Примечательная статья англосаксонского СМИ. В первый раз на памяти а.п. гипотетические события описываемые в статье официального СМИ иллюстрируются фотоизображениями, созданными И.И.
Пока сгенерированные изображения маркируются. Пока. Но скоро маркировка начнет пропадать. Сперва «случайно», а после намеренно.
И конечно по прежнему, как и в прошлых материалах такого рода, авторы статьи вменяют россиянам то, что собираются делать сами, выдавая свои планы за намерения своего противника.
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Chilling prediction of Putin's 'Eurussian Empire' illustrates how Russia could spread war across Europe in five years
Ukraine has warned of the chilling consequences of allowing Russia to encroach on Europe's border amid growing concerns about the shape of a looming peace deal.
United24, the official fundraising platform for Ukraine launched by President Zelenskyy in 2022, published its 'Possible History' project on the third anniversary of the war as a stark warning to Europe.
The startling forecast, based on data February 2025 data from Estonian and Danish intelligence, begins this year with Russia receiving a favourable peace deal and the return of Russian state media to Europe.
Within just five years, they predict, Russia could be in a hot conflict with NATO forces.
By July of this year, the hypothetical predicts that Russia will have already begun conducting military exercises in Belarus, near the borders with Poland and Lithuania.
With support from the puppet government in Transnistria, it is then able to capture Moldova, bordering Romania, within 15 months.
By the summer of 2027, United24 expects, Europe could experience internet outages caused by cut undersea cables - reminiscent of similar incidents in the Baltic blamed on Russia last November.
The forecast suggests that by December 2028 Europeans could be anxiously searching questions like 'what is hybrid war?', 'nearest bombshelters Zurich' and 'who ddosed European airports?' as conflict looms.
By mid-2029, pro-Russian governments in Slovakia and Hungary agree to host Russian military bases on their territory in the forecast.
Soon after, European nations are desperately scrambling to react by bringing back conscription and pouring funds into defence spending at the expense of social benefits.
The Ukrainian warning concludes in September 2030 with an aged Vladimir Putin announcing a special military operation on NATO, troops crossing the borders of Poland and Finland.
In a disclaimer, United24 adds: 'What if Russia reaches Europe's borders? It may sound dystopian, but just three years ago, war in Europe and missile strikes on Kyiv seemed unthinkable, too.'
The project was published on February 24, 2025 as Ukraine marked three years since Russia's full-scale invasion, termed a 'special military operation' in Russia.
It draws on studies from Danish intelligence and Estonian intelligence that concluded Russia is still mobilising resources in preparation for a potential conflict with NATO.
The 'possible future history 2025-2030' echoes concerns across Europe about the shape a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia might take.
Where the Biden administration had offered Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in vital aid, Donald Trump has overseen a huge shift in American policy.
Representatives for Russia and the U.S. have met in Riyadh to begin talks towards finding a peaceful solution.
But Trump's stated willingness to make concessions to Moscow without yet making strong security guarantees to Kyiv has many worried a bad deal could leave Ukraine - and wider Europe - vulnerable to attack.
One sticking point was the presence of peacekeepers in Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. Britain and France had shown willing to field peacekeepers, which Trump finally said he was ready to accept during talks with Emmanuel Macron in Washington this week.
Trump said in front of reporters that Putin 'will accept that' and 'has no problem with it' - an apparent volte face from Kremlin insistence that such a move would be an escalation. Russia has since said the move would indeed be unacceptable.
The Russian Embassy in the UK today insisted that Russia 'poses no threat to the UK', accusing the UK government of 'needing these fabrications to avoid dealing with the country's real social and economic problems'.
But intelligence agencies across Europe continue to warn that Russia poses a direct threat not only to Britain, but the wider continent, and could be planning for war within a matter of years.
Military training exercises in Belarus could pave the way for attacks in Europe, they warn
Latvia's intelligence agency, the Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), reported earlier this month that 'Russian intelligence and security services are currently developing their capabilities to organize sabotage in Europe' in preparation 'for a possible military confrontation with NATO in the long term'.
Should a peace deal play out to 'freeze' the conflict in Ukraine along existing battle lines, Moscow 'would be able to increase its military presence next to NATO's north-eastern flank, including the Baltics within the next five years', the report claims.
