Hungary’s ousting of longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this month sent shockwaves across Europe and beyond. In Moscow, Hungary under Orbán had been a rare ally amid an adversarial EU. In Kyiv, Orbán’s intransigence had scuttled various European initiatives to aid Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in the country’s with Russia. But with Orbán out, Hungary will seemingly focus on repairing and normalizing EU ties. Ukraine stands to benefit from this emerging era in Eastern Europe, even as it faces a host of risks.

What did the commentators say?

Over the past four years of war with Russia, Hungary has been a “persistent source of irritation” for Ukraine, The New York Times said. Orbán’s government “maintained friendly relations” with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin while “blocking critical European Union funding” for Kyiv’s war effort and “stalling Ukraine’s path toward integration into the bloc.” Orbán’s ousting means “this sort of Trojan horse for Russia within the EU may disappear,” said Andreas Umland, a policy fellow with the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, to the Times.

Orbán’s “vociferous recalcitrance” toward Ukraine allowed him to cast himself as “virtually the only opponent of aid to Ukraine in the entire EU,” said the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “In reality,” Orbán was “simply willing to wield his veto and absorb all the backlash,” allowing other antagonists to “remain in the shadows.”

The victory of Hungary’s incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar “clears the way for greater European support for Ukraine,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. Already, that shift has seen Hungary lift a hold it placed on a 90 billion euro loan to Kyiv, which Orbán coupled with what he claimed was Ukraine’s destruction of the Druzhba oil pipeline (Ukraine contends the pipeline was damaged in a Russian strike). The “spat” over the Druzhba pipeline also blocked a round of Russian sanctions the EU had hoped to “adopt to mark the fourth anniversary” of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in late February of this year, the CBC said.

With Orbán’s hold lifted, Ukraine is expected to make short work of the initial EU loan payments, the first of which are supposed to arrive in Kyiv “as soon as next month,” said The Telegraph. To date, Ukraine has been “reliant on donations from allies to plug the gap left by the Hungarian veto” and will use the newly released funds toward “U.S.-made Patriot air-defense interceptors to protect against incoming Russian ballistic missiles, new-fangled drone technologies produced in Ukraine and other legacy weapons, such as British Storm Shadow missiles.”

Ukraine is also taking Orbán’s ousting as an “opening to expand its energy footprint in Europe and displace Russian crude oil in Eastern Europe,” said Politico’s E&E News. Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz oil company is “eying plans to ship about 100 million barrels of oil a year” from a Black Sea port to neighboring countries, including Hungary, which could “supplant the Russian deliveries.”

What next?

Although the “dramatic change in tone” from Hungary is “certainly encouraging,” Ukrainians are “well aware that Hungary is not likely to become a major supporter,” said the Atlantic Council. Incoming Hungarian leadership has already “ruled out” arming Ukraine and “underlined” opposition to “fast-tracking the country’s EU accession process.”

While Magyar is “expected to take conciliatory steps toward Ukraine,” said the Russia Eurasia Center, “expectations may be overstated.” Ukraine’s inclusion in the EU is “increasingly unpopular in the bloc’s eastern part,” where countries like Poland and Bulgaria see Kyiv as a “direct competitor for European subsidies, jobs and agricultural markets.” Ukraine is also seen by some of its neighbors as an “obstacle to accessing Russian energy supplies.”

Removing Hungary’s vetoes on Ukrainian aid improves the EU’s “decision-making capacity,” said Zsuzsanna Végh, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund think tank, to The Telegraph. But Hungary won’t contribute to the EU funds directly, as Magyar’s Tisza party is “unlikely to embrace expansive military support.”

Ukrainians saw Orbán as the “hostile actor,” said Kyiv Independent reporter Tim Zadorozhnyy to the Lowy Institute, “not Hungary itself.” With Magyar’s promises of eased tensions and EU backing, he “now has all the cards in his hands.”

The EU has finally signed off a €90 billion (£78 billion) loan to Ukraine after Hungary dropped its veto. The loan – agreed in December but blocked for months by Hungary in a row over an oil pipeline – is “a question of our life, of surviving”, said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Without the money, his country was struggling to manufacture the number of weapons it was capable of producing, he told CNN.

“Ukraine really needs this,” said EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “It’s also a sign that Russia cannot outlast Ukraine.”

What did the commentators say?

“European officials had found ways” to get some funds to Ukraine during the delay but this no-interest loan provides “far more substantial financial support”, as Moscow’s full-scale invasion extends into a fifth year, said The New York Times. Ukraine will only need to repay the loan if a future peace deal includes Russia paying reparations.

Having finally secured the loan, Zelenskyy has renewed calls to restart peace talks with Vladimir Putin, said The Independent – although US mediators are currently “preoccupied with the conflict in Iran”.

A resumption of talks seems unlikely any time soon. Only a few weeks ago, the Russian president gathered key oligarchs behind closed doors and asked them to contribute financially to the war, said independent Russian news outlet The Bell. “We will keep fighting,” its sources reported Putin as saying. “We will push to the borders of Donbas.”

And it’s the question of Donbas that led to the most recent peace talks being “placed on hold”, said political scientist Samuel Charap and military analyst Jennifer Kavanagh in Foreign Affairs. Donald Trump’s administration had “centred the talks on a core bargain”: that Ukraine cede the roughly 20% of the Donbas region it still holds to Russia “in exchange for security commitments from the US and Europe”. This approach exaggerated “the significance of territory for Russia and the importance of Western assurances for Ukraine”. It also neglected to “address the key challenge in ending any war”: convincing each side that “its enemy will really commit to peace”.

What next?

A Kremlin spokesperson has been reported as saying Putin would only meet Zelenskyy “for the purpose of finalising agreements”, said The Guardian. Instead, Russia wants the US to send Trump’s delegates Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – who “have repeatedly listened to Putin’s maximalist demands” – to Moscow.

While the EU loan is “sorted”, there is now “another issue altogether”: Ukraine gaining membership of the EU, said Henry Foy in the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has long seen this as key to securing Ukraine’s long-term security and prosperity. “Belligerent public opposition” to the idea from outgoing Hungarian president Viktor Orbán had long “provided a useful shield for many other EU leaders to huddle behind” but, with his departure, “they will be forced to clarify their positions”.

There are only so many weapons to go around. The United States is waging war on Iran, and some observers are concerned the massive expenditure of munitions will make it more difficult to supply Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Conflict in the Middle East may deprive Ukraine of weapons to “defend itself from Russia’s bombardment,” said The Wall Street Journal. The intensity of the U.S. war on Iran “will affect the amount of air defense we receive,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the “sudden depletion” of air defense munitions will make it more challenging to “credibly project U.S. power against Russia in Ukraine,” said Time magazine. America’s “resources and supplies are limited,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). That has raised concerns in Kyiv, said Time. “Everyone understands that the right weapons are our lifeline,” Zelenskyy said.

The Iran war “could save Vladimir Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion,” said The Atlantic Council. Russia “stands to benefit more than most” from the surge in oil and gasoline prices caused by the war in Iran, which could also “distract the Trump administration” from its efforts to mediate a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. Putin “will now likely be able to breathe a little easier” while the U.S. is distracted.

What did the commentators say?

The “obvious truth” is that Ukraine’s struggle is “not a priority for the White House,” Bohdan Nahaylo said at the Kyiv Post. The Iran war also increases pressure on Europe, which now must “deal with instability in two important areas simultaneously.” European energy markets that “had just stabilized after cutting off Russian supplies” have been thrown into renewed turmoil. That will create new challenges for a continent already “stretched thin” by its backing of Ukraine. The newest crisis will be a “test of Europe’s ability to remain focused and united.”

War in the Middle East “offers Russia several opportunities,” Stefan Wolff said at The Conversation. The oil shock gives Moscow a “new lifeline for financing its ongoing war” while the diversion of U.S. arms to Iran gives Putin an advantage in his “relentless campaign of missile and drone strikes” on Ukraine. The war in Iran will not give Russia a victory in Ukraine, “but it has thrown the world into additional turmoil for no good reason.” That will delay a “much-needed restoration of peace” for a war-weary Europe.

What next?

President Donald Trump is “looking to Ukraine to help its operations against Iran,” said Politico. Zelenskyy’s government has extensive experience with the kind of drone warfare at the center of the Iran conflict, making Ukraine a “world leader” in the kind of “anti-drone defenses” that the U.S. needs right now. The Ukrainian leader said the country would help as long as that assistance “didn’t weaken its own defenses.” Doing so may give Ukraine leverage with Trump: Assistance to the U.S. “serves as an investment in our diplomatic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said.

“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”.

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.”

“The man without a smile”, they call him, said Meduza (Riga). Known for his cold stare and for surviving ten assassination attempts, Kyrylo Budanov, until this month the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service (HUR), is renowned for daring operations against the Russians – the bomb attacks on the bridge to Russia-occupied Crimea, for example. Just after Christmas, he even tricked Russian spooks into handing over half a million dollars in bounty money for the killing of the general of a pro-Ukraine Russian militia, a death the HUR had faked.

Major shake-up

He’s a popular figure in Ukraine; some polls show he’s more trusted than President Zelenskyy. Last week, relieving him of his spymaster duties, Zelenskyy made him chief of staff. That decision marks a “tectonic shift” in Ukrainian politics, said Jamie Dettmer on Politico (Brussels). The man he has replaced, in a major shake-up of top officials, is Andriy Yermak, who was such a close confidant of Zelenskyy’s that he was “virtually a co-president”. But he was also mired in an energy corruption scandal, and for too long the “stubborn” Zelenskyy had resisted calls for his sacking.

It was a bold, albeit belated, move on the president’s part, said Pavlo Vuets in Glavkom (Kyiv). Yermak, who had no love for Budanov and tried to get him sacked as spy chief, had “consciously absorbed all the negativity that fell on the presidential mantle”. Budanov has no such inclinations: indeed, he no doubt hopes to replace Zelenskyy should an election be held in the near future.

‘Renewed lustre’

It’s actually a smart move on the president’s part, said Tadeusz Iwanski on Polskie Radio (Warsaw). Appointing the highly popular Budanov to lead his team will bring “renewed lustre” to Zelenskyy, whose approval ratings have been sliding. Budanov’s rise bodes well for Ukraine’s prospects in peace talks, too. He’s well liked by the Americans, who view him as a credible negotiator, untainted by corruption and more willing than Yermak to make the needed compromises as Ukraine struggles with troop shortages, renewed attacks on its energy infrastructure, and pressure from Donald Trump to agree terms with the Kremlin.

Some senior Ukrainians see Budanov’s elevation as the start of “Operation Successor”, said Roman Romaniuk in Ukrainska Pravda (Kyiv). Yet it’s hasty to assume that Zelenskyy is heading for the exit. For a start, he has cut his protégé off from his base in HUR by choosing a Yermak ally as his successor as spy chief. Yes, Zelenskyy is happy to let Budanov become a serious political player, but only if “he plays strictly within Zelenskyy’s own team”.

