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Like the US, they should seek to intermediate in talks, not promote the interests of one side in a losing war I am aiming to cut through the warmongering propaganda with balanced analysis and a desire to fill the diplomacy vacuum in our troubled world. If you find my work helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee . Alternatively, I’d be delighted if you purchased a copy of the memoir of my diplomatic posting to Russia, A Misfit in Moscow . Thank you very much. President Zelensky now attends every major European meeting of Heads. While perhaps understandable, that means the agenda gets hijacked by Ukrainian talking points and limits Europe’s ability to play an impartial role in peace talks. European leaders met again in Paris on 27 March to discuss ideas for a coalition of the willing, specifically, a group of European nations that would be willing to provide security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a future peace process. That meeting produced no new breakthroughs and the co-hosts, President Macron of France and Prime Minister Starmer of Britain, held separate press conferences at the end. Yet again, it wasn’t possible to reach a consensus on the controversial topic of using frozen Russian assets for reconstruction in Ukraine, given the significant legal and financial risks around this. No new determination was reached on the controversial notion of deploying western ‘reassurance’ troops to Ukraine in the future. Some European countries including Greece and Italy have made it clear that they see this as an unworkable and dangerous step. Unworkable, because the deployment of, essentially, NATO troops to Ukraine, will almost certainly face resistance from Russia. Dangerous because, even the most optimistic western commentators are talking about a deployed European force of 30,000 troops, which is tiny when set against the 600,000 Russian troops thought to be in Ukraine right now. But there is a deeper problem. Proposals to deploy troops to Ukraine, however unworkable and dangerous, are addressing the wrong question. The United States and, indirectly, the NATO Secretary General, have admitted that Ukraine’s desire to join the military alliance is off of the table. The Paris summit would have better focused on the detail of what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like as part of any peace deal. This might be along the lines of an Article 5 type of commitment by willing European states, as recommended by the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Leaders like Macron and Starmer can’t claim the threat of a military force is a tactic to put pressure on Russia to strike for peace, given the proposed force’s limited size and the reality that it would take months, at the current rate of progress, for troops to arrive in Ukraine, if they ever did. Yet again, this talks to Europe’s inability to fight wars by committee. Big meetings in Paris give European leaders their moment to say the right things, express solidarity and offer every type of support short of assistance. But, and fundamentally, they offer no new ideas and inject no new energy or momentum into efforts to bring peace to Ukraine. In fact, in terms of the substance, the events have become a distraction from and a delaying tactic to, real peace. A contributing factor, it seems to me, is the inability of Europe’s leaders to hold a meeting without inviting President Zelensky of Ukraine. He appears, in his cargo pants and black sweatshirt, to be treated like royalty. And, of course, it may be understandable that people feel a sense of solidarity with Ukraine at a time of war and feel a personal affinity to Zelensky. But the question remains, what role does Zelensky play at these talks? Clearly, he arrives with his own talking points and a package of narratives to deploy during his many press engagements in Europe. These include the need to impose more sanctions on Russia, that Europe should force Putin to make peace, that only strengthening Ukraine with more weapons will help. You’ve probably heard these lines countless times before because they are aggressively deployed by every Ukrainian official and media outlet. As Ukraine is fighting Russia on the battlefield, I understand their need to pursue an aggressive public communications posture as part of their wider war effort, including to prop up morale at home. In Zelensky’s shoes, I might pursue a similar tactic. And yet, the lines he advances, on sanctions and applying pressure on Russia all appear, most likely, to extend the war, not end it. They certainly offer nothing new, in the context where Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, and the tried and tested tools to thwart Russia have all failed. Yet, because Zelensky attends every major European meeting now on the war effort, his narratives dominate the agenda of the day, whether or people believe that his proposals will work. So, during his press conference in Paris, and following Zelensky’s script, Starmer said that the west should impose more sanctions on Russia as part of efforts to force President Putin to make peace. This despite the fact that eleven years after the first sanctions were introduced, Russia’s economy still outperforms those in Europe. (Indeed, this week the UK Office of Budget Responsibility halved its estimate of UK economic growth in 2025 from 2% to 1%.) Or that, with Russia still retaining the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine, imposing further sanctions now will merely, and self-evidently, discourage President Putin from agreeing any peace deal. An extremely small potential package of sanctions relief on the Russian Agricultural Bank hangs in the balance, despite the US agreeing with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi this week to unlock the Black Sea deal. President Macron has said that there can be no sanctions relief until there is complete peace. The European Commission Press Spokesperson has said that sanctions can’t be removed until the compete withdrawal of Russia troops in Ukraine, a position that clearly hasn’t been discussed or agreed with other EU Member States. These British, French and wider European pronouncements might be well-meaning, but they are usually unhelpful. On top of the already challenging bureaucratic straitjacket on Europe making a constructive input into peace talks, the presence of Zelensky at all of their meetings inevitably drags them towards agreeing and promoting his agenda. And, of course, it also means that Russia does not see Europe as an independent actor in any peace talks, as it has become an extension of Ukraine and unable to adopt an impartial position. Not least as European leaders seldom, if ever, engage directly with President Putin. That’s why Putin has been open to engaging in peace talks with Trump, because he sees that the US is trying to intermediate in talks, rather than simply taking sides with Ukraine. Zelensky has now ‘insisted’ that Britain and France should be represented at any future peace talks for Ukraine. In truth, if Starmer and Macron want to play a more prominent role in the process, they should invite Zelensky to fewer meetings.

