S. state — infuriated Canadians,” The Associated Press said. Canada’s government “continues to review the purchase of U.S. F-35 fighter jets to explore other options.”

What next?

Bringing another G7 partner into SAFE strengthens the program’s credibility as the EU “seeks to coordinate long-term weapons demand and ramp up Europe’s defense industrial base,” Politico said. Talks for the U.K. to join “broke down on Friday.” EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius Monday said all 19 participating European nations have submitted their spending plans, financed by low-interest SAFE loans, and 15 of those plans included “billions, not millions” to support Ukraine.

After days of frantic diplomacy, Donald Trump claimed this week that his negotiators had made “tremendous progress” towards ending the Ukraine War. The Ukrainian leadership indicated that it had accepted the “core terms” of a US-backed peace plan – and Trump said that his envoy, Steve Witkoff, would be dispatched to the Kremlin for talks with Vladimir Putin next week. However, significant doubts remained, both about the exact terms of the deal, and about Russia’s position. On Wednesday, Russian officials indicated that the deal was not acceptable.

Last week, Trump had piled great pressure on Kyiv to sign up to a 28-point plan that the US had drawn up following Witkoff’s talks with Russian envoys in Miami. That proposal echoed Moscow’s maximalist war aims, by calling for Kyiv to cede the rest of the Donbas region, and to limit its army to 600,000 personnel. It caused alarm among Ukraine’s European allies, whose 19-point counter-proposal is believed to form the basis of the deal Kyiv later accepted.

Pro-Russia bias

Effectively, the US-Russia peace plan amounted to a demand for Ukraine’s “outright surrender”, said The Times. It would have handed over Ukraine’s “fortress belt” in the Donbas, which it has spent years defending, and denied it meaningful security guarantees. If Zelenskyy had bowed to Trump’s ultimatum to agree to its terms by Thanksgiving, 27 November, or lose access to US weapons and intelligence, he’d surely have had to resign.

This peace plan was reportedly leaked by Moscow, said The Economist – and AI analysis suggests it was translated from the original Russian. Either way, it again “betrayed” Trump’s pro-Russia bias, and his indifference to Ukraine; as did his dismissive suggestion that Zelenskyy can “fight his little heart out” if no deal is struck, and his grousing on social media that “UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS.”

Sobering question

There was a “grim familiarity” to events last week, said The Guardian. As in August, when Trump hosted Putin in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies had been excluded from talks which would decide their future, and were left scrambling to improve a Moscow-friendly deal.

Europe’s leaders were confronted with a sobering question, said Michael D. Shear in The New York Times: was the US about to force Ukraine to “capitulate”, to the detriment of Nato and the benefit of Putin – “all without even bothering to consult with them”? It looked that way for a while; but by Tuesday, the crisis had been averted by European leaders who have honed their “how-to-handle-Trump playbook” during a year of similar episodes. Rather than lashing out, they “embraced” the plan to keep Trump onside, while insisting that it was only a starting point for negotiations. “The goal was to slow the process and eliminate some of the provisions they saw as crossing Europe’s red lines.”

The Europeans succeeded in shrinking the 28-point plan to 19 points, said Roger Boyes in The Times. But several of Russia’s key demands remained: no Western military presence in Ukraine, no Nato membership. And the fundamental questions – how to divide the land, and security guarantees against future invasions – remained apparently unresolved. As usual with Trump’s “drive-by diplomacy”, nothing adds up.

‘Miserable choice’

With the knotty questions about territory yet to be resolved, Russia is “trying to pour cold water on the prospects of an imminent peace breakthrough”, said Samuel Ramani in The Daily Telegraph. It continues to bombard Ukrainian cities; its officials have dismissed the new proposals as “not constructive”.

For Kyiv, the risk now is that Putin will talk Trump into backing favourable terms for Russia, said Tim Ross et al in Politico. That would leave Zelenskyy with a “miserable choice”: either take an offer “cooked up by Trump and Putin”, or hope that his European allies finally make good on their bold promises of help.

Sooner or later, though, he’ll have to make a deal, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. During four years of war, Ukraine has sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties. Millions of its citizens have fled abroad, and its economy lies in ruins. A bad settlement could imperil its future as a “genuinely independent” nation. But make no mistake: “the continuation of the war is also deeply damaging to Ukraine”.

This article appeared in History of War magazine issue 152.

CIA analysts gathered around U-2 spy plane photographs taken of Cuban military facilities. With horror, they realised they had just discovered Soviet medium-range and intermediate-range nuclear missiles – weapons that were capable of targeting most of the continental US.

The next morning, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy briefed President John F Kennedy. A naval quarantine of Cuba, and the closest the world has ever come to all-out nuclear conflict, followed.

The Cold War pivoted on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The USA and the Soviet Union looked into the terrifying void and decided to collaborate on limiting horizontal (the number of nations with access to nuclear weapons) and vertical (the size of nuclear powers’ arsenals) proliferation.

International agreements followed, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, gradually bringing the world closer to safety. However, Serhii Plokhy, Cold War historian and author of The Nuclear Age, told History of War that our contemporary nuclear age has become significantly more dangerous.

“None of these treaties have continued. We are back to where we were before the Cuban Missile Crisis.” he explains. “We have entered the second nuclear arms race, and it’s more dangerous than the 1950s, because there are more players and no regulations in place.”

In the past, nuclear powers have pondered using force to limit proliferation. Advisers in Kennedy’s administration considered using covert special operations deployments to stop China from acquiring nuclear weapons.

This planning has escalated to deadly action in the post-Cold War nuclear age, including the invasion of Iraq and US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025.

Yet the main danger may not lie in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations. “Today, we think that the world will end if Iran acquires nuclear weapons,” says Plokhy.

“We have been in Iran-type moments in history many times, and the world didn’t come to an end because there was no monopoly on the use of nuclear weapons. Whatever country acquires them exists in a world with other players that are much more powerful.”

The proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations has diluted the nuclear monopoly, an essential condition for mutually assured destruction, but that alone has not made the world safer.

Plokhy explains: “The balance of nuclear weapons continues between the U.S. and Russia, who are the nuclear superpowers more than three decades after the Cold War, but the balance of fear has disappeared.

During the Cold War, countries that had nuclear weapons were equally as concerned about the dangers of nuclear conflict. However, “Russia behaves as if it’s the only country with nuclear weapons,” Plokhy explains.

Vladimir Putin appears to have lost his fear of nuclear destruction because economic weakness has backed him into a corner; Russia has not yet fully recovered economically from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“There is an enormous imbalance between the economic and nuclear power of Russia,” says Plokhy. “Nuclear power has become the only card they can play in the global arena and during the Russo-Ukrainian war.” Other nuclear powers have recently taken actions to assert their nuclear readiness, which could lead to a resurgence of Russian fears.

Plokhy indicates that the West also needs to show conventional military readiness: “If Russian drones attack NATO countries and NATO countries don’t send their drones into Russia, that causes a problem with the balance of fear. Russia is not the only country that can send drones into the territory of other states.”

As nuclear powers seek to return to a safe world, Plokhy positions the Cold War not as a “horribly dangerous period in international relations”, but as a “success story” from which “new generations can relearn the lessons that helped their grandparents to survive”.