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”.

A peace deal in Ukraine means more than ending the fighting now. Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to ensure Russia does not invade his country again. The only way that can happen, he says, is if the United States guarantees Ukraine’s defense in — and against — any future war.

Zelenskyy is hoping for “security guarantees from the United States that could span up to 50 years” as part of any peace agreement with Russia, said USA Today. The Ukrainian leader wants President Donald Trump to “consider a longer commitment” than the 15-year guarantee he has reportedly approved. “Realistically, this war will not end” without a defense commitment, said Zelenskyy. Trump, who has been eager to extricate the U.S. from its backing of Ukraine, vowed any pledge would heavily involve “Kyiv’s allies in Europe,” said The Wall Street Journal. “There will be a security agreement, it’ll be a strong agreement and the European nations are very much involved,” Trump said Sunday.

Protecting Ukraine against another war

A peace deal involving “international security guarantees” appears to be coming into view, David Ignatius said at The Washington Post. Despite Trump’s “inexplicable sympathy” for Russia, the president’s team appears to recognize that any peace proposal will fail “unless Zelenskyy can sell it to a brave but exhausted country.” That means the plan must include measures to protect Ukraine against future invasion, as well as support for the country’s “future economic prosperity.” Without those elements, the American leader will not get the peace deal he so clearly wants. “Trump should make a reasonable deal that will last.”

Trump must “avoid promising to fight a direct war with Russia” to defend Ukraine, Andrew Day said at The American Conservative. It is surprising that Trump appears ready to “extend America’s superpower shield” to Ukraine after he “slashed U.S. funding for Ukraine’s war effort” and blasted Zelenskyy as a “manipulative ingrate.” But the president’s “notorious fixation on getting a deal” has taken priority. The challenge: Russia will oppose any “military partnership” between Ukraine and the West. Trump should instead push for an “armed non-alignment” model that leaves Kyiv prepared to “deter — but not threaten — Russia.”

Another brutal year?

Europe’s commitment to increasing its financial and military support may make Trump more amenable to backing Ukraine’s play, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. said at The Wall Street Journal. The president is “drawn to teams that are winning and mobilizing resources on their own” because that lets him “step in and take credit for their success.”

The question now is whether Putin “will tolerate a deal that safeguards Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood said at Foreign Policy. Putin’s war demands include “limits on the Ukrainian military’s size and foreign support,” and most European observers believe he wants a “pliant government” in Kyiv that is “shorn of a strong deterrent” against Moscow’s power. That would seem to weigh against his acceptance of U.S. security guarantees. For now, the “likeliest scenario next year is a continued brutal slog at the front.”

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.”

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”.

As Volodymyr Zelenskyy scrambles to strengthen European support for Ukraine’s position in the peace talks, he finds himself without his long-time chief of staff and lead negotiator. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s de facto deputy leader, resigned on Friday after a dramatic anti-corruption raid on his house, and has now announced he is off to the front line.

Yermak was so influential, the political system “had come to be known in Ukraine as Yermakshchina – the era of Yermak”, said Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times. His departure is a “seismic event”. With him no longer around to oversee domestic policy, “keep a lid on power struggles within the military and oversee peace negotiations,” Zelenskyy’s “political control may weaken” just at the time he is looking to agree an end to the war.

What did the commentators say?

Nicknamed the “green cardinal” for his early adoption of battle fatigues, Yermak was “in every way” the “second-most powerful man in Ukraine”. A close ally of Zelenskyy, he acted more like an “unelected vice-president than a simple chief of staff” and, according to many officials and diplomats, was often “the de facto decision maker”, said Christopher Miller in the Financial Times.

His departure will be “extremely painful” for Zelenskyy – “physically and psychologically”, Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko told The Washington Post’s Siobhan O'Grady. “Yermak was always next to him. But Zelenskyy is adaptive. He learns quickly. I don’t think it’s a catastrophe – but it is a serious challenge.”

Yermak had become a deeply unpopular figure in Ukraine who “somehow aggregated all the dissatisfaction with what” Zelenskyy “does wrong”, Nataliya Gumenyuk of Ukrainian news site Hromadske told Andrew Carey at CNN. So, “a key question will be whether his departure increases the domestic pressure on Zelenskyy himself, or in fact turns the tide”.

What it could do is dilute the concentration of authority in Ukraine. And that could actually “strengthen Zelenskyy both domestically but also internationally”, William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine told the FT’s Miller. “Zelenskyy has some young, competent people who could step in.”

What next?

The scandal over corruption in the state energy company has weakened Zelenskyy domestically and, this week, Ukrainian MPs will be asked to vote on his budget. Losing that vote would not be terminal but it would be “another blow to Zelenskyy’s credibility as leader”, said Dominic Hauschild in The Times.

On the international front, Zelenskyy has moved quickly to replace Yermak as lead negotiator in the peace talks. With the president facing “a new round of US pressure to reach a deal to end Russia’s war”, and Moscow continuing to “relentlessly bombard his country”, the stage is set for one of Zelenskyy’s “most politically perilous moments yet”, said O’Grady in The Washington Post.

As for Yermak, in an “impassioned text message” to the New York Post, he said was going to the front and was “prepared for any reprisals. I am an honest and decent person.”

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”.

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”.

It beggars belief, our country’s propensity for corruption, said Zoya Kazanzhy in Vysoky Zamok (Lviv). Even as a terrible enemy “rages, kills and destroys” our people on the battlefield, the government of our supposed protector, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is robbing us blind at home.

‘Drastic change’

I’m talking about the vast corruption scandal revealed last week by Nabu and SAP, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, which for 15 months have been investigating the financial dealings of Energoatom, the state nuclear power company. High officials involved in negotiating contracts for the company have been collecting bribes worth 10% to 15% of each contract: Nabu estimates that $100 million in kickbacks were laundered through a secret Kyiv-based office.

So far, seven people have been charged and two government ministers (for energy and justice) have resigned for their role in the scandal. The alleged mastermind of the whole plot, businessman Timur Mindich, is a long-time pal of Zelenskyy: before Zelenskyy became president, the two men were co-owners of a film company. Mindich fled to Tel Aviv on the morning of the arrests: “you don’t have to be a detective” to figure out who warned him. War or no war, “Zelenskyy must go”.

Russia’s latest strikes have targeted the very Ukrainian power plants at the centre of this scandal, said Marina Daniluk Yarmolaeva on Espreso TV (Kyiv). It is disgraceful that, while millions of us have been sitting in the cold and dark, contemplating a brutal winter, our officials have been filling their pockets with international aid donated to protect our infrastructure from attack. To Ukrainians it all feels “like something between suicide and treason”.

Ministerial resignations are not enough, said Serhiy Taran in Vysoky Zamok. Even in our ongoing state of emergency, we need “a drastic change in the culture of Ukrainian politics”, notably a return to open competition for senior roles. Government can no longer be allowed to fill these positions with business mates.

‘Clean slate’

“These are not easy times for Zelenskyy,” said Lorenzo Cremonesi in Corriere della Sera (Milan). Even as “the Russians are pushing hard on the war front, corruption scandals are weakening the domestic front”. All of this, of course, “plays into the hands of the Kremlin’s supporters”, said Gerald Schubert in Der Standard (Vienna): countries such as Hungary are “once again calling for an end to EU accession talks with Ukraine and that all funding be turned off”. We can’t allow that to happen. There is no suggestion Zelenskyy was aware of this plot, and he acted quickly to remove his energy and justice ministers, pledging a “clean slate”. And right now, “Ukraine needs the West’s support more than ever” to strengthen its democratic structures.

We saw that support used effectively this summer, when Zelenskyy’s government, under pressure from Brussels, was forced to backtrack in its attempts to restrict the independence of its anti-corruption agencies. And the success of that effort “speaks for itself”: it was Nabu that led the investigation into Energoatom. However, pressure from Brussels will only work if we encourage Ukraine in its hopes of joining the EU, “instead of snubbing the long-suffering country at every opportunity”.

But that’s the problem, said Luís Delgado in Visão (Lisbon). Much of Europe is still incredibly “uneasy” about the current situation. Although “a river of money has been flowing into Ukraine” since 2022, Kyiv’s allies have always been wary of sending it, knowing the country’s reputation for corruption and the potential for a lot of that money to go missing. Now that some of Zelenskyy’s closest confidants are implicated in the graft, urgent explanations will be needed to avoid a freeze in the flow of funds.

The worst of it is that all this is happening just as the EU is locked in a debate about lending billions in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. It’s an ugly situation for everyone – everyone, barring Vladimir Putin. He may be the leader “of one of the most corrupt countries in the world”, but he’ll still be gloating.

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.”

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

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed during a “very productive” phone conversation to meet in Budapest “within two weeks or so” to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin said Russia had requested the two-hour call, which took place as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was en route to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Trump today.

Who said what

Trump said on social media that he and Putin made “great progress” during their call and would meet in Hungary’s capital “to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War between Russia and Ukraine to an end.” Trump “has long courted Putin” but is becoming “increasingly critical” of the Russian leader as he flouts Trump’s Ukraine peace efforts, The Washington Post said. Thursday's call was an “opportunity for Putin to regain the initiative and promote Russian narratives” before Zelenskyy arrived and tried to persuade Trump to arm Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.

“Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks,” Zelenskyy said on social media after arriving in D.C. Putin’s call “appeared to dim prospects” that Trump would approve the long-range missiles for Kyiv, as seemed likely earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal said. Moscow’s “long-range curveball” fits an increasingly “familiar pattern,” the BBC said: “Every time Trump grows increasingly frustrated with Putin’s intransigence over Ukraine,” the Russian leader calls and Trump “backs off his threats to apply tougher sanctions or supply more destructive weapons.”

What next?

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as soon as next week to lay the groundwork for the Budapest summit.

Ukraine is taking the war deep inside Russia, and it wants U.S. help to do so. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes American-made Tomahawk missiles could finally force Vladimir Putin into peace talks.

Tomahawk cruise missiles could reach Russian targets “far beyond any of the weapons the U.S. has provided to Kyiv until now,” said The Wall Street Journal. The Biden administration “never seriously considered” providing the weapons to Ukraine over concerns the move would “prompt a confrontation with Moscow,” but President Donald Trump has suggested he might allow it. “I’ll make a determination on that,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Ukraine believes the missiles would give it the capability to hit Russian “military targets and energy facilities” thanks to their 1,000-mile range, said The Hill. Kyiv is already using drones to hit enemy oil refineries far from the front lines, but the U.S. weapons would “do even more damage against them, which definitely would hurt Russia,” said military analyst Emil Kastehelmi. Moscow has been “scathing” about the prospect, said CNBC. Introducing Tomahawks into the conflict would be “truly a serious escalation,” said a Kremlin spokesman.

What did the commentators say?

