In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the order had come from Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth.

‘This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theatre requirements and conditions on the ground,’ he said.

‘We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to twelve months.’

…

The US military deployment in Germany is by far its biggest in Europe, with about 12,000 troops in Italy and a further 10,000 in the UK.

Many are stationed at Ramstein Air Base outside the south-western German city of Kaiserslautern.

And while Trump has proposed US troop reductions in Germany before, they have so far not come into effect.

Only Japan hosts a larger US troop presence.

The USA is traditionally one of the most important foreign markets for German car manufacturers, especially for Porsche, BMW and Mercedes.

In any case, the industry was hit hard by the tariffs last year: Although 27.5 per cent initially applied, this fell to 15 per cent in August following the deal with the EU. However, this is still six times as much as the 2.5 per cent that previously applied. The latest escalation is likely to leave car managers shaking their heads once again.

After all, car exports from Germany to the USA already collapsed last year as a result of the tariff increases.

‘Trump has hit the car industry in Germany and Europe hard,’ said car expert Stefan Bratzel. With his tariffs, he is reinforcing the trend that cars are increasingly being built where they are sold. ‘For jobs in Europe, in Germany, this is of course poison.’

Throughout the whole process, the king plays a major part in crafting. He makes marks by hand, in red ink, to drafts printed out for him, writing commentary in the margins at considerable length, adding things in and crossing things out. He will also have held meetings with Alderton on the subject.

He is said to be good at jokes, with no need for a joke writer. Certainly there were many, which lightened the tough message. Though which genius came up with the idea of giving the president a bell from HMS Trump, a T-class submarine launched in 1944, is not immediately known.

What resulted was an address that appealed to much of the US political class, if not the Trump administration, according to Murphy.

But its impact should not be judged immediately. ‘Trump will be back to being Trump on Monday,’ said Seldon.

‘But I wouldn’t judge its impact by what Trump is going to be saying on Monday. I would judge it in the long-term sense, by what the Republicans and the Democrats do; how they view NATO; how they view the Ukraine war; how they view America’s unilateral behaviour; how they view executive power in the person, which is to take more power than the founding fathers intended when they carefully devised the separation of powers.’

During a lengthy discussion with podcast host Pawan Luthra, Tony Burke, who also holds the Immigration and Citizenship portfolios, describes how Australia needs to find the best skilled migrants ‘more than ever before’.

‘Half of our doctors now are born overseas, half of our registered nurses are born overseas, about a quarter of the tradespeople we need to build homes are born overseas’.

‘We can’t run our health system or build the houses that we need without immigration now, and we have really geared up the targeting, and there’s still more that I wanted us to keep doing to make sure that we can get the best and the brightest’.

‘A whole lot of the economic strength of Australia relies on us having a really well targeted immigration program and can I say in the time that that story has happened, that we’ve needed the best and the brightest and more and more skilled immigrants, has been the exact time that we’ve seen the growth in the Indian community.’

Asked about recent debate about the levels of immigration in Australia, Mr Burke acknowledged the government needed to make sure that ‘infrastructure and services are keeping pace’.

‘It is true that you need to make sure you are building enough houses for the people to deal with the housing shortage that we have - getting the right immigrants is actually part of the solution, not just, not necessarily, part of the problem’.

‘It’s not like you could have unlimited immigration without creating a problem with housing and infrastructure, so we need to make sure that it’s managed and it’s paced,’ Mr Burke says.

‘One of the things that really worries me about the current debate, though, if you get into a world of just saying, effectively immigration is bad, you get into a world of people casting suspicion on immigrants.’

Japan has overtaken the US in the 2026 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, ranking 62nd in its annual global ranking released Thursday.

Tokyo moved up from 66th the previous year, while the U.S. slid to 64th, down from 57th in 2025, said the group, which is also known by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF).

In 1799, Monroe was elected governor of Virginia. As governor, Monroe increased state involvement in education and transportation, he also invested in the state militia.

He supported the candidacy of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, by appointing election officials favourable to Jefferson to ensure his presidential victory.

Jefferson capitalised on this support and Monroe’s ambassadorial past, by sending him to France to assist in the Louisiana Purchase.

While negotiating, Jefferson made Monroe the ambassador to Britain. Jefferson gave orders to purchase only West Florida and New Orleans for at most nine million dollars, Monroe disobeyed Jefferson and bought all of Louisiana for fifteen million dollars. Monroe’s actions did not anger Jefferson; rather he was very pleased with the purchase, the president even offered Monroe the position of the first governor of the new territory, he declined and remained in Europe to continue as ambassador to the British.

…

In 1811 Monroe was once again elected the governor of Virginia; however, in April of that year, Madison appointed him Secretary of State, forcing him to leave the gubernatorial position. By selecting Monroe, Madison sought to quell instability within the party, along with reconciling with his former friend. As Secretary of State, Monroe worked diligently to prevent the practice of impressment. He found progress with the French, however, the British would not negotiate, and in 1812, Monroe joined Henry Clay and the ‘War Hawks’ and called for war. Madison followed Monroe’s advice, and the War of 1812 began.

The War of 1812 cemented Monroe into the public eye as a leader. Monroe served as Secretary of State, where he sent John Quincy Adams to negotiations in Ghent. In 1814 Madison made Monroe Secretary of War, and Monroe resigned from his position as Secretary of State, but Madison never appointed a new Secretary of State, and as a result, for a brief time, Monroe served a joint role as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War.

After the war concluded in 1815, Monroe decided to run for president in 1816. Monroe had become a hero through his leadership in the war. Monroe won the presidency with an electoral vote of 183 to 34.

The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favour of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic.

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defence.

With the movements in this hemisphere, we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted.

We owe it, therefore, to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

In the war between those new Governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no change shall occur which, in the judgment of the competent authorities of this Government, shall make a corresponding change on the part of the United States indispensable to their security.

…there are several potential ways in which a renewed Monroe Doctrine could take shape from 2025 onward.

In addition to defence issues, concern over China’s role in Latin America would spread to include a variety of matters involving technology, investment, trade, drugs, and diplomacy. Trump may well rely on an intimidating policy base of pressures, sanctions, and retaliations to try to persuade governments to turn away from Beijing—even though, if recent history is any guide, Washington is unlikely to offer much of an alternative when it comes to investments or help with infrastructure.

Iran’s footprint in the region is also likely to garner more attention, especially given that country’s longstanding alliances with Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Given Trump’s previous abandonment of a deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program during his first term, Iran may shift from being seen as an annoyance in the region to something more overtly ‘malign’—to be dealt with more forceful policy both in the Middle East and in Latin America.

But the biggest shifts could be in Washington’s treatment of Latin American governments themselves. Trump’s last Secretary of Defence, Mark Esper, in his book Sacred Oath, paints a vivid picture of Trump’s obsession with Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. For example, he proposed launching missiles into Mexico to obliterate drug infrastructure, imposing a blockade of Cuba, and engaging in military action against Venezuela.

A second Trump White House may well lack some of the more rational voices that averted more rash actions the first time around. And with Nicolás Maduro continuing to rely on violence and repression to subdue the political opposition in Venezuela, the temptation to intervene may only grow.

…

A hardline policy against migrants, including military deployment in the Caribbean Basin, should not be discarded, as well as an expanded role of the U.S. Southern Command in the fight against drugs and organised crime in large parts of the region.

The Monroe Doctrine is an old idea. But it hasn’t been consigned to the dustbin of history just yet.

The Monroe Doctrine belongs to a bygone era of American history. Its invocation in the twenty-first century reflects not strategic wisdom but rather the intellectual bankruptcy of a foreign policy establishment unable to imagine alternatives to interventionism. The doctrine’s promise to keep European powers out of the Western Hemisphere has morphed into a presumptuous claim that Washington should manage all regional affairs—a mission impossible that serves neither American interests nor regional stability.

The irony is rich: the same voices warning about Chinese ‘debt trap diplomacy’ in the Caribbean support policies that would trap the United States in an endless cycle of military interventions, nation-building failures, and budgetary haemorrhaging.

The same officials who claim to defend American interests advocate commitments that drain national resources while producing minimal security benefits.

The path forward requires intellectual courage—the willingness to admit that American military power cannot solve every problem and that restraint often serves national interests better than intervention. It demands recognition that the Caribbean’s proximity to the United States creates neither an obligation nor a right to dominate the region’s political affairs.

Until Washington abandons the Monroe Doctrine’s interventionist legacy and embraces a foreign policy of realistic restraint, the Caribbean will remain a theatre for costly, counterproductive military adventures. American taxpayers and Caribbean peoples alike deserve better than this tired, failed approach masquerading as a strategic necessity.

And the first six days of the war alone cost the US $11.3bn, the Pentagon briefed members of Congress – though it wasn’t clear if those numbers included the cost of the buildup or the US missile defences as well. The ultimate toll of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz on the world economy remains to be seen.

Past administrations had been war-gaming an Iran invasion for decades – but with Trump in the White House, observers said that the rigidly closed circle of advisers around him, the collapse of an interagency process in the government and his erratic decision-making process made this unlike any other US military campaign in recent memory.

‘This is hard under any circumstances but especially with so little [evidence of] planning,’ said Philip Gordon, the former national security adviser to Kamala Harris and the White House coordinator for the Middle East under Barack Obama.

Of the growing chaos in the Middle East, he said: ‘It is surprising that Trump is surprised.’

Previous administration had ‘gamed out’ potential conflict scenarios with Iran ‘many times and constantly’, said Gordon, now of the Brookings Institution, but regularly ran into exactly the problems that the Trump administration is now facing: Iran targeted neighbouring countries to threaten a regional war and closed the strait of Hormuz, threatening the global oil trade and driving up energy prices.

‘One of the reasons we did the nuclear deal and didn’t try to change the regime is exactly what’s happening,’ he said of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2018.

The military campaign to eliminate the Iranian leadership has achieved considerable success. The early strikes that killed Khamenei and dozens of his senior advisers were the product of a collaboration between Israeli on-the-ground intelligence and US signals intelligence. Trump seemed poised to match the success of the 12-day war, when the US delivered surgical strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme and then exited the conflict.

But Iran has continued to fight. And as Trump and top officials such as the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, herald the complete destruction of the Iranian leadership in successive briefings, there are no clear explanations for what the US will call victory in the conflict, and how it will now reverse Iran’s decision to squeeze the global oil supply.

‘The military planning has been stellar,’ said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert on US foreign policy on Iran. ‘That said, politically, this is increasingly looking like a cluster fuck. And the reason is that step one of any plan is to establish a goal – the targeting should be in pursuit of that goal. The United States has this backwards. We have the targeting, but we don’t have a clear goal, and that lies not on the Pentagon planners, but on Donald Trump.’

Iran new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s physical condition and inability to maintain regular communication with officials have prompted criticism and political maneuvering among some ruling clerics, according to information received by Iran International.

Ali Asghar Hejazi, deputy chief of staff to the former Supreme Leader, and Alireza Arafi, a member of the Guardian Council and a member of Interim Leadership Council are among clerics who have raised concerns about Mojtaba Khamenei’s health and managerial capacity, sources told Iran International.

They are pushing for authority at the top of the Islamic Republic to return to a temporary leadership council.

Hejazi and Arafi are also among influential clerics who have criticised the growing power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the increasing dominance of its commanders over government decision-making during the war.

Divisions between political officials and ruling clerics on one side and Revolutionary Guards commanders on the other have deepened following the killing of Iran’s former leader, particularly after Mojtaba Khamenei was introduced as the new head of the Islamic Republic.

Today, this 22-square-kilometre coral outcrop in the Bushehr province is widely known among Iranians as the ‘Forbidden Island’.

Shrouded in intense secrecy and guarded by the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), it is a place where entry is strictly restricted to those with official security clearances.

Yet, beyond the imposing steel fences and military watchtowers lies a pristine landscape where millennia of diverse human history quietly coexist with the beating heart of Iran’s modern energy empire.

….

Located 55km northwest of the Bushehr port and 15 nautical miles (equivalent to about 28km) from the Iranian mainland, Kharg Island is the undisputed economic backbone of Iran.