He explains: “If we look at the Cold War through that perspective, we can ask questions like: ‘Was it just luck that we survived, or did we do something right?’ One of the things that was done right was the balance of fear necessary for equilibrium in international relations.”

Plokhy makes it clear that regenerating the right kind of nuclear terror can make the world a safer place. Whether that will happen before another event like the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world back to the brink remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared in History of War magazine issue 152. Click here to subscribe to the magazine and save on the cover price!

Emmanuel Macron has said a new voluntary national service programme in France, announced today, is not about “sending our youth to Ukraine” to fight.

The growing realisation that Russian aggression could “easily spill into Europe” has put “intense pressure” on countries across the continent to “quickly expand the ranks of full-time soldiers and reservists that shrank during the post-Cold War peace”, said The New York Times.

“Yet the question of how to recruit hundreds of thousands of service members is prompting fierce and soul-searching debates.”

What did the commentators say?

France’s new national service plan “stops short” of full conscription, said France 24. Lasting 10 months, with volunteers paid for their service, it is “expected to start modestly”, recruiting 2,000 to 3,000 people in the first year, before “ramping up” with a long-term goal of 50,000 per year.

“Some countries in Europe already have a form of a conscription”, said The Times, notably those “closest to Russian borders” such as Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania. But the war in Ukraine, and the so-called “grey zone” activities carried out by the Kremlin such as drone incursions into Nato airspace, “have reignited the debate across the continent”.

In Poland, “plans are under way for every man to go through military training”, said The New York Times, as the government aims to more than double the size of its army to 500,000. In the hope of also growing its fighting force from 70,000 to 200,000 by 2030, Denmark recently expanded its military conscription programme to include women turning 18 who are entered into a conscription lottery. Croatia has gone further, voting in October to reintroduce compulsory military service, which was suspended in 2008.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, this month opted for a “new military service” made up initially of a volunteer force that mirrors a system used in Sweden, where a questionnaire is sent out to all 18-year-olds. Conscription, which ended in 2011, “is not compulsory under the new rules but this model does include the potential for that”, said DW.

It marks the “first unmistakable shift in German security policy for a generation”, said Henry Donovan in The Spectator. Far from being an “overreaction” as some claim, “it is the minimum a serious country does when confronted with the concrete possibility of war on its own continent”.

Britain should also “pay close attention”. Up to now the UK government has ruled out reintroducing conscription (which was abolished in 1960) to boost its number of military personnel, instead favouring a recruitment drive by the Ministry of Defence.

What next?

Security and defence analysts, as well as Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have warned that Russia could be ready to expand its war into Europe within the next five years.

Even with countries vowing to “do a better job of attracting volunteers to fulfil national targets and commitments to Nato”, the “outlook for meeting targets is dim”, said The New York Times. “Retention rates remain low in many countries, reserve schemes are uneven and recruitment has dwindled in ageing societies with low unemployment,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a European think tank, concluded in a recent report.

The problem is that less than a third of EU citizens appear willing to fight for their country in a war, according to a 2024 poll by Gallup.

“Even if conscription would help address issues with military recruitment, in many countries it could be socially and politically controversial to the point that it reinforces polarisation, leads to backlash or social/political unrest, and undermines the wider security benefits that could be gained from it,” Linda Slapakova, from research institute RAND Europe, told Euronews.

This view was summed up by France’s chief of the defence staff, General Fabien Mandon, last week. While France has the economic and demographic power to defeat Moscow, it lacked the “spirit” in society to stand up to the threat, he said. “If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept – let’s be honest – to lose its children, to suffer economically because defence production will take precedence, then we are at risk.”

What happened

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration had made “tremendous progress” toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. The original Moscow-tilted 28-point peace proposal “has been fine-tuned, with additional input from both sides,” he wrote on social media, and there are “only a few remaining points of disagreement.” Trump told reporters Tuesday night that his envoy Steve Witkoff would visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week, while Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will continue to meet with Ukrainian officials.

Trump shrugged off a leaked Oct. 14 phone call, published by Bloomberg on Tuesday, in which Witkoff coached Putin envoy Yuri Ushakov on selling Trump a Russia-friendly peace deal. “I haven’t heard it, but it’s a standard thing,” Trump told reporters. “He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what a dealmaker does.”

Who said what

“Momentum had been picking up over the U.S.-led negotiations,” The Washington Post said, “but a landing zone for a deal that can satisfy both sides remains extremely narrow.” Moscow and Kyiv are at odds over post-war security guarantees, and Trump’s plan calls on “Ukraine to concede the entirety of its eastern Donbas region, even though a vast swath of that land remains in Ukrainian control,” The Associated Press said.

“Giving up territory Russia hadn’t conquered” is one of Ukraine’s “red lines,” The Wall Street Journal said, but Witkoff suggested in his leaked call that losing the rest of the Donbas province of Donetsk was inevitable. “Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff told Ushakov, according to the Bloomberg transcript. The call proves Witkoff “cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on social media. “Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired.”

What next?

Trump told reporters that his earlier Thanksgiving ultimatum for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to the deal was no longer operational, and the new “deadline for me is when it’s over.” He said on social media that he looked forward to “hopefully meeting” with Zelenskyy and Putin “soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages.”

What happened

The U.S. and Ukraine said Sunday that a round of “highly productive” negotiations in Geneva had resulted in an “updated and refined peace framework,” following days of confusion and pushback against a Russia-friendly 28-point plan the Trump administration presented to Kyiv last week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the U.S. delegation, said the two sides made “substantial progress” and he felt “very optimistic that we can get something done.”

Who said what

The U.S. and Kyiv agreed in a joint statement that a final peace deal “must fully uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace.” But neither side explained how the revised plan differed from the original, which required Ukraine to cede unconquered land, cap its army and arsenal, and other measures long rejected by Kyiv as tantamount to capitulation.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that the initial 28-point proposal was “not my final offer,” but if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not accept it by a Thursday deadline, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” Trump said on social media Sunday morning that “UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS.” Rubio also downplayed Trump’s Thanksgiving deadline.

Adding to the uncertainty, “there seemed to be continued confusion about the original proposal,” The New York Times said. A bipartisan group of senators said Rubio had told them Saturday that it was a Kremlin “wish list” that the U.S. was just passing along. But the State Department said that was “blatantly false,” and Rubio wrote on social media that it was “authored by the U.S.” It was “absolute chaos,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post, “because even different parts of the White House don’t know what’s going on. It’s embarrassing.”

What next?

The U.S.-Ukrainian statement said the two sides would “continue intensive work on joint proposals in the coming days.” When that work is done, “obviously the Russians get a vote here,” Rubio said, before flying back to Washington, D.C., on Sunday. Kremlin officials “have been rejecting” the original 28-point plan, the Institute for the Study of War said, suggesting “Russia is unlikely to accept any proposed peace plan that falls short of Ukrainian capitulation.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has framed the 28-point US peace plan to end the war in Ukraine as an impossible choice: between losing national dignity or losing the support of its most important ally.