“Putin has no intention of voluntarily giving up his campaign against Ukraine,” said Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post. But Trump could force him to the negotiating table by furnishing the Tomahawks and “imposing unsustainable military and financial costs on Russia.” The U.S. should ignore Moscow’s talk of “escalation.” Russia, after all, has fired more than 2,400 cruise missiles into Ukraine since the start of the war. “It would be a proportional response to Putin’s escalation.”

The question is “whether Russia’s latest threats deserve to be taken seriously,” said Peter Dickinson at The Atlantic Council’s blog. Moscow has repeatedly warned of reprisals against U.S. weapons support for Ukraine, “only to then do nothing when these red lines are subsequently crossed.” Putin has managed to limit support for Ukraine by “exploiting the West’s collective fear of escalation.” Sending Tomahawks to Kyiv could mark an “important turning point in the biggest European war since World War II.”

“Getting the Tomahawks is one thing — using them is another,” said Leo Chiu at Kyiv Post. Complex “launch platforms and guidance expertise” are required to actually operate the missiles, which means the proposed deal would be “largely symbolic” unless accompanied by Pentagon support. The unanswered question: “Would Kyiv be able to use the missiles if the transfer comes to fruition?”

What next?

Trump might be “bluffing” by considering Zelenskyy’s request, said The New York Times. It might also be a sign of his “growing frustration” with Putin for not doing more to end the war. The Russian leader “just doesn’t want to end that war, and I think it’s making him look very bad,” the president said this week. One ominous sign for Ukraine was that Trump announced Thursday he will meet Putin in Hungary for more talks on the war.

“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.

Peace in Europe seems further away than at any time since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.

Far from forcing a ceasefire between Vladimir Putin and Kyiv, Donald Trump’s return to the White House has seen an escalation in Russian aerial attacks, culminating in this morning's dramatic drone incursion into Poland.

“Putin just keeps escalating, expanding his war, and testing the West. The longer he faces no strength in response, the more aggressive he gets,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X. “A weak response now will provoke Russia even more – and then Russian missiles and drones will fly even further into Europe.”

What did the commentators say?

Recent attempts to bring Russia to the negotiating table have focused predominantly on diplomatic efforts. By sending his envoys to meet directly with Russian negotiators and “literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin”, Trump believed he “could reset the bilateral relationship”, said Alexandra Vacroux in the Los Angeles Times. “It did. But not the way Trump intended.”

Last month’s Alaskan summit “convinced the Russians that the current administration is willing to throw the sources of American global power out the window”. At the same time, Putin has positioned Russia at the centre of a new global power alliance, alongside China and India.

The Kremlin has insisted on its own “security guarantees” before laying down arms. These “reflect a list of grievances” that Putin refers to in shorthand as “the root causes” of the war, said The New York Times. They include a guarantee Ukraine will never join Nato, limits on Ukraine's military capabilities and, most contentiously, to be part of any international security guarantees provided to Kyiv, "which analysts have equated with the fox guarding the henhouse”.

Western efforts to craft a security deal for Ukraine without considering the Kremlin’s position make them unlikely to succeed, said Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at RAND Corporation, a security research organisation in Washington.

Putin knows his maximalist demands are unpalatable to Ukraine and many of its allies, but he believes he is slowly winning on the battlefield so has little reason to broker a ceasefire agreement while he still holds out hope of a major breakthrough that will secure Moscow better terms – or even the collapse of Ukraine’s defences.

The alternative, as set out by Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania’s foreign minister, this morning, is a ramping up of sanctions which “must strike at the heart of the Kremlin's war economy".

“In fact,” said Vacroux, “the Kremlin indicated a readiness to talk with Trump about the war only when Trump threatened very, very powerful’ sanctions in mid-July”.

What next?

Amid “frustration within the White House at the difficulty of brokering a peace deal” – and perhaps acknowledging that sanctions may be the quickest way to bring the war to an end – the Financial Times reported Trump has made an “extraordinary demand” that the EU follow the US on imposing tariffs on India and China for buying Russian oil and gas.

European capitals have been discussing potential secondary sanctions aimed at escalating economic pressure on Russia, but “many are nervous given the EU’s trade relations with Beijing and New Delhi”.

“It’s a question of, do the Europeans have the political will to bring the war to an end?” one US official said. “Any of these things will of course be costly, and for the president to do it, we need our EU partners and ideally all of our partners with us. And we'll share the pain together.”

What happened

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Sunday marked his country's 34th Independence Day from Soviet Russia with a speech in Kyiv's central Maidan square, flanked by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg. From Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC's "Meet the Press" that President Vladimir Putin had no plans to meet with Zelenskyy for peace talks pushed by President Donald Trump.

Who said what

"We are building a Ukraine that will have enough strength and power to live in security and peace," Zelenskyy said. "Putin can be stopped," said Carney, announcing that Canada will invest $1.5 billion (2 billion Canadian dollars) in military assistance for Ukraine. "The Russian economy is weakening. He is becoming increasingly isolated, while our alliance is growing stronger."

Norway said Sunday it was working with Germany to provide Ukraine with two more Patriot air defense systems. The Trump administration, meanwhile, "has for months been blocking Ukraine's use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia," The Wall Street Journal said, "limiting Kyiv from employing a powerful weapon in its fight against Moscow's invasion."

What next?

"Trump thought the red carpet would impress Putin," Mykhailo Samus, the director of a Kyiv think tank, told The New York Times, but "Putin just wants to grab Ukraine and is not interested either in money or in red carpets." Russia had already "made significant concessions," Vice President J.D. Vance told "Meet the Press," including recognizing that Ukraine would have "territorial integrity" after the war and Moscow cannot "install a puppet regime in Kyiv."

European countries are working with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on proposed "security guarantees" to protect any future peace deal, measures that Donald Trump has suggested he will support after the historic White House meeting earlier this week.

There is a "wide spectrum" of what this could mean in practice, said the BBC, and a "big question mark" remains over what guarantees Russia will be willing to accept.

What did the commentators say?

The "inherent contradiction" of any security guarantees is that they must be "robust enough" to deter Russia from a future attack, but "not so robust" that Russia refuses to accept them and "threatens to target Western assets" in Ukraine, said the BBC. "Nobody wants to start World War Three."

Trump has ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine and US boots on the ground, but Europe still hopes that Washington will agree to provide logistics and intelligence, and a backstop of military air support if Russia were to renege on any peace deal.

Even for Europe, "I don't think boots on the ground is a credible answer", military analyst Sean Bell told Sky News. Policing the 600-mile border would require 100,000 soldiers at a time and a force of 300,000 to allow for training and rotations. The entire UK army would only make up 10% of that, with France likely to be able to contribute a further 10%.

It's unclear what Putin and Trump agreed at the Alaska summit but the White House claimed Russia had accepted "Nato-style protection" for Ukraine. US special envoy Steve Witkoff described the security guarantees that Putin had accepted as "Article 5-like", referring to Nato's mutual defence clause.

Keir Starmer said the coalition of the willing is "preparing for the deployment of a reassurance force" in the event of "hostilities ending". In practice, that is likely to involve "protecting Ukraine from the skies and sea" and helping to train and replenish its depleted armed forces – or an agreement "with only the threat of military involvement once any deal is breached", said The Times.

What next?

The question remains: how would the coalition respond if its forces were attacked or Russia re-invaded?

"A formal pledge to fight Russia would amount to Article 5 by other means", while a "vague mandate" might "tempt Russia to test European resolve", said The Economist. France's President Emmanuel Macron said the ultimate guarantee would be the strengthening of Ukraine's own – currently much beleaguered – armed forces and thus Russia should not be allowed to impose limits on the size or capability of those forces in a peace deal.

But Kyiv and Moscow's positions remain far apart on territory, said The Economist, and the "Trumpian vision of a peace deal" relies on Russia agreeing to security guarantees for Ukraine, "a state it denies exists".

What happened

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday before the two leaders were joined by the heads of NATO and key European allies who had flocked to Washington, D.C., to backstop Ukraine. All the leaders emerged upbeat, though there was little sign of tangible progress toward ending Russia's 3 1/2-year war in Ukraine.

Who said what

The "tone and style" of Zelenskyy's private meeting with Trump was "far different" from their Oval Office sit-down in February, when Zelenskyy was "hounded out of the White House," The Associated Press said. This time, Trump voiced support for guaranteeing Ukraine's security, Zelenskyy "expressed his gratitude and wore dressier clothes," and Vice President J.D. Vance "kept his mouth shut."

Monday's "cordial but inconclusive" meetings largely "focused on what security guarantees the European nations and the United States would provide Ukraine" if Zelenskyy agreed to a peace deal, The New York Times said. Trump also took 40 minutes to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to "begin setting up a possible direct meeting" between him and Zelenskyy, with Trump joining later.

Zelenskyy "quickly embraced" a meeting with Putin, but the "Kremlin gave a noncommittal response," The Wall Street Journal said. Ukraine's president also called Trump's signal that the U.S. would participate in securing his country's security "a major step forward." Trump said Washington would "help" the Europeans ensure security for Ukraine, and give Kyiv "very good protection and very good security," though he did not offer details. Earlier Monday, Russia's Foreign Ministry "ruled out the deployment of troops from NATO countries to help secure a peace deal," Reuters said, contradicting Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.

What next?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the "overall security guarantees coordination effort" to prepare for a Trump-Putin-Zelenskyy summit, Politico said. Zelenskyy said the guarantees "will somehow be formalized on paper within the next week to 10 days."

What happened

European and NATO leaders said Sunday they would accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House as he meets with President Donald Trump today following Trump's talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Trump went into the Alaska summit demanding that Putin agree to a ceasefire but left siding with Russia's proposal to proceed to full peace talks.

Who said what

After his disastrous meeting with Trump in February, Zelenskyy is heading to the White House "with backup," The New York Times said. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, NATO and the European Commission "are flying in" to "make sure that a viable, defensible Ukraine survives whatever carving up of its territory is about to happen at the negotiating table."

Trump and his team initially disclosed few details about Friday's summit, but according to Reuters, sources familiar with the Kremlin's thinking said Putin proposed that "Russia would relinquish tiny pockets of occupied Ukraine and Kyiv would cede swathes of its eastern land which Moscow has been unable to capture." Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN Sunday that Russia also made an important "concession": that the U.S. "could offer Article 5-like protection" to Kyiv, "which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO."

Trump last night said on social media that there was "NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE" and Zelenskyy "can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to." The Trump team's "fresh, if still vague, support for providing security guarantees" has narrowed one "gap" with Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal said, but a "chasm over Moscow’s territorial demands remains," making for "treacherous" diplomatic terrain at today's meeting.

What next?

The European leaders are "determined" to hammer out "'cast-iron' security guarantees" for Ukraine at today's meeting, the BBC said, and to ensure Trump "is not being swayed by his obvious personal rapport" with Putin "into giving in to the Russian leaders' demands."

