Ukraine

Sometime in the late morning of February 4, somebody at SpaceX headquarters pressed a computer key. A command line was beamed to Starlink’s 9,600 satellites in low Earth orbit. Their onboard processors, circling 550 kilometers above the Earth, instantly obeyed the command and fractionally changed their operational settings. Back down on the frozen ground, in the trenches, bunkers and ruined cities of Russian-occupied Ukraine, hundreds of Starlink terminals lost internet connectivity. As another freezing night set in, the Russian army’s drones and tactical comms went dark. “We are left without communication!” complained a frontline Russian military officer in a video posted on the Telegram channel “Voenkory Russian Spring.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that World War Three has already started. Speaking to the BBC on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion, it’s understandable why he would want to take this line, but he's wrong. What is striking about Putin is the lack of a messianic ideology On an emotional level, Zelensky has seen millions of his citizens flee within and out of his country, its cities and infrastructure shattered and Vladimir Putin's propagandists denounce him variously as a Nazi apologist, drug addict and western puppet. Of course he will frame this in the most apocalyptic of terms. More to the point, Ukraine is now dependent on European aid. It is European money that keeps the government solvent, and arms the troops.

How might the ayatollahs know an American strike force is coming? Advanced radar technology, perhaps, or a mole somewhere in the Pentagon. Or they could just look at Polymarket. There is currently around $125 million wagered in the largest market predicting when the US will next strike Iran. Given the current odds, traders reckon an attack will take place in the second half of this month. If Nicolás Maduro had checked Polymarket on the night of January 2, he would have seen his odds of losing power spike from around one in ten to 66 percent, hours before Delta Force arrived. One trader has racked up $150,000 in profits in seven months, placing trades on military activity by Israel Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi are prediction markets.

Last week was one of realpolitik, Trump-style. Greenland was sorted, the "New Gaza" unveiled, and all that was left was Ukraine and Russia. Donald Trump went from Davos back to the US but ordered his special envoys to Abu Dhabi, armed with the president’s formula for ending the war in Europe, to get a deal to stop the killing and destruction. As the envoys from the US, Russia and Ukraine opened the talks on Friday in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, none of the pre-signaling indicated that a breakthrough was in the offing. Two days were allotted for the meetings, in the expectation that it wouldn’t just be a rehash of the same, familiar arguments.

Boris Johnson has urged European leaders to hand $247 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets to Ukraine – but says he fears they “lack the courage” to do so, in an interview with The Spectator. The former British prime minister also warned that Trump is at risk of “morally polluting” himself if he caves to Putin’s demands in peace negotiations and encouraged his negotiating team to stop the “nauseating deals” they are discussing about joint business ventures.“I think Europe is at a very difficult point because Europe has got to do the reparations alone,” Johnson said. “And I'm worried that they lack the courage. They must do it. I think that's the only way to get the Americans to take Europe seriously.

No one ever tucked themselves up in bed to read a government document – at least not in the expectation of enjoying it. The standard format is one of hundreds of pages of impenetrable jargon yielding no more than nuggets of significant ideas. The Trump administration has admirably cut through that tendency to produce a National Security Strategy (NSS) that is worth reading: a coherent outlining of America’s strategic intentions on the world stage. Originally composed by Michael Anton, a brilliant mind who is sadly leaving the State Department, the document concisely lays out a Trumpian vision of America’s role in the 21st century.

The Kremlin pulled out all the stops for the visit of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow yesterday. Accompanied by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner strolled through crowds on Red Square with minimal security after lunching at a fancy restaurant on Petrovka street. Not coincidentally, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi was also in town for a meeting with Russian Security Council head Sergei Shoigu, where Russia affirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy.  It was a sophisticated piece of great power signaling intended to send a multi-part message to Donald Trump.

Kyiv The urge to run from danger is only human. It was palpable when air raid sirens sounded as I left the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, which is close to the front line and under relentless attack nightly from Russian drones. Five MiG-31 aircraft were in the air, Telegram channels with access to reliable intelligence reported. The warplanes can be armed with either the Iskander ballistic missile – which travels at up to 5,400mph – or the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, top speed 7,700mph. So fast there wasn’t enough time to find a shelter. We sat in traffic with bated breath, waiting. A deep boom resonated through the mini-bus and two colleagues of mine began praying. Was it an intercept or an impact – or a Patriot defense battery firing? We still don’t know.

As Moscow and Washington prepare for talks on the latest version of Donald Trump’s peace plan, leaked recordings of a conversation with US envoy Steve Witkoff have thrown a spotlight on to senior diplomat Yuri Ushakov. It seems he, not Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is the prime mover behind Russia’s negotiating position. The stature of Lavrov, once a legend in the diplomatic community, has steadily diminished since 2014, when he wasn’t even consulted before Vladimir Putin decided to annex Crimea. Every year since then, the now-75-year-old minister has petitioned Putin to be allowed to retire; every year this is denied. Instead, Lavrov remains confined to a role of repeating threadbare talking points to audiences who frequently and openly disbelieve him.

It was summer 2022. Ukraine had just taken back Kyiv, people were returning to the city, and the mood was one of euphoria, triumph and success. I was having dinner with a Ukrainian official in a neon-lit seafood restaurant in the center of the city, the curfew nearing. "If this ends like the West Germany or Korea scenario, that would be the best outcome," I said to him. He snapped at me: "You want me to tell my relatives in Kherson that they will never live in Ukraine?" Three years later, and even that unwelcome outcome is now far from what Kyiv is being offered by the Trump administration.