It's time to sell, baby, sell! I am aiming to cut through the warmongering propaganda with balanced analysis and a desire to fill the diplomacy vacuum in our troubled world. If you find my work helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee . Alternatively, I’d be delighted if you purchased a copy of the memoir of my diplomatic posting to Russia, A Misfit in Moscow . Thank you very much. As President Trump threatens the world with sweeping tariffs, he is trying to change the fundamental laws of economics through force of will. He shouldn’t succeed. Reciprocal tariffs will hurt developing countries more than the USA; they should instead sell off U.S. debt. The Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises once said that ‘the balance of payments theory forgets that the volume of trade is completely dependent on prices.’ The United States has such a gigantic trade deficit, at over $1 trillion each year, because it can buy foreign goods cheaper than it can produce them domestically. Some countries subsidise production to lower prices for export advantage while others export goods further down the value chain. But, the U.S. dollar is so powerful, that it renders American exports more expensive, irrespective of the distortions and disadvantages of its trading partners. This is part of the exorbitant privilege in which the U.S. dollar remains the world’s leading reserve currency, amounting to 58% of total reserves. Foreign countries put their capital into the U.S. precisely because it is a stable and safe, raising the price of the dollar on exchange markets because demand is always high. A strong greenback makes imports cheaper and that helps manage inflation in America. President Trump clearly wants to boost his support in the blue collar heartlands of America, driving job creation in traditional American industry that has been undercut by foreign imports over many years. But he can’t have two cakes and eat them both. He can’t simultaneously slash the huge U.S. balance of payments deficit – helping blue collar workers – while at the same time maintaining the U.S. as the destination of choice for foreign capital. That would be to defy the logic of economics. To oversimplify slightly, America has built its bloated Federal apparatus on the back of cheap imports. The huge current account surpluses that exporting powerhouses like China, India, some European and ASEAN countries run produces a torrent of easy capital that props up the U.S. state. The U.S. has a debt mountain of around $35 trillion which is roughly the equivalent sum of debt held by foreign investors. Of that debt, around $8.5 trillion is in the form of U.S. Treasuries, literally loans to the U.S. government, with a similar amount invested in corporate debt and the rest largely in equity. That’s why Trump is going in so hard with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. He’s desperate to reduce the size of the U.S. state apparatus because he knows that the Federal house of cards is built on fiscal quicksand. He probably figures that the political benefits of promoting employment among among the working class are higher than cutting the federal workforce. If his plan works. Because the real challenge to the U.S. is not the federal debt itself but its ability to service its debt. The exorbitant privilege, coupled with the massively disinflationary tidal wave of the global financial crisis, ushered in a period of historically low inflation and low interest rates. That era has ended, as ratings agency Moody’s pointed out this week. U.S. interest rates are now higher, at 4.25-4.5% driving up the costs of servicing the country’s enormous debt mountain. The threat to the U.S. right now is inflation and what that means for its debt servicing bill, if interest rates are held or, even, forced higher. That’s why the idea of a BRICS currency is so terrifying to Trump, because BRICS now accounts for 41% of the global economy by purchasing power parity. A BRICS currency (a highly speculative idea, frankly, at this stage) might pose a longer-term risk of making the dollar less appealing and, therefore, weaker, driving up inflation. There are parallels here for the 1970s, when rampant inflation, triggered by a number of factors including the oil crisis and America’s move to a fiat currency, led U.S. interest rates to soar at one point to 20%. During this period, foreign countries withdrew their investments, and the dollar slumped to 45% of total global foreign exchange reserves. And herein Trump’s challenge. He can’t export more without a weak dollar, and a weak dollar will make U.S. debt harder to services. Tariffs are simply his attempt to bully less developed economies for America’s political and economic advantage. They impose a cost on foreign exporters that is unrelated to the price of the goods, as determined by the rate of exchange at any time. And there is little value for an individual country in responding with reciprocal tariffs, precisely because they export more to the U.S. than they import. On the escalation ladder of tariffs, developing countries will always lose out. And economic war, like real war, hinges on which belligerent can accept the most pain and continue to fight on. But developing countries have more power than they realise. Countries that export more than they import, build up stocks of foreign exchange that they invest overseas. If you look at the size of countries’ trade surpluses with the U.S. it is insightful. China’s surplus runs out at almost $300 billion each year, for the EU and ASEAN it’s over $220 billion. These countries/blocs all park significant volumes of their capital in the U.S. Rather than fighting a losing tariff, the should accelerate the divestment of long-term debt holdings in U.S. treasuries and corporate debt, undermining the strength of the dollar and adding inflationary pressure. U.S. exports may rise. Exporting countries may need to seek to reinvest in other jurisdictions or repatriate capital (as Russia did in 2014, following the imposition of sanctions). However, and as happened in the 1970s, inflation would become an increasing risk to the U.S. economy over a period of years, as the price of foreign imports rose in the face of a weakening dollar. That would force up interest rates, as the U.S. government sought to shore up demand for the dollar to reduce inflationary pressure. And that would raise the cost of servicing America’s debt mountain. In the art of the deal, threatening to crash the U.S. economy would bring Trump to the table far quicker than a tariff war. As the U.S. President himself might say, ‘sell, baby, sell.’

I recently published the piece below in Responsible Statecraft . The Paris Summit on 27 March produced nothing that indicated European leaders are focused on the issue of longer-term funding. This is worrying, not least as the Paris Summit appeared designed to prolong, not end, the war. Do the Europeans still have their collective heads in the sand? I hope you find my article interesting! I am aiming to cut through the warmongering propaganda with balanced analysis and a desire to fill the diplomacy vacuum in our troubled world. If you find my work helpful, please consider buying me a coffee . Alternatively, I’d be delighted if you purchased a copy of the memoir of my diplomatic posting to Russia, A Misfit in Moscow . Thank you very much. BEGINS There is no plan in place to fund the Ukrainian budget after 2025. Even if the war ends by the summer of 2025, it will take some time to reduce military expenditures, leaving European nations on the hook. It’s not clear that European elites have fully understood the political costs, however much longer the war continues. With intensive, U.S.