In the build-up to the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska today, the US president has made vague references to territorial swaps – a terrifying prospect for Ukraine and its allies "given that all the territory in question" is Ukrainian, said the BBC.

Vladimir Putin is said to be demanding control of the Donbas, a region consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died trying to defend the Donbas, which is home to key industrial assets and millions of people, as well as being a fortified line protecting Ukrainian territory to the north and west.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has maintained that ceding land is impossible, because Ukraine is prohibited from doing so by its constitution. But Donald Trump appears to be giving this argument short shrift. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One earlier, Trump said land swaps would be "discussed" but that ultimately the greenlight would have to come from Kyiv. "I've got to let Ukraine make that decision," he said, "and I think they'll make a proper decision."

What did the commentators say?

Zelenskyy has stood his ground, telling journalists on Tuesday: "I am not going to surrender my country, because I have no right to do so." The Ukrainian president's red lines are that Ukraine "will not hand over any of its territory", that it must be "fully involved in any negotiation" and that Kyiv must receive "security guarantees as part of any peace deal", said the Financial Times.

"I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying, 'Well, I have to get constitutional approval'," Trump told reporters on Monday. "I mean, he's got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap?"

More than three-quarters of Ukrainians "oppose trading land for a promise of peace", said The New York Times. Crucially, inside the military, "that figure is much, much higher," said Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center. Given that Trump has previously withdrawn military support and financial aid from Ukraine, it's hard to imagine what other leverage to accept a land-swap arrangement might be on the table.

Russia and the US have reportedly discussed a "model" that "mirrors Israel’s occupation of the West Bank", whereby Russia would have military and economic control of occupied areas technically under Ukrainian sovereignty, a source told The Times. Apparently the idea was raised "weeks ago" in discussions between Steve Witkoff, Trump's peace envoy, and his Russian counterparts. The White House has denied that this is part of its plan.

For Zelenskyy, this is a juncture of "maximum pressure" domestically as well as on the battlefield, said the FT. Trump's team "are aware this is a moment of weakness for Zelenskyy", who is contending with sinking popularity at home, said former EU diplomat Balázs Jarábik. There is a danger that any agreement the president might make involving any surrender of Ukrainian territory to Russia would fail to be ratified by his parliament.

What next?

The US president called the Alaska summit a "feel-out meeting" and the White House described it as a "listening exercise", perhaps to lower expectations in case a deal is not reached.

In a call with Zelenskyy and European leaders on Wednesday, Trump apparently agreed that a ceasefire would be a prerequisite before any peace negotiations. That hasn't allayed fears that Trump and Putin will hatch a plan redrawing borders in Russia's favour and then force Ukraine to agree.

Zelenskyy has said that ceding territory, particularly in the strategically important Donbas region, would be a "springboard for a future new offensive" by Russia.

"If you're not at the table, you're on the menu", so the famous saying in international diplomacy goes.

As Donald Trump prepares to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, there is concern in Kyiv and other European capitals that they could negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine over the head of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is not invited to the talks.

European leaders – who will also be absent – have sought to present a united front with Ukraine. They issued a statement saying that "the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine", and that "international borders must not be changed by force".

What did the commentators say?

The "worst-case scenario" for Kyiv and Europe is that Trump and Putin reach an agreement on what the US president calls "land swaps". This would, "in reality, mean Ukraine ceding large swaths of its territory permanently to Russia", said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. The deal would then be "presented to Ukraine as a fait accompli".

While Ukraine want "agreement on a ceasefire – with the threat of secondary sanctions on Russia if Putin restarts the war" before any discussion on territory, it has to be realistic about the state of the war as things stand.

Russia now occupies nearly a fifth of the country and this year has slowly but steadily been utilising its superior manpower and supplies to make territorial gains.

Understanding this, Zelenskyy has told European leaders ahead of Friday's summit that while giving up Ukrainian land held by Kyiv remains a red line – and something prohibited by the constitution – Ukrainian territory in Russia's control could be on the table. This represents a "softening" of his negotiating position and "would mean freezing the front line where it is and handing Russia de facto control of the territory it occupies in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea", said The Telegraph.

"The critical distinction is between de facto and de jure concessions of territory," said Rachman. A legal recognition is "rightly unacceptable" to Kyiv, but an informal "recognition of Russian occupation of some territory as a brutal reality – in the context of a broader peace deal – may be necessary".

If it can maintain its independence and democratic institutions, then Ukraine "making some de facto territorial concessions might be a painful but acceptable concession".

Whether this outcome is acceptable to Putin is another matter entirely. "While the Kremlin's propaganda machine would be able to spin such relatively modest gains as a glorious victory to Russia's people, Putin would not be able to fool himself," said The Times.

As the president and his allies "have made clear on multiple occasions, Russia is not just fighting for land; it is seeking to eliminate Ukraine as an independent state".

Putin's "unchanging goal is to subjugate Kyiv, however long it takes and by whatever means necessary".

What next?

Trump "remains wedded to the notion that 'land swapping' will shape any deal to end the war in Ukraine", said Sky News.

He has said that Friday's meeting with Putin is to "feel out" what the "parameters" are for a future ceasefire. This is a "strategic preemption perhaps, setting expectations low, and preparing the public for failure".

But, "having played the ultimate card of a presidential summit, the only result that counts will be the full and complete ceasefire that President Trump has long demanded and that Ukraine accepted five months ago", said CNN.

"Short of that, the summit will be a failure with peace further out of reach for the foreseeable future."

What happened

European leaders over the weekend presented top U.S. officials with a unified framework for President Donald Trump's scheduled Ukraine peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Putin told Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin last week that Russia would agree to a ceasefire if Kyiv withdrew from Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine's European allies said Russia needed to halt its fighting before any discussions of reciprocal land swaps.

Who said what

The European governments and Ukraine "scrambled" to "draw a common red line" after Putin's offer was clarified and Trump "let lapse his self-imposed deadline" to punish Moscow's intransigence, The Wall Street Journal said. Russian officials and commentators "crowed about landing" the Alaska summit, The Washington Post said. Trump handed Putin his first invitation to the U.S. since 2007, "apparently without the Kremlin having made any clear concessions over its war in Ukraine."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it was unacceptable for any agreements to be reached "over the heads of the Europeans, over the heads of the Ukrainians." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated that his country would not cede any land to the Russian invaders.

What next?

Vice President J.D. Vance said on Fox News Sunday that the White House was working on "scheduling and things like that" for when Putin, Trump and Zelenskyy "could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict." The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, told CNN that Trump could still invite Zelenskyy to the Alaska summit.

Not for the first time, Donald Trump might have jumped the gun when it comes to Vladimir Putin, leaving President Zelenskyy and a mutually agreeable ceasefire in Ukraine appearing equally lost.

President Trump's hope that he can end the war in Ukraine is "impossibly optimistic", said CNN. He plans to meet the Russian president as soon as next week – although Moscow might "bristle at the rush" – and Trump told European leaders on Wednesday that he wants to follow it with a trilateral meeting between him, Putin and Zelenskyy.

But while Yuri Ushakov, a key Putin aide, confirmed that the US and Russia have "essentially reached" an agreement to hold a meeting between Putin and Trump "in the coming days", the prospect of a three-way summit looks very unlikely. "This was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin. But this was not discussed. The Russian side left this option completely without comment," said Ushakov.

What did the commentators say?

Putin's reasons for continuing the war are stronger than "any incentive Trump can give him to end it", said CNN.

Taking part in negotiations could just be a stalling tactic to buy time while Russia's summer military offensive continues to make gains in eastern Ukraine. Pressure from Trump might deliver a partial win, such as a promise to halt air attacks on civilians, but "Russian ceasefire pledges are often not worth the paper they are written on".

"The entire Putin regime is based on not just concluding this war on Russian terms but continuing to fight it … the entire economy is propped up around the war," David Salvo, a Russia expert, told CNN.

Regardless of the outcome, the mere occurrence of a meeting with Trump would "represent something of a victory" for Putin, who has largely been ostracised by Nato leaders since the Ukraine invasion, said The New York Times.

The plan reflects the US president's "deep belief that his powers of persuasion, especially in an in-person meeting, are the only way to strike a bargain". That instinct was behind Trump's attempts in his first term to negotiate with Kim Jong Un of North Korea – meetings that were "cordial and an utter failure", theatrical photo opportunities that did nothing to slow North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

Putin could use Trump's preference for face-to-face negotiations to his advantage by manipulating Trump's eagerness for a deal to put pressure on Zelenskyy to make concessions, said The Washington Post.

While the US president signalled his impatience with Russia by punishing India with higher tariffs for buying Russian oil, they won't take effect for three weeks, which gives Russian forces more time to advance in Ukraine. A partial ceasefire could disproportionately hamper Ukraine, which relies on drones to attack key Russian military production facilities, without halting Russia's slow but steady progress on the ground.

What next?

Up for discussion at the meeting could be the fact that the Trump administration has proposed a tough new sanctions package designed to "strike at the core of Russia's war financing: its global oil exports" and a crackdown on its "shadow fleet" of ageing oil tankers that carry Russian crude to India, China and other countries, said Time. A bipartisan Senate bill seeks to impose tariffs of up to 500% on countries that continue to import Russian energy and Trump has said he is "very strongly" considering endorsing it.

If a meeting goes ahead, there are no signs that Putin would concede his unwavering demands. Trump sees himself as a great dealmaker but he has splintered so many alliances since taking office in January that Russia is now in a relatively stronger position.

"Because Donald Trump has changed so many deadlines and he's twisted one way or another, I don't think Putin takes him seriously," Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at New York's The New School, told the BBC.

"Volodymyr Zelenskyy just betrayed Ukraine's democracy – and everyone fighting for it," said The Kyiv Independent. Last week, our president signed into law a bill that would have stripped two of the country's top anti-corruption bodies of their independence. He then backtracked, but only after thousands had taken to the streets (the first protests since Russia invaded in 2022), and after the EU had issued a rare and embarrassing rebuke, saying the proposed law could jeopardise Ukraine's bid to join the bloc.

Why would Zelenskyy choose to "squander his political capital" in this way, asked Andreas Rüesch in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich). Abroad, Ukraine's wartime president is a hero. But domestically, "he's proven himself for years to be a politician with unforgivable weaknesses", a man who has tried to consolidate power and allowed his allies to carry out "undemocratic manoeuvres". The official reason for the bill was that Russia was influencing anti-corruption investigators. In reality, those investigators had probably "targeted too many of Zelenskyy's political friends".

This whole affair only reaffirms something the EU has known for years, said Anna-Lena Laurén in Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm), but has "chosen to keep quiet about" so as not to undermine the country's fight for survival: "corruption continues to be a major problem in Ukraine". In the military industrial complex in particular, "it is rampant", said Timothy Ash in the Kyiv Post, with insiders skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from contracts for aeroplane wheels and the like. There's nothing to suggest Zelenskyy himself is "personally corrupt", or that Ukrainians "are more amenable to corruption" than others. It's just an ugly symptom of the "post-Soviet transition".

