Navigating the Vortex

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the White House on October 17 hoping to secure long-range Tomahawk missiles that United States President Donald Trump had recently said he was considering supplying to Kyiv . He left empty-handed, his hopes thwarted by a surprise, lengthy phone call between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Mr Zelenskyy was en route to Washington...

Drone incursions into Poland. Fighter jets in Nato airspace. Little green men —notorious for their role in the Russian take-over of Crimea more than a decade ago — in a remote corner of Estonia . Election interference in Romania and Moldova . These are just a few examples of the tools Russia has been using in the past few weeks as part of a much broader strategy variously referred to as the Gerasi...

And the winner is … not Donald Trump. This is probably going to be the enduring memory of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. This year’s recipient is María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition movement. The Norwegian Nobel committee awarded her the prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful trans...

With almost all of the votes counted in yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Moldova, the ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity of President Maia Sandu has achieved a slim overall majority of just over 50% of the vote. More importantly, perhaps, it has garnered more than twice the votes of the main pro-Russian opposition party Patriotic Bloc, which has just under 25% of the vote. Wh...

Donald Trump appears to have had a major change of heart regarding Ukraine. On the face of it, it looks like he has embraced outright optimism that Kyiv “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”. However, this came with the message that Europeans will need to be in the driving seat to make this happen . According to Trump , a Ukrainian victory depends on “time, p...

While the air and ground war in Ukraine is grinding on, Moscow is increasing pressure on Kyiv’s western allies. Russian drone incursions into Poland in the early hours of September 10, and Romania a few days later, were followed by three Russian fighter jets breaching Estonian airspace on September 19. And there has been speculation that drones, which forced the temporary closure of Copenhagen and...

It's not the first time that Polish airspace has been violated by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. But early in the morning of September 10, 2025, after Poland shot down Russian drones in its airspace, it became the first time a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member opened fire during this war. Regardless of whether it was intended or accidental, the drone incursions are a serious...

When Nato jets were scrambled over eastern Poland in the morning of September 10 to defend the airspace of an alliance member against an incursion by Russian drones, it was the first time that the west fired shots in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. This incursion marks a serious escalation by Moscow. But it also highlights yet again that the west has no clear red lines and is unprepared to resp...

China’s president, Xi Jinping , has been busy on the diplomatic front. China has just hosted the largest annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), followed by an impressive military parade to mark the defeat of Japan in the second world war — all accompanied by key bilateral meetings with heads of state from like-minded countries. You could be forgiven for thinking Beijing is n...

The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating — but rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-libera...

At a high-stakes meeting in the White House on August 18, the US president, Donald Trump, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, hammered out the broad contours of a potential peace agreement with Russia. Their encounter was in marked contrast to their last joint press conference in Washington back in February which ended with Zelensky’s humiliation by Trump and his vice president, J.D...

The only certainty after a three-hour meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15 is that there is no ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine. This is bad news for Ukraine, which has been under assault for three-and-a-half years. By contrast, it is a clear victory for Russia, and a personal triumph for Mr Putin. Not only can...

What happens when a convicted felon and a man under indictment for alleged war crimes get together? This sounds like the opening line of a great joke, but sadly, describes what will most likely be the defining meeting of the second term of Donald Trump as US president. As with any meetings involving the current incumbent of the White House, expectations are low and anxieties are high in the run-up...

With only two days to go before the expiry of his latest ultimatum to end the Russian aggression against Ukraine, US president Donald Trump dispatched his envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for the fifth time on August 6. After three hours of talks in the Kremlin with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump announced that “Great progress was made!” This, according to US secretary of state, Marco R...

Against a backdrop of threats Donald Trump made but never followed through and demands ignored by Vladimir Putin without consequences, the United States president issued yet another ultimatum to his Russian counterpart on July 14: Make progress toward a ceasefire within 50 days or prepare for serious economic disruption. It was already a major shift in Mr Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine, be...

On July 28, in yet another twist in his unpredictable decision making, US president Donald Trump dramatically shortened his original 50-day ultimatum to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to call a ceasefire in Ukraine to a mere ten days. This is an unmistakable sign of Trump’s frustration with the Russian leader who he now appears to view as the main obstacle to a ceasefire in the war again...

Another round of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place in Istanbul on July 23. This was the third meeting between the two sides since face-to-face meetings resumed in May. The previous two rounds yielded very few concrete results, apart from agreements on prisoner exchanges and the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in action. They did, however, demonstrate two things. Fir...

Clearly angered by the intensification of Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine, Donald Trump has pivoted from the suspension of US military assistance to Ukraine to promising its resumption. Russia’s strikes on major cities killed more civilians in June than have died in any single previous month, according to UN figures . Over the past two weeks, the US president has made several disparaging com...

Recent news from Ukraine has generally been bad. Since the end of May , ever larger Russian air strikes have been documented against Ukrainian cities with devastating consequences for civilians , including in the country’s capital, Kyiv . Amid small and costly but steady gains along the almost 1,000 km long frontline, Russia reportedly took full control of the Ukrainian region of Luhansk, part of...

When Nato leaders meet for their annual summit in The Hague on Wednesday, June 25, all eyes will be on Donald Trump. Not only is the 47th president of the United States less committed to the alliance than any of his predecessors in Nato’s 76-year history. But he has also joined Israel’s war with Iran , threatened regime change, and then brokered a ceasefire between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Closer to N...

News of the spectacular “spiderweb” mass drone attack on Russian air bases on June 1 will have been uppermost in the minds of delegates who assembled the following day for another round of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. The attack appears to have been a triumph of Ukrainian intelligence and planning that destroyed or damaged billions of pounds’ worth of Russian aircraft stati...

Two statements from world leaders this week bear closer examination. On May 27, US president Donald Trump took to his TruthSocial social media channel to proclaim that if it wasn’t for him, “lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia”. The following day the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that his country would assist Ukraine in developing long-range missiles to d...

After a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on May 19, US president Donald Trump took to social media to declare that Russia and Ukraine will “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire and an end to the war. He did, however, add that the conditions for peace “will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be”. With the Vatican, according to Trump, "very interested i...

When the Ukrainian and Russian delegations meet in Istanbul later today (May 15), territory — and who controls it — will be high on their agenda. The meeting, when it happens, will have come about after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, offered to start direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv at a press conference on May 11. Donald Trump, the American president and want-to-be peacemaker, pushed...

Although small in number and only tenth in a line-up of 13 foreign military contingents during the parade marking the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the participation of Chinese troops in Russia’s Victory Day parade in Red Square, Moscow, on May 9 was a clear indication that President Xi Jinping is fully committed to his “no-limits” partnership with his Rus...