-brokered negotiations ongoing in Saudi Arabia  involving separate Ukrainian and Russian delegations, hopes are rising that the Trump administration  will finally be able to bring an end to the war. But even if the war ends tomorrow, it would be unwise to assume that Ukraine could reduce military spending close to prewar levels. Ukraine now has almost 900,000 men and women at arms , a threefold increase from peacetime, and that doesn’t take into account irrecoverable losses through death and injury. Estimates vary widely, but the casualty rate is commonly thought to number in the hundreds of thousands, with compensation provided to the injured and families of the deceased . The war in Ukraine has therefore come at a vast financial cost to that country. Ukraine’s defense spending has risen tenfold since the 2021 budget was announced , when social welfare payments were the country’s biggest expenditure. This has left a gaping hole in Ukraine’s finances that no amount of tax increases or Western donations will be able to fill over a sustained period without political consequences. Since 2022, Ukraine has run an average budget deficit of over 22% of GDP. Based on the current exchange rate, Ukraine’s budget shortfall in 2025 amounts to around $41.5 billion. And that assumes defense spending falling slightly this year. In the hopefully unlikely event that war continues to the end of the year, the Ukrainian state would need to revise its budget upwards  as it did in 2024. Today, Ukraine’s domestic revenue, including taxes, excise, and duties, just about covers the cost of the defense effort, which in 2024 accounted for 64% of its total budget expenditure. That includes significant tax increases  as the war has gone on. Total tax revenue will have risen by more than 100% since the war started and personal income taxes by over 200%. This in a country in which, according to the Wilson Center, 50% of the population lives at a basic subsistence  level. As Ukraine is cut off from international capital markets, it has had to meet the difference through aid and loans from Western nations. Put simply, Western donations and loans have paid the salaries of Ukrainian state officials and kept the lights on in their buildings. At the start of the war, donations took the form of free financial aid to meet the country’s budgetary and military needs. According to the Kiel Institute,  the United States has provided just above $50 billion in direct budgetary assistance. The European Union  provided $51.5 billion in financial assistance – i.e., budgetary support – between 2022 and 2024. However, since the start of 2024, free aid has progressively shifted to lending as Western governments have felt the political and economic cost of unlimited financial assistance. So, Ukraine has increasingly resorted to borrowing money. In some regards, that is to be expected. Governments tend to borrow heavily at times of war. The UK only settled its World War II war debts  to the United States and Canada in 2006. Ukrainian debt has therefore soared to over 100% of GDP and, critically, the cost of servicing its debt has tripled, and now makes up the second largest line of expenditure in Ukraine’s budget, after military spending. To put that into context, Ukraine will spend more  than twice the amount on servicing its debt in 2025 than it spends on the health of its population. That ratio will only widen the longer the war continues. Ukraine should just about be able to make ends meet in 2025 thanks to the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan agreed in June 2024. As part of a last-ditch compromise by the outgoing Biden Administration, the $20 billion U.S. contribution  to the G7 loan was directed through the World Bank to provide specific project-based support – i.e., to help rebuild power infrastructure - rather than generalized budgetary support. The crucial point is that I’ve seen no plans for how Ukraine’s budgetary needs will be met from 2026 onward. Even if the war ends tomorrow, Ukraine may still be at risk of running out of money in 2026 if Western donor countries falsely assume that it will be able to return to prewar spending on Day One. Therefore, the big question is how quickly Ukraine can reduce military spending in 2026 and who will cover the shortfall. To balance the books in 2026, Ukraine would need to reduce its military spending by 80%, or around $41 billion. But decision-makers in Kyiv may understandably push to maintain a big army against the threat of future Russian aggression. While the huge expenditure in weapons and ammunition from war fighting may fall away, maintaining a standing army, even if its numbers are reduced, would still carry a heavy price. Even if Ukraine’s future budget deficit wasn’t as high as $41 billion, it is easy to imagine that it might be $20 billion. The International Monetary Fund also doesn’t expect Ukraine to be able to access international lending markets before 2027. That will leave the Ukrainian state reaching out to donor nations for additional funding. With the Trump administration looking to pare back its financial commitments to Ukraine and focus instead on investing, including in minerals, the pressure will be on European states. There is significant political risk here. In the past few days, the Europeans struggled to agree to an additional weapons package of $5 billion for Ukraine . Funding $20 billion in budgetary support to Ukraine in 2026 following a ceasefire this year may still herald a backlash from those on the nationalist left and right who believe the war should have ended in 2022. I assess the UK and Europe  would find it economically and politically unsustainable to prop up the war beyond this year without the United States. That’s another reason why European leaders should get behind ongoing peace negotiations.

Since the start of the year, I've been incredibly busy and have posted much of my work on a new Substack account called the Peacemonger . Below, I have provided links to the various articles that I've posted there. In future, I will simultaneously post articles to this site as well, to ensure no one misses out. Please get in touch any time if you'd like to discuss my work! January The Cancellation of Mainstream debate in the west on Ukraine . We need to talk about Russia sanctions if we are committed to peace in Ukraine Zelensky isn't Churchill, and he might not get a Pearl Harbour moment The memorial in Auschwitz reminds us of the blind hatred and cruelty that fuels the war in Ukraine Russia is capturing as many coal mines and minerals as it can before a ceasefire February Does Volodymyr Zelensky face the same fate as previous western-backed leaders Should Russia cut a real estate deal with Ukraine to end the war? Switching off Russian gas is hurting Europe more than it's hurting Russia France can't afford Ukraine's entry History made a long overdue comeback on 12 February Zelensky's deal on Ukrainian minerals looks even worse after Trump's slapdown Why European leaders are experiencing the final stage of grief, as their Ukraine policy is confirmed dead Starmer faces a struggle to stay relevant in DC Starmer will talk tightrope in Trump meeting How President Trump is well placed to secure a deal with Russia to end the war March The pro-war lobby in the west needs to come up with new ideas Kaja Kallas is the wrong person to lead EU policy Britain needs to DOGE its small army Starmer is ditching Zelensky to avoid Trump tariffs Ukraine: what would Margaret Thatcher have done? From Misfit in Moscow to Peacemonger in London All the pressure is on Zelensky after ceasefire offer Owen Matthews loses his credibility by parroting idiotic nonsense about Russia's economy Losing Kursk has weakened Zelensky's hand in ceasefire talks The Ukrainians failed to confront ultranationalists to secure a peace deal in the Donbas Let Russia compete in the Olympics and other global events President Trump's move to rebuild trust with President Putin is welcome and overdue

Responsible Statecraft involves hard choices and unpalatable compromises. General Keith Kellogg, President-elect Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, will need to confront head on a number of stubborn foreign policy obstacles as he seeks to broker peace in Ukraine in 2025. Right now there is no strategy Failure in Ukraine has emerged out of western disunity as the U.S., the EU, and the UK and intra-alliance interests collided on key issues such as sanctions, war aims, financial and military support. The run-up to the US Presidential elections, and its aftermath, saw repeated appeals to “Trump-proof” U.S. policy towards Ukraine. Kellogg should encourage Ukrainian and European leaders to coalesce around a single, realistic vision for Ukraine’s future. Defeating Russia is not a legitimate foreign policy goal as Ukraine will never be in a position to deliver this. The focus might include rebuilding a strong, democratic and prosperous Ukraine that attains EU membership at a determinate time. We cannot strike a peace deal without talking to Putin  In their America First paper, Kellogg and Fred Fleitz expressed an understanding of what the Biden Administration did not — that any approach to Russia must involve both deterrence and diplomacy . As they pointed out, “Biden was not interested in working with Putin. He wanted to lecture and isolate him.” Not talking to Putin has also been an unshakeable UK foreign policy approach since 2014 and is now hardwired within the EU, with its hawkish new foreign policy chief, former Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas , ruling out direct engagement. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has made negotiations with Russia illegal. By contrast, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that he is willing to engage with President Trump and other world leaders to resolve the Ukraine crisis. Kellogg needs to encourage European leaders to reengage with diplomacy and get on board with a more transactional approach with Russia that seeks workable solutions for all sides. Ukraine is never going to join NATO NATO cannot continue to hold a principled line on future Ukrainian membership that it will not underwrite with force of arms . Putin talks about the proximity of NATO rather than its size. Yes, he was forced to swallow Finnish membership , which he regarded de facto as halfway in NATO before his invasion of Ukraine. However, he has staked his political career on Ukraine never joining NATO for over 16 years, and that will never change. NATO membership should finally, irrevocably and without caveats be taken off the table as part of a deal which provides security guarantees to Ukraine. Who provides those security guarantees will require skillful negotiation, as Russia will expect guarantors to include non-NATO countries . Kellogg’s role here is in drawing a U.S. line firmly in the sand and killing the idea, in the face of potentially heated European resistance. Ukraine will undoubtedly want to secure a quid pro quo . The Europeans should stop kicking the EU can down the road European leaders have disingenuously kicked the issue of Ukraine’s EU membership down the road while supporting the war’s continuation. French President Emmanuel Macron has said that it could take 20 years for Ukraine to join. I have long been an advocate for Ukrainian membership in the EU. However, and as I have previously pointed out, this will come at a huge and potentially damaging cost to the EU project and to neighboring Poland, if not handled well. Specifically, the EU cannot afford to expand based on its current settlement without intolerable political risks of instability, which we are seeing play out in France and Germany. Kellogg should press European leaders to chart a realistic membership concept for Ukraine . This might allow for an accelerated political-level membership, even if the more contentious challenges around regional funds for infrastructure investment (called cohesion funding) and agricultural subsidies are deferred for later consideration. Sanctions haven't worked but can help deliver peace Russia remains in a vastly stronger position economically than Ukraine because of its size and its effective fiscal and monetary policy since 2014. Sanctions have never nor will they ever tip the balance in favor of Ukraine which is becoming an economically failed state. But even today, considerable effort in the West is invested in exploring how to make sanctions more impactful. This is wasted effort. There is considerable scope to offer an easing of sanctions that nonetheless maintains economic pressure on Russia. I revealed earlier this year that 92% of all UK sanctions on individuals and 77% of sanctions on companies have had zero impact; the people or entities sanctioned have no freezable assets within our jurisdiction. If the same were to apply across all sanctioning jurisdictions including the U.S., 20,000 Russian “zero-effect” sanctions could be removed upon the agreement of a peace plan between Ukraine and Russia. This would serve as a hugely symbolic confidence building measure with Russia while offering no short-term economic relief. The harder-hitting sanctions would remain, contingent on Russia meeting its obligations under any peace deal. This should include clarity on how and under what circumstances frozen Russian reserves of around $300 billion will be released. Zelensky may be part of the problem, not the solution An end to the war will signal an end to Zelensky’s political career, at least for now. Opinion polls suggest he will lose a presidential election when war ends. Zelensky’s regular prognostications about putting his country in a stronger position to negotiate look increasingly self-serving. Ukraine will never be in a stronger position than today, militarily economically or demographically. This performative illusion and delusion merely puts off the inevitable and much-needed elections in Ukraine that would follow on from a ceasefire. Zelensky has undoubtedly played a colossal role as a rallying point for Western support for his nation at war. But he is a politician and not a demigod. And our well-intended political beatification of Zelensky has effectively given him a veto over peace. Kellogg needs to be hard-headed and recognize that, rather than being part of the solution, Zelensky may be part of the problem in ending the war. He should encourage Zelensky to play his biggest role so far, in putting Ukraine first and taking the country to elections. This article was originally published in Responsible Statecraft .

If you were worried that 2024 hadn’t been bizarre and unpredictable enough, Donald Trump recently suggested that the U.S. might buy Greenland in a ‘large real estate deal’. This follows an earlier statement that he wanted the U.S. to reclaim control of the Panama Canal and make Canada the 51st state . None of these ideas seem likely to gain ground. The incoming U.S. president appears to enjoy baiting Canada’s embattled prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Both the Panamanian and Danish governments responded angrily to Trump’s nods in their territorial direction. But Trump’s statements were intended for effect. They may also offer a way forward in Ukraine, through a deal for Russia to buy occupied territory. While Trump may be talking with specifically American interests in mind, he has inadvertently opened up a much wider debate about borders. Since 1945, almost all border changes that have taken place have emerged out of the collapse of empire as new states were formed and recognised by the UN. In that regard, the UN charter has proved remarkably resilient in maintaining a global status quo, with all its imperfections. The first Gulf War in 1991 emerged out of a need to respond to Iraq’s invasion of oil-rich Kuwait . At that time, Kuwait represented by some margin the largest post-War attempt by another country to seize land from a neighbour by force. The U.S. is not about to go to war to gain territory and couldn’t afford it anyway. Canada’s economy is valued at $2.2trn annually and an entirely hypothetical purchase of that country would nudge the U.S. closer to the point where its national debt was unsustainable . Greenland boasts an enormous wealth of natural resources including oil, gas and rare minerals, key to the production of everything from electric cars to cell-phones. But, again, at what cost? Clearly, Chinese influence is one factor in Trump’s posturing around Greenland and Panama in particular. And his statements are not historically unprecedented. The U.S. has bought territory from other states before, most notably the purchase of Alaska from Russia. But, modern day borders are largely a construct of the post-World War II settlement. Whether they make sense in ethnic or economic terms is secondary to the fact that they have provided for a certain level of stability in global affairs since the signing of the UN Charter in June 1945 . Throwing the nations of the world open to the highest bidder threatens to unpick the delicate and imperfect threads of that world order with potentially disastrous consequences. However, with team Trump looking for ideas to end the war in Ukraine, it does raise the question about whether Russia might give up its frozen assets in a grand deal to buy that lands that it has incorporated. The issue of the frozen $300bn in Russian assets refuses to go away. U.S. and European figures continue to explore ever more creative ways to seize these assets. However, the illegal theft of assets exposes the west’s financial system to significant risk as investors in the developing world move their assets to safer jurisdictions, including within BRICS. Recognition grows that the $50bn G7 loan package agreed in June is a large debt trap for Ukraine itself, as I have said consistently. And, as I have also said, Russia will expect its frozen assets to be unfrozen when the war ends; expropriating these assets actively disincentivises Russia from ending the war, as it continues to win on the battlefield. With pressure from the west unlikely to soften and with Russia’s legal position not likely to change, the frozen assets question arguably represents the biggest obstacle