The island processes 90 per cent of the nation’s total oil exports, handling approximately 950 million barrels every year.

Measuring just 8km in length and 4 to 5km in width, its deep surrounding waters provide a natural geographic advantage. This depth allows colossal supertankers to dock safely and load crude destined primarily for Asian markets, with China standing as the leading importer.

According to the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum, the island’s facilities act as the vital nerve centre for the sector. The terminal receives crude from three major offshore fields – Aboozar, Forouzan, and Dorood – which is then transported via a complex network of subsea pipelines to onshore processing facilities before being stored or shipped to global markets.

In May 2025, S&P Global Commodity Insights reported that Tehran added two million barrels to the terminal’s storage capacity by rehabilitating tanks 25 and 27, each capable of holding one million barrels.

Historically, the loading capacity of these continuously upgraded terminals has reached a staggering maximum of seven million barrels per day, though current national exports hover around 1.6 million barrels daily, in addition to managing production for the domestic market.

‘Six members of the G7 expressed a very clear view that this is not the right signal to send. We learned this morning that the US government has apparently decided otherwise,’ (Merz said).

‘Once again, we believe this is the wrong decision. There is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem. And in that regard, I would like to know what additional motives led the US government to make this decision.’

Merz, who discussed support for Ukraine in its war against Russia with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, said Moscow continues to show no willingness to negotiate and that pressure on the Kremlin must increase.

‘If we continue to pound the security infrastructure in Iran, I believe that we’ll create the conditions for the people of Iran’ to overthrow their government, Pence said.

Pence, who served as vice president during Trump’s first term in office, said he disagrees there is a wide rift within the GOP over the conflict.

Some members of Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ movement have said they feel betrayed by the president’s intervention overseas after he pledged as a candidate to avoid wars. Other critics within MAGA oppose the Trump administration’s supportive policy toward Israel.

That divide is largely ‘among some commentators, some online influencers,’ Pence said.

Mr Steele said: ‘I would argue this goes right back to the 1970s.

‘My sources in America tell me that the American government, the American intelligence services assessment was that Epstein was recruited as early as the 1970s by Russian organised crime figures in New York and that his information was being used, his operational techniques were being used from that point onwards.

‘One of the interesting aspects of this is that if the American security services knew that this was initially a Russian operation, was a continuing Russian operation over the years, why did they let it run so long? I find that mysterious. I think other intelligence services were also involved. Israelis, almost certainly.

‘The value of the kompromat that was being gathered must have been so great that it was attractive to more than just the Russian intelligence services.’

While the core of the Epstein saga will always be his web of sexual abusers and the women and girls they preyed on, every new set of messages released by the US justice department reveals the staggering range of his social network and the relationships he was able to sustain.

Epstein’s emails read like a self-help group for the 0.01 per cent. How did a college dropout from a working-class family in Brooklyn manage to do it?

The picture that emerges is of a man with an extraordinary ability to work out exactly what some of the world’s richest and most powerful people wanted and needed, and provide it to them. Epstein managed to keep doing this even after spending 13 months in jail starting in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

He was able to turn those relationships into a source of money, information and further relationships, a form of social Ponzi scheme that he kept going until he was arrested and died in jail in 2019. The needs of his elite group of associates varied.

To satisfy them, Epstein could present himself as a confidant, a broker of introductions, a gateway to a more luxurious lifestyle, or even a banker. According to US prosecutors, he had also built ‘a network of minor victims in multiple states to sexually abuse and exploit’.

Fame, power, sex and crime — the Epstein files are likely to reverberate for a generation, especially given the legion of questions about his abuse of women and the source of his money that remain unanswered. In an era of profound mistrust of elites, modern politics is already being shaped by the power of conspiracy theories. QAnon believers in the US, a loyal part of the Trump coalition, have long claimed to be battling a group of elite paedophiles in government, business and the media.

It turns out that the real conspiracy was being run not by Davos or the UN or from the basement of a pizza restaurant, but from the hyperactive email account of a child sex offender in a townhouse on the Upper East Side. When Epstein’s deployment of wealth, flattery or assistance failed, he would threaten and bully — turning the intimacy he cultivated in people into a fear of exposure that kept the machine running.

In Norway, the revelation of emails between Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Epstein caused initial shockwaves.

Then, on Thursday this week, Norwegian police opened a criminal investigation into former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland on suspicion of ‘gross corruption’ linked to gifts, loans and benefits he may have received from Epstein.

…

Jagland’s association with Epstein is linked to his time as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

His critics at the time alleged he did not do enough to fight corruption and that he was overly friendly towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Thursday this week, Norwegian police said it is investigating whether Jagland received gifts, loans and travel benefits while serving in those positions after emails between him and Epstein emerged in the released documents last Friday.

…

Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s … friendship with Epstein was already known. The latest tranche of documents, however, provides a much clearer picture of the nature of her relationship with him, with hundreds of messages sent over several years.

They included a 2012 email from Mette-Marit to Epstein in which she asked him: ‘Is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my I5 yr old sons wallpaper?’

…

In a statement following the documents’ release, the crown princess said she felt ‘deep sympathy and solidarity’ with the girls abused by Epstein.

She said she took responsibility for ‘not having investigated Epstein’s background more thoroughly’ and also expressed regret for ‘having had any contact with Epstein at all. It is simply embarrassing.’

Separately, Mette-Marit’s eldest son, Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, whom she had referred to in her emails to Epstein, appeared in court this week on multiple charges, including rape and domestic violence.

He denied charges of rape and filming people without their consent in court on Wednesday, but admitted to transporting drugs and speeding while driving.

When he was alive, Jeffrey Epstein relentlessly abused young women. Nowadays his ghost haunts a different group: the grand old men of global capitalism. Even before America’s Justice Department released a vast trove of documents on January 30, the Epstein affair had claimed enough high-profile careers to fill a private jet.

Les Wexner, a retail magnate who employed Epstein as a financial adviser, was the first to go. He resigned from L Brands in 2020. The next year Jes Staley, boss of Barclays, a British bank, and Leon Black, founder of Apollo, an investment firm, were dethroned. Some of the biggest names in commerce, from Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, to Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, have been tarnished.

Their ranks will surely grow as lawyers, journalists and social-media addicts pore over Epstein’s emails. On February 4 the chair of Paul Weiss, a white-shoe law firm, joined those resigning from their posts over revelations of their ties to Epstein. What many of the defenestrated have in common, apart from various levels of bad judgment, is membership of an elite at its zenith between the 1980s, when Epstein left Wall Street to work as a fixer and tax adviser, and 2019, when he died in an apparent suicide.

Epstein attracted powerful people because he knew so many of them. Yet this dynamic also created a single point of failure for a singular elite. Meritocracy made them powerful, global markets made them rich — and now Epstein is making them reviled.

Giuffre’s family told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday they wish Giuffre were here to witness this moment and see her impact.

‘I’m very proud of her for everything she was able to accomplish and everything she keeps accomplishing from beyond,’ Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts said.

Roberts applauded the growing social justice movement coming out of the files release and called for a criminal investigation of Mountbatten-Windsor.

‘I think that his day is coming, and we hope that they open up a criminal investigation on him quite frankly,’ Roberts said.

In an interview with British public broadcaster BBC, Giuffre’s family called the release of the email a ‘vindicating moment.’

‘It shows that not only was she not lying this entire time … she was telling the truth,’ Roberts said.

‘It’s a moment where we’re really proud of our sister. I think that it is a vindicating moment, but we also want to use this as a moment to remind people to believe survivors,’ Roberts added.

‘I served there. I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there,’ Prince Harry, who was twice deployed to the country, said on Friday as he paid tribute to Nato troops killed in the conflict, including 457 UK service personnel.

The prince was reacting to controversial comments made by Donald Trump in an interview on Thursday.

Trump’s words have drawn condemnation from international allies, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling them ‘insulting and frankly appalling’.

The UK and other nations joined the US in Afghanistan after Nato’s collective security clause was invoked following the 9/11 attacks.

Prince Harry said: ‘In 2001, Nato invoked Article 5 for the first - and only - time in history. It meant that every allied nation was obliged to stand with the United States in Afghanistan, in pursuit of our shared security. Allies answered that call.’

He added: ‘Thousands of lives were changed forever. Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.

‘Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defence of diplomacy and peace.’

That trust has been shaken irreparably. Even if tensions ease, the episode leaves a mark. An alliance can survive repeated shocks. But each one raises the threshold to restore confidence.

Europeans did not have to make a decision this week about retaliation. But they must use this episode to reflect on the fact that fragmentation carries its own costs. When Europe cannot speak clearly about its red lines, it invites testing. Pressure does not need to succeed to be repeated. It only needs to go unanswered.

Ultimately, the deeper lesson of Greenland and the many humiliations of the past year is that Europe’s vulnerability lies in its dependence on the United States. Economic tools can raise costs at the margin; they cannot substitute for power. European leaders face a more consequential task: building the foundations of autonomy that were allowed to erode. That means investing seriously in military capability, integrating defence planning and procurement, diversifying trade partners, and reducing exposure in critical economic domains, from energy and technology to finance and supply chains. There can be no return to the comforts of asymmetric reliance, dressed up as partnership.

Greenland should be treated as a precedent, not an aberration. The immediate threat has receded, but the underlying reality remains: Europe is dealing with an ally willing to test boundaries, probe weakness, and turn dependence into leverage. In response, Europe must pair greater unity and clarity about its red lines with sustained efforts to reduce the vulnerabilities that make coercion effective in the first place.

The reaction among Trump’s European allies has not been uniform. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Czechia’s new populist leader, Andrej Babis, and Matteo Salvini, head of the right-wing Lega Nord party, avoided criticising Trump and urged restraint.

Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s former prime minister, lent credence to Trump’s argument about the supposed Russian and Chinese threat to Greenland.

But the response from nationalists — and possible future leaders — in Europe’s three leading powers shows the ingrained contradictions in their alliance with Trump.

In 2025, a number of right-wing Trump-friendly parties, seen as clear favourites to win the next elections, have been defeated at the polls — primarily in Canada and Australia — showing just how toxic an alliance with the US president can be.

‘This shows how contradictory it is to support Trump’s policy while pretending to be protecting your country’s national sovereignty,’ says Sebastien Maillard, special advisor at the Institut Jacques Delors.

‘Supporting the national interests of your country and supporting Trump’s America First policy just isn’t sustainable,’ he told the Kyiv Independent.

He also sees himself as standing up for Maga principles at a time when Trump seems to be watering them down.

The White House’s bid to persuade Republicans in Congress not to vote for releasing files relating to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a huge blow to Maga, Dans says.

‘To see America First warriors being savaged for arguing for publication was very dispiriting,’ he adds, referring to Maga supporters who incurred Trump’s wrath by calling for the files’ release.

The most prominent was Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a one-time Trump diehard who has had a bitter fallout with him over Epstein.

‘She was fighting for the president in his darkest moments [before his re-election],’ says Dans. ‘It’s a gross mistake to pillory her and not to listen.’

As the White House faces pressure over what Democrats dub the ‘affordability crisis’, Dans concedes that the midterm elections in November will be a challenge for Republicans.

‘People are not getting behind the big jingoistic flyover. Yes, they saw a miraculous extraction in Venezuela, but that’s as good as it’s going to get.’

‘No one has ever won an election by alienating their base and that’s the problem here,’ he adds. In his view, Project 2025 stopped the internal warring.

‘That’s what always divided the conservative movement, and you see that breaking out again today. They’re right back at it with fisticuffs.’

In Canada, I made about $130,000 per year. Driving, I’m unlikely to exceed the $36,580 per year that is the federal poverty guideline, and it takes twice that much to live comfortably in Northern Virginia.

Before, I interviewed prime ministers and CEOs and documented humanitarian disasters for media organisations with a global reach. Now I provide a basic service, and I wait for my phone to beep.

For most of my life, my movement has given me both agency and freedom. Now other people’s movement is a means for my survival.

I see my own fragility reflected in the people climbing into my back seat before dawn: widows, migrants, parents, workers stitching together lives on the margins. We are all improvising, all one broken transmission or missed paycheck away from something worse. For the first time in my life, I am no longer observing this precarious world from the outside, notebook in hand. I am inside it, dependent on an algorithm, measuring my worth in five-dollar increments.