Zelenskyy may not be corrupt, said Michael Bociurkiw in the same paper, but he and his increasingly powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, are steadily treading down the path to authoritarianism. It's not so much that elections have been suspended – justifiable given the ongoing war. It's that Zelenskyy's most outspoken critics have been silenced or targeted for criminal prosecution, and other government institutions weakened in order to concentrate power in the president's office. These moves are only undermining Ukraine war efforts. This latest scandal will be seen both in Moscow and among the Maga base in Washington as a "welcome PR gift – reinforcing the Kremlin's narrative that Ukraine is irreparably corrupt and unworthy of Western support".

The West isn't blameless either, said Adéla Knapová in Novinky (Prague). For too long, Zelenskyy's allies have refused to ask "uncomfortable questions, let alone issue ultimatums" about his government's behaviour. "It's high time to do what a true friend should do", and tell the Ukrainian leader "we support democracy and civil society, not autocrats". After all, said Svitlana Morenets in The Spectator, isn't that what Ukraine's desperate fight against Putin is all about? "The war for Ukraine's future is being fought not just on the battlefield, but also within its democratic institutions." Last week that battle was almost lost.

Why is Volodymyr Zelenskyy opposing anti-corruption laws? How will US withdrawal affect Unesco? And are shared electric bikes a force for good or evil?

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When first-term President Donald Trump leaned on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to provide damaging political material on 2020 electoral rival Joe Biden, his ask was based in part on Ukraine's reputation for a historically questionable commitment to anti-corruption efforts. Fast forward to today, and a very different Ukraine is once again grappling with the specter of crippling national corruption thanks to a controversial law hurriedly signed by Zelenskyy earlier this week. Critics contend it will weaken the country's independent National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) by placing them under the auspices of Ukraine's presidentially appointed prosecutor general.

After days of mass demonstrations in opposition to the new law, Zelenskyy (facing significant domestic policy protests for the first time) appeared to relent. This morning, the Ukrainian president announced on X that he'd approved a new, still ambiguous draft bill which "upholds the independence of NABU and SAPO."

What did the commentators say?

Demonstrations in Kyiv, as well as across Lviv, Dnipro and Odesa, are Ukraine's "biggest anti-government protests" since Russia began its Ukrainian invasion in 2022, said the BBC. While Zelenskyy initially sought to justify the law as a necessary boost for the "efficiency of Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure," critics argue that the bill is "at odds" with the country's pro-democracy efforts. For those critics, the stakes in the controversy are clear, said The Nation. Can a country "fighting for survival" also defend the "hard‑won democratic reforms" achieved in its 2014 anti-Russian revolution?

The "unusual speed" with which Ukraine's parliament passed its anti-corruption reforms follows "mounting warnings" from activists who've cautioned against an "escalating crackdown on anti-corruption bodies and NGOs" lately, said The Kyiv Independent. Just one day before Zelenskyy signed the legislation, various Ukrainian security agencies conducted "sweeping searches of NABU and SAPO" in what officials claimed was targeting "suspected Russian infiltration and administrative misconduct." Earlier this month, a top anti-corruption activist was arrested and charged with fraud and evading military service, which defenders said was "political retribution for exposing corrupt officials," Reuters said.

Anti-corruption critics claim Zelenskyy has "overstepped his authority under the martial law imposed since the Russian invasion," with the initial law adjusting the NABU and SAPO's independence marking the "latest in a string of steps he has taken to consolidate his power, said The New York Times.

What next?

By enacting the new law's intended reforms, Zelenskyy risked "endangering" Ukraine's "bid to join the European Union," for which a "crackdown on internal corruption" is a "requirement," said Fox News. Some in Ukraine wonder if the new law and ensuing protests have afforded Russia a "powerful propaganda tool" that could be used not only to further divide Ukraine but also damage its "support from the West at a crucial moment in the war," said NBC News. Western officials are "alarmed" that Ukraine might be "backsliding" on its "endemic graft problem."

By submitting his alternate bill Thursday morning, Zelenskyy hoped to "defuse tensions" with a revised law that "underlines" that the prosecutor general's office "cannot give orders to anti-graft agencies or interfere in their work," The Associated Press said. It's "not immediately clear" when Zelenskyy's new bill will get a parliamentary vote, with protests "likely to continue until the law is passed." Still, representatives from NABU hailed the revised legislation as restoring "all procedural powers and guarantees of independence" to it, said the special prosecutors' office in a post on Telegram.

Nevertheless, should state organs like NABU ultimately lose their independence as the initial law proposed, "there will still be anti-corruption activity," said investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov to The Kyiv Independent. "What will remain" is "anti-corruption activity against low-level people."

"The war ends. The landmine goes on killing," said Jody Williams, who led the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, in her 1997 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

The Ottawa Treaty signed that year banned the use of anti-personnel landmines as well as the ability to "develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, anti-personnel mines". It has since been ratified by 160 countries, but not by the US, China or, crucially, Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced his intention to withdraw from the convention, following similar decisions by Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

What did the commentators say?

It is no coincidence that these countries together guard 2,150 miles of Nato's frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus.

In the three years since the invasion of Ukraine, they have all made "significant investments to better secure these borders, for example with fences and surveillance systems", said DW. "Now, a new plan is in the works: landmines."

The Telegraph's chief foreign affairs commentator David Blair has reported plans to build a "new 'Iron Curtain' – with millions of landmines".

"Banning them might have been a luxury cause for a dominant West in the years of safety after the Cold War, yet no longer." Now, "as Europe re-arms to deter Putin, what was once unconscionable has become unavoidable".

For Zelenskyy, whose country is already at war and now the "most mined" in the world, according to Euronews, withdrawing from the convention will help level the situation on the battlefield. The Kremlin has by far the world's largest stockpile of anti-personnel mines, with an estimated 26 million, and has used them with "utmost cynicism in Ukrainian territory, he said. The problem, said Zelenskyy, is that anti-personnel mines are "often the instrument for which nothing can be substituted for defence purposes".

Small explosive devices designed to detonate under a person's weight, "they are attractive to militaries because they can block an enemy advance, channel forces into kill zones and protect defensive positions," said The Times. They are also a "serious threat to civilians, often remaining lethal for decades after a conflict has ended".

What next?

The timing of the departures is "related to threat assessments shared by Nato countries", said Al Jazeera.

"Liberal-democratic" states across northern Europe "are in agreement", defence expert Francis Tusa said in The Independent: if Kyiv "loses its struggle against Russia, the latter may be emboldened to take military action against the Baltic states, Finland, or even Poland".

Many defence specialists agree the timeline for this is "within three to five years", making the need to prepare for a potential Russian invasion with all the tools available a priority for those on the frontline.

But anti-landmine campaigners "worry this is part of a larger trend, with the rules of war and international humanitarian norms being eroded more broadly", said The Irish Times.

In the context of conflict and geopolitical tension escalating around the world "it is impossible not to feel that we are going backwards, seeing threats to the international rules-based order, and most importantly to the frameworks that have long been in place to protect civilians", said Josephine Dresner, director of policy with the Mines Advisory Group.

What happened

President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a "good" 75-minute phone conversation Wednesday, "but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace." Putin said, "very strongly, that he will have to respond" to Ukraine's weekend drone strikes on Moscow's most prized warplanes deep inside Russia, Trump recounted on social media.

Who said what

Trump's recap of the call did not say "how he reacted to Putin's promise" of retaliation, The Associated Press said, and it "showed none of the frustration" Trump has expressed in recent weeks over Putin's "prolonging of the war." Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov did not mention Putin's retribution vow in Moscow's readout, but said the leaders discussed the drone strike "at some length." In Russia, CNN said, pro-Kremlin pundits and bloggers are "seething with calls for retribution, even nuclear retaliation."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday night that none of the phone calls with Putin "have brought a reliable peace," and "with every new strike, with every delay of diplomacy, Russia is giving the finger to the entire world." The powerful "share responsibility" with Putin if they don't stop him, he wrote on social media, "and if they want to stop him but cannot, then Putin will no longer see them as powerful."

What next?

U.S. officials assess that Ukraine's explosive drones hit 20 Russian strategic bombers and spy plans and destroyed 10, Reuters said, about "half the number" Zelenskyy claims but still a "highly significant" strike that could "drive Moscow to a far more severe negotiating position in the U.S.-brokered talks."

It took 18 months of planning and more than 100 carefully hidden attack drones smuggled to various clandestine staging sites deep inside Russian territory, waiting to be activated. And when the dust settled on June 1, Ukraine's audacious operation "Spider's Web" left dozens of Russian bombers smoldering on their airstrips in an unprecedented surprise attack.

While drones have increasingly played a role in 21st century warfare, "Spider's Web" is quickly being weighed by military analysts as a new and potentially precedent-setting expansion of unmanned combat tactics and capabilities — one which has not only altered the course of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict, but perhaps the future of war itself.

What did the commentators say?

The "strategic and symbolic" success of Ukraine's operation shows how the country has used drones in particular to "adapt and evolve" in its effort against Russia's "much larger army with more resources," said The New York Times. The scale and impact of the attack means similar long-range drone strikes are "now a commodity available to almost every nation state, and nonstate actor," so long as they have a "few million dollars and the desire to reach out and strike their adversary," said Australian Gen. Mick Ryan (Ret.), a senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute, to the Times. The attack was "likely highly cost-effective," the Kyiv Independent said. The first-person-view drones believed to have been used in the operation can cost a few hundred dollars apiece, while the price tag for Russia's destroyed bombers likely "runs into the billions."

The attack may have been a brazen success, but the "means and technology to conduct an operation like this aren't that new," said Center for New American Security Senior Fellow Samuel Bendett to the Kyiv Independent. The potential for "wide-scale, low-end, localized drone attacks against prized aircraft sitting at airfields" has been a "brewing threat," said defense industry–focused publication The War Zone. Drone technology has "proliferated dramatically," while the "threshold requirements" for carrying out an operation like this have "dropped considerably." Ukraine's drone assault was a "really good example of just how quickly technology is changing the battlefield," said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George at an AI conference yesterday, per DefenseScoop.

What next?

Ukraine's drone assault means Russia must now "devote more resources to protecting bombers and other valuable military assets" after having spent years leaving its assets "parked outside and easily visible, both for operational reasons and as part of nuclear-disarmament agreements with Washington around the end of the Cold War," said The Wall Street Journal.

Ukraine's advances in drone warfare often "outpace traditional U.S. defense contractors," said the Kyiv Post, with many tech firms "increasingly turning to Ukrainian drone makers for their frontline expertise." And it's not just corporate interests paying attention, either. This summer, Ukraine will host a group of soldiers from Denmark, training them in the art of widespread drone warfare, Defense News said. Meanwhile, a "new crop of testing facilities designed to test the small aircraft in war-like conditions" will begin operating across various European nations inspired to keep pace with Ukraine's drone innovations.