'This scenario would significantly increase Russia's military threat to NATO,' the SAB assesses.
Denmark last year came to a similar conclusion, that Russia could attack a NATO country within three to five years and 'test' the bloc's Article 5 commitment of mutual defence.
It is a concern shared by Ukraine. Zelenskyy said earlier this month that Russia could build up troops in ally Belarus, setting the stage for an attack into NATO.
European leaders are wary of the dangerous precedent that would be set by welcoming Russia back into the international community after a prolonged invasion of Ukraine, dating back some 11 years.
United24's possible history hold that with 'Ukraine forced to make territorial concessions' and peace 'established without long-term guarantees', Russia could begin conducting drills in Belarus by July 2025.
By October 2026, it said, Russia could 'swiftly capture Moldova with North Korean troops'.
Thousands of North Korean troops were reportedly drawn in on Russia's side late last year as Ukraine began making advances into Kursk. Experts separately warn that Russia seeks to keep Moldova in 'geopolitical limbo' by stoking internal divisions and frustrating reforms.
'Throughout the war, there have been intermittent worries that Russian forces fighting inside Ukraine might seek to join up with the approximately 1,500 Russian troops stationed in Moldova's breakaway region of Transnistria to open a new front against Ukraine, destabilizing Moldova's pro-Western course in the process,' Maksim Samorukov wrote for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center last October.
United24 warned that within three years Russia could target internet cables under the sea [AI generated image]
Citizens in Western Europe could soon be fearing Russian hybrid warfare attacks [AI generated image]
Fears of Russia then attacking internet cables have been mounting alongside reports accusing the Kremlin of staging 'hybrid warfare' and sabotage on European soil.
Western leaders last year accused Russia of sabotaging vital cables in the Baltic twice within 48 hours, after Biden relaxed rules on Ukraine firing long-range missiles into Russia and amid speculation Europe may follow suit.
A former senior European official told the Guardian that the EU is 'totally unprepared' to confront Moscow in its campaign of 'hybrid' warfare, lacking the resources to effectively counter sabotage, arson, assassination and attacks on infrastructure.
Concern was also roused when Russia reportedly tested cutting off internet access in some areas of the country to work on building its own sovereign network, late last year.
According to United24, the future history project 'illustrates how Russia will be able to continue to play Europe by engaging in hybrid warfare and interfering in the politics of other countries.
'The already regular cutting of internet cables (which carry 95% of the world's internet traffic) that are already happening regularly, could have much more serious consequences, highlighting the vulnerability of global infrastructure to a ruthless aggressor.
'Lifting sanctions will ultimately free the hands of an already successful Russian propaganda machine.'
A manipulated image depicts an aged Putin, shared by United24
Moscow could seek control of Moldova, interfering with local politics [AI generated image]
While Putin insists that Russia has no designs on Europe, United24 warns that Putin has wider 'imperialist ambitions' for a new world order.
'The concept suggests that having come out unscathed from his war of aggression against Ukraine, Putin continues to gather 'imperial lands' and announces a 'special military operation' targeting the Baltic states, former Soviet republics, and even some NATO countries,' a statement read.
To illustrate the project, United24 included AI-generated images 'to visualise the potential unfolding of events' that they said would 'add an immersive and thought-provoking layer to the narrative'.
The project concludes with a clear call: 'The course of history can still be changed. Peace is only possible through strength, not appeasement of a dictator.'
The project was developed by United24, an initiative that includes United24 Media (united24media.com), a platform for spreading information about events in Ukraine during the war, and United24 (u24.gov.ua), a fundraiser attracting international aid to Ukraine.
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Putin warns 'western elites' not to disrupt Russia-US peace talks ahead of Keir Starmer's meeting with Trump - as it's claimed Macron had to convince Donald not to cancel Zelensky meeting
Vladimir Putin has warned 'western elites' not to disrupt talks between Russia and the United States on a potential Ukraine peace deal - hours before Donald Trump is set to meet Sir Keir Starmer.
The prime minister is in Washington today seeking a US backstop to any future European peacekeeping force in a post-war Ukraine.
He has been appealing for Trump to stop Putin 'coming again' after a rushed peace deal, arguing America must help guarantee the terms - which Washington has so far made no commitment on.