As a journalist, I depended on taxi drivers to do my job. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to the White House, I took an Uber to Pennsylvania Avenue. When, as a sitting prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi spoke during his tax fraud trial, I took a cab to the Milan courthouse. When I interviewed Romano Prodi ahead of the 2006 national election, in which he narrowly defeated Berlusconi, I took a cab to party headquarters.

For several years I covered the deadliest migration route in the world, across the Mediterranean to Italy from Libya or Tunisia. Some 26,000 migrants are estimated to have died attempting this sea passage since 2014, a number roughly equivalent to half of America’s dead in the Vietnam War. It is also where there have been the most disappearances. Only Neptune, Roman god of the sea, knows how many.

At the time I was documenting the contours of human displacement I didn’t really understand what would drive a person to attempt such a dangerous passage, especially with children in tow. Now I am closer to understanding that kind of desperation.

The significance of Thursday night lies not in raw numbers alone, but in coordination and credibility. Many external calls in the past produced little or nothing. This one did not. For the first time, a call issued for a specific hour was answered across the country. Demonstrations began simultaneously at the designated time, offering clear evidence of collective response rather than scattered unrest. That precision, and the response to it, marked a qualitative shift in Iran’s political dynamics.

The Islamic Republic still controls the machinery of the state. What it lost on Thursday night is exclusivity over its remaining political legitimacy, both domestically and internationally. From this point on, foreign governments are no longer dealing with an uncontested representative of the Iranian nation, but with a regime whose claim to speak for Iran is openly challenged. Power maintained by force can endure for a time. Power stripped of legitimacy does not recover it.
At the same time, Reza Pahlavi crossed a line that many before him failed to reach. This was not symbolism, nostalgia, or digital noise. It was a successful act of political command. Others issued calls from abroad and were ignored. He issued one, and it was answered nationwide and on schedule. That is not popularity. That is operational leadership.

With this, Iran’s opposition space has been fundamentally reordered. The question is no longer whether Iranians are searching for an alternative or whether a leader could emerge. Both questions have been settled. A focal point now exists, and the regime is forced to reckon with it.

‘The one thing the Chinese were not at all polemical about was the war in Ukraine.

They listened carefully. Because they knew they had gotten it wrong before the war started. They thought the Russians would roll right over the Ukrainians,’ he says.

‘I think that honestly had fuelled some of Xi’s doubts about issues such as Taiwan.’

It is a different presidency. It is highly challenging. But there is something to work with. He feels quite personally about Ukraine, in a way that’s hugely problematic for the UK, but he has affection for the UK, deep affection, which is actually more manifest this time around. He’s got a good functioning relationship with Starmer. I was there for the early setting of that relationship. It is important. And he thinks that NATO increasing defence spending is one of his success stories. It’s not without justification that he can say in the Middle East that his unorthodox approach to diplomacy has yielded more success than there was under Biden. It’s hugely problematic on the Ukraine portfolio. But then there’s still a lot to play for.

But it’s unquestionably a different beast. First time around there were the so-called adults in the room, even if there was a lot of churn. Jim Mattis talking about the rules-based order being the greatest gift of the greatest generation. Gary Cohn and HR McMaster saying America first does not mean America alone. You could orient yourself around that.

This time around it’s harder to orient yourself around a particular faction or grouping. The head of policy planning is gone already, Michael Anton, who was regarded as the Trump intellectual, though his hand is on the national security strategy. The National Security team in the White House is much smaller. In the Biden White House the NSA was massive, hundreds and hundreds of people. So you’ve got more confusion about who’s doing what, as you have seen with what’s going on with the Ukraine negotiations (Kellogg to Witkoff to Rubio to Kushner).

…

Ukraine needs the UK, the proper allies, to stay in the fight and play with whatever ground there is. There’s room for sharp, effective diplomacy. It’s more radical, it’s more combustible. It sticks in the craw. However, we’ve learned some useful habits. Why should we have commentary on every US domestic political issue when we don’t on Chinese and Indian ones. For the sake of diplomacy, do we need to respond every time JD Vance says something about our free speech? No, we don’t.

…

What’s tangibly different now is the Trump administration approach in Ukraine, which changes the conversations that are being had privately between Paris and Berlin and London. In particular, those between Berlin and London right now are of greater consequence than they were when the Biden administration had a relative constancy and transparency about its approach. Secondly, though all three countries are careful about wishing away American support and flouncing around about the future Europe without America, there’s more behind-the-scenes planning in place for what you might call an orderly transition from a dominant American security umbrella.

There are lots of areas where the substance of what the UK-EU relationship should look like hasn’t been worked out.

Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, promised on Friday that ministers were looking seriously at the possibility of access to X being barred in the UK.

Kendall said she expected Ofcom, which said this week that it was seeking urgent answers from the platform, to announce action within ‘days not weeks’.

‘X needs to get a grip and get this material down,’ she said. ‘And I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act, there are backstop powers to block access to services if they refuse to comply with the law for people in the UK. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they would have the full backing of the government.’

In a statement, Ofcom said it had contacted X on Monday and set a ‘firm deadline’ of Friday for the site to explain itself, adding: ‘We’re now undertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency and will provide further updates shortly.’

Under the Online Safety Act the regulator can compel platforms to tackle such material and issue multimillion-pound fines for lack of compliance, with the ultimate sanction being a court order for web providers to block a site or app altogether.

X has been approached for comment. Musk has previously insisted, ‘anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they uploaded illegal content’.

Musk responded to an X user’s post about the UK government’s threat, saying: ‘They want any excuse for censorship.’

‘Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together. In the best-case scenario, I don’t think you should drink alcohol, but it does allow people an excuse to bond and socialise, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.”

‘If you look at the blue zones, for example, around the world where people live the longest, alcohol is sometimes part of their diet. Again, small amounts taken very judiciously and usually in a celebratory fashion. So there is alcohol on these dietary guidelines, but the implication is don’t have it for breakfast. This should be something done in a small amount, hopefully in some kind of an event that may have alcohol at it.’

‘But the general move away from two glasses for men, one glass for women. There was never really good data to support that quantity of alcohol consumption. That data was probably primarily confused with broader data about social connectedness.’

Given this record, it is easy to imagine that things will continue to get worse, and that America’s self-degradation has not yet found a bottom. I have been travelling in Asia and Europe recently, and in both regions, I get asked the same questions: What happened to the American system of checks and balances? What should American allies do, now that the United States has pulled the rug out from under them? Do we have an alternative to obsequiously bowing to Trump and pleading for him to spare us the worst, as everyone from American law firms to NATO allies has learned to do up to now?

I think it is very important at this juncture for former American friends not to engage in catastrophic thinking, because catastrophe may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. During the first Trump term, I warned friends not to assume that the world would at some point snap back to what it was prior to 2016, or that Trumpist populism was just a passing phase. There were too many shifts in right-wing coalitions around the world for this to happen.

But it is important to understand that Trumpism is also not a permanent condition. I believe that already in the first year of his second term, we have experienced peak Trump, and that his power will decline steadily as time goes on.

When we talk about the threat assessment, how has it changed from Estonia’s perspective from the beginning of the year to the end?

What we’re still seeing today is that Russia currently has no intention of attacking any of the Baltic states or NATO more broadly.

We’ve seen that, as a result of our responses, Russia has altered its behaviour following various incidents that have occurred more broadly in the region. So far, it’s still clear that Russia respects NATO and is currently trying to avoid any open conflict.

What do you mean when you say that Russia has changed its behaviour in response to our actions?

Following various incidents — starting with the undersea cables some time ago or the different drone incursions into NATO airspace or aircraft violations — what we’ve seen is that, in response to reactions from the West or NATO, Russia has taken various measures to prevent such incidents from happening again in the future.

If we look at the current situation, including what’s visible to the public, the drone flight paths over Ukrainian territory or airspace have been adjusted to minimise risk. We’re also seeing that Russian aircraft are now very carefully monitoring their flight paths over the Baltic Sea, strictly adhering to their trajectories to avoid triggering incidents.

There have also been no cable-related incidents since the NATO mission [Baltic Sentry] was launched here. That's the current situation. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility of future incidents because military activity remains high and the war in Ukraine is ongoing. In theory, such events are still possible, but at the moment we don't see any indication that Russia is deliberately trying to escalate.

Lieutenant General Budanov, 39, has led HUR since 2020. Under his leadership, HUR has evolved into a formidable force during Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Budanov has become a household name in Ukraine, his agency is regarded as one of the most competent institutions in the country, while the spy chief has been publicly giving bold predictions about the war’s outcome. Not all of them came true.

A lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, who spoke with the Kyiv Independent on condition of anonymity, believes that Budanov’s appointment may signal that the widely discussed peace plan will not yield results given the Russian stance.

‘We need to prepare for a long, exhausting struggle. And this is exactly the approach that Budanov represents,’ the lawmaker said.

Lawmakers and experts argue that the most important thing is not who becomes the new head of the President’s Office, but the role’s future influence. Budanov’s predecessor, Yermak, accumulated unprecedented power within the Ukrainian government.

‘(Budanov) will need to build his own system, his own vertical of power. I think it will be a different style of leadership for the office,’ the same source told the Kyiv Independent.

‘He’s a spymaster, but he’s not a master of political intrigue.”’

Lawmakers from the president’s party who spoke with the Kyiv Independent approved Zelensky’s choice, while questioning why Budanov agreed to take on this role.

Although Budanov has never announced plans to pursue a political career, he is regularly featured in opinion polls and ranks among the top presidential contenders, behind only Zelensky and Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.K. Valerii Zaluzhny.

According to a recent poll conducted by Socis, Budanov would secure 5.7 per cent in the first round. In a hypothetical runoff between Zelensky and Budanov, the latter one would defeat Zelensky with 56 per cent of the vote against 44 per cent.

According to the Economist, Budanov was close to losing his job in June 2025. The effort to oust the popular spy chief was led by then President’s Office Head Yermak, according to the news outlet.

Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, sees Budanov’s appointment either as an attempt to remove a political rival or a move to shape him into a possible successor to Zelensky.

In an August 27 complaint, a soldier’s mother, Oksana Krasnova, attached a video her son had taken of himself and a comrade handcuffed to a tree for four days without food, water or access to a toilet. She pleaded, ‘They are not animals!’

She also made the story public on social media, saying her son and his comrade had been punished for refusing to go on a suicide mission that involved taking a photo with a Russian flag on Ukrainian-held territory.

Reached by The Times, the son, Ilya Gorkov, said he had taken the video near Kreminna, Ukraine, after hiding a phone in his sleeve and that he was released thanks only to a relative with connections in the Russian security services. He said he had hired a lawyer and was refusing to return to his unit, because doing so ‘would be like signing my own death warrant.’

‘People in wheelchairs are being sent to the front, without arms or legs,’ he said. ‘I saw it all with my own eyes.’

…

In at least 95 cases reviewed by The Times, prisoners of war released by Ukraine were returned against their will to Russian military service, often to active combat.

Thousands of captive Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been freed in prisoner exchanges over the last four years. The documents show that Russia sometimes sends these troops back to the front line as quickly as a day after their release.

One Russian soldier who said he had been sent back to the front line after seven months in Ukrainian captivity described in a complaint how memories from his time as a POW were causing him to panic and make poor decisions on the battlefield.

‘Given my psychological state, sending a former prisoner of war to an active combat zone is a rash decision,’ he said in the complaint. ‘How can I carry out the orders of the command if this whole situation is affecting me mentally?’

The Ukraine War has significantly changed public attitudes toward this question, and led to a consolidation of most of the Russian population behind a set of national ideas. This has contributed to the resilience that Russia has shown in the war, and helped to frustrate Western hopes that economic pressure and heavy casualties would undermine support for the war and for President Vladimir Putin. To judge by the evidence to date, there is very little hope of these Western goals being achieved in the future.

…

When the war in Ukraine started, without any warning to the Russian public, it was initially met with disbelief, confusion, and bewilderment. Most were concerned with their chances to navigate the troubled waters rather than providing support for their country.