What happened

Ukraine struck 41 Russian long-range bombers and other military aircraft Sunday in a covert drone attack on air bases as far away as Siberia and the Finnish border, officials in Kyiv said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) had worked on the operation for 18 months, and the 117 drones they smuggled close to four air bases had disabled 34% of Russia's strategic bombers. Earlier Sunday, Russia killed at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded dozens more at a training base, Kyiv said, and hours before that Moscow launched 472 drones and seven missiles at Ukraine, hitting 18 targets.

Who said what

The "audacious" drone operation was a "significant victory for Ukraine's deep-strike program," The Wall Street Journal said, and the "biggest blow of the war against Moscow's long-range bomber fleet," which is also "vital to Russia's nuclear forces." Russia has been using Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers to hit Ukraine with hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, and "killing the archers instead of intercepting the arrows" is "a more effective way to degrade Russian capabilities," said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

SBU officials told Western media organizations they had hidden small explosive quadcopter drones inside the roofs of mobile wooden houses that were then driven near the Belaya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Olenya air bases and released. They said the attack, codenamed Operation Spider's Web, inflicted $7 billion worth of irreparable damage to Russia's aging bomber fleet. Russia's Defense Ministry said the "terrorist attack" caused "several units of aircraft" to catch fire at the Belaya and Olenya airfields but the "fires have been extinguished" and there were "no casualties." Russia's "influential" pro-war military bloggers described the assault as the "Russian Pearl Harbor," The Washington Post said.

Zelenskyy called the results "absolutely brilliant" and "achieved solely by Ukraine." The "people involved in preparing the operation were withdrawn from Russian territory in time," he added. "Ukraine is defending itself, and rightly so — we are doing everything to make Russia feel the need to end this war."

What next?

Zelenskyy said he was sending Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to scheduled ceasefire talks with Russia in Istanbul Monday, though "the key issues can only be resolved by the leaders."

What happened

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday that his government, France, Britain and the U.S. had lifted "any range restrictions for weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine," allowing Kyiv to "defend itself by, for example, attacking military positions in Russia." His comments followed Russia's biggest drone and missile attacks of the war, which prompted President Donald Trump to claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin "has gone absolutely CRAZY!" Russia suggested Trump's criticism stemmed from "emotional overload."

Who said what

"I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin," Trump told reporters Sunday in New Jersey. "I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people and I don’t like it at all." Putin is "needlessly killing a lot of people" for "no reason whatsoever," he said on social media a few hours later.

When asked by reporters, Trump said he was "absolutely" considering new sanctions on Russia. But he has made empty threats about sanctions before and "expressed shock that the Russian president was unleashing attacks on Ukrainian civilians," while refusing to give Kyiv new weapons or missile defenses, said The New York Times. "The result is a strategic void" in which Trump "complains about Russia's continued killing" but won't make Putin "pay even a modest price."

Trump's decisions on Ukraine are "colored" by his "dislike" for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his belief that Putin "would end the war as a personal favor" to him, The Wall Street Journal said. After Putin "refused" to meet with Zelenskyy in Turkey for peace talks, Trump "claimed that the only way to achieve progress in the war would be by him speaking directly" with Putin, The Washington Post said. "The two men spoke for several hours by phone last week, and Russia has since ramped up its devastating attacks across Ukraine."

What next?

Merz, speaking at a forum organized by public broadcaster WDR, was "tightlipped" on whether his new government would supply Kyiv with Tarsus missiles, which have a range of 310 miles, The Associated Press said. He cited a need for "strategic ambiguity."

What happened

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for two hours Monday in a phone call Trump characterized as "excellent" and Putin described as "very informative and very frank." Trump said "some progress has been made" toward ending Russia's Ukraine war, but he backed off an earlier demand that Putin agree to an immediate ceasefire, a condition accepted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Who said what

"Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the war," Trump said on social media after the call. "The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be." Putin, who rejected an invitation to meet with Zelenskyy in Turkey last week, said Russia was "ready to work" with Kyiv "on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement."

Trump is "banking on the idea that his force of personality and personal history with Putin will be enough to break any impasse over a pause in the fighting," The Associated Press said. But the "lack of any meaningful breakthrough" in Monday's call, The New York Times said, shows that Trump's "belief in his personal charisma and negotiating acumen has so far run up against deep divisions and complex political motivations guiding Russia and Ukraine."

What next?

There are "big egos involved," Trump told reporters Monday. "I think something's going to happen and, if it doesn't I'd just back away and they have to keep going."

Kyiv and Washington have struck a deal that will allow the US to share profits from the mining of Ukraine's mineral reserves, raising hope that Donald Trump will push Russia to make peace.

The White House said the US now has "an economic stake" in securing a "peaceful and sovereign future" for Ukraine but key questions remain unanswered.

Ukraine's supporters hope the agreement will at least lead Trump "to see the country as something more than a money pit and an obstacle to improved relations" with Vladimir Putin, said The New York Times, but it will only kick in after fighting with Russia stops. And there is "no indication" that it gives Ukraine "any explicit American security guarantees against future Russian aggression", said Lisa Haseldine in The Spectator.

What did the commentators say?

For months, Trump has been "bullying" Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, "blaming him for the war", while playing nice with Putin, said Jamie Dettmer at Politico. Then, last week, Trump threatened Russia with more sanctions and posted "Vladimir, STOP!" on Truth Social: was this "rare public rebuke of Putin" a sign of a key "shift" in US thinking?

A "frustrated" White House is becoming increasingly unsure of Putin's "willingness to end the war", said Shelby Magid at the New Atlanticist. And the minerals deal now signals US commitment to a "free, sovereign Ukraine", which completely "undercuts" the Kremlin's aims. Ukraine is now "in its strongest position" with Washington "since Trump took office".

Ukraine's "fragile new confidence" is not centred on the belief that Trump "is about to deliver peace for the ages", said The Economist. "Rather it comes from a shift in mood – a sense that the American president may finally have got Vladimir Putin's number" and might even "have begun to respect his Ukrainian counterpart."

And yet, over the course of "his entire political life, Trump has never truly stood up to" Putin, said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. Recently, "perhaps fearing that he's being humiliated", the US president has "started to show glimpses of exasperation". But few White House insiders have any sense of when or if he might take a stand and, even if he does, he's unlikely to truly "excoriate Putin".

What next?

The minerals deal allows Ukraine to retain control over its natural resources, and its share of any profits "will be reinvested in post-war rebuilding", said The New York Times. But Zelenskyy "has made clear that the minerals agreement is not an end in itself". For him, signing the deal helps clear the way "to more consequential talks" on US military support and, ultimately, a ceasefire.

Trump has indicated that he will now give Russia and Ukraine "two weeks or so to come to the negotiating table" to work out a peace deal, said The Spectator's Haseldine.

Ukraine will be pulling out all the stops to show Trump that "when the clock runs out on that fortnight and fighting continues, it is Moscow – not Kyiv – who's to blame".

Peace talks to end the war between Russia and Ukraine may have hit a sticking point: Crimea. The future of the region is at the center of President Donald Trump's peace plan for the two nations, but that approach may be strategically challenging.

Before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Russia seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and Trump says Crimea should "stay with Russia" as part of any peace settlement. But Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has no power to give up Crimea to the Russians. "There's nothing to talk about here," he said.

Crimea's location on the Black Sea "makes it a strategically important asset" that Russia has sought to control for centuries, said The Associated Press. For both sides, the peninsula allows control over a "critical corridor for the world's grain, among other goods" through the sea. Ukraine's constitution recognizes Crimea as an "integral part of the country," said The Guardian. The only way Kyiv could legally cede the territory to Russia "would be to put the issue to the public in a referendum."

What did the commentators say?

Trump's demand that Ukraine recognize Russia's control of Crimea "makes a mockery" of the peace process, said the Financial Times. That recognition would represent the "first forcible annexation of territory in Europe since 1945," and "embolden tyrants elsewhere to violate borders." Taiwan, in particular, would be vulnerable. That would be the result of the "incompetence and cynicism" of the Trump administration as it "scrambles to land a settlement at any price."

"Ukraine and Europe can't afford to refuse Trump's peace plan," said Responsible Statecraft. The acceptance of Russia's control of Crimea "really constitutes a major concession" by Kyiv. But there may not be much choice. "If U.S. aid is withdrawn," Ukraine's ability to defend itself against a Russian breakthrough "would be greatly reduced." Trump's plan would leave much of Ukraine independent, but rejecting it "can only promise Ukraine greater defeat."

What next?

Trump's proposal "would tear down a decades-old pillar of the global order," said CNN. White House recognition of Crimea as part of Russia would be a breach of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the U.S. persuaded Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for a "commitment to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders." It would also reverse the Trump administration's 2018 promise to refuse to recognize Moscow's claim on the peninsula. American recognition "creates a further rift between Europe and the U.S., and within NATO," said Carla Ferstman, a law professor at Essex University in England, to CNN.

The White House says Trump's peace proposal is his "final offer," said Axios. The U.S. is "ready to walk away if the parties don't make a deal soon." Some influential Ukrainians may be ready to give up territory to make that deal. "It's not fair," said Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko Friday, "but for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be a solution."

What happened

President Donald Trump Wednesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for rejecting elements of a "final" U.S. peace plan presented to Kyiv and Moscow last week. Vice President J.D. Vance, traveling in India, said Trump's "very explicit" and "very fair proposal" would "freeze the territorial lines" somewhere "close to where they are today," and "it's time" for Moscow and Kyiv to "either say 'yes' or for the United States to walk away from this process."

Who said what

Trump is demanding that Zelenskyy "accede to an American-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained" since illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 and "explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining" NATO, "while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances," The New York Times said. "Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea," Zelenskyy said Tuesday. "There is nothing to talk about. It is against our constitution."

"We are very close to a deal" but Zelenskyy's "inflammatory" pushback "will do nothing but prolong the 'killing field,'" Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday. "The situation for Ukraine is dire — he can have peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country."

Ukraine and Western analysts maintain that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "dragging his feet" and "in no rush to conclude peace talks" because Russia "has battlefield momentum," The Associated Press said. It's "not clear" whether the Trump team's scolding of Zelenskyy was "part of a pressure campaign to force" him to make territorial concessions or "designed to create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine," the Times said.

What next?

"Reality check: There's no sign a deal is actually close," Axios said. Along with Ukraine's objections, Putin has "rejected other elements of the U.S. framework." Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling to Moscow Friday, where he will reportedly have a fourth meeting with Putin to discuss ending the war.

Russia has "always looked positively on any peace initiatives" with Ukraine and "we hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way", Vladimir Putin told state TV yesterday, less than 24 hours after his sudden and surprise "Easter truce" ended with both sides accusing each other of multiple violations.