Speaking after a series of meetings between US and Russian officials in recent weeks, Putin told a meeting of intelligence chiefs today: 'The first contacts with the new US administration give some hope. There is a mutual desire to work on restoring relations.'
However he warned that 'some western elites will try to undermine our dialogue' - an apparent swipe at Starmer and European leaders who have been vying to get their voices heard and a seat at the negotiations table for Ukraine.
As relations between Moscow and Washington appear to have warmed with Trump's return to the White House, Kyiv has been cast out, with the US president aiming increasingly inflammatory rhetoric at Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian leader is set to meet with his American counterpart tomorrow, in what is likely to be a tense face-to-face after Trump labelled him 'a dictator without elections' and a 'terrible' leader.
Trump reportedly wanted to cancel the meeting, according to French media, but was convinced to go ahead with it by France's President Macron who apparently assured him that Zelensky would no use it to discuss demands such as NATO membership.
Zelensky reportedly received a call from 'someone in the Trump administration telling him not to bother getting on a plane because Trump would not see him,' French news network BFMTV reports.
Starmer's trip to the White House builds on a visit by Macron earlier this week, amid spiraling concerns in Europe that Trump is taking Russia's side and will sever the decades-old transatlantic alliance.
But in a marked departure from the position held by Paris, London and Berlin that Moscow should remain isolated over the war on Ukraine, the French president conceded that Trump was right to establish a relationship with Putin.
'There is good reason for President Trump to re-engage with President Putin,' Macron said, adding that the new administration represented 'a big change'.
Sir Keir Starmer has reiterated Britain's 'ironclad' backing for Kyiv in a series of discussions with allies over the weekend as he make the case for safeguards to protect the country's sovereignty.
'The security guarantee has to be sufficient to deter Putin,' Starmer told reporters on the plane to Washington.
'If there is a ceasefire without a backstop, it will simply give him the opportunity to wait and to come again, because his ambition in relation to Ukraine is pretty obvious.'
'We realise that not everyone is happy with the resumption of the Russian-American contacts,' Putin told a meeting of the board of his Federal Security Service, successor to the feared Soviet KGB.
'Part of the Western elites is still determined to maintain instability in the world. And these forces will try to disrupt or compromise the dialogue that has begun.'
He vowed: 'We need to take this into account and use all possibilities of diplomacy and special services to disrupt such attempts.'
He told his counterintelligence chiefs: 'The FSB needs to continue its systematic work in all relevant areas.'
He went on: 'I note that the first contacts with the new American administration inspire certain hopes.
'There is a reciprocal mood to work to restore intergovernmental ties and to gradually resolve the huge number of systemic and strategic problems that have built up in the world's security architecture.'
As well as disrupting the West, the FSB - which Putin once headed - must tackle 'international terrorism' and protect military, industrial, transport and energy infrastructure.
But the West - apart from America - was collapsing, according to Putin. 'You and I can see that the Western community itself has also begun to fall apart from within.' he said.
'This is evidenced by the problems in the economies of many Western countries and in domestic politics. We all see this. This is especially evident in the course of domestic political events in these countries.'
…
Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted
President Trump has rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who can be targeted, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the policy shift.
The quiet but seismic recalibration dismantles Biden-era mandates and signals a return to more aggressive counterterrorism policies Trump first instituted in his first term.
During his first overseas trip earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a meeting with senior U.S. military leaders from U.S. Africa Command in Germany, signed a directive easing policy constraints and executive oversight on airstrikes and the deployment of American commandos.
The move prioritizes flexibility by giving commanders greater latitude to decide whom to target while relaxing the multi-layered centralized control former President Joe Biden implemented over airstrikes and raids by American special operation forces, U.S. officials told CBS News on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about national security matters.
One senior Defense Department official told CBS News that Biden's warfare policies were carbon copies of those established during former President Barack Obama's second term. During Biden's tenure, airstrikes typically focused on the senior leadership of terrorist organizations.
The official added that Mr. Trump's approach carries both risks and rewards because the streamlined process can potentially degrade foreign terrorist organizations capabilities faster, given the lower threshold required to strike and widened target selection, but it inherently raises the risk of flawed decisions and unintended civilian casualties.
The Islamist armed group Al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Houthis in Yemen were discussed as potential targets, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the meeting. It's not clear if the other