The plan, which has been widely decried as a Kremlin wish list, would allow Russia to keep Crimea, as well as Luhansk and Donetsk and other territory in the Donbas that Ukraine has successfully defended for nearly four years. It would halve the size of Ukraine’s army, ban it from launching long-range missiles and end its hope of joining Nato. In return, Ukraine would receive as yet unspecified security guarantees.

For Zelenskyy, such demands are unpalatable but he may end up having to swallow at least some of them.

What did the commentators say?

Nearly four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian president faces “a triple threat at home and abroad”, said Colin Freeman in The Telegraph. There have been “huge losses on the front lines as winter draws in” and “growing anger” over a scandal in which officials allegedly stole millions from the state nuclear energy provider. Now Donald Trump is pushing a “controversial” peace plan, most of which appears “calculated to be unacceptable to Kyiv”.

“Having Zelenskyy in a bind, though, is one thing,” said Freeman. “Getting him to sell the deal to the Ukrainian public is another, as it tears up red lines that Kyiv has drawn in very thick blood.” Any peace agreement would require constitutional changes voted through by a supermajority in Ukraine’s parliament. This appears unlikely given the reaction of the Ukrainian public and politicians to Trump’s 28-point plan.

The power-company scandal, as well an unsuccessful attempt to curb the independence of two national anti-corruption watchdogs earlier this year, have “delivered a devastating blow to Zelenskyy’s international reputation and to the Ukrainian cause at large”, said Leonid Ragozin on Al Jazeera. He is “emerging out of it as a lame duck who will do what he is told by whoever is pulling the strings”, which, right now, looks to be the US president.

“Yet this very vulnerability” makes Zelenskyy “even less likely to yield to the Trump administration”, said Yaroslav Trofimov in The Wall Street Journal. “No Ukrainian president – and especially not a weakened Zelenskyy – has a mandate to agree to anything like this,” Nico Lange, a former senior German defence official, told the paper. “If he does, he would not be president any more when he comes home.”

What next?

The Trump administration has given Ukraine until Thursday to agree to the deal – or risk losing all US support and “imperilling Ukraine’s troops, who rely deeply on American intelligence sharing” and “US weapons”, said Siobhan O’Grady in The Washington Post.

But, in the rush to exploit Ukraine’s weakness, Trump may have “inadvertently strengthened Zelenskyy at home, at least for the time being”, said Cassandra Vinograd and Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times. “The 28-point plan has shifted” the nation’s focus away from domestic scandal and allowed the president to “reprise his most successful role: as rally-er in chief”.

What happened

A senior U.S. military delegation arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday as President Donald Trump’s administration was finalizing a 28-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine. The plan, “negotiated between the Trump administration and Russia” with no Ukrainian input “would require Kyiv to surrender territory, significantly reduce the size of its army and relinquish some types of weaponry,” The New York Times said, citing officials. It reflects the “maximalist demands the Kremlin has made throughout the war” and Kyiv has “long denounced as amounting to capitulation.”

Who said what

Trump’s revived push for a peace deal “began late last month” with a secret meeting in Miami between his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian emissary Kirill Dmitriev, Politico said. It would “require Ukraine to surrender to Russia the entire eastern Donbas region, even lands that Russian forces have not captured,” the Times said, as well as other terms “unacceptable to Kyiv.”

The administration is “attempting the same approach it used to achieve a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Gaza last month — draft a multi-point outline and then push the warring parties to accept it,” The Wall Street Journal said. It is “likely to run into strong opposition in Kyiv and from European governments,” but proponents of the plan argue that “Russia’s steady but incremental gains on the battlefield” and a “corruption scandal involving associates” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will “add pressure on Kyiv to make a deal.”

What next?

As European officials “publicly voiced concern about the plan,” the Journal said, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “cast it as an ‘exchange of serious and realistic ideas’ and not a diktat that the U.S. is seeking to impose on the two sides.”

EU officials are meeting today to discuss what would be a 20th sanctions package against Russia, focusing on the “shadow fleet” helping circumvent existing sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas imports.

In the 19th package announced in October, the EU listed 557 vessels believed to be acting as a proxy for Russia in international waters.

What is the shadow fleet?

It refers to a group of largely Russian-owned vessels, usually tankers, that sail under various non-Russian flags. On board, they carry sanctioned commodities like oil to customers such as India and China, to bypass sanctions and export caps.

“Flag hopping” allows ships to “switch identities” by “jumping from one registry to another”, said The Parliament Magazine. Ships slip under the radar by “exploiting lenient registries” in countries such as Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands.

Over the last year in particular, it has become “so easy now to re-register somewhere else” that the practice has “escalated to an unprecedented peak”, leaving Russian tankers hiding in plain sight.

Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that shadow tankers ship around 62% of Russia’s crude oil exports, which in October alone brought almost £10 billion into Kremlin coffers, said the BBC.

What other problems does it cause?

The issues around the shadow fleet are particularly acute in the Baltic region, which is seeing more such vessels pass through its waters, said The Guardian. Maritime areas around Finland and Sweden were seen as a potential “Nato lake” when the two countries joined the Western military alliance in 2023 and 2024 respectively, but they have since become a “battleground for hybrid warfare”.

In August, Finnish authorities filed charges against crew members of a tanker suspected of damaging undersea cables by dragging its anchor in December 2024. The damage was reported to cost the owners “at least €60 million” in repair costs, said The Guardian.

But unless there is tangible or substantial evidence of a crime – infringing environmental, fishing or sea traffic law – the Swedish and Finnish coastguards’ ability to act is “extremely limited”.

The issues go beyond violation of sanctions. Ships sailing without displaying or registering under a valid national flag are operating “without proper insurance”, said the BBC. If a major spill were to occur, the financial fallout and clean-up operation would be huge.

How can governments counter them?

Establishing jurisdiction is challenging. National law can only apply in a country’s territorial waters, usually defined as within 12 nautical miles of the coast. Further out to sea, “freedom of navigation is a golden rule”. National governments have neither the legal ability, nor political appetite, to risk “escalating” the issue.

One way of tackling the shadow fleet is to boost powers to board suspected vessels for inspection, said Politico. In a draft declaration prepared last month for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the EU proposed “more robust enforcement actions tackling the shadow fleet”, including pre-authorised boarding of suspected shadow fleet vessels, supported by bilateral agreements.

The draft also offered incentives to flag states to deregister sanctioned vessels. This appears to be having an effect. Earlier this year, Panama, the largest ship registry, committed to rejecting bulk carriers over the age of 15 years, which are often used in shadow fleets as their provenance is harder to ascertain.

Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has successfully tested an (unarmed) underwater nuclear-torpedo powerful enough to “put entire states out of operation”. Speaking at an event for veterans of the Ukraine war last week, the Russian president said “there is nothing like” the Poseidon missile.

What is the weapon?

Russia’s new nuclear submarine, Khabarovsk, is armed with autonomous Poseidon missiles. Said to be 20 metres long and nearly two metres wide, they are capable of travelling up to 6,200 miles at speeds of up to 115 mph, deep below the surface of the water. According to arms control experts, the weapon breaks “most of the traditional nuclear deterrence and classification rules”, said The Guardian. “Launched from a submarine like a torpedo”, it is thought that they are “able to loiter as an underwater drone” before deploying a nuclear warhead “capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami to render coastal cities uninhabitable”.