to a peace deal. New ideas are needed. I propose that Russia gives up its $300bn in frozen assets to Ukraine in return for Ukrainian recognition of its claims on lands that Russia has incorporated. As part of this, Ukraine would renounce its NATO aspiration but receive security guarantees from an international coalition of countries, including in the developing world. Zelensky has made noises recently about making territorial concessions as part of a future peace plan, although he may be seeking a trojan horse to secure NATO membership which remains off the table. He has certainly accepted that Ukraine cannot retake Crimea by force. For Russia, $300bn represents a vast cost, but in fact constitutes less than 50% of its current international reserves. Ending the war would allow Russia to walk away with its claims on land incorporated during the war legally decided. It would allow the slow process of normalisation of relations with Ukraine to begin. For Ukraine, $300bn in frozen assets would go a huge way to funding reparation of immense damage to its cities and critical infrastructure since war started valued at around $500bn . It would also support rebuilding Ukraine’s economy and progressing long frozen efforts at reforms around corruption, human rights and democratic freedoms . An end to the war would allow Ukraine to reduce its colossal defence spending return to a more normal fiscal framework and end its dependence on foreign aid to pay nurses and civil servants . For western powers, a deal on territory between Russia and Ukraine would also remove a contingent liability to continue to fund a war that Ukraine is slowly losing on the battlefield. There is no plan in place to continue to fund the Ukrainian state after the end of 2025, when the $50bn G7 loan package will likely run out. The U.S. and Europe will therefore be on the hook to pay for a war that ran on into 2026. All sides could walk away from this deal claiming victory of sorts. For Russia that would be certainty that western powers didn’t return at a later time to help a rearmed Ukraine fight over land it had lost. Ukraine would walk away with its sovereignty and freedom and be able to join the EU, if it still wished. Taking all the risks into account, this could be the real estate deal of the century.

She plans to mount a coup d’etat by insisting that she remains the rightful ruler of Georgia. I spent thirty minutes watching current Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili’s interview with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell on their popular ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast. It was both illuminating and deeply disturbing. My main conclusion was that the biggest threat to democracy in Georgia is Zourabichvili herself, and that Georgian authorities should tread carefully to avoid bungling the end of her Presidency on Sunday 29 January. Salome Zourabichvili is very obviously driven by a deep-seated hatred of Russia dating back to her grandparents’ decision to go into exile in 1921, in the teeth of the Red Army occupation of Georgia. It was clear that she has made it her life’s ambition to right the wrong of Georgia’s occupation, by which I inferred she meant to eradicate any hint of hated Russian influence. Salome has a childish and romanticised historical view of Georgia rooted in her affluent childhood in central Paris and attending the Georgian church. Like a child, she was mendacious and slippery in her response to the question of her Georgian citizenship, describing herself as always having been Georgian through speech and song at home. In fact, she only gained Georgian citizenship on March 20 2004, awarded by then President Saakashvili, while she was still France’s serving Ambassador to Georgia. The reason for Zourabichvili’s sudden citizenship was to allow her to become Georgia’s Foreign Minister, a role she carried out for a year and a half, for most of that time still employed by the French Diplomatic Service. If that sounds familiar to you, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s first Finance Minister in 2014, Natalia Jaresko, was a former State Department official, as is former President Viktor Yushchenko’s wife, Kateryna. Noone screams ‘democracy’ more, after all, than western officials put in charge of countries that they want to rescue from the tyranny of independence. By becoming Georgian Foreign Minister while still a serving French diplomat and French citizen, she described a sense of exacting ‘revenge’ on behalf of her parents. So, it was apparent that she has spent her whole life in a private fury about the Russian menace and developed an almost fanatical determination to right what she considers to have been an historical wrong. A political opportunist, she has aligned with and dropped most political parties in Georgia on her way to the top, including Georgia Dream itself. Like a French Greta Thunberg without the global fanbase, Zourabichvili has turned her fury more recently towards righting the so-called injustice imposed on Georgia by the 26 October election which she describes as having been stolen. She is entirely dismissive of the weak support lent to her cause by the OSCE monitoring mission, which found that the Georgian elections were generally well organised, even if there were discrepancies in a number of areas. Or to the fact that most European Heads of State have soft-pedalled on outright condemnation of the Georgia Dream party since that time. Her position rests almost exclusively on the notion that the wrong party won, and that that must by definition be anti-democratic. That – in her words – the elections themselves were ‘really a referendum’ about Georgia’s right to choose Europe over Russia. And that the fact Georgia Dream won must axiomatically indicate that the result was fiddled. An elderly woman, reaching back to her high-society upbringing in Paris with her Nazi sympathising relatives, she describes a young generation of Georgians who have lived and ‘studied abroad’ and are desperate to choose Europe. And yet, statistics from UNESCO show that only around 10000 Georgians study overseas in tertiary education each year, or around one quarter of a percent of the population. Her idea of the modern Georgian citizen is that of an urban rich kid, who may well yearn for a European future for their country after skiing trips to Chamonix. That chauvinistic and narrow view of an appropriate Georgianness doesn’t represent the median of a Georgian society in which GDP per capita is just $8200. While the elections on 26 October were not perfect, a very clear pattern emerged in which rural Georgians, who make up 40% of the population, voted overwhelmingly in favour of Georgia Dream. As has been the case since the election night itself on 26 October, Salome Zourabichvili has provided not a single scrap of evidence of Russian interference. Indeed, at the end of the interview, she conceded that Bidzina Ivanishvili himself is not even a direct agent of Russia. Bizarrely, she even described Sergei Lavrov as extremely professional. Her protest is entirely ideological; that any right-minded Georgian must necessarily have wanted to vote against Georgia Dream, and, by implication Russia, although she has never articulated persuasively how the two are linked. And that by choosing Georgia Dream, voters have either been got at or are plain stupid and not worthy of the right to vote. But her position is also astonishingly self-interested. Narcissistic and drunk on her own propaganda, she just wants to cling to power. Come what may, Salome Zourabichvili is determined to remain President of Georgia, even though her constitutional term expires on Sunday 29 December. At first, during the interview, as if she has a grand plan that she only intends to reveal at the weekend, she refused to be drawn on her future. But by the end of the she announced that ‘I will certainly be President this time next week for the Georgian people’. So having heaped scorn of the democratic failings of the electoral process in her adopted country, Salome Zourabichivili plans to mount a coup d’etat, at least in publicity terms, by insisting that she remains the rightful ruler of Georgia. What she undoubtedly wants is to create a huge scene in which she suffers a deathless martyrdom involving her being dragged out of town and exiled, bullied and bruised. Georgian authorities, which appear so far to have managed the heavily orchestrated protests in Tblisi with restraint, should continue to do so in ushering her out of power in a firm, yet polite way, so that Georgia’s incoming President, Mikheil Kavelashvili, can assume office.