No longer. Nearly four years of war has profoundly transformed Russia. Fostered by state propaganda, many ordinary Russians have developed a sense of pride that Russia has survived in the face of Western hostility. This feeling has been fed by Western expressions of contempt toward the Russian people and Russian culture — insults that are assiduously quoted by the state-controlled Russian media.

…

Emphasis on Russian culture has become more pronounced, and not only because of the war. Russia, having rejected ‘woke’ ideology when it emerged onto the global stage, has presented itself as the ‘true,’ or traditional, 20th-century Europe. This appeals even to many liberal Russians, who aspired to join the Western civilisation of the past, but not what it has become today. Even among Russians who strongly opposed the war, there is a feeling of satisfaction that Russia no longer has to defer to the West culturally.

The Australia I remember during my youth bears little resemblance to the nation that now exists.

I am not sure you can even describe us as a nation – we are more like a heterogeneous agglomeration of vested and frequently colliding interests.

I think there is a fair case to be made that we have traded away our soul. There is no cohesive national identity. There was, once upon a time, a demonstrably visible national character. We knew what it was to be Australian.

We loved our country. Our flag. Our history. Our entrepreneurial and iconoclastic verve. Our disdain of centralised authority. Our willingness to give every person a fair go. Our characteristically intense competitive streak. And our eccentric and larrikin heroes. From Don Bradman to Kerry Packer.

But today it is difficult to discern a unifying crusade or common community. There are, to be sure, redoubts here and there. But across this sunburnt land, we have emerged as a nation divided.

Many will claim that their vision of Australia best represents a universal mission. That they know the true Australia. And that there is a silent majority that agrees with them.

But I do not see it. Right now, Australia is a battlefield bloodied by conflicting interests, which this column belaboured seven days ago.

The lucky country has become the lazy land, spoilt by endless resource riches and the seemingly bottomless pit of public money that this has bestowed.

Our wealth has been relentlessly wasted on pet political projects that serve only to perpetuate the reign of those in power. Financially corrupt the voters to win the next election and then rinse and repeat. Until the money runs out.

Australia has become obsessed with the public sector providing answers to its problems. Obsessed with centralised control. Remember the world’s worst lockdowns? Obsessed with censorship: eviscerate parental responsibilities and ban children from access to the internet.

Obsessed with revisionism. We don’t even give our kids an opportunity to learn from our historical wins and losses. It is airbrushed in the name of trying to create an alternative political reality. Obsessed with cutting down tall poppies. That is, we don’t just want equality of opportunity, which is a crucial ideal – we increasingly seek equality of outcomes.

But here’s what needs to be said to the people who’ve spent two years treating Israel as a uniquely evil state. Who’ve made ‘Zionism’ synonymous with racism and slavery and every conceivable sin. Who’ve said Zionists should not be platformed, should not have culturally safe spaces, should essentially be drummed out of polite society. Who’ve chanted ‘from the river to the sea’ at rallies, in parliament, and posted it on their Instagram stories with little ­watermelon emojis:

You built this. You laid the foundations, brick by rhetorical brick, post by viral post, march by march with your inverted red triangles and your signs bearing the words ‘Zionists are neo-Nazis’.

What exactly did you think ‘intifada’ meant? It means blood. It has always meant blood. And now they’ll be cleaning up the blood on Bondi Beach for weeks.

…

Anti-Semitism has always been like this. It never goose-steps into the ball dressed as anti-Semitism. It doesn’t wear a sign. It arrives in the costume of the moment. As nationalism. As anti-capitalism. As social justice. It makes itself sound reasonable, even righteous. It speaks in the gentle language of decolonisation and human rights.

And then people die; that’s how this story goes.

Yes, you can criticise Israel. You can oppose settlements and protest civilian casualties in Gaza. But there’s a difference – and it’s a life-or-death difference now – between protest and incitement. Between holding a government accountable for its conduct in war and demonising an entire people.

Because when people talk about Russia and its war in Ukraine, none of it metastasises into graffiti on Russian restaurants. Into harassment of Russian students. Into boycotts and firebombings. Or bullets on beaches.

But with Israel? With Jews? It always does. Every single time. And the Jewish community kept saying this. We saw it coming. We saw it in Europe and America. We saw it in England.

So spare us the shock. Save the thoughts and prayers.

You don’t get to globalise the intifada and then act all surprised when it finally shows up.

Albanese argues a royal commission would take a long time and he doesn’t want to slow responses. ‘We want urgency and unity, not division and delay,’ he told a Monday news conference.

But this is not convincing. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns is both undertaking a raft of actions with legislation this week (cracking down on protests and symbols, and changing firearm laws) while planning a state royal commission.

Former High Court chief justice Robert French, in a strong call for a national royal commission, said, ‘There is no requirement for governments to put on hold their responses to the attack, pending the provision of reports by the royal commission.’

The government could ask a royal commission to provide both short term and longer term reports.

There’s no shortage of people ready to reduce Frydenberg’s intervention to political calculation. A former treasurer who lost his seat in 2022’s landslide against the Morrison government. A potential return to public life. A moment of national grief. The cynicism is familiar – and tempting. It is also, as even his most hardened critics this week believe, grossly uncharitable.

What set Frydenberg’s address apart was not just its bluntness, but the fact that it came from someone speaking as a parent and as a Jew before speaking as a politician. During his 12 years in parliament, no one ever called Frydenberg a conviction politician, but here he spoke with the type of moral clarity now rarely heard in public life. That distinction mattered – and it was audible.

He spoke not in abstractions but from lived experience. As a father raising Jewish children in Melbourne, where their schools and synagogues now need armed guards and families calculate risk before attending public celebrations. This was not borrowed outrage. It was personal fear, publicly expressed. Unscripted and pointed.

‘We, as a Jewish community, have been abandoned, and left alone by our government. Our governments have failed every Australian when it comes to fighting hate and antisemitism,’ he said. ‘Our prime minister, our government, has allowed Australia to be radicalised on his watch.’

He did not speak delicately. He accused governments of moral failure – of hiding behind euphemisms, of refusing to name Islamist extremism, of indulging antisemitism under the cover of balance and process. His charge was blunt: if leaders cannot say what is driving the violence, they cannot stop it.

That directness was jarring precisely because it is now so rare. It left MPs on all sides in Canberra wondering why no one else could manage the same cut-through.

The need for a royal commission is as blindingly apparent as the Bondi morning sun. An inquiry must investigate the attack itself, whether security agencies missed opportunities to stop it, and how the anti-Semitic beliefs which incubated it were allowed to gain a foothold in our society.

Yet the Government wants to keep us in the dark. Mr Albanese says he is prepared to take ‘whatever action is necessary’ to confront and root out anti-Semitism. Except, it seems, to risk embarrassment to his Government through a thorough and public review.

Undoubtedly, the onus is on our governments and institutions to lead this fight against hatred and radical beliefs.

But do not underestimate the power each of us holds as an individual.

We saw the truth of that in the most literal sense through the courageous actions of Ahmed Al Ahmed, who has rightly been lauded a hero for disarming one of the killers.

Many others also put themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of others. Some — Reuven Morrison, and Boris and Sofia Gurman — paid with their own.

We seek out these stories of heroism not to distract ourselves from the horror but because it is one of the most powerful things we can do right now. They remind us that there is strength in goodness.

Mercifully, few of us will be called upon in our lives to make such dramatic shows of our goodness. Instead, we can show it in smaller ways — by reflecting on the Australia we are today and the Australia we want to become.

If souls survive death for all eternity, how can the heavens hold them all? Or for that matter, how can the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried in it? The answers are the same. Just as on earth, with the passage of time, decaying and transmogrified corpses make way for the newly dead, so souls released into the heavens, after a season of flight, begin to break up, burn, and be absorbed back into the womb of reason, leaving room for souls just beginning to fly. This is the answer for those who believe that souls survive death.

‘Go straight to the seat of intelligence.’

‘People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too… until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.’

‘So many who were remembered already forgotten, and those who remembered them long gone.’

‘The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.’

‘It is the responsibility of leadership to work intelligently with what is given, and not waste time fantasising about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.’

‘Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most – and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial.’

‘Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well.’

‘Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.’

‘All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment: action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.’

But what unites these seemingly disconnected incidents is not only their symbolic targeting or clandestine execution, but their systematic amplification through Russian-linked disinformation networks. In each case, the physical act is not an end in itself but the first step in a broader influence mechanism. These actions were all rapidly followed by their amplification across social media and their insertion into Russian-linked disinformation networks such as Doppelgänger. The pictures of the ‘red hands’ went viral online only a few hours after the act of vandalism itself, with the Russian ecosystem of fake X accounts and coordinated bot networks injecting manipulated content into public debate.

These operations demonstrate that Russian intelligence services make use of traditional covert structures together with modern tools of digital influence. While the actions themselves are often low-cost and operationally crude, they are designed from the outset for online amplification. Using bot networks, inauthentic media outlets, and AI-generated content, these small-scale disruptions are rapidly transformed into far-reaching influence campaigns. This approach reflects the evolution of Russian intelligence tactics in which acts of vandalism serve primarily as triggers for larger information operations.

Ultimately, these interference activities reflect the growing strategic weight Moscow places on subverting public opinion in Europe in the context of war. These acts of subversion are not peripheral but closely linked to Russia’s broader war objectives, unfolding in parallel with espionage and sabotage efforts. Together, they reflect a coherent doctrine of offensive action rooted in the longstanding traditions of Russian intelligence. The ‘red hands’ case therefore stands as both a testament to Russia’s tactical adaptability under constraint and a reminder that even seemingly amateur operations can contribute to an integrated strategy to destabilise democratic societies from within.

With Mr Yermak no longer around to ride herd on domestic policy, keep a lid on power struggles within the military and oversee peace negotiations, Mr Zelensky’s political control may weaken, analysts say. Mr Zelensky has said he would consult with Ukrainian politicians and generals before appointing a replacement.

Before his top aide’s ouster, the political system under Mr Zelensky had come to be known in Ukraine as Yermakshchina — the era of Yermak.

This arose from Mr Zelensky’s dominance in elections in 2019. Key appointments to ministries and agencies became internal decisions within Mr Zelensky’s team, rather than compromises hashed out with opposition parties.

Mr Yermak held sway, doling out jobs and enforcing loyalty. He was also widely understood to control a powerful network of pro-government news channels on the Telegram messaging app, used to conduct smear campaigns against the government’s opponents and to promote Mr Zelensky.

The corruption case that brought down Mr Yermak has highlighted the role of money as a glue in Ukrainian politics. Ukraine’s presidents have used such favours to gain and maintain allies. Past scandals in previous administrations exposed political slush funds collected from wealthy businessmen or skimmed from state enterprises such as a natural gas company and a defence contractor.

Mr Yermak’s predecessor as chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, in a 2021 interview all but admitted a continuation of the approach under Mr Zelensky.

Speaking to a Ukrainian talk show host, Mr Bohdan said that members of Parliament in Mr Zelensky’s party were paid under-the-table bonuses for delivering votes. He called it an informal salary in ‘black money’ and said it was raised from businesses, without specifying how.

Arrayed against corruption and other perceived misdeeds of the government is Ukraine’s civil society, a buzzing ecosystem of thousands of volunteer groups, nongovernmental organisations and online chat groups. Mr Yermak’s firing represents a victory for this potent force in Ukrainian politics.

Underestimating the power of civil society has cost previous Ukrainian politicians dearly, including former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in street protests in 2014 after seeking closer ties with Russia.

Mr Zelensky has been responsive. Mr Yermak’s standing with Mr Zelensky took a first hit over the summer, when the aide misread the public mood and pushed for a law that would limit the independence of anticorruption agencies.

Street protests erupted for the first time since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Mr Zelensky quickly reversed course, with Mr Yermak finding himself in a rare position: on the losing side of an internal debate.

The events of 2024 and 2025, despite minor achievements at the front, indicate the absolute effectiveness of such a strategy for Russia in its efforts to achieve its political goal.

However, a war of attrition is also being waged on the political front and the economic front. Military actions play an important role in achieving political goals, but are not the final phase.