“Compared to an intercontinental ballistic missile it is very slow”, said Naval News, but still fast enough to be “realistically uncatchable to existing torpedoes”, while its operating depth (said to be up to 1,000 metres) puts it “beyond reach” of defences.

What did Moscow say?

There’s “nothing like this in the world in terms of the speed and the depth of the movement of this unmanned vehicle”, and it’s “unlikely there ever will be”, Putin said, claiming that there are “no ways to intercept” it.

Kremlin defence minister Andrei Belousov said Khabarovsk and its missiles will “enable” Russia to “successfully secure” its maritime borders and “protect its national interests in various parts of the world’s oceans”.

A sensational report on Russian television boasted that one Poseidon missile could cause enough damage to “plunge Britain into the depths of the sea”, said the Daily Mail.

The more excessive Russian boasts of a “100 megaton ‘tsunami bomb’” are not reliable, said Naval News. “More recent estimates are two megatons”, which is still roughly 100 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

A new nuclear arms race?

News of the submarine launch has prompted Donald Trump to order the US military to restart nuclear tests for the first time in 33 years. But he said that the US would test on “an equal basis” to other countries, so as neither China nor Russia has carried out an “actual explosive nuclear test”, Trump “probably” means “reciprocal testing of nuclear-capable missiles” rather than the “actual explosive warheads that sit on top of them”, said The Telegraph.

His announcement still “bolstered concerns” that the world is “sliding into a new nuclear arms race”, said the Financial Times, as “much of the cold war-era arms control architecture has collapsed”. A return to US testing “would be a highly retrograde step”, providing a premise for Russia and China and other nuclear states to ramp up their nuclear weapons programmes, in turn encouraging non-nuclear states to “pursue their own”.

A lucrative illegal trade in cars and their parts has driven a 74% increase in the number of vehicles stolen in England and Wales over the past 10 years.

The cars will often be “soaked”, left in a location for two or three days, and end up in a “chop shop” but some will follow stolen mobile phones and be shipped abroad.

What happens to stolen cars?

Car thieves in the “intricate £1.8 billion-a-year web of crime normally take several steps to maximise profits and avoid arrest”, and the first is usually “soaking”, said the Daily Mail. After leaving the crime scene, the thieves will generally abandon the car for two or three days at a predetermined location, to check whether it’s been fitted with a tracker.

After that, they attach cloned number plates, which correspond to another car of the same make, model and colour, to avoid detection from automatic numberplate recognition system cameras.

Sometimes the car will be sold to drug dealers, armed robbers or gangsters. Or it might go to a so-called “chop shop”, where mechanics can “rapidly strip” the stolen car of lucrative parts, which “get sold on to unsuspecting consumers” who want to repair their own car.

The vehicles could also be shipped abroad. Stolen cars from the UK have been “found across the globe”, including in Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eastern Europe, Dubai, Thailand and Cyprus.

What happens to stolen phones?

Headlines and social media posts about mobile phones being snatched on Oxford Street have worried Londoners and visitors alike. Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Police busted an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China over the past 12 months, said the BBC.

After the number of phones stolen in London almost tripled in the last four years, from 28,609 in 2020 to 80,588 in 2024, the Met discovered that street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset. Stolen devices are being sold in China for up to £4,000 each, because they are “internet-enabled and more attractive for those trying to bypass censorship”.

What is being done about it?

The Met said personal robbery has decreased by 13% and theft is down 14% in London this year. Up to 80 more officers are joining the West End team to focus on offences such as phone robbery. But London Mayor Sadiq Khan said “coordinated global action” is needed to “shut down” the trade in stolen phones.

As for cars, the “days of hard-bitten detectives getting tip-offs from snouts over a pint” and then “raiding a seedy back-street garage” are “long gone”, said The Telegraph. Instead, police are turning to private companies staffed by former officers.

“We’re almost trying to alleviate the pressure on the police,” said Ahron Tolley from W4G. “I’m ex-police. We know the stresses and strains on the police in the UK to investigate crime.”

For the past two years, France has been rocked by acts of vandalism and destruction at religious and cultural locations in and around Paris. Decapitated pig’s heads were left at area mosques; provocatively labeled coffins for the “French soldiers of Ukraine” were displayed around the Eiffel Tower; and in a first-of-its-kind trial this week, four Bulgarians stand accused of defacing a Holocaust memorial with red handprints in 2024. The latter case has drawn international attention due to allegations from French authorities that it and similar acts are the work of covert Russian agents hoping to sow discord in a Western power during a crucial phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

A reflection of 'geopolitical reality'

This week’s trial is the “very first” in a “series of legal cases” dealing with the past two years that authorities have successfully linked to “foreign interference operations,” said French security researcher Clement Renault to Agence France-Presse. Court filings in the case include “intelligence reports” that “attribute the ‘red hands’ operation” to Russia’s federal security agency, Renault said. The “red hands” case is a “rare window” into an “escalating campaign” by Russia to “destabilize France through covert influence and psychological operations,” said Politico. As a nation “with global weight but domestic vulnerabilities” making it “especially susceptible” to interference, France “presents both a prime target and a weak flank.”

The allegation of Russian manipulation operations “reflects a geopolitical reality,” said Kevin Limonier, the deputy director of Paris’ GEODE geopolitical research center, to Politico. France is the EU’s sole nuclear power and an economic powerhouse opposed to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, so accordingly, “Russia considers France to be a serious adversary.”

This trial comes just months after British authorities sentenced six Bulgarians to up to a decade in prison for “belonging to a Russian espionage cell,” Le Monde said. Those convicted were “motivated by money” and operated “across borders in the U.K., Austria, Spain, Germany and Montenegro.” Three of the four defendants on trial this week in France were “extradited from Croatia and Bulgaria,” while a fourth is being tried in absentia on charges of “complicity for having booked accommodation and transport for the others,” said France 24.

Part of a broader destabilization campaign

For the past two years, the Paris prosecutors office has counted “nine such cases” of vandalism and destruction in connection with alleged Russian interference operations, said France 24 reporter Antonia Kerrigan on air this week. For instance, graffiti depicting the Star of David in the weeks immediately following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, when the “Jewish community felt particularly vulnerable,” was carried out by two Moldovan men who claimed to be “acting on orders,” said Kerrigan. A similarly targeted attack on Paris’ Javel mosque in September was likewise connected to a “group of Serbian nationals” who were suspected in a series of antisemitic incidents across the city, Politico said. “This modus operandi is identifiable,” Kerrigan said, citing suspects who are “often foreign actors, very briefly in France, often from Eastern Europe, placing suspicion firmly at Russia's door.”

These influence operations are part of a “broader strategy” by Russia, said a French intelligence report cited by prosecutors. The goal, the report said, is “dividing French public opinion or fueling internal tensions by using ‘proxies,’” which it clarifies as people who don’t work directly for foreign intelligence services but are “paid by them for ad hoc tasks via intermediaries.”