I recently enjoyed a conversation with the Multipolarity podcast during which I concluded that UK foreign policy has drifted in circles for the past two decades. Circles, because we continue to try to same old prescriptions, hoping vainly that they might work this time. And drifting, because we lack any sense of purpose and are completely dependent for our ideas on a changing cast of decision makers in Washington DC. I also delve, of course, into the parlous state of UK-Russia relations. I hope you enjoy the podcast!

Many western commentators are frantically predicting the imminent onset of World War III following Joe Biden's decision to permit the use of US ATACMS missiles inside of Russia. The Russian media and political establishment will undoubtedly respond furiously to this move. But much depends on how the missiles are used. With a Trump Presidency on the horizon on a mandate to end the war in Ukraine, I believe Putin will be measured in his response. Republican commentators have condemned the move by Biden as escalating risk of WWIII Unlike in 2016, there has been fairly widespread condemnation from supporters of Trump at Biden's move, which has been viewed as a blatant escalation. Donald Trump Junior went to X to claim the Biden administration was trying to 'get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.' Other Republican politicians including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia have echoed the World War 3 warning. Venture Capitalist and Trump Support David Sacks asked if Biden's goal was 'to hand Trump the worst situation possible?' Biden copies Obama's final move, to break up the diplomatic ground for an incoming Trump Presidency Biden's move was designed to make the diplomatic terrain harder for Trump to navigate on Ukraine policy. Putin will view it in those terms too. He will remember that President Obama pulled a similar - though less dangerous - stunt during this final days in office. In one of his final foreign policy moves Obama announced sanctions against Russia for alleged election meddling, and expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the USA. This prompted a frenzy of reporting about how Putin might respond, much like we have seen over the past twenty-four hours. In the end, Putin chose not to respond and, instead, he paused to see where US policy would go under the incoming Trump administration. ATACMS decision not as significant as it appears as Zelensky's hands still tied Biden's decision is an extension of the decision from May to allow limited use of US HIMARS systems to hit military installations in the borderlands of Russia to reduce attacks on Kharkiv. Zelensky won't have weapons free to strike at will within Russia. While escalatory, it is not as significant as it seems. The indications coming out of the US administration are that the ATACMS missiles may only be used to quell an expected major Russian assault on Ukrainian formations dug in in Kursk oblast. Biden's decision an attempt to help Zelensky save face after blunder of Kursk offensive Ukraine has lost around half of the territory in Kursk that it occupied during its audacious raid in August. Clinging on to that territory until peace talks inevitably happen to end the war, Zelensky has said, will allow him symbolically to trade Russian land for Ukrainian land occupied by Russia. Since the Kursk offensive, Ukraine has lost more land to the relentless, grinding Russian advance in the Donbas, which takes small steps most days. Losing the foothold in Kursk will reveal what many commentators already point out, that the Ukrainian incursion was a strategic blunder by Zelensky that won't change the outcome of a war he is losing. So, a US decision to permit the use of ATACMS at best is an attempt by the Biden Administration to help Zelensky save face. Russia's response will depend on actual ATACMS strikes With the use of ATACMS entirely dependent on US intelligence and targeting, it is unlikely that the outgoing Biden administration will permit wider attacks outside of the Kursk theatre or in military centres that are in range of Kursk. However, we have yet to see how the missiles will be used and Putin will take his cue from that, rather than acting pre-emptively. Putin will have to respond in some way Despite the use of HIMARS already inside of Russia, Putin will have to reciprocate in some way, having said on screen in St Petersburg in September that he would. He doesn't have the political space not to act. Putin has been here before and probably won't overreact Putin knows that a major Russian retaliation that targeted US military or other assets would make it far harder for Trump to sue for peace between Russia and Ukraine, as he has promised to do. I assess it unlikely that Putin would escalate to a nuclear level on the back of what is essentially a tactical change in western weapons' use. He won't want to close off any space that Trump has to negotiate, which is Biden's aim in taking the ATACMS decision. While he has the resources and political support to continue bleeding Ukraine white, the war in Ukraine still comes at a significant economic and human cost to Russia. Trump offers a potential off-ramp that would leave Putin in a better position that he was in March 2022, when the US and UK blocked the Istanbul peace agreement. Putin will be happy for Russian state commentators to whip up the risk of over-escalation As happened in late 2016, Putin will undoubtedly encourage Russian talking heads to sow panic in the western media about a possible Russian over-escalation. That will give him space to respond in a moderate way and illuminate the western press as hysterical and Russophobic, a common attack line. More likely, he will: up strategic attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine; possibly target NATO weapons' distribution hubs in Poland; make a limited and pre-signaled strike on a US military facility in Europe or elsewhere. The risk to the UK and France There are signals that the UK and France are following America's move in possibly authorising the use of Storm Shadow and Scalp Cruise Missiles inside of Russia. I believe the same limitations on targeting would apply, as above. The same risks of a limited Russian strike on UK and French assets therefore apply. However, the bigger risk is that a Trump Administration will reverse the decision on ATACMS use inside of Russia, leaving both countries on a limb in which Ukraine still hits Russia with their weapons while Trump pushes for peace talks between Zelensky and Putin. That will mean France and Britain have a bigger climb down from their position of unquestioning support for war in Ukraine, when ceasefire talks start. In Britain in particular, that may increase pressure on the government's enormous spending on supporting the ongoing war, at a time when taxes are taking a massive hike and the cost of living crisis continues. There is more scope for France to pivot its position within the EU, which will be unable to match US financial military support for Ukraine if Trump pushes, instead, for peace. Keir Starmer has already got off to a bad start with Trump by sending Labour party activists to support the Harris campaign. He risks leaving the UK increasingly isolated and irrelevant on Ukraine policy. Plus ca change! For now, don't expect World War III to start overnight. Keep calm and carry on pressing for this mindless war to end.