For example, let’s imagine that Russia completely occupied the Donetsk region. The war would not end because it would not achieve the political goal. Russia seeks to create conditions to achieve the collapse of Ukraine on the military, economic and political fronts simultaneously.

In the absence of a unified vision of a new security architecture on the European continent, without security guarantees and real financial programmes, the war with Russia risks turning into a broader war with over the capture of Eastern Europe. War does not always end with the victory of one side and the defeat of the other. We Ukrainians strive for complete victory, but we cannot reject the option of a long-term end to the war.

Peace, even in anticipation of the next war, provides a chance for political change, for deep reforms, for full recovery, economic growth and the return of citizens. It is even possible to speak about the beginning of the formation of a safe, protected state through innovation and technology; of strengthening the foundations of justice through the fight against corruption and the creation of an honest court system; and of economic development, including on the basis of international economic recovery programmes.

But all this is impossible without effective security guarantees. Such security guarantees could include: Ukraine’s accession to Nato, the deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory or the deployment of a large allied military contingent capable of confronting Russia.

However, there is no talk about this today and, therefore, the war will probably continue. Not only militarily, but also on the political and economic fronts. Russia may change the tools and forms of its aggression, but they will all serve the same purpose. For us in this situation, the main political goal should be to deprive Russia of the opportunity to carry out aggression against Ukraine in the foreseeable future.

It’s the actors that ultimately make it. Cranston is superb as a grandfatherly figure who believes he has squared his past actions with himself, because he’s a pragmatist, a capitalist and because he thinks what he did was in line with the American Dream.

But at the very end, he is almost physically stunned to discover that he does care – the revelation rips him to shred before our eyes. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is exquisite as Kate Keller: a tough, no nonsense woman for whom the death of her son Larry has become an achilles heel, a point of vulnerability in an otherwise steely character.

It’s Essiedu however, who really runs off with the show as the Kellers’ surviving son Chris. At one point the family’s embittered neighbour Sue (Cath Whitefield) suggests Chris leave town because she’s annoyed that his sunny goodness is encouraging her husband to take a lower paid job (‘He’s driving my husband crazy with that phony idealism of his’).

And as Chris, Essiedu really is that guy: a puppyish, bashful, extraordinary wholesome young man who teeters on the border between ‘really nice’ and ‘living saint’. We really root for him – when he eventually turns on Joe it’s not a petty family squabble, it’s Biblical, the Son confronting the Father and declaring Heaven is a lie. There’s plenty of imagery relating to the Fall sprinkled throughout Miller’s prose, and this production laps it up.

US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told European ambassadors and Western officials at a volatile meeting in Kyiv late on Friday that he was ‘optimistic that now is the time for peace’ — but warned that Washington would show little flexibility. ‘We are not negotiating details,’ he said, according to a senior European official in the meeting at the Kyiv residence of US Chargé d’Affaires, Julie Davis. A top European official described the tone of the meeting as ‘nauseating’.

…

Davis told the group gathering in the mansion that ‘as much as we can support Ukraine continuing the war, there are limits’, said one ambassador present.

‘There are strong indications that Russia has a strong industrial base and it is a matter of time until Ukraine has to cut a deal,’ she said, according to the ambassador.

Driscoll showed up late and laced his comments with profanities, according to people present. ‘We need to get this shit done,’ he said. ‘The US Armed Forces love Ukraine and stand behind Ukraine, but it is the honest US military assessment that Ukraine is in a very bad position and now is the best time for peace,’ Driscoll continued. He added that ‘security guarantees are part of this’ US deal and would be discussed with European and Ukrainian leaders in the coming days.

Financial Times Gift Link

Russia is expected not to invade neighbouring countries, and NATO will not expand further.

[No membership of NATO for Ukraine, and also in this formulation, any other potential candidates, has been a feature of Trump plans from the start. What is ‘an expectation not to invade.’ It imposes no obligations. A simple ‘will not’ would suffice.]

The size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be limited to 600,000 personnel.

[This is more than envisaged under previous Russian proposals - in 2022 it was 85,000 - but why is it needed for a sovereign country? There is no mention of limitations on particular classes of weapons - aircraft, tanks etc. There are no restrictions envisaged on Russian forces.]

U.S. guarantee:

• The United States will receive compensation for providing the guarantee.

[What does this mean? From whom, in what form and how much? A security guarantee is a promise to act in certain contingencies. It doesn’t cost much to make the promise. This plays to Trump’s transactional view of alliance security but it is a weird insertion in a peace treaty]

▪️ If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee.

[Of course unlikely but remember that the Russian pretext for the full-scale invasion was that Ukrainian forces were ‘invading’ the Luhansk enclave]

▪️ If Ukraine, without cause, launches a missile at Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the security guarantee will be considered void.

[But Rostov would be OK? And what would be sufficient cause to justify a missile launch? Another weird clause]

Frozen assets will be used as follows:

US$100 billion of frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led efforts for Ukraine’s reconstruction and investment. The United States will receive 50% of the profits from this initiative.
Europe will add US$100 billion to increase the investment available for Ukraine’s reconstruction. European frozen assets will be unfrozen.
The remaining frozen Russian assets will be invested in a separate U.S.–Russia investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in designated areas. This fund will aim to strengthen relations and increase shared interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.

[I can’t believe that Russia will agree to any of this. They want their assets back. Equally Ukraine wants them as reparations for all the losses they have suffered - and even then it will not be enough. What is with the US making a profit from this?]

What he did not count on was that one of his most frequent sources, Witkoff, would undermine this exclusive by getting away trade secrets. The envoy accidentally tweeted under Ravid’s story what looked to be an intended direct message to a third party: ‘He must have got this from K.’

I saw the tweet and screenshot it before Witkoff, realising his technical whoops, deleted it. ‘K,’ I assumed, referred to Kirill, the only on-the-record source for Ravid’s story — an unintended disclosure by Witkoff, another frequent source for Ravid’s stories, that the Russian was preemptively selling something he didn’t yet own, having worked out how American media is a helpmeet to politics. More interesting was that Dmitriev’s freelancing was not being met with unmixed delight by a fatuous and impressionable US diplomat.

The reaction from Ukrainian civil society has been overwhelmingly negative. People have variously dismissed the plan as one-sided and tantamount to Ukraine’s abject surrender. It comes as Zelenskyy is under immense pressure at home after a corruption scandal involving his former business partner and at least two of his ministers.

The plan also failed to win over senior European commentators. Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institute described its drafting as “appalling” and said its substance was ‘outrageous’.

If enacted, it would lead to Russia becoming the ‘apex predator in Europe’, she observed. ‘Truly marks the complete enshittification of diplomacy,’ she added on X.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, an ally of the US president, expressed opposition to the Trump Administration plan.

‘Ukraine being asked to halve the size of its army is unacceptable. I am waiting to see a counter-proposal from Zelensky’s government,’ he posted on X.

The emergence of a Russia-leaning proposal – advanced through an unconventional diplomatic backchannel – now sets up a tense Trump-Zelensky confrontation.

But the episode is also exposing a deeper fault line inside the US administration: the clash between the State Department’s institutional approach and Trump’s preference for personal, transactional diplomacy.

But the biggest gamble belongs to Trump. By publicly endorsing a draft Kyiv views as a blueprint for surrender, he risks a rupture with Ukraine and key European allies in pursuit of a pre-election narrative: only Trump can end the war.

That wager now enters its most delicate phase. The coming days will test whether Kyiv or Washington’s competing factions blink first – and what price the administration is prepared to pay to declare victory.

My cellmates and I had often fantasised about what it would be like to get out: the first meal we’d eat, the first time we’d hug our families, the first time we’d get in the sack again. We swore that we would never be the same as before – blind to our riches, blithe about our loved ones. We were adamant that we would exercise as diligently as we had in the cells, that only natural food would pass our lips.

Reality wasn’t quite like that. All those things I thought I wouldn’t do, I did: play with my phone, eat crap, worry about trivial stuff, spend too much time getting dressed, get annoyed by the kids.

I felt older and stupider as I grappled with the speed of new technology, while my kids swiped and clicked at lightning velocity.

I got flustered and impatient with everyday tasks, or confused and startled at how Australia had changed. I felt I would never be done with crying. All the tears I held back for three years of disciplined calm burst from the dam and my eyes burned constantly from the wash of salt. How could I not cry, when I could not even bring myself to throw away leaves cut from roses?

Or when I took mental photos of every sunset and recorded mental audio of every birdsong? I asked myself, ‘Am I doing justice to freedom?’ and the reminder kicked fear to the roadside and lit a rocket up my arse as I attacked an impossibly long list of things I wanted to do now that I was free.

In detention we could not have imagined the happiness of freedom that was like the fiercely glinting facets of an Ottoman crown, or the dense intricate knots of a Persian carpet.

This elite infighting, which is engulfing a sector that is critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue resisting Russia’s aggression, is astounding in its disregard of the existential crisis engulfing Ukraine. While its outcome, for now, is unclear, several important conclusions can already be drawn from it.

The return to a competitive political process with freedom of speech, media, and association, which was suspended as a result of the war, is vital. Fears of playing into the hands of Russian propaganda by revealing corruption in Ukraine simply enable the corrupt officials to further abuse their power and damage the country’s prospects of prevailing against Russia.

More direct involvement of the EU and the US is needed in fighting corruption in Ukraine. Corruption reduces funds allocated for the war. But it also fuels public pessimism in donor countries about the effectiveness of their continuing support.

This corruption has been hugely damaging for recruitment to the armed forces. A recent survey found that 71 per cent of Ukrainians believe the level of corruption has increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Monthly desertion rates from the army now stand roughly at the level of two-thirds of new recruits. That’s 21,000 deserters compared to 30,000 sign-ups. It’s not sustainable for Ukraine’s defence efforts – and is part of the reason for some of the recent setbacks at the frontline.

This is no longer about the country’s reputation and its prospects of European integration. Cleaning up Ukrainian politics – and being seen to do so – is now as essential for Ukraine’s survival as shoring up its air and ground defences against Russia.

Tolerating corruption is a luxury that Ukraine can no longer afford if it wants to survive as an independent country.

Since then, Hungary and the US have disputed the terms of the deal, which remains just a verbal agreement between Budapest and Washington, and the White House is said to be wary of throwing its full weight behind Orbán as he faces a potential revolt at the polls that could bring the opposition to power.

‘Orbán hopes words will be enough to keep him above water,’ said a diplomatic source in Washington, adding that Trump and his Republican allies had become increasingly sceptical of the Hungarian leader’s chances in next April’s elections.

The dispute is whether Hungary has received a temporary or permanent reprieve from sanctions targeted at the Russian energy majors Rosneft and Lukoil, which have continued to supply Hungary and Slovakia despite anger from other countries in the European Union.

Hungary has claimed that Trump promised them an indefinite exemption, effectively allowing the country to continue to import energy from Russia. But the administration has said it has only exempted Hungary from the sanctions for one year.

‘We have received a waiver for an unlimited period from the sanctions. Anyone who states differently wasn’t present during the meeting,’ the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said during a press briefing last Saturday, calling media reports ‘fake news’.

Tevina Kammari, who staffs a hotel bar in Funafuti, was among this year’s first visa lottery winners. She plans to move with her husband, a supervisor at one of the capital’s largest retailers, to Melbourne where they look forward to legally mandated pay of at least 24.95 Australian dollars ($16.20) per hour. That compares with their current wages of AU$4 to AU$6 an hour.

‘I’m so happy,’ said Kammari, 21. ‘I want to satisfy the needs and wants of my family. … There’s just not enough money.’

Family, in the form of a 2-year-old child, was also Ainoama Kaitu’s motivation to apply for a Falepili visa to escape Tuvalu’s rising seas. She plans to reenter the lottery again next year if she is not accepted in this year’s group.

‘Looking in the future for my daughter here in Tuvalu is kind of sad,’ said the 28-year-old. ‘She won’t be able to see … how Tuvalu used to be in the past.’

Meanwhile, Iakopo Matanile has pushed back his family’s departure for Brisbane by a month or two. They have until next September to make the move under the terms of their Falepili visa. But news of large anti-immigration rallies in Australia in August and October have given him some second thoughts about the community he is about to enter. ‘What if they don’t want us?’ Matanile said.