The "sceptical view" is that the 30-hour cessation was "less about pushing for peace" and "more to do with maintaining good relations with the Trump White House" as it grows "impatient with the lack of progress on Ukraine", said BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg.

"But there is also a more optimistic view" that while it was a "surprise" it "did not come out of nowhere" and was the result of "intense international diplomacy to try to end the fighting".

What did the commentators say?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's threat to walk away from the negotiating table last week "appeared to trigger Putin's weekend offer" said The i Paper's political editor Hugo Gye, "but hopes for a lasting ceasefire between the warring nations were quickly dampened after both sides accused each other of violating the short-lived agreement".

Instead, the Russia president's "hopelessly short-lived" truce appears "aimed directly" at Donald Trump and at "shifting blame for his disastrous peacemaking efforts in the Ukraine war", said CNN.

"For Moscow, it seems, this was never going to be the beginning of the end of the war" but rather a "cynical public relations stunt" amid growing criticism that the Kremlin "had become a foot-dragging obstacle to peace".

Volodymyr Fesenko, chairman of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies in Kyiv, told DW that Putin's "urgent, unilateral ceasefire was intended to set a trap for Ukraine".

"In exchange for accommodating Trump's wishes – even if not fully – Putin could have also achieved some of his own goals", said the German news outlet.

Among these, Fesenko points to the weakening of Western unity, reducing Russia's dependence on China, and returning to the exclusive club of influential world leaders.

What next?

In what could be a "decisive week", said the Kyiv Independent, Ukraine is set to continue talks with US and European countries in London on Wednesday, with the "primary task" of negotiations "to push for an unconditional ceasefire", said Zelensky.

Kyiv is "under pressure" to respond to "a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for how to end the war in Ukraine" including "potential US recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and excluding Kyiv from joining Nato", the Wall Street Journal reported.

If there is a "convergence among the American, European and Ukrainian positions, the proposals could be floated to Moscow".

But Putin has so far shown little willingness to compromise, especially now he "feels he's negotiating from a position of strength", said Al Jazeera.

His aim is to "use the Trump administration's self-professed 'peace-making' ambitions to his advantage". Having launched a massive conscription drive, Putin's strategy is to "drag out ceasefire negotiations until US military aid runs out and the Russian army is able to advance far enough into Ukrainian territory to force Kyiv into capitulation".

What happened

Ukraine's military has captured two Chinese men fighting alongside Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday, and there's evidence "significantly more Chinese citizens" have joined Moscow's war.

Who said what

The discovery "puts into question China's declared stance for peace," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X. China and Russia did not immediately respond to Ukraine's "first official allegation" that Beijing is "supplying Russia with manpower," the BBC said. But both have "boasted of their 'no limits' partnership" and military cooperation" since Moscow's 2022 invasion, said Al Jazeera.

The North Korean troops that have been fighting with Russia in recent months are gaining "unmatched battlefield experience" they can take home and "spread throughout the country's massive army," The Wall Street Journal said, unnerving "North Korea's own foes in Seoul and Tokyo." Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani Tuesday expressed interest in joining NATO's Ukraine support mission in Germany, offering a "major boost in ties" with the Atlantic alliance, The Associated Press said. "Both Japan and NATO face many challenges and our security environment has become increasingly more severe," Nakatani told NATO leaders.

What next?

Moscow has "effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt" in fighting, the AP said, and "both sides are believed to be readying a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield."

First, Donald Trump made a pitch for Ukraine's critical minerals; now, the US president seems to want to own the war-torn nation's nuclear power plants.

But there's a lot of confusion over what Trump would do if he did take control of the plants – and if he actually even wants to.

How many nuclear power plants in Ukraine?

Ukraine has four nuclear power plants. The most significant one – and the largest in Europe – is Zaporizhzhia, which was seized by Russia in the first weeks of the war. And it's this plant, in particular, that's become Trump's "new craving" in his "transactional approach to bringing peace", said Politico.

What is Trump demanding?

As a demand, it's Trump "at his most confusing", said The Guardian. If the current frontlines in Ukraine were "frozen" in a ceasefire or peace deal, it would be "difficult to see" how Zaporizhzhia could be operated by the US while it's "surrounded by Russian occupiers". Besides, Ukraine is "not thought willing" to "renounce" ownership.

It's "unclear" whether the US is actually looking to own Ukraine's atomic power, said the Financial Times. A US account of a recent call between Kyiv and Washington suggested so, but Zelenskyy said the discussion only touched on the US helping to "recover" and modernise the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Why would Trump want control?

Trump's minerals deal with Ukraine is "back on" but "can only go ahead if the materials can be extracted", said The Telegraph. This "takes a lot of energy – something which the Zaporizhzhia plant could provide".

Energy analysts have also noted that the US could have another "economic interest" in the plant, said The New York Times. Zaporizhzhia uses fuel and technology supplied by Westinghouse, an American nuclear technology company.

But still, the idea has "a catch" for "the man who coined the art of the deal", said Reuters: "it would be years" before there is "even a hope of it making a return on investment". So, the proposal could simply be the US "testing out various ideas to see what works", as Trump "seeks to hammer out a lasting peace deal".

What might happen next?

Control over the plant is "likely to remain a legal and logistical challenge", said The Associated Press. And, of course, control over the land Zaporizhzhia stands on is a "highly divisive issue for both warring sides".

It's "unclear" what Trump could "offer to Russia to get it to hand over the plant", said the NYT. Moscow is likely to demand something meaningful in return, such as "the lifting of Western sanctions that have hurt its economy".

If Ukraine does regain control of Zaporizhzhia, the "more likely" alternative to US ownership is a "joint venture" – an investment fund for the ageing plant, which "both parties could contribute to and benefit from", said The Telegraph. This is essentially the same concept that "formed the basis" of the minerals deal.

"Getting people to talk to each other makes the biggest difference," said Britain's national security adviser Jonathan Powell back in 2014 after the publication of his book on conflict resolution.

The former chief-of-staff to Tony Blair was in Kyiv this weekend to advise the Ukraine delegation preparing to fly to Saudi Arabia for talks today. Powell will have urged them to "adopt the sort of language during the talks with the Americans in Riyadh which will somehow bridge the gap between Trump's demands and threats", said The Spectator.

Talks between Ukraine and the US aimed at negotiating an end to the war with Russia will mark the first high-level meeting between the two countries since last month's unprecedented White House bust-up between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

'A good guy and a bad guy'

In an attempt to mend bridges with the Trump administration, Ukraine's president last week indicated he was ready for peace negotiations. He summarised terms for a peace plan, which could include "the release of prisoners and truce in the sky – ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure – and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same", said Al Jazeera.

A temporary truce of the kind suggested by Zelenskyy could be part of a "confidence-building exercise", and will likely be at the "centre" of discussions in Jeddah, Timothy Ash, from the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera. A revival of the much-touted minerals deal might also be on the table if talks proceed amicably.

Freezing all military aid, ending intelligence sharing and publicly dressing down Zelenskyy is all part of Trump's plan "to bring Ukraine to heel and force the country to negotiate on peace", said The Telegraph.

The impact of these measures – in particular on intelligence – has been "immediate and dramatic", said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Enjoying the element of surprise, Russian air attacks have pounded newly exposed Ukrainian civilian targets while Russian forces have been able to carry out a sudden assault in the Kursk region.

This represents an "important evolution" in Trump's negotiating strategy. "He is no longer arguing for peace at any price. Instead, he has identified a good guy (Russia) and a bad guy (Ukraine)." In Trump's view, the "good guy definitely wants peace" and the bad guy is "standing in the way of a settlement". What we have now is Trump's opinion that "the only way to secure peace is for the good guy to inflict more death on the bad guy".

'You don't have the cards'

To show they are serious – and hopefully restore much-needed US military aid and intelligence support – Ukraine's "opening gambit in its pursuit of an equitable peace with Russia" this week is expected to include a proposal for a sea and air truce, said The Times.

But while this would bring some relief from relentless air attacks, a "ceasefire that bought time for Russia, while Ukraine got no reinforcements, would be a disaster for Kyiv", said The Independent.

Were a subsequent ceasefire to break down, "it is now certain that Zelenskyy, or his successor, would be blamed for the breach by the Trump administration". This could then see Trump play his "last major card" by asking Elon Musk to suspend the Starlink satellite broadband network, which is so crucial to Ukraine's survival.

"You don't have the cards," Trump taunted Zelenskyy during the recent clash in the Oval Office.

Arguably the US president is the one snatching away any cards Ukraine did hold. Nevertheless, Zelenskyy is left with "a painful choice" in Saudi Arabia, said The Independent – "bend the knee to Trump or lose his country".

Four senior members of Donald Trump's administration have reportedly held secret meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy's political rivals as Washington puts pressure on Ukraine to hold elections.

Trump has called Zelenskyy a "dictator with elections". Now, his officials are said to have spoken to Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as former president Petro Poroshenko, "just as Washington aligns with Moscow in seeking to lever the Ukrainian president out of his job", said Politico.

The discussions reportedly centred on whether Ukraine could hold "quick presidential elections", which have been delayed while the country remains under martial law. But there are fears that holding elections while Ukraine is under attack would be "chaotic and play into Russia's hands".

Why have there not been elections in Ukraine?

Following the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine was placed under martial law, under which it cannot legally hold elections. That is why Zelenskyy, who won 73% of the vote in the last presidential election in 2019, has remained in office beyond his original May 2024 term limit.

The practicalities of holding an election would also pose a significant challenge, when millions of eligible voters are internally displaced within Ukraine, living abroad as refugees or serving on the frontline of the war.

Will Zelenskyy resign?

If he did, it would be "a great result" for Vladimir Putin, who has sought to depose him from the start, said the BBC. Zelenskyy himself has hinted that he would be willing to step down in exchange for Nato membership. But with Trump firmly opposed to Ukraine joining the Western military alliance, that course of action is off the table, for now at least.

As things stand, Zelenskyy is unlikely to resign in the absence of a peace deal or ceasefire, not least because Ukrainian officials estimate that "preparations to get elections to 'international standards' would take six months", during which time the country would be in "political limbo", said CNN. An "enduring ceasefire" must be secured in order to hold a safe and fair election, but there are other considerations too: for instance, "only three quarters of Ukraine's polling stations are operable at present".

Who could replace Zelenskyy?

Ruslan Stefanchuk
If Zelenskyy were to step down, parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk would automatically become acting president under Ukraine's constitution. Stefanchuk, a Zelenskyy loyalist and member of the president's Servant of the People party, has strongly opposed Trump's call for wartime elections, stating that Ukraine needs "bullets, not ballots".