Below an article that was published in Responsible Statecraft on 27 November 2024. Since that time, and as I predicted, there has been no further escalation by the US or other western powers, specifically a loosening of restrictions on the use of longer-range western weaponry inside of Russia. Indeed, for the first time yesterday (2 December), UK Prime Minister conceded in his Manion House speech that Britain now needs to help Ukraine get into the strongest position to secure a negotiated settlement to the war. Of course, that too has been Zelensky's narrative for some time, in pressing his Victory Plan which, in fact, seeks further militarization of the conflict. Events on the ground in Ukraine show a continued, creeping loss of Ukrainian land in the Donbass; Russian forces have started to encircle Velyka Novosilka and create a new salient south of Pokrovsk that hints at a winter campaign there, after months in which the line of contact has been static. For now, with western rhetoric having cooled since the devastating deployment of the Oreshnik, there appears to be no military scenario in which Ukraine will finally enter peace talks with Russia in a position more advantageous than now. That argues for the incoming President Trump to press for peace talks before his inauguration. On Nov. 21, Vladimir Putin presented a huge escalation challenge to the West: are you ready for Russia to strike NATO facilities anywhere in Europe with hypersonic munitions that you don’t possess? Until Monday, Nov. 18, media outlets brimmed with pro-war activists urging Biden and other Western leaders to free Zelensky’s hand to use longer-range weapons deep inside Russia. Since the summer, bombastic British ex-military saber rattlers have been talking up the decisive impact that Storm Shadow missiles — and by implication, US ATACMS — could make on the battlefield in Kursk, with a range of 300 kilometers or around 185 miles. They got their wish on Nov. 19, when the first salvo of ATACMS was lobbed at a military facility in Bryansk — outside the area in which Ukrainian forces are battling in Kursk. The following day, British Storm Shadow missiles were fired into Kursk, with the jubilant approval of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, no less. These strikes elicited widespread attaboy jingoism from the Western media, with hardly a word of caution. However, those who call for the use of deeper strikes into Russian territory fundamentally misunderstand Russian strategy. I have seen at critical points over the past decade that Russia seeks escalation dominance , a Cold War concept holding that a state can best contain conflicts and avoid escalation if it is dominant at each successive rung up the “ladder of escalation,” all the way to the nuclear rung. Since the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russia has sought to dominate each step up the escalation ladder. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 were major escalations that NATO didn’t meet head-on. This strategy is also seen in the diplomatic sphere, for example, Russia escalated a dispute with the U.S. in 2017 when it kicked 755 American diplomatic staff out of Russia. When Moscow over-escalates, it makes a gamble that its adversary will not be willing to step another rung higher on the escalation ladder. There is a hard-wired view in Moscow, bolstered no doubt by Biden’s incrementalism , that Russia will always overmatch a divided and morally weak Western alliance when push comes to shove. Russia has something that the West does not have — the sovereign power and the political will to act unilaterally. Putin had been subject to criticism from hardliners in Russia that he hasn’t responded to the slow ratcheting up of military support to Ukraine from the West. As indicated previously, Ukraine receiving permission to use ATACMS deep into Russia would leave Putin with no choice but to respond, having said in September that he would. So, on Nov. 21, Russia launched a hypersonic Oreshnik missile at a well-fortified Ukrainian weapons facility in Dnipropetrovsk. This is the first time an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile has been used in combat. Its use was significant for several key reasons. First, it offered a major escalation in destructive capabilities. Russia had been trying unsuccessfully to destroy the Yuzhmash weapons facility since 2022 using the battlefield weapons at its disposal. Built during the Soviet era, Yuzhmash has workshops buried deep underground to protect them from attack. Among other purposes, the facility is thought to be where Rheinmetall has set up a plant to repair German Leopard tanks. It is also used in missile and long-range drone production. According to eye-witness reports from Russian sources, the damage caused was considerably more extensive than after previous conventional strikes.The video footage of the strike was astonishing, with molten shards of light erupting out of the clouds to strike the factory. It was a studied demonstration of shock and awe tactics. Second, carefully described by Putin as a “ test ” the Oreshnik is now a deployed capability far beyond those that Western powers have allowed Ukraine to use, namely ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles. And also beyond the capabilities that Zelensky had requested in his so-called “Victory Plan” — namely Tomahawk cruise missiles — that the U.S. has refused to sanction . Putin has left the door open for further “tests” of the Oreshnik. The U.S., UK, and others now face placing Ukraine in a position where a more devastating weapon may be used against strategic or battlefield targets that would overmatch the use of ATACMS or Storm Shadow inside of Russia, with their shorter range and more limited payload. The potential future use of Oreshnik will render ATACMS and Storm Shadow as battle-losing capabilities. And Ukraine is still losing the battle for Donetsk, slowly and in a grinding fashion, even with the more limited arsenal Russia has deployed so far. Third, the claimed range of Oreshnik is 16 times greater than ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles. That puts any NATO targets within Europe in the scope of a conventional strike. The capability displayed and the potential destruction of valuable Western repair facilities at Yuzhmash will have satisfied Kremlin hawks that Oreshnik has taken Russia two steps up the escalation ladder. Putin has also sent a clear message to military planners from the U.S. and UK who supported the deployment of the ATACMS, that a more specifically NATO target may be next. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pro-ATACMS advocates have largely fallen silent since the deployment of Oreshnik. There have been two further declared U.S. ATACMS uses , although specifically within the Kursk region itself, where Ukrainian forces are clinging on to the land they captured in August. It had already taken the U.S. and the U.K months finally to agree to deploy ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles in a limited fashion within Russia. The scope appears to have been tightened further in recent days. In the twilight of his presidency, Biden must now decide whether he is willing to over-escalate Putin. That would require him to expand, massively, the scale and scope of U.S. weapons systems that can be used in Ukraine, knowing that American forces don’t currently have an in-service equivalent to the Oreshnik. And with a Trump presidency looming larger each day, it is questionable that he will.