Out of the many thousands — surely tens of thousands — of albums I’ve listened to in my time, I can’t recall one that had me on the edge of my seat from the first moments to the last on first listen the way Lily Allen’s new “‘West End Girl’ did, almost as if it were a suspense movie.

The tension doesn’t come in wondering about where the record’s narrative is ultimately headed; as you may have heard, this is a divorce record with a capital D. My inability to sit back in my chair came from just savouring every confessional line and wondering what the hell she was going to tell us in the next one to top it. It’s the pleasure of listening to a master storyteller who makes your jaw drop by seeming to have spilled all the tea almost at the outset, and then the tea just keeps on coming. Not since Boston in 1773, maybe, has anyone dumped it this massively, or this fulfillingly.

If all Allen did was read like-minded passages of her diary aloud, you’d still have to give the album some points. It’s not just what she says from moment to moment but how she says it that keeps you riveted. And that applies on fifth, sixth and seventh listen, too, however well you’ve absorbed the story beats. The level of pop craftsmanship remains superb throughout, too, in 14 songs that somehow manage to keep the emotions feeling utterly raw at every turn, even as the music itself is anything but.

So: Come for the shock value, and stay for the high level of craftsmanship. Then stay even longer for how cannily the album sustains its mix of droll delivery and pure heartbreak. It’s a place you’ll probably want to linger.

Stepping into the building, a converted Romanesque Revival schoolhouse built in 1895, felt like a scene right out of Bama sorority rush—a line of blonde girls wearing white dresses with white heels, accompanied by their polo or linen shirt-clad dates, waited to be checked in. (‘Every girl in here owns a Dyson—I guarantee you,’ my plus-one whispered in my ear, referring to the hairdryer-curler tool that has become a status symbol for women.)

We stepped into the bright, two-story, brick-walled living room, where I met Maren Hersam, 26, who works in public relations.

I was surprised that she identifies as an independent, although when I asked her whether she supported the MAGA movement at all, she said she was excited about the direction free speech was moving under Trump—and how ‘the right to express opinions without it being a problem’ was important for her.

‘I feel like it’s important for the culture to include both sides.’

…

Indeed, the more I spoke to this well-connected subset of the young right, the more it was apparent that the ‘culture’ of MAGA is what unites them behind Trump, rather than any one policy or ideology. And the part of this culture repeatedly cited by these partygoers was feeling like they could finally share their beliefs openly.

‘When I threw my inauguration party, the New York magazine accused me of waging a quest for cultural dominance. They were right. We should be culturally dominant,’ Pearson told me as we sought a quiet corner in the pantry.

‘When you have people out here—400-plus young people who are young, hot, and healthy and are unapologetically MAGA—it shows other young people: This isn’t taboo. This isn’t un-ordinary. This is cool!’

‘We’re going to need every bit of kit and equipment and munitions that we can in order to beat that,’ Grynkewich said.

If China’s President Xi Jinping makes a move on Taiwan, he likely would coordinate such an attack with Russian President Vladimir Putin, opening the possibility of a global conflict, he said.

‘That, to me, means that both of these things could happen together,’ said Grynkewich, who also serves as NATO supreme allied commander.

’When it comes to projects, there are a few things — artificial intelligence, computing power and new energy vehicles. Do all provinces in the country have to develop industries in these directions?’ Xi told the Central Urban Work Conference, a rarely held high-level Communist party meeting on urban development.

Xi’s remarks were carried on the front page of the Communist party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, underlining their importance.

They follow a series of official statements attacking what Beijing calls neijuan, or ‘involution’ — price wars in industries suffering from overcapacity.

…

In the electric vehicle industry, scores of manufacturers have engaged in bruising price wars that have hit their earnings and angered trading partners who fear China’s abnormally low prices are undermining the industry globally.

‘We should not only focus on how much GDP has grown and how many major projects have been built, but also on how much debt is owed,’ Xi told the conference.

‘We should not let some people pass the buck and leave problems to future generations.’ The remarks and the party’s campaign against involution are a major turnaround from a year ago, when Xi denied that overcapacity existed in China, during a visit to France.

Taking the proposal to the G7 summit in Canada last month, the bloc tried and failed to secure a deal with the United States resisting as oil prices surged after Israeli and American attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Presumed dead at first, several key EU member states such as Germany and France as well as the European Commission still aimed at resuscitating the new cap and tried to convince Cyprus, Greece, and Malta - countries with considerable maritime services sectors – to agree on EU-only measures instead.

Eventually, the trio got onboard with lowering the cap to $47.6 per barrel, 15 per cent lower than the average market price of Russian crude oil. What got them all onboard was the promise of a ‘dynamic review’ of the cap, meaning that it should be reviewed on a regular basis.

The key thing to look out for now is if other G7 nations follow suit.

Japan has committed to a goal of spending 2 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, laying out a five-year, ¥43 trillion plan in 2022.

According to the paper, some 61 per cent of this plan has already been put into action, with defense-related spending in the fiscal year through March 2026 set to total ¥9.9 trillion ($68.4 billion), or 1.8 per cent of GDP in line with 2022 budget standards — a figure that has Japan within striking distance of the 2 per cent target.

Moves by the Chinese military in the airspace and waters around Japan have been a driving factor in the push to spend more on defence.

‘China's growing military activities have the potential to seriously affect Japan's security, and this is of grave concern,’ the paper says.

The report also echoes concerns stated in last year’s version about China’s designs on self-ruled Taiwan, noting Beijing’s ramped-up pace of military activities around the island.

The possibility of a ‘serious situation’ akin to Russia’s war in Ukraine occurring in East Asia ‘cannot be ruled out,’ it said, in a view widely seen as highlighting fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

‘As the United States continues to make clear its stance of supporting Taiwan militarily, China — which regards the Taiwan issue as the 'core of its core interests' — is unlikely to compromise, and the conflict between the US and China over the issue may become even more pronounced,’ the paper notes.

For all the recent focus on Iran, in a cruel irony, East Asia is where the world’s fastest buildups are unfolding, in China and North Korea. A dangerous proliferation cascade may be about to break out, right in the shadow of Hiroshima. It would likely start in South Korea, and spread first to Japan. It might not stop there. The decades-long effort to keep nuclear weapons from spreading across the planet may be about to collapse.

…

Under Trump, the United States is now reported to be considering pulling troops out of South Korea, though administration officials have denied that. “The Korean people do not know if the U.S. commitment to them is real,” Heo told me. They may soon decide that to deter Kim, they need nuclear weapons of their own.

…

When Heo and I discussed the possibility that South Korea may need to go nuclear, he emphasised that he wouldn’t want an arsenal just for its own sake. Members of the defence intelligentsia would prefer to keep the American alliance the way it is. But they have to prepare, in case South Korea is left to deal with Kim on its own. Like almost everyone I talked with in Seoul, Heo eventually mentioned Ukraine. When the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine had a nuclear arsenal on its soil, but Bill Clinton helped persuade the Ukrainians to give it up. Not to worry, he said. The U.S. will have your back.

…

Jimbo told me that if South Korea built its own nuclear arsenal, the desire to possess such weapons would surely spill over to Japan. “We would have to be very serious about what to do next,” he said.

Japan has been rearming itself with impressive speed already. As the country’s war crimes have receded in historical memory and China has grown stronger, many Japanese have come to feel that the country’s pacifist constitution is outmoded.

The French deterrent includes both submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched nuclear missiles of its own design. More importantly, these weapons are technically independent of NATO nuclear planning, unlike the British nuclear deterrent, which is also closely intertwined with that of the United States.

The British deterrent comprises submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The British government recently announced plans to acquire F-35A stealth fighters that will have the ability to deliver U.S.-owned B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs. While this will reinstate the United Kingdom’s air-launched nuclear capability, the use of those weapons has to be approved by the United States and the NATO alliance.

…

These discussions underline a growing rift in the transatlantic alliance under U.S. President Donald Trump, emphasised by calls from German leader-in-waiting Friedrich Merz for talks with his British and French colleagues about European ‘nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security.’ Calling upon the United Kingdom and France to offer greater nuclear protection, Merz also warned that Washington’s ‘interest in Europe is decreasing.’

…it seems the primary thinking behind the nuclear coordination agreement is to show joint resolve, especially bearing in mind the growing threat from Russia and the concerns about the reliability of the United States as a guarantor of deterrence in Europe in the future.

Thierry Burkhard said that Russia views France as its principal threat and that the international order is deeply and durably disrupted.

He continued by highlighting that, ‘Russia is a nuclear and conventional military power’ that has ‘all the attributes of a totalitarian state: a centralised decision-making capacity, a conditioning of the population.’

For France and Europe more broadly, this constitutes ‘a long-lasting, close and dimensional threat’, which, according to Burkhard, ‘will constitute a real threat to our borders’ by 2030.

He summarised what he sees as Vladimir Putin’s strategic objective: ‘to weaken Europe and dismantle NATO.’ However, he held back on commenting regarding whether France may need to engage militarily in Europe in the near future.

‘The war is already here in Europe,’ he stated simply.

Burkhard has previously given similar briefings to parliamentarians and government ministers, and has made it clear that his aim is to help foster public understanding and break what he referred to as ‘a form of habituation to violence.’

He made an effort to call for a ‘lucid’ view of the international situation, warning that elsewhere in the world, the use of force and destabilisation are becoming normalised and are active weapons in modern warfare. ‘National cohesion cannot be achieved without awareness, if there is a denial,’ he warned.

The official, and other Israelis with access to the country’s intelligence findings, said any attempts by Iran to recover it would almost certainly be detected — and there would be time to attack the facilities again.

Western intelligence officials confirmed the Israeli assessment, saying that they believed much of the stockpile was buried under rubble in Iran’s nuclear laboratory at Isfahan and potentially other sites. One of the officials concurred that the United States or Israel would know if the Iranians tried to retrieve the enriched uranium. Such a move, the official said, would surely invite a renewed Israeli bombing attack.

Israel, the United States and now a growing number of outside experts agree that all of Iran’s working centrifuges at Natanz and Fordo — about 18,000 machines, which spin at supersonic speeds — were damaged or destroyed, probably beyond repair. The question they are now examining is how long it would take the Iranians to rebuild some or all of that capability, especially after the top scientists in their nuclear program were targeted and killed.

…

‘The country is going dark,’ said Ray Takeyh, an Iran scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who has followed the program over its many iterations in the past 25 years. ‘I think where we are headed is that the next phase of Iranian proliferation will be the dispersal of the effort around the country into a large number of small workshops. What the Iranians have learned is that even something you put in a mountain can be bombed.’

If Mr Takeyh is right — and his prediction has been echoed by several American, British and European intelligence officials over the past two weeks — Israel and the United States could be entering a new era of hide-and-seek.

Iran seems unlikely to try to rebuild its nuclear sites at Fordo or Natanz. Even Fordo, built deep inside a mountain, was far more vulnerable than its Iranian designers had believed. (One key vulnerability was the existence of ventilation shafts that went deep into the plant; the American attack included strikes that sent the 30,000-pound bombs into those shafts, enabling them to plunge closer to the control rooms and enrichment halls than if they had to blast through the rock.)

For the Iranians, getting access to the fuel that is already enriched to 60 perc ent purity — just shy of the 90 per cent ordinarily used in nuclear weapons — is critical. The vast majority of the effort to get to highly enriched uranium is at the initial stages.

But any effort to dig the fuel out from the rubble of Isfahan may be hard to hide from satellite surveillance.

As special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff rightly noted, ‘enrichment enables weaponisation’. Yet, policy has not changed to reflect that realisation. The White House recently directed the Department of Energy to pursue 20 new international civil nuclear deals that would include technologies and materials — including enriched uranium and advanced plutonium fuel cycles — that the US deemed too dangerous for Iran.

