Russia

With all the good news coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there’s only one question that needs to be answered: Will President Putin be interested in any kind of deal right now? President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace. But if the Russian leader truly wants to end his war, will he do so on America’s terms, or will he wait until he achieves one of his main objectives — the total subjugation of the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that he claimed to have annexed in the first seven months of the invasion? At a ceremony in St. George’s Hall at the Kremlin in September 2022, Putin declared that Russia now had four new regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.

So much for the flurry of visits by European leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron and British prime minister Keir Starmer this past week to placate, prod and persuade President Donald Trump to back Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. Kyiv’s lonely battle to retain its sovereignty just got a little bit lonelier as Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky quarreled during a televised meeting in the Oval Office.   The president and his deputy disrespected Zelensky by telling him that he was being “disrespectful.” It ended with Zelensky being dismissed from the White House, a canceled press conference and the mineral deal with Ukraine in a state of inanition.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?

British foreign policy has always oscillated between isolation and engagement. The division has shaped Conservative thinking over generations. The archetypal icon of engagement is Winston Churchill. In the wake of the Munich Agreement, Churchill made his greatest anti-appeasement appeal: ‘What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany.’ He was for rearmament and, ultimately, for war. Churchill had in his sights the isolationists of the right – those Tories who would not ‘die for Danzig’. Victory in the second world war, the western alliance, Nato, America’s nuclear guarantee, the European Union, communist collapse – all seemed to prove Churchill triumphant and correct.

The Anti-corruption Action Centre, the NGO I chair, is probably one of the loudest watchdogs in Ukraine that is monitoring President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. We expose corruption, advocate for comprehensive rule-of-law reforms, and demand better governance ­– even during war. For over a decade we have built anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine, and endured persecution for simply carrying out our work. We want to strengthen Ukrainian institutions and build a more effective, resilient democracy. It’s unacceptable for any foreign leader (even of the United States) to humiliate our president, decide on behalf of the Ukrainian people that we should hold elections, and spread falsehoods about who started the war.

After four hours of talks in Saudi Arabia, Russian and American negotiators have reportedly come up with a three-stage plan to end the war in Ukraine. According to Fox News, the plan includes a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine and the signing of a final agreement. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who was neither informed nor invited to the talks, said that Russia and the US are discussing the same old ultimatum Moscow set at the start of full-scale war. ‘I wonder – if we didn’t accept such ultimatums in our most difficult moment, why does anyone think we would now?’, he said. Back in February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin said he invaded Ukraine to protect people from the ‘Nazi regime in Kiev’.