Below an article that I published in November on Strategic Culture website. My assessment is as relevant as ever. With much speculation about how Trump might get Zelensky to come to the negotiating table,, very little has been said on how sanctions relief might leverage Russian engagement in any peace process. Keith Kellogg, Trump's Envoy For Ukraine, mentioned sanctions relief in the paper he produced in April on peace in Ukraine, but no more detailed suggestions have emerged since his appointment. Now is the time to put some intellectual effort into planning for sanctions relief against key milestones, and to ensure that any plan is Zelensky-proof. Following Trump’s election, there has been much speculation about how the war in Ukraine might end. But to understand it might end, it’s vital to understand how it started. The origins of the war in Ukraine can be traced back to the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych in February 2014. Russia labelled it a coup, realists would say it was unconstitutional change in power, and U.S. & British officials would shrug their shoulders. After Russia occupied Crimea and as insurgency broke out in the Donbas, the French and Germans launched a peace process involving the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine. From this so-called ‘Normandy format’ emerged two peace deals named the Minsk agreements. But the UK was sidelined from the peace process and the Americans suspicious of it. Left out, Britian, supported by the U.S., pushed sanctions as the primary vehicle to contain Russia, running counter to what the French and Germans were trying to achieve. By the summer of 2015, the Minsk agreements had become sidelined, and sanctions were set in stone. Since that time, Russia has become the most sanctioned country on the planet. Thirty-three western countries, led by the USA, imposed more than twenty thousand sanctions against Russian people and companies. That’s fifteen times more sanctions than Iran in a distant second place. If we could completely cut Russia’s economic ties with the west, so the theory went, then that would be so damaging that Russia would have to withdraw from Ukraine. Western powers therefore sanctioned everything that they could, from money, ships, oil, gold, diamonds, weapons and all manner of hi-tech components. But from a very early stage, it was clear that sanctions weren’t altering Russian policy to Ukraine, quite the opposite. When I left the Foreign Office in 2023, the UK government with its western partners, had gone through all the sanctions that they thought might weaken Russia. The west could probably find more people or entities to sanction. But policy makers never really gripped Russian gas, as some European countries still rely on it. And anyway, the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline solved that conundrum. Russian oligarchs that had political connections in the west were spared as were Russian companies that owned factories in the USA, to prevent American job losses. But we hit most things and neared the bottom of the barrel. Yet, Russia’s economy always seemed to bounce back. That’s partly because, sanctions were never as big a deal as other events that moved the global economy, such as the oil price collapses in 2014 and 2016 and Covid. But it was also because Russia continually adapted its macroeconomic policy to absorb and, in the end, profit from sanctions. Following an immediate post-sanctions contraction of economic growth in 2022, Russia has grown more strongly than the western countries that imposed sanctions. Western powers therefore needed something stronger, so sanctions evolved into a political tool to isolate Russia on the world stage. The USA, European Union and other countries including Japan and Australia sanctioned every possible type of economic, social and cultural activity involving Russia. Western academics no longer collaborate with Russian academics. Russian airliners can’t pass over western airspace and vice versa. Border posts have been closed or minimized. Russia can’t compete in international sporting events or even the Eurovision song contest. Russian Ministers are subjected to indignant walkouts by western diplomats and ministers at international gatherings. Ordinary Russian people were denied a weekend ParkRun. Ukraine did its part, cancelling the Russian Orthodox church and going on a propaganda offensive with any western company that sold goods with the word ‘Russia’ in their branding. And yet, outside of the west, Russia’s standing on the global stage doesn’t seem to be in decline. In a process accelerated by the Ukraine war, Russia, with China, has spearheaded a rapid shift by the developing world to create their own formats for dialogue and cooperation. There are over 200 countries on this planet, so the wealthy ‘west’ is in a minority. The BRICS group has grown rapidly, with a long queue of countries waiting to join, including NATO member Turkey.. Vladimir Putin has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant out on him, yet he still travels freely to ‘friendly’ countries, where he receives the red-carpet treatment. He recently hosted a successful BRICS summit in Kazan while war continued to rage in Ukraine. War started in February 2022 a few days after the Ukrainian government finally signalled the death knell of the Minsk peace agreements. But the point is that the Minsk agreement was necessarily bad; it’s simply that the U.S. and UK invested significant efforts in ensuring its failure. Sanctions never looked likely to prevent war, nor force its end, despite the death or injury to over one million people and a vast exodus of Ukraine’s population. War in Ukraine became reduced to the brutal, bloody town by town fighting in Europe after D-Day, while life in the west, and in Russia, carried on almost as normal. Fighting alone, Ukraine has never had sufficient resources to survive and never will. There is a strong case that sanctions created the conditions for war to erupt, by undermining the very peace process – the Normandy Format – that was established to prevent it. And that the west’s continued blind faith in sanctions took us to the brink of a doomsday scenario, more horrific than the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Western leaders, not wanting war themselves, focused blindly on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. But the notion of ‘as long as it takes’ became tarnished with increasing numbers of western politicians started complaining that it is taking too long. Not least as the economics and demographics of war still show that Russia can continue fighting for as long as it takes, and that Vladimir Putin has the domestic political support to do that. So, beyond the hype, if Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he must look at its origins. A ceasefire alone won’t cut it with Putin. There needs finally to be a peace proposal that includes targeted sanctions reduction. That, and a final reckoning with the NATO membership issue, the brightest red line of all.

I recently caught up with Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen on their popular Duran geopolitics podcast, to discuss the recent elections in Georgia and Moldova. Conversation inevitably drifted to Ukraine as well. My key takeaway from our discussion was that European leaders have lost sight of the need for a pan-European peace. That will only change when there is a paradigm shift away from seeing elections in former Soviet States as a zero-sum choice between Europe and Russia. And remembering that focussing on economic relationships first is what helped Europe emerge stronger and more peacefully from the devastation of World War II. As we nudge ever closer to World War III, politicians on all sides need to get back to basics and remember that our collective security hinges on every country believing that its core strategic interests aren't threatened.