Similarly, the US has offered to help Saudi Arabia enrich uranium as a part of any civil nuclear deal. That’s a mistake if Washington wants to avoid further proliferation. Besides saying no to reprocessing and enrichment, the US and like-minded nations should lay down the law on NPT withdrawals. Non-compliant nations should not be allowed to leave the treaty until they’ve come back into full compliance. Automatic sanctions against any such attempts should be laid out now before any non-compliant state attempts such a move. Finally, nuclear-armed nations that left or never joined the NPT — Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and India — should be encouraged to come into full compliance. Some will argue that in a multi-polar world, tightening the rules is for fools.

The stark alternative of a nuclear Wild West suggests otherwise.

It is well known that in November of 2011, the Obama administration announced the US Pivot to Asia. But fewer noted that just over a year later, in June 2013, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin essentially did the same. He announced a Russian pivot to the Asia-Pacific region. This announcement was perhaps later eclipsed by Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, initiation of conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas, and its intervention in Syria’s Civil War in 2015. And given Russia’s history in announcing foreign policy declarations whereby its aspirations have resoundingly exceeded its actual abilities, it was easy to dismiss Putin’s Pacific pivot as mere rhetoric.

But Putin’s Pacific pivot represented something different: a doubling down on a slow but steady geopolitical turn away from the Euro-Atlantic centric international order toward a Eurasian-centric one. It was not just toward the Asia Pacific, but toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Unlike the US pivot, it was not focused on a threat posed by an adversary but toward gaining an ally in a larger geostrategic competition to balance against and enable the defeat of perceived US hegemony. Whether the Pacific Century proves to be a myth or a reality, a 2017 statement by Putin shows how he views the world: ‘The main struggle, which is now underway, is that for global leadership, and we are not going to contest China on this.’ While one may naturally question Putin’s sincerity in making this statement with Russia’s failure to subjugate Ukraine in 2022, Putin has been forced to irreversibly commit Russia toward alignment with the PRC. As such, Putin has been unwavering in pursuing Russian strategic interests that ensure Russia is on the side it desires to prevail in the larger US-China geostrategic competition.

Instead of asking NATO allies to spend out of ‘solidarity,’ European countries should jointly commit to being responsible for tangible tasks that contribute to a stronger, more autonomous European defence. For instance, southern countries could carry the borrowing costs for EU-issued joint debt for defence (so-called Eurobonds). By one calculation, the European Union could borrow €500 billion, resulting in an annual interest burden of about €15 billion per year.

That cost could be carried by countries on NATO’s southern flank and would give Europe a common pot of funding to undertake large-scale procurement decisions that address major capability gaps.

Additionally, what countries like Italy and Spain lack in fiscal space, they can make up for in scale. They have real manpower, approximately 160,000 and 120,000 active soldiers in uniform, for Italy and Spain, respectively, which many Eastern European countries lack. European countries could focus on leveraging this strength to defend the eastern flank, perhaps by permanently deploying a portion of these forces.

Furthermore, European countries could demand that countries that are unwilling to ramp up defence spending should play a larger role in supporting Ukraine, given the urgent need. What is needed are tangible proposals instead of abstract spending targets.

Options to boost defence spending include raising taxes, cutting public spending (including popular welfare and social programs), and issuing debt. The European Commission is helping with its new €150 billion loans-for-weapons scheme dubbed SAFE, and its planned smaller €1.5 billion European Defence Industry Programme. The EU's next multi-annual budget is expected to earmark more cash for defence — but that will only kick off in 2027.

‘The only European countries with public finances that allow them to aim for this [5 per cent] target are Germany, Poland, and the Baltic and Nordic countries,’ said François Heisbourg, senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ‘Everyone knows that France, Belgium, the UK, Spain and Italy are absolutely not in a position to keep this type of commitment.’

Moreover, the further from Russia, the harder the sell — as evidenced by Spain's eleventh-hour opposition to NATO's new target.

Another warning of potential political discontent over higher spending was a short bus ride away from the NATO summit. That's where Italy's former Prime Minister and anti-establishment leader Giuseppe Conte on Tuesday led a gathering of around 70 leftwing politicians from across Europe who signed a declaration bemoaning the continent’s rearmament.

‘Reaching 5 per cent defence spending will inevitably require deep cuts to welfare, healthcare, education, social services, and business investment,’ Conte told POLITICO

Japan has been under pressure from the Trump administration to increase its defence spending, as well. According to the Financial Times, Tokyo cancelled a summit between US and Japanese defence and foreign ministers over the demand. (A Japanese official denied the report.)

Japan also did not offer its full support to the US bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this week. The foreign minister instead said Japan “understands” the US’s determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Japan has traditionally had fairly good relations with Iran, often acting as an indirect bridge with the West. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe even made a visit there in 2019.

Japan also remains heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. It would have been adversely affected if the Strait of Hormuz had been blocked, as Iran was threatening to do.

Unlike the response from the UK and Australia, which both supported the strikes, the Ishiba government prioritised its commitment to upholding international law and the rules-based global order. In doing so, Japan seeks to deny China, Russia and North Korea any leeway to similarly erode global norms on the use of force and territorial aggression.

At each of the previous NATO summits in Washington, Vilnius, and Madrid, the world leaders held three such meetings. This time, Rutte opted for only one meeting due to the temperament of United States President Donald Trump, NATO sources told the newspaper.

But that does make this summit the most expensive one yet, when looking at how long the world leaders are actually meeting. It is also among the most expensive in absolute amounts. The NATO summit in Wales in 2013 cost 81.3 million euros. Madrid spent 50 million euros on the summit in 2022, and Vilnius spent 30 million euros in 2023, but that amount excluded the costs of air defence and naval ships that NATO sent to Lithuania.

Chinese civilisation was far more advanced in, say, the year 1000, than anything in Western Europe. But for most of the next millennium, China stagnated.

That is history. Now we are living through the end of that period of Western ascendancy.

Why is that? It is because the rest of the world finally realised, if you can’t beat them, join them. And so, people in non-Western societies, beginning in Japan, downloaded the killer apps of Western civilisation. And of course, they work everywhere because one of the important things about ideas and institutions is that they don’t care what colour you are or what your religious background is. If you adopt those ideas and institutions, your economy will grow, your human lifespan will increase and everything will be better.

It’s amazing that it took so long. It took into the late 20th century for China to accept that there really was only one path to prosperity, and it involved markets, it involved science. You couldn’t rig those because of Mao’s ideological predilections. Once they finally recognised this, the Chinese caught up and they caught up really quickly.

If you thought of history starting in 1600, there is not a huge difference between Chinese and European incomes. But it just diverges spectacularly all the way until 1979, when, on a purchasing power basis, the average American was 22 times richer than the average Chinese. Now, in 2025, it’s maybe three times because there’s been a dramatic reconvergence. That’s the story of our time.

That’s the way to think about this historical moment. The problem for the Chinese is that they did not download all the killer apps. They were never willing to download the political competition app, that is to say, the idea that there should be competition between institutions, branches of government and parties. Without that, they can’t really have rule of law, because you can’t have rule of law if there’s no accountability through a system of justice.

So what the Chinese did was to say, ‘Yeah, we’ll take science, and we’ll certainly take modern medicine, and we’ll have a consumer society, and we’ll have a work ethic, but we just don’t want those institutions that presuppose competition and private property rights.’

That is why, in my view, their system can’t succeed. It is incomplete and thus fundamentally doomed. Over the next 10 or 20 years, it will unravel.

The early Republic began in 509 BC, when a group of Roman aristocrats got together and overthrew the last king of Rome – Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud).

These aristocrats needed the support of the people in order to maintain this new Republic, and so you ended up with a rather odd contrast of a democratic republic that was run by aristocrats. This basically set the tone for the Roman Republic from then on.

….

Despite its bloody reputation, Roman society was in some ways very civilised – particularly in the city of Rome. There was a rule, for example, that stated a butcher was not to go more than three steps away from his stall while holding a knife. And an actor could sue his audience for injury to his feelings while booing. So plebeians did actually have a great deal of legal protection.

The problem was that Rome had what we might call a strong society and a weak state. Scythian philosopher Anacharsis summed it up nicely when he said: ‘Laws are spiderwebs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones.’

So, Roman laws were good at containing ordinary Roman citizens, but the rich and powerful could brush through them as though they didn’t exist.

One of the European officials, who participated in the call, said that Trump began Monday’s discussion, held to brief allies on the US president’s lengthy phone conversation with Putin, by saying, ‘I think Vladimir does not want peace.’

Trump, the official said, told the people on the call that the war was going well for Putin and that he would ‘therefore keep fighting.’ This official’s conclusion: Trump ‘simply doesn’t want to take sides.’

…

That Sunday call included some of Trump’s signature off-the-cuff style, mixing praise and criticism of European leaders. He complimented Merz on his beautiful English. ‘I love it even more with your German accent,’ he said, according to a person on the call.

At another point, he digressed into a broadside against Europe’s migration policies. Trump said out-of-control migration was bringing their countries to the ‘brink of collapse.’

Macron, who has the longest relationship with Trump, asked him to stop. ‘You cannot insult our nations, Donald,’ said Macron, according to the person on the call.

‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was shouting at Elon Musk in the halls of the West Wing last month, loud enough for Donald Trump to hear and in a language that he could certainly understand.

Bessent and Musk were fighting over which of them should choose the next IRS leader—and, implicitly, over Musk’s bureaucracy-be-damned crusade. Without securing the Treasury chief’s sign-off, Musk had pushed through his own pick for the job. Bessent was, quite obviously, not having it.

The fight had started outside the Oval Office; it continued past the Roosevelt Room and toward the chief of staff’s office, and then barreled around the corner to the national security adviser’s warren.

Musk accused Bessent of having run two failed hedge funds. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he told Bessent as they argued, their faces just inches apart. ‘Say it louder.’

Musk came to Washington all Cybertrucks and chain saws, ready to destroy the bureaucracy, fire do-nothing federal workers, and, he bragged, save taxpayers $2 trillion in the process.

He was a Tech Support–T-shirt-wearing disruptor who promised to rewire how the government operates and to defeat the ‘woke mind virus,’ all under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. For weeks, he and his merry band of DOGE bros gleefully jumped from agency to agency, terrorising bureaucrats, demanding access to sensitive data, and leaving snack wrappers on employees’ desks.

But as Musk winds down his official time in Washington, he has found himself isolated within the upper reaches of the Trump administration, having failed to build necessary alliances and irritating many of the department and agency heads he was ostensibly there to help.

His team failed to find anything close to the 13-figure savings he’d promised. Court challenges clipped other projects. Cabinet secretaries blocked DOGE cuts they said reduced crucial services. All the while, Musk’s net worth fell, his companies tanked in value, and he became an object of frequent gossip and ridicule.

Four months after Musk’s swashbuckling arrival, he is effectively moving on, shifting his attention back to his jobs as the leader of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, among his other companies.

VIVIE. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I've come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.

PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

VIVIE. I don't care for either, I assure you.

PRAED. You can't mean that.

VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.

PRAED [rising in a frenzy of repudiation] I don't believe it. I am an artist; and I can't believe it: I refuse to believe it. It's only that you havn't discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.

VIVIE. Yes I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria's chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could.

In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my life.

‘And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.’

‘He who becomes a Prince through the favour of the people should always keep on good terms with them; which it is easy for him to do, since all they ask is not to be oppressed.’

‘Therefore the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses they will not save you if you are hated by the people.’

‘There is no other way of guarding against adulation, than to make people understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth.’

‘The people, as Cicero says, may be ignorant, but they can recognise the truth and will readily yield when some trustworthy man explains it to them.’

‘Experience shows that only rulers and republics with their own armies make serious progress, while mercenaries bring nothing but trouble. And a republic with a citizen army is less likely to fall victim to a coup than a republic paying for mercenary armies.’

Bibi himself is on trial for corruption and should absent himself from making any appointments in law enforcement agencies that might be involved in his own trials.

This is setting up a constitutional crisis unlike anything Israel has ever seen. Sound familiar?

As the Times reported, the Trump administration is heading to a ‘constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government’ as a result of ‘airplane loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States.’

Time to stop kidding ourselves, folks.

The rule of law is in danger in both America and Israel if some red lines are not drawn and defended right now.

