Owen Matthews

Who will pay for Ukraine’s war effort now the Trump administration has turned off the financial taps? European leaders have expressed themselves ready and willing to take up the burden, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen affirming that ‘if we continue to believe that Ukraine is our first line of defence, we need to step up our assistance.’ Individual countries have come up with generous funding packages – most open-handed of all being Germany, which has recently pledged more than €3 billion in direct funding. But that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what Ukraine says it needs.

A solid gold toilet and cupboards loaded with bagfuls of €200 bills are among the treasures linked to the prominent Ukrainian businessman Timur Mindich, after an investigation by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu). Mindich is big in real estate, fertilisers, banking and diamond trading – but he is best known as a long-time co-owner of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 television production company. Nabu’s 15-month long investigation into what it describes as ‘high level’ corruption at the top of Ukraine’s political elite is likely to have momentous consequences for Zelensky’s political future.

Is Donald Trump’s peace process in Ukraine moving forward – or it is merely going around in circles in a series of gut-wrenching loop-the-loops? Less than a fortnight ago Trump raised Ukrainian hopes by dangling the possibility of sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, describing the Kremlin as a ‘Paper Tiger’ and warning that the Russian economy was on the verge of collapse. But when Ukraine's president Volodimir Zelensky arrived late last week in Washington for face to-face talks at the White House instead of Tomahawks he received a lecture on how he had to accede to many of Putin’s demands or face ‘annihilation’. Land – or ‘property’ as Trump puts it – is not what Putin really wants at all What changed?

For many of Ukraine’s supporters, Donald Trump’s recent declaration that Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form” came as a welcome – and unexpected – turnaround in US policy. “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post in late September. “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.” But would taking back the lost territories of the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea make Ukraine whole again – or could a reconquest instead condemn Ukraine to perpetual civil war against itself and prolong the conflict with Russia indefinitely?

The news footage was satisfyingly reminiscent of Mission: Impossible. Masked French commandoes swarmed up the side of the rusty oil tanker Boracay, assault rifles drawn, and commenced their search for evidence the vessel had been responsible for launching Russian drones at Danish airports. The captain and first officer – both Chinese nationals – were taken into custody. France’s president Emmanuel Macron could not confirm that the Boracay was responsible for the drone attacks – but did make it clear that stopping the vessel off the coast of St Nazaire was intended as ‘a step moving towards a policy of obstruction of suspicious ships in our waters that are involved in trafficking’ Russian oil.

Provocation, mistake, or something in between? Either Putin sent Russian drones into Poland’s airspace on Tuesday night to test Nato’s reaction, or Ukrainian electronic jamming scrambled the targeting systems on Russian drones and sent them haywire. Or perhaps the Kremlin is playing a grey-zone game, launching an accidentally-on-purpose attack to push Europe’s boundaries.  The problem with the Kremlin testing the boundaries theory is that it doesn’t make much political or military sense Whatever Putin’s intent, the shooting down of several drones marks the first time ever that Nato warplanes have engaged and destroyed Russian weapons in European airspace.

The Trump-Putin press conference in Anchorage was 12 minutes that shook the world. Putin got precisely what he wanted, which was full personal rehabilitation as a respectable world leader. Donald Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin and at the presser said that he had ‘always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir.’ And though no deal was done over Ukraine, what Putin achieved was something far more valuable – a re-set of relations between Russia and the US. Putin admitted that bilateral ties had fallen to the ‘lowest point since the Cold War’ but called for both sides to move on. ‘Not far from here lies the international date line where one can literally step from yesterday into tomorrow,’ said Putin.