On 31 August, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) noticed an attack on its computer systems. JLR – which employs 32,800 people and supports another 104,000 jobs through its supply chain, mostly in the West Midlands – had to close its factories for over a month. It is estimated that the attack will cost some £1.9 billion. JLR is only the latest victim in a string of ransomware attacks. In the UK alone, Marks & Spencer, the Co-op Group, Harrods, Heathrow Airport, Transport for London and the British Library have all had their operations disrupted in the past two years.

According to GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, “highly significant” attacks rose by 50% in the past year, with 18 incidents affecting the Government, essential services, the economy or a large number of people.

Why is this happening?

Because we’ve built a world that is entirely dependent on a set of technologies which are intrinsically insecure and ultra-complex, and which few people understand. The internet is designed to be easy to access, which of course makes it vulnerable; it suffered its first big hack attack in 1988, when few people had even heard of it.

The more that organisations rely on networked computer technology, the more they’re vulnerable to attack and extortion. Manufacturing and logistics, such as JLR’s, grind to a halt when the systems go down. Hospitals, law firms and other institutions where privacy is paramount can be threatened with data leaks.

How do these hacks work?

There are various ways of invading or disabling a network. Hackers can gain access directly via software vulnerabilities; they can hack lots of unprotected computers and use them as a sort of zombie army, known as a “botnet”, to overwhelm a network.

At present, we are seeing a spate of ransomware attacks. The first step is to get into a network, usually by impersonating an employee. This often involves “phishing” emails, or other inventive forms of manipulation known as “social engineering”: in 2023, hackers combed LinkedIn for MGM Resorts employees with high-level system access, then called an MGM helpdesk posing as one of them and asked for a password reset, which got them in. Once inside, they extend their access, steal sensitive data for extortion purposes and, where they can, take control.

A favoured current target is the “hypervisor”, a server computer that allows many remote machines to use one system (as when employees work from home). Then they use ransomware to encrypt its data, rendering the whole system unusable and making it impossible to recover without paying the hackers for a decryption key.

Why has the problem got worse?

One reason is the huge growth in cryptocurrencies, which make money safer to receive and launder – a record $1.1 billion is thought to have been paid out globally in 2023. They also make it easier to buy illegal services on the dark web. The presence of groups offering “ransomware as a service” (RaaS) – currently the most popular business model – have greatly lowered barriers to entry for criminal hackers.

What is ransomware as a service?

RaaS groups – which advertise on the dark web, with names such as Hive, DarkSide, REvil and LockBit – sell tech support services for ransomware attacks. For a monthly subscription, or a share of the take, they’ll provide encryption software, a payment portal and a dedicated leak site for threatening the victim further, as well as help with the negotiations.

Some are picky about who they’ll hack; LockBit apologised and offered free decryption when one of its affiliates attacked a children’s hospital in Toronto in 2022. This may only be good business sense. DarkSide collapsed as a brand because of the law-enforcement attention it attracted by hacking the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies the east coast of the US with 45% of its fuel, in 2021.

Who are the hacking groups?

The perpetrators range from loose-knit bands of individuals to professionally structured illegal businesses. In the past, many have been in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. A Russian-speaking group known as Wizard Spider paid its employees salaries and commission; Evil Corp, another Russian hacking group, offered holiday pay, sick leave and more. Some groups have documented ties to Russian security services; Iran and North Korea appear to sponsor others.

But most cybercriminals are motivated by profit, and can come from almost anywhere. Many of the recent attacks on UK companies – including the Co-op, M&S and JLR – have been traced to, or claimed by, a loose, English-speaking group known as Scattered Spider or Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters. They are known for their exploitation of human vulnerabilities, and for their stunning speed in taking over a network once they have invaded it.

Why can’t they be stopped?

Hackers pose all sorts of problems for law enforcement. Groups are often based abroad in uncooperative jurisdictions, though pressure can be applied: four days after an angry call from Joe Biden to Vladimir Putin in 2021, REvil vanished. Even if based at home, though, groups usually have decentralised, evolving structures that make them difficult to track and stop. Members operate under aliases, using software to disguise their location.

The best way to deter such attacks is through boring but essential measures: installing software security updates; using multi-factor authentication for signing in. The National Cyber Security Centre thinks most ransomware victims aren’t specifically targeted; they just had a vulnerability that was noticed by hackers in a bulk search. Cyber-insurance now seems a necessity. Some smaller companies, like the Kettering haulage group KNP, have had to close because of hacks.

What is ‘Scattered Spider’

Many recent ransomware attacks are the work of closely linked, overlapping groups known variously as Scattered Spider, Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters and ShinyHunters, among other names. They stem from a large underground network that calls itself “The Community” or “The Com”, based largely in the US, the UK and Canada. Many members came into contact with each other as gamers, playing online games such as Minecraft, particularly among “griefing” circles. Griefers deliberately disrupt and “troll” other players. Members of The Com then graduated to cybercrimes: such as cryptocurrency theft and online grooming.

The security company Darktrace describes Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters as “English-speaking, aged 16 to 21, and a little bit neurodiverse”. Paul Foster of the National Crime Agency thinks “Covid probably accelerated their development: more time online, more time on devices”.

The groups plan their attacks through invite-only groups on Telegram, an encrypted messaging service, and other sites. Their British and US accents make it easier for them to fool IT helpdesks. Law enforcement can eventually catch up with them: a series of men in their teens and early 20s, from Florida to Walsall, London to Las Vegas, have been arrested.

It wasn’t as calamitous as his first Oval Office encounter in February, said The Guardian, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest visit to the White House last Friday did not go well.

Ukraine’s president had hoped that Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher line against Russia in recent weeks, might agree to sell Kyiv long-range Tomahawk missiles. But Trump, who had shared a two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin the previous day at the Russian leader’s request, not only ruled that option out but lectured Zelenskyy on the need to make territorial concessions. He apparently tossed aside maps of Ukraine during the ill-tempered meeting, warning Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms or be “destroyed” by Russia.

Reality check

Trump’s harsh tone should concentrate the minds of European leaders as they explore the idea of using frozen Russian assets to secure a £122 billion loan to Kyiv. It’s now clear that the US can’t be relied on. This makes Europe’s support for Ukraine more important than ever. Trump’s rejection of Ukraine’s request for Tomahawks has been presented as a concession to Moscow, said Jennifer Kavanagh on UnHerd, but that’s “unfair”.

The fact is, “these missiles were never truly on the table”. Kyiv isn’t equipped to launch them, and the Pentagon can’t really spare any – and Trump may be right in any case to argue that they wouldn’t shift the war’s trajectory decisively. The recent “diplomatic scramble” has delivered a reality check to Kyiv, but also to Moscow: Trump later pushed for a ceasefire along current lines, seemingly rebuffing Putin’s demand that Ukraine cede the rest of the Donbas.

‘Rattling Russia’s cage’

By dispelling some false hopes, Trump may have improved the chances of the two sides resigning themselves to an imperfect armistice. The mere possibility that Trump might send Tomahawks to Ukraine certainly prompted anxiety in Moscow, said The Washington Post. But once he withdrew the threat, the Kremlin soon lost interest in diplomacy. A planned meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest was shelved on Tuesday, after Russia rejected the idea of a ceasefire along current battle lines. Russia once again harked back to the “root causes” of the conflict, which is really just code for its desire to snuff out Ukrainian sovereignty.