‘We’re working on it. I think we’ll have a couple of alternatives,’ Bannon told NewsNation’s ‘CUOMO’ when asked how Trump could overcome term limits.

‘We’ll see what the definition of term limit is.’

Bannon expressed confidence in this effort, comparing it to Trump’s 2024 comeback.

‘I’m a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,’ Bannon said. ‘We’ve had greater long shots than Trump 2028.’ He added that they’re ‘not prepared to talk about it publicly, but in a couple of months, I think we will be.’

When pressed on whether he was suggesting revolution or overthrow, Bannon rejected that characterization, describing himself as a ‘huge believer in democracy’ while claiming the country is experiencing a ‘1932-type realignment’ comparable to the FDR era.

‘We’re in the middle of a 1932-type realignment if we can continue to have populist nationalist policies,’ Bannon said. ‘We have African-Americans coming to our side. We have Hispanics coming to our side.’

He described the current administration’s actions as a ‘revolution of common sense to deconstruct the administrative state’ and claimed anti-democratic forces are working through the courts to ‘obstruct a sitting president’ from fulfilling his executive mandate.

There are no guarantees, moreover, that the US would provide the necessary intelligence-sharing and air cover requirements a Ukrainian peacekeeping force would need to keep the Russians at bay.

Such is the dysfunctional nature of Europe’s current military dispositions, that they could soon find themselves sitting ducks for the Russians. This is particularly true of the UK military, where a generation or more of defence cuts means that only about 30 of our remaining 120 tanks are currently operational.

Fortunately, the evident flaws in Starmer’s coalition plan are now starting to surface, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offering some refreshing clarity on the venture, insisting that sending European peacekeeping troops to Ukraine would be ‘risky, complex and ineffective.’

We launched the drone, put the GoPro in the water and saw something unforgettable: an octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles.

This `sharktopus’ was a mysterious find indeed – octopus are mostly on the seabed while short-fin mako sharks don’t favour the deep.

We moved on after 10 minutes so I can’t tell you how what happened next. The octopus may have been in for quite the experience since the world’s fastest shark species can reach 50 kilometres per hour

This summer, sharks have been on people’s minds. We’ve had the ‘Please don’t attack me bro’ kayaker tailed by a great white shark in remote Northland, the drone footage of a bronze whaler cruising in the shallows at Ōhope Beach, and a number of hasty beach evacuations.

Less than a week ago, Carney beat the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, the former government house leader Karina Gould and the former member of parliament Frank Baylis with a dominant 85.9 per cent of the vote, in a closely watched leadership race. He has no prior elected experience and does not have a seat in the House of Commons, making him a rarity in Canadian history.

Carney is expected to announce an election in the coming days, reflecting both the urgency of Canada’s trade war with the US, and the awkward reality that as prime minister without a seat in parliament, he is unable to attend sessions of the House of Commons.

The effects of Donald Trump’s economic attack on Canada are so wide-ranging and so damaging that they are likely to overshadow all other issues in the coming months. US trade tariffs, if held in place for an extended period of time, could push Canada’s fragile economy into a recession and unleash a cascading chain of knock-on upheavals.

‘This is the first time we've shared this, is that British Columbia will be introducing a law before April 1 that ensures that British Columbians don't have to pay that increase on April 1,’ he said, referring to the scheduled increase of $15/tonne that is required by federal legislation.

Following that, he said, his party would be moving to scrap the tax ‘altogether.’

….

British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce carbon pricing through a consumer tax, under then-premier Gordon Campbell of the B.C. Liberals, which was at the time the province's centre-right leaning party.

The tax, introduced in 2008, was initially set at $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions and was meant to be revenue-neutral, with the government refunding costs to lower-income residents.

‘The Canadian government has made their position, how they feel about it [annexation] clear, and the president has made his argument about why he thinks Canada would be better off joining the United States for economic purposes,’ Rubio said.

‘There’s a disagreement between the president’s position and the position of the Canadian government. I don’t think that’s a mystery coming in, and it wasn’t a topic of conversation because that’s not what this summit was about.’

Rubio later reiterated that the issue wasn’t discussed at the summit, but when pressed again said the issue began in December 2024, when then-prime minister Justin Trudeau met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to discuss the threat of tariffs on Canada.

‘I’ll tell you how it came about: [Trump] was in a meeting with Trudeau and Trudeau basically says that if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Canada, then Canada couldn’t survive as a nation state, at which point the president said, “Well, you should become a state,”’ Rubio said.

‘He says he loves Canada. He made an argument for why Canada would be better off joining the United States from an economic standpoint and the like. He’s made that argument repeatedly, and I think it stands for itself.’

Everything Trump has said and done has led to a level of rage and defiance that I think very few Americans fully appreciate.

People hear that 51st state stuff, and say, ‘America is literally attempting to annex us. They’re trying to coerce us into becoming Americans. And we hate that.’

Yesterday, I was walking around my neighborhood, and there were three shops in a row on the main drag in my neighborhood, and every single one of them listed the Canadian-made goods that they were selling.

There’s a widespread boycott of American-related goods here in Ontario, which is not only Canada’s largest province, but where state-run liquor stores have a semi-monopoly on alcohol sales. And they have taken all American-made products out of those stores. That’s a government initiative, not a citizen boycott. There’s both: Consumers don’t want to buy American goods, and the government is limiting access to certain American goods.

….

Ontario is currently governed by a Conservative government, one that you would think would have more ideological affinities with the Trumpers. The fact that they’ve been so aggressive is demonstrative of where public opinion is in Canada.

Canadians are so insulted, so infuriated because they have their own real sense of nationhood. One of the pillars of Canadian national identity is being not American, is that Canada is different from the other country near them. To say ‘You should just become part of the US’ is to assail one of the foundations of what makes Canada Canada.

Being so infuriated has led to a backlash against the United States and against the Trump administration, unlike anything in recent memory, dwarfing even the anti-Americanism you saw in Canada during the Bush administration around the Iraq War.

Not so long ago, the Conservatives were boasting a lead of 20-plus percentage points over the Liberals, but the combination of Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Donald Trump’s threats to Canada and Carney’s arrival in the top job has changed all of that.

On the last point, this newest Abacus poll has some fascinating findings about how Canadians see Carney in comparison to Poilievre, and suggests that the Liberal leader’s honeymoon is coming largely at the expense of the Conservative leader.

Abacus laid out eight tasks for a future prime minister and asked whether Carney or Poilievre would be better at them. Carney was seen as more skilled at six of the eight. He was judged better than the Conservative leader on finding common ground, standing up to a bully and helping people manage household expenses, as well as being the man people would prefer to see captaining a ship through a storm, putting out a kitchen fire or sitting next to them on a long flight.

Poilievre only had the advantage in this comparison when it came to two skills: hosting a party and putting up a shelf.

Coletto confesses to some surprise at these results. A while back, Abacus asked these questions about the relative skills of Poilievre and Trudeau, and Poilievre was seen as superior in almost every way.

But now respondents are judging Carney, a relative unknown, to be more adept — well, except for party hosting and shelf installation.

At this distance, it does not matter if it was an ambush designed to belittle Zelenskyy in the mind of Republican America, or something that evolved into a vicious takedown. What matters is that the anger reflects Trump’s true feelings towards Ukraine, his faith in Putin and his belief that Zelenskyy does not warrant his support.

In one set of judgments, it marks the end of the post-1945 world order. The US may no longer be a trusted ally, but a competitor, even a strategic threat. It leaves Europe feeling even more alone than at the end of the Munich Security Conference when Vance portrayed Europe’s leaders as a threat alongside Russia and China.

Indeed, after the trio of Oval Office meetings with Macron, Starmer and Zelenskyy, it is an illusion to think that Trump can be motivated by any sense of shared history or common values.

…

Only Giorgia Meloni, now under growing domestic political pressure to break from Trump, wants to see if the relationship can be restored. The Italian prime minister said: ‘What is needed is an immediate summit between the United States, the European states and the allies to talk frankly about how we intend to face the great challenges of today, starting with Ukraine, which we have defended together in recent years.’

Either way, the US is determined to end the freeze in its bilateral relations with Russia. Europe is now alone in its conflict with Russia, and the US may not even play the role of a neutral bystander. Somehow, this disparate continent has to decide if it has the strength and cohesion to do what is required to force Moscow’s retreat.

For Starmer, the choice between Europe and the US – one he has sought to avoid – comes ever closer.

If the goal of Mr Trump and Mr Vance was to undermine the Ukrainian president’s support among ordinary citizens, it seems to have backfired, at least for now. Mr Zelensky’s emotional stand might have been unwise, but it has touched many in a nation hurting from war. Even those historically opposed to the president took to social media overnight to praise him for standing up for the country. Some Ukrainians have even started a collection for a nuclear bomb. Ukraine is not in any position to produce such a weapon even if it wanted to: it is a decade away from the facilities needed for enrichment. But that did not stop the pot reaching 22.75m hryvnia ($550,000) in the space of a few hours.

Far from everyone in the elite is convinced, however. One business leader talks of disbelief and shock at the White House standoff. Another source, the former diplomat, says it brought no winners except for Mr Putin: ‘The true issue now is how and when exactly the dust will settle down for Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign independent state.’

An opposition MP admits surprise at the reaction of many colleagues in parliament, where, he says, most publicly welcomed the president’s conduct. ‘Beyond the foolishness and disgrace, what shocks me most is that intelligent people are praising the president and criticising those who had the courage to call it a disaster.’ That assessment would change once initial emotions die down, he adds.

…

An exit by Mr Zelensky, or his removal by others, would be fraught during war time, and could plunge the country into chaos. Polling shows that there is nowhere near a majority in support of elections, which would require an end to martial law in turn making it difficult for Ukraine to remain mobilised and united.

One less painful way to conjure up an alternative leader for the purposes of negotiation might be to vote in a new parliamentary speaker, officially the second-most senior politician in Ukraine. According to this theory, they could then interact with the Trump administration. Doing that, however, would require Mr Zelensky’s acquiescence. It is also far from clear that the Ukrainian public wants it.

Earlier this month, Alnur Mussayev, a retired Kazakh intelligence official who had been in the Soviet-era KGB claimed that Trump had been recruited by the agency in the 1980s and given the codename Krasnov. (It is a fairly common name in Russia which means ‘red’ - is this an allusion to Trump’s orange skin?)

I don’t give too much credence to these claims - why would only one person have come forward with this information up to this point? Why did it only emerge now? Given that Ukraine had every incentive to release this during the Biden years and there is considerable Ukrainian infiltration of Russia’s intelligence services, it seems unlikely that the only person in the know is an ageing Kazakh.

In 2021, Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer, claimed that Trump had been ‘under cultivation’ by the KGB since 1987 (the date of his first Russia visit). Shvets is a far more serious source than Mussayev and many other things he has provided information on have proved correct, such as the events surrounding the assassination in London of former KGB intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.

It’s important to understand that what Shvets has said is not the same as saying that Trump was a ‘recruited’ asset: the allegation is not that he had consciously agreed to work for the Russians, taking instructions and so forth, but that he was regarded as ‘extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.’

This assessment appears entirely accurate and reflects the way he is handled by friend and foe alike (look at Starmer and Macron’s recent meetings). This sort of ‘asset’ is generally described as an ‘agent of influence’: someone who can be manipulated into helping Russia by a combination of ego, vanity and naked self-interest.

In a strongly worded statement, the company criticised a televised event involving US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, referring to it as the ‘biggest shitshow ever presented live on TV.’

Haltbakk Bunkers praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his restraint, accusing the U.S. of ‘putting on a backstabbing TV show’ and declaring that the spectacle ‘made us sick.’

As a result, the company stated: ‘We have decided to immediately STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports. No Fuel to Americans!’ Haltbakk Bunkers also urged Norwegians and Europeans to follow their lead, concluding their statement with the slogan ‘Slava Ukraina’ in support of Ukraine.

This week started with administration officials refusing to acknowledge that Russia started the war in Ukraine.

It ends with a tense, regrettable conversation in the Oval Office and whispers from the White House that they may try to end all US support for Ukraine.

I know foreign policy is not for the faint of heart, but right now, I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and US values around the world.