Valery Zaluzhny
Abroad, Zelenskyy is the face of Ukrainian resistance. At home it is "six-foot man-mountain" Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's "Iron General" and former commander-in-chief of the armed forces, said The Telegraph. Following "long-simmering tensions" over war strategy, Zelenskyy removed him from that post in 2024, said Newsweek. He now serves as the country's ambassador to the UK, and caused a storm this week by accusing the US of "destroying" the current world order. Internal polling, reported by The Economist, suggests that Zelenskyy would lose a future election to Zaluzhny by 30% to 65%.

Petro Poroshenko
Ukraine’s former president, Poroshenko rose to power after the 2014 uprising that ousted Ukraine's pro-Kremlin government. Defeated by Zelenskyy in 2019, the two are "bitter rivals", said The Telegraph. Poroshenko has indicated that he plans to run for president again, but only once the war ends. "If you ask me if I plan to participate in the next election, yes," Poroshenko told Al Jazeera. "But first, for this election, we need to have a victory." In the meantime, he remains politically active, often visiting frontline troops.

Vitali Klitschko
The current mayor of Kyiv "is a political heavyweight in the literal sense", said The Telegraph. The ex-boxing world champion and brother of Wladimir is the son of a Soviet general, fluent in four languages and entered politics in order to "steer Ukraine to a pro-European path". He has occasionally clashed with Zelenskyy, accusing him of not being honest about the state of the war. While few expect Klitschko to run for the top job if there is an election imminently, many think he will one day.

Viktor Medvedchuk
Oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk was Kyiv's key link to Putin; so close was he to the Russian president that Putin became godfather to his youngest daughter. Arrested in 2021 for allegedly aiding pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, his TV stations were shut down as Russian propaganda outlets, a move that enraged Putin and may have helped trigger the 2022 invasion. Western intelligence believed that Medvedchuk was Russia's first choice for a puppet leader if the invasion succeeded in its goal of deposing Zelenskyy.

What happened

President Donald Trump has halted intelligence sharing with Ukraine's military, days after he froze military assistance to Kyiv, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and national security adviser Mike Waltz said Wednesday. They described the decision as a temporary measure to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Who said what

Suspending intelligence sharing "could cost lives by hurting Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russian missile strikes," Reuters said, and "underscores Trump's willingness to play hardball with an ally as he pivots to a more conciliatory approach to Moscow." The "suspension of intelligence sharing to Ukraine is a major concession" to Putin, The Wall Street Journal said, but Trump officials said it would push "Ukraine to negotiations more quickly than the pause in weapons shipments."

Trump ordered a "pause" because he had a "real question" about whether Zelenskyy was "committed to the peace process," Ratcliffe told Fox Business. But as Zelenskyy commits to peace talks, the pause "will go away" and "we'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine as we have." Trump's "ill-advised and weak decision" to cut off intelligence support to "our Ukrainian partners will cost lives" and cede more "American power to Russia," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said. "And, all the while, Putin has not let up on his illegal assault against Ukraine."

What next?

Waltz told Fox News that Trump "will take a hard look at lifting this pause" if Ukraine agrees to scheduled talks with Moscow and takes unspecified "confidence-building measures." The halt of security assistance will "reduce Ukraine's leverage, weaken the Ukrainian military and therefore undermine Ukraine's negotiating position with Russia," David Shimer, former U.S. National Security Council director for Eastern Europe, said to The New York Times.

What happened

President Donald Trump Monday at least temporarily suspended the delivery of all U.S. military aid to Ukraine, a White House official told news organizations. Trump "has been clear that he is focused on peace," and he is "pausing and reviewing" the aid to ensure that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is "committed to that goal as well," the official said.

Who said what

Trump "has long been skeptical of aid to Ukraine," The Washington Post said, but this decision stemmed from Friday's "rancorous Oval Office shouting match" where Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Zelenskyy for what they saw as insufficient gratitude for the $67 billion in military aid the Biden administration gave Ukraine to fight off its Russian invaders.

The freeze "dramatically escalates the breach" between Trump and Zelenskyy "at a critical moment in the conflict," and the "most immediate beneficiary" is Russian President Vladimir Putin, The New York Times said. Trump's aid cutoff was "essentially an ultimatum," forcing Zelenskyy to "agree to a ceasefire on terms" Trump dictates, while Putin "can use the time to press for further territorial gains" or "hold back from any negotiations at all."

What next?

The freeze will continue until Trump is convinced Zelenskyy is making good-faith efforts to participate in peace talks with Russia, a White House official said. Thanks to a final "surge of new weapons approved by the Biden administration," Ukraine "likely has enough weapons to keep fighting Russia at its current pace until the middle of this year," The Wall Street Journal said. Then it would "lose its supply of some sophisticated weapons."

The announcement that the US is "pausing and reviewing" all military aid to Ukraine has been met with applause in at least one quarter. Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said President Donald Trump's decision to cut off Ukraine's defence fund "could really push the Kyiv regime to a peace process", said the BBC. Meanwhile, Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko told the corporation that the move was a "disaster" for Kyiv and suggests that the White House is now "siding with Russia" in the conflict.

What did the commentators say?

In just over a month, Trump has "executed a startling realignment of American foreign policy, effectively throwing US support behind Moscow", said NBC News. This "extraordinary pivot" that "has upended decades of hawkish foreign policy toward Russia" has seen Trump accuse Ukraine of starting the war, brand President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator", and now suspend all military aid to the country.

So far, his administration has sanctioned direct "peace" talks with the Kremlin, voted against a UN resolution blaming Moscow for its invasion, ended offensive cyber operations against Russia, disbanded efforts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs, halted efforts to combat covert Russian influence online, and signalled that it is prepared to loosen economic sanctions.

All this amounts to a simple truth that Western leaders are only now coming to terms with: "Trump is with Putin far more than he is with Europe's democracies", including Ukraine, said Phillips Payson O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, in The Atlantic.

This should perhaps come as no surprise to anyone who has watched Trump over the past decade. He has a "unique kinship" with the Russian leader that goes back to the investigation into alleged interference by Moscow during the 2016 US presidential election, said AP News. There is also an ideological and strategic rationale behind Trump's backing for Putin, explained his former chief advisor and "godfather of the Maga right", Steve Bannon, in a recent interview with The New Statesman. He said "Ukraine is a sideshow" in the long-term strategy of bringing the US and Russia together as partners in the same "Judaeo-Christian civilisation" in order to confront the real threat posed by China.

What next?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted this strategy is the best way to end the war, and that Trump is "the only leader in the world that could actually get Putin to agree to a peace". But "this is the opposite of what Trump’s actions are likely to achieve", said Katie Stallard in The New Statesman. By accusing Zelenskyy of being the main impediment to peace, the Trump administration is "only strengthening Putin's hand" and "making it less likely" that the Russian leader will offer concessions in following negotiations "let alone agree to the kind of terms that might yield a durable peace, such as the presence of a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine".

It's hard to overstate how wildly Donald Trump's foreign policy is deviating from that of his predecessor – and even "from his own campaign pitch of America First restraint", said Dave Lawler on Axios. Before taking office, Trump caused alarm by threatening to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland. Since then he has "stunned" even his own advisers with his plan for the US to take over the Gaza Strip. He says he wants Canada to become the 51st US state; he has taken an axe to America's main foreign aid agency, USAID.

And now, to the horror of European partners, he is abandoning Ukraine. Although not the first Western leader to rail against the "dictator" that started the war, he is the first to have been referring to President Zelenskyy, not Putin. His projection of raw, unfocused power is fuelling the sense that Trump's America is to be feared, even by its allies.

Well, sometimes a tougher approach – more vinegar than honey – is needed, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. In 2011, the then defence secretary, Robert Gates, gave a speech in which he warned Europe's leaders that there would eventually be "a dwindling appetite and patience" in the "American body politic" to expend funds on behalf of nations that weren't prepared to be serious partners in their own defence. Europe ignored that warning. Trump is "abrasive", but his message is hard to ignore. Even so, he should moderate his tone, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. "The future will be a hard place", and we'll need old friends at our side. It is not wise to estrange them.

Trump says he is disengaging from Europe to focus on the threat from China, but if he pushes the US's allies away, Beijing will reap the benefits, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. EU officials are now talking of expanding trade with China. Dismantling USAID will only make developing nations even more reliant on Chinese money, said Michael Schuman in The Atlantic. Indeed, there is evidence that Beijing is already moving to fill some of the gaps created by the US aid freeze. And by pulling the US out of the World Health Organisation and other bodies, Trump is clearing the way for China to use them as "instruments" of its power. His handling of Ukraine presents another opportunity for President Xi, who may in the future be able to make the case that only he can rein in Putin's territorial ambitions – and in this way, expand China's influence in Europe. How is any of this in America's best interests?

After three years of fighting Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy leads Ukraine into a fourth year of conflict with a new battle on his hands: fending off Donald Trump's demand that he agree a peace deal "fast or he's not going to have a country left".

The Ukrainian president has said he will not accept the results of Russian-US talks "held behind Ukraine's back", nor agree to Trump's $500 billion (£395 billion) "payback" plan to give the US rights to Ukrainian minerals in return for military assistance. But the US president "appears determined not only to end the war on Putin's terms but to take down" Zelenskyy's government, said The New Statesman.

Other world leaders are, for the time being, standing firm with Kyiv. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are among the politicians visiting the Ukrainian capital today to mark the third anniversary of Russia's invasion. And both Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have signalled they'll be backing Zelenskyy when they meet Trump this week.

What did the commentators say?

Trump's actions seem to be giving Vladimir Putin a victory "he could not possibly have dreamed of even a week ago", wrote Owen Matthews in The Spectator. Not only is the US president endorsing all Moscow's messages around the war, he has also signalled that "he regards Zelenskyy as a dictator".

But Putin should pay heed to Trump's past form, said Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London, in The New Statesman. During his first term in office, Trump was "even more gushing" about North Korea's Kim Jong Un, only to cool off suddenly when "reality set in". It's "as likely as not" that "there will be no early deal".

Regardless, "the shift in Washington’s policy has set off alarm bells in Europe", said The Associated Press. The visits to Ukraine today are part of a "conspicuous show of support" for Zelenskyy – "We are in Kyiv today because Ukraine is Europe", posted von der Leyen on X. The EU has also announced that it is "committed to supporting Ukraine" until there is "a just and lasting peace".

In Ukraine itself, 91% oppose any peace negotiations that exclude their country, according to a survey in The Kyiv Independent. In a weekend call with Zelenskyy, Starmer affirmed that Ukraine must be "at the heart of any negotiations" on a peace deal, and that "safeguarding Ukraine's sovereignty was essential" to stop future Russian aggression, said The Guardian.

What next?

Starmer and Macron will deliver a united message on Ukraine at their respective meetings with Trump this week, pursuing a co-ordinated approach agreed after "a round of intense international diplomacy", said The Times. The two leaders will each try to persuade Trump "not to hold bilateral peace negotiations with Moscow, in return for European commitments to Ukraine's future security".