The lesson of this episode is that “pressure works on Russia”. Trump should “put Tomahawks back on the table”, as well as German long-range Taurus missiles. At some point this war will end in a deal, most likely one involving some territory for Russia and robust security guarantees for Ukraine. “Rattling Russia’s cage some more might bring Putin to his senses.”

Donald Trump has targeted the “economic equivalent of Russia’s crown jewels” with a new wave of sanctions, said Sky News.

The president has slapped fresh restrictions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, in response to what he calls Vladimir Putin’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.

What did the commentators say?

The new measures, which target Russian giants Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as more than 30 subsidiaries, “aren’t just any sanctions”, said Sky News, they’re a “punch to the gut of Moscow’s war economy”. They’re “no slap on the wrist” because oil is “Russia’s bloodstream”, and Trump “just cut off the blood flow”, said the broadcaster.

The timing is significant too, said the BBC, because the new measures were announced “just days after the UK sanctioned the same two Russian oil companies”, and European Union countries have issued new measures that ban the import of Russian liquefied natural gas from 2027.

Putin’s “tactical triumph didn’t last long”, said The New York Times – last week “it looked as if the Russian president had outmanoeuvred his adversaries yet again” by making a “deftly placed call” to Trump that “scuttled any expansion in American support for Ukraine”. But yesterday “Russians awoke to new American sanctions against their oil industry”.

The sale of oil and gas accounts for about a quarter of the Russian budget, and Moscow’s oil industry is already under pressure from increasingly long-range strikes by Kyiv. So the measures “take aim at the heart of the Russian economy” and deal a major blow to Putin’s “effort to cajole” Trump into “forcing Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s main demands”.

Actually, the sanctions are “not a maximal blow,” Daniel Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, told Atlantic Council, and there may need to be tougher US actions, such as “joining Europe in lowering the price cap on Russian oil, enforcing the oil price cap by putting sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet of tankers, and sanctioning ports that service them”.

But the measures are still a “strong move” and they could “put even more downward pressure on Russian oil revenues” by pushing Moscow to further discount its oil and “forcing purchasers to consider alternative sources of oil”.

What next?

Some experts in Russia said that the new measures would have a “muted impact”, said The New York Times. Moscow has “become adept at evading restrictions” by using “hundreds of old vessels uninsured by Western companies” and by processing transactions “through buffer companies in third countries”.

So although oil prices “rose sharply” yesterday, the sanctions’ “potential potency” may “ultimately depend on how the penalties are enforced and how energy buyers react to them”.

In response to the move, four Chinese state oil companies have suspended purchases of Russian seaborne oil. Indian refineries have also announced that they will slash imports of Russian crude to comply with the new sanctions. If these cancellations “prove permanent”, Russia “faces a serious economic hit”, said The Telegraph.

Ukraine used UK-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike a Russian chemical plant on Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian military. The plant reportedly produced gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel components for missiles and ammunition. The “outcome of the strike is being assessed”, the military said.

The attack comes after last week’s meeting at the White House in which Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he was not prepared to supply Ukraine with its sought-after Tomahawk missiles, which would be capable of striking targets even further into Russia.

Even though Ukraine “has been innovating with weapons capable of reaching deeper into Russian territory”, its military still needs foreign technology to “match Russia’s more advanced missile arsenal”, said Bloomberg.

What are Storm Shadow missiles?

Developed jointly by the UK and France, long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles, known as Scalp, can strike targets up to around 150 miles from their launch site. Their manufacturer, MBDA, says the missiles are designed to carry out high-precision attacks, making use of an advanced navigation system to evade detection.

Launched from an aircraft in most cases, the missiles fly low to the ground, below radar, at speeds that can exceed 600mph. Targets are pinpointed with an internal camera.

Storm Shadow is “considered an ideal weapon for penetrating hardened bunkers and ammunition stores”, said the BBC. Each missile costs in the region of $1 million, so they are typically deployed with “a carefully planned flurry of much cheaper drones, sent ahead to confuse and exhaust the enemy’s air defences”.

How have they been used?

The UK first gave the missiles to Ukraine in May 2023, but Keir Starmer didn’t give permission to use the weapons on targets inside Russia until November last year.

Since then, the cruise missiles have been used “against targets including military headquarters and ships”, though “operational details of their use do not always emerge”, said Sky News. The missiles are likely being operated from within Ukraine but with input from “intelligence gathered by Western surveillance planes” over international waters.

In addition to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Storm Shadow missiles were also reported to have been used by India against Pakistan earlier this year. According to their manufacturer, they have also been used in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

How are they different from Tomahawks?

Tomahawks, the US-made missiles originally sought by Ukraine, have a much longer range than Storm Shadows so could hit targets deeper inside Russia. The most common variant of the Tomahawk can travel almost 1,000 miles at 550mph, making them difficult to detect and intercept. They have been used in combat since 1991 and “are typically launched from sea to attack targets in deep-strike missions”, said The Guardian.

Though Trump had previously indicated openness to supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks, he “changed tack” in his meeting with the Ukrainian president on Friday, said the Financial Times. “He did not want to escalate the conflict or drain US stockpiles”. The president said: “We need them too, so I don’t know what we can do about that.”

What happened

The White House Tuesday said there were “no plans” for President Donald Trump to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin “in the immediate future,” less than a week after Trump said they would meet in Budapest “within two weeks or so” for Ukraine peace talks. Trump told reporters Tuesday he didn’t “want to have a wasted meeting” with Putin or a “waste of time, so we’ll see what happens.”

Who said what

This “latest twist in Trump’s stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine” followed a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the White House called “productive,” The Associated Press said. Trump on Monday “embraced a ceasefire proposal backed by Kyiv and European leaders to freeze the conflict on the current front line,” the BBC said, but Lavrov shot that idea down Tuesday, insisting on the “complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops” from Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The “back-and-forth is the latest example of the cycle” in which Trump “teases some kind of diplomatic breakthrough, only to be pulled back” by Putin, The New York Times said. Trump has “by turns courted the Russian leader and threatened him — but has never taken action to punish Russia in a meaningful way,” and Ukraine always “seems to lose any traction” in the process.

What next?

Trump “suggested that decisions about the meeting would be made in the coming days,” the AP said. His “hesitancy in meeting Putin will likely come as a relief to European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.”

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An average of about four “nationally significant” cyberattacks were launched in the UK every week in the last year, twice as many as in the previous 12 months, according to the UK cyber agency’s latest annual review.

“Cyber is being used by state and non-state actors,” said the National Cyber Security Centre, “and the overall cyber threat to the UK is growing from an already high level.”

Following the recent cyberattacks on Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer and Asahi, other companies are desperately trying to avoid the same thing happening to them.

Where do they come from?

Globally, around half of cyberattacks in 2024 may be attributed to financially motivated cybercriminals, while state-sponsored actors accounted for around a third, according to a report by Cognyte.

The “Big Four” – North Korea, Iran, Russia and China – are highest on the UK’s state actor list, said Politico. Three are considered “hostile states” and “Britain has an uneasy relationship with the latter”.

But a group of young, English-speaking hackers, who sometimes go by the name of Scattered Spider, claimed responsibility for the recent large-scale attacks on M&S and Jaguar Land Rover, although this hasn’t been confirmed.

How do the new hacking groups work?

Ransomware is still one of the “most acute and pervasive cyberthreats” to the UK, said the National Cyber Security Centre. This was underscored in the attacks on British retailers this year, but most cybercriminals are “sector agnostic”. They target organisations that are vulnerable, hold sensitive data and are likely to pay a ransom.

One Russian group, Qilin, is “cementing its place as one of the most prolific ransomware-as-a-service operations in the world”, said Digit. It recently claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Japan’s Asahi Group – which also owns Peroni and UK chain Fuller’s – forcing the “suspension of order and shipment operations in Japan”.

Like many other new groups, Qilin operates as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) network, said IBM. Unlike conventional “gangs”, it functions more as a “business model” that can even run “customer-service portals to help affiliates troubleshoot deployment”.

Whereas traditional attacks were carried out by highly technical malware, this “game-changing” RaaS business model rents out cutting-edge malware in return for “20% to 40% of the profits”. Overcoming the time-intensive and “limited scalability” of old gang models, RaaS provides “nearly anyone with malicious intent” with the means to “carry out powerful attacks using advanced tools”.

How are states using cyberattacks?

Countries like Russia, Iran and China are “increasingly relying on criminal networks” to target political “adversaries”, said AP News. Security officials are reporting more and more “growing collaboration” between governments and hackers, demonstrating “increasingly blurred lines” between state espionage and hackers motivated by financial gain.

This “marriage of convenience” is set to become more popular, as the symbiotic relationship is hard to break: governments experience a “boost” in cyber activity “without added cost”, while new profit opportunities and “government protection” are directly in the attackers’ interests.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, has “inspired a growing number of pro-Russia hacktivist groups”, said the UK cyber agency. Without formal state control, they choose Western targets based on vulnerability, which “makes their activities less predictable”.

“If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well – including the Russian war,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Following Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Zelenskyy is pushing for “stronger military capabilities” to enhance the prospect of counter-attacks against Russia, said the BBC.

Zelenskyy and Trump spoke on the telephone on Saturday, an indication of a “warming of relations” between the two leaders, said The Guardian. The conversation centred on the proposed US provision of Tomahawk cruise missiles, whose 1,500-mile range could pose a significant threat to Moscow.

What did the commentators say?

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could be an “unlikely casualty” of the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, said UnHerd. Trump’s main takeaway from the Middle East negotiations has been that “pressure and arm-twisting succeed while friendly overtures do not garner results”: a conclusion that undermines Trump’s red-carpet attitude towards Putin so far.

With “next year’s Nobel Peace Prize to win”, the prospect of another conflict to resolve could reinforce the strategy of “pushing” rather than “luring” Putin to the negotiating table.

But there’s no guarantee that Trump’s attention will now turn to Eastern Europe, said RFE/RL. The US President looks to have “achieved headway” and celebrated the “pomp and circumstance” of his 20-point peace deal, but talks with the Russians have “appeared to lose steam” in recent months.

Achieving resolutions to each conflict are two very different undertakings. Israel is “diplomatically isolated” to such an extent that it “depends” on US support, and as it is the “largest recipient of US aid in the world”, American leverage is substantial. Russia, on the other hand, presents a separate challenge as it “enjoys” economic backing from China and military endorsement from North Korea.

Obtaining US Tomahawk missiles could prove decisive, as Ukraine’s strategy involves an “increasing number of long-range strikes into Russian territory that have expanded and remade the battlefield”, said Atlantic Council. The war has become more of a “technology race than a battle for territory”. Ukrainian engineers are “rushing to innovate” more quickly than Russia, due to their inferior size and their refusal to deliberately target civilians; Putin, meanwhile, “prioritises” attacks on Ukraine’s population.

Russia’s position might not be as strong as we have been led to believe, as it continually “bleeds troops for microscopic frontline gains”, said Politico. Russia lost more than 280,000 soldiers in Ukraine between January and August, Ukrainian intelligence services claim, with around a third of those killed, and the rest either missing, wounded or captured.

What next?

Russia “warned” in September that if the US agreed to the use of Tomahawks in Ukraine, it could mean they were “directly involved in the war”, said The Times.

The conflict in Ukraine may be the “most difficult international conflict in the world to resolve”, said RFE/RL. “Influential” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has also called for “massive secondary tariffs to cripple Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels” to further turn the screw on Russia.

Though the introduction of Tomahawks into the conversation is a “step in the right direction”, said UnHerd, “if recent success has taught the US president anything”, it is that “he will need to apply even more pressure” on Putin and Russia.

As Europe ramps up defence spending in the face of the growing threat posed by Russia, states on Nato’s eastern flank are turning to a more unusual line of defence: bogs.

“Water has played a role in defensive strategy for millennia,” said the Financial Times. Germanic tribes used peatland to defeat the Romans, while Holland mastered strategic flooding to ward off invasion by Spain and France. The great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz thought that bogs were among “the strongest lines of defence”.

‘Let nature fight for you’

This was shown to devastating effect in 2022 when, in a desperate bid to stop the Russian army’s advance on Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities decided to blow up a massive Soviet-era dam to the north of the capital that had long contained the Irpin River.

The “desperate gamble” paid off, said The Telegraph, flooding a long-lost wetland basin and turning the land into “an almighty, impassable swamp that helped shield the city as Russian tanks languished in thick, black sludge. The drastic measure sent a message: let nature fight for you in war. Countries along Nato’s frontier took note.”

By chance, “most of the European Union’s peatlands are located on Nato’s border with Russia and Belarus”, said Defence 24. They stretch from the Finnish Arctic, through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, across the Suwalki Gap – judged by many to be the most likely point of attack in a future Russian confrontation with Nato – and on to eastern Poland.

Finland has already begun a bog-restoration pilot close to its border with Russia, while Poland plans to revive and expand peatland and forests as part of its £1.9 billion East Shield fortification.

“If there are natural stops on the border such as swamps or bogs or lakes… then that helps us,” said Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal.

‘Fusing defence and climate’

Restoring bogs and wetlands along Nato’s eastern flank would be “relatively cheap and straightforward” and fuse “two European priorities that increasingly compete for attention and funding: defence and climate”, said Politico.

Bogs store a huge amount of CO2 and, when drained, release carbon into the atmosphere, fuelling global warming. The problem is particularly acute in Europe, which has seen over half its bogs lost or converted to farmland. Wary of the environmental impact, the EU has set a goal of reviving 30% of degraded peatlands by 2030.

The problem up until now has been securing funding for this. “At a time when Europe focuses on security and resources are allocated to defence”, scientists hope that “acknowledging the military significance of bogs will accelerate their renaturation and secure unprecedented financial resources”, said Defence 24.

“There are not many things that environmental activists and defence officials agree on and here we find great common ground,” Finnish MP Pauli Aalto-Setälä told The Telegraph.

When Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of the US military’s top brass from around the globe to a special meeting in Virginia last week, “rumours ran wild”, said Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic. Was the Secretary of Defence about to purge the ranks, or demand that these leaders swear fealty to the president? No, it turned out the former Fox News host wanted to lecture them on the “warrior ethos”.

Hegseth said he was fed up with “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals”. All soldiers would have to be in good shape, and clean-shaven: “no more beardos”. Diversity and inclusion is out: there would be “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he declared, “no more climate-change worship... we are done with that shit!” Training should be “scary, tough and disciplined”. Sergeants must be allowed to “instil healthy fear”, to “put their hands on recruits”.

Risk takers

What was remarkable about Hegseth’s lecture, said The Wall Street Journal, is that it “probably needed to be delivered”. The Biden-era focus on identity politics did indeed erode standards in the military.

Hegseth was also right to argue that the military needs to be more open to “risk takers”, allowing those who make honest errors to continue their careers. Reagan’s navy secretary, John Lehman, has warned that none of the fleet admirals who won the Second World War would make it past the rank of captain in today’s one-mistake navy. Ingenuity and creativity really matter in warfare – “see Russia’s battlefield floundering in Ukraine”.

Modern battlefield

Hegseth’s speech, and the rambling address by President Trump that followed it, were ultimately both exercises in “military nostalgia”, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Hegseth, a former National Guard officer, wants to revive a sort of gung-ho, “hard-ass” approach that would be well suited to staging another landing on Omaha Beach, but is less relevant to a modern battlefield dominated by drones and AI.

Trump talked of bringing back battleships, a fighting platform that became obsolete in the 1940s. He also repeated his desire to use the military for domestic law enforcement, to fight “the enemy from within”, which is ominous, unconstitutional – and “just dumb” at a time when Russia and China pose a growing threat. A preoccupation with “woke” culture and internal enemies “won’t prepare the military for the hi-tech demands of 21st century war”.

The public “should be in a state of collective outrage and revulsion” at the crimes of Nathan Gill, said Neil Mackay in The Herald.

Gill, Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, has admitted accepting bribes in exchange for making statements in favour of Russia while he was a member of the European Parliament.

‘In bed with Putin’

The 52-year-old pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between December 2018 and July 2019 involving payments from Oleg Voloshyn, whom the US government once described as a “pawn” of Russia’s secret services.

But instead of outrage, there’s “a collective sense of ‘oh well, so now we know the rumours were true’”, said Mackay. That “tells you all you need to know about Reform”. Gill may no longer be a member of Nigel Farage’s party, but when it comes to connections between Russia and the British far-right, “there’s much to pick over”.

Farage is “in bed with Putin”, Rachel Reeves claimed at the recent Labour conference. Boris Johnson, a one-time Farage ally, also described his stance on Russia as “extremely dangerous”. The former prime minister recently told the “Harry Cole Saves the West” show that he had “serious anxieties” about Reform’s position on the Ukraine war.

The Reform leader does have a “long record of falling for even the most inventive of Kremlin cock-and-bull tales”, said The Telegraph. His response to Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 “proved his willingness to believe Russian propaganda”. Putin’s “cover story” was that Ukraine had “provoked its own invasion” by applying to join the EU and Nato. That year Farage told the European Parliament that “amongst the long list of foreign policy failures” had been “the unnecessary provocation” of Putin – although Putin had already annexed Crimea.

Far from retreating from this speech, he “retweeted it approvingly” last year. Even on the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, “he could not stop himself from repeating the Kremlin’s cover story that the whole tragedy was a ‘consequence of EU and Nato expansion’”.

Until the channel was banned, Farage had a regular paid role on Kremlin broadcaster Russia Today, voicing similar views. Such thoughts raise “a vital question: is there anything he would not believe if the Kremlin claimed it to be true?”

‘Ideological alignment’

During the last general election, ABC News in Australia discovered a “network of Facebook pages” spreading “pro-Kremlin talking points” and posting support for Reform. Some of the posts were shared by Reform candidates.

In March, The New York Times reported that “one of the biggest corporate donors” to Reform had “sold almost $2 million” worth of sensitive technology to “a major supplier of Moscow’s blacklisted state weapons agency” – just two days after Farage was announced as party leader.

There is “no suggestion” that Farage ever received illegal bribes for his opinions about Russia, said Byline Times. But the Gill case highlights “a consistent alignment between senior members of Reform and Kremlin messaging”. And as Reform continues to rise in UK polls, that “ideological alignment raises urgent questions in need of answers”.

A person or a party “does not need to be a paid stooge of the Kremlin to be a threat to national security”, said Mackay. “Simply being in any way simpatico with Putin should be enough in this day and age to render a movement or an individual so beyond the moral pale as to be unelectable.”

“Russia is at war with Europe,” said Ivo Daalder on Politico. It has been attacking Ukraine for over a decade now, “with increasing ferocity since its full-scale invasion in 2022”. Now, though, it is increasingly waging a “wider war”. Until recently, European nations have preferred to see Moscow’s operations – “the assassinations, cyberattacks, sabotage of critical infrastructure, disinformation campaigns” as falling into “a grey zone beneath the level of armed conflict”.

But over the past month, its escalating incursions have become hard to ignore. Russian drones have been launched at Poland and Romania. Fighter jets have invaded Estonian airspace. Russian aircraft have buzzed a German frigate in the Baltic. Unidentified drones have brought Danish airports to a standstill. Europe’s leaders are slowly starting to recognise the reality. “We are not at war,” said Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, this week, “but we are no longer at peace either.”

‘Systematic disruption’

“Russia’s aim is to sow division,” said Edward Lucas in The Times. It is in “some difficulty” in Ukraine. Its offensive has stalled. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries are causing fuel shortages and growing economic pain (VAT is set to rise). But instead of coming to the table, Vladimir Putin is “cranking up attacks on Ukraine’s European backers”. He hopes that “systematic disruption” will convince many Europeans that the price of helping Ukraine is too high. Sending jets into Nato airspace is designed “to plant corrosive, highly specific dilemmas in our minds”. Are we really willing to risk war with Russia over a sliver of northern Estonia? Would the US back up its Nato allies? Until it meets solid resistance, Russia “will seek to intimidate us”.

Still, it’s hard to calibrate the response, said Taz Ali in The Independent. It’s one thing for Poland, with its large air force, to promise to shoot down any Russian jet in its airspace. But are the Italian fighters patrolling the Baltic really going to call Putin’s bluff?

‘Invoking war’?

Russian subversion and sabotage certainly pose a threat, said Mark Galeotti in The Spectator. But is the situation “apocalyptic” enough to merit the word “war”? So far, the main costs to Europe’s nations have been “airport delays” and “essentially trivial Russian airspace violations”. The truth is that both Russian and Western leaders are “invoking war” for political ends.

In Russia, as the economic costs begin to mount, claiming that the nation is at war with Nato helps to make sacrifices more “palatable”. It’s the same story in the rest of Europe. It’s clear that Donald Trump expects Europeans to foot the bill for Ukraine’s conflict. The talk of war makes it easier to “accept the price to be paid”.