Lisa Haseldine

Thanks to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin could enjoy his Victory Day parade in Moscow safe in the knowledge that no Ukrainian drones would come hurtling onto Red Square while he was inspecting the Russian troops. Taking to Truth Social last night, the American president declared that he had requested that Moscow and Kyiv observe a three-day ceasefire, starting today and lasting until 11 March.  ‘This ceasefire will include a suspension of all kinetic activity, and also a prison swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country,’ Trump said. At the time of writing that truce is still holding, with both Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky stating that they would stick to the agreement.

With Donald Trump’s noisy war on Iran about to enter its third month, it can be easy to forget that another conflict is going on much closer to Britain’s shores. Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is creeping towards a grim milestone of its own: by the beginning of June, it will have gone on for longer than the First World War. Today, Navy chief Sir Gwyn Jenkins issued a timely reminder that the danger posed by Moscow extended far beyond eastern Europe. ‘Russia remains the gravest threat to our security,' he warned. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank in London, Jenkins, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, revealed that incursions by Russian ships and submarines into British waters had jumped by almost a third in the last two years.

Could an agreement for Britain to join Europe’s defence fund ‘Security Action for Europe’ (Safe) be back on the cards? Speaking in Paris yesterday, European Council president Antonio Costa suggested as much. ‘It could take some weeks, ‌months, ⁠but for sure, we will achieve an agreement with the UK on the Safe issue,’ he said. Nato officials last month warned Starmer that uncertainty over Britain's defence spending and the speed of rearmament risked undermining the country’s status in the alliance Talks between Britain and the EU on joining the £130 billion scheme broke down last November when Brussels demanded the government hand over a £5 billion joining fee. France, reportedly, was the most hardline proponent of this ‘pay to play’ model at the time.

Munich, Germany It’s no secret that Keir Starmer prefers foreign diplomacy to the domestic side of his job. So after perhaps the most difficult week of his leadership so far, the Prime Minister was no doubt relieved to have made it to the Munich security conference today, addressing delegates in the main conference hall this morning. Starmer was unexpectedly forthright in his address: Britain would be prepared to fight Starmer began by warning that the prospect of war for Britain was no longer a remote one. Russia, he warned, could be ready to use force against the Nato alliance ‘by the end of this decade’. In doing so, he echoed key figures of the British armed forces and intelligence services who, in recent months, have said much the same.

One of Russia’s top military generals, Vladimir Alekseev, is in a critical condition after being shot while leaving his Moscow apartment earlier this morning. Lieutenant General Alekseev, a deputy director in Russia’s military intelligence agency – still best-known by its former acronym, the GRU – has been taken to hospital following reports he was shot multiple times in the back in the lobby of his apartment block in the north of the city. The assailant fled the scene immediately after the shooting, which took place shortly after 7 a.m. local time, and reportedly has yet to be caught. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped some in Russia from already pointing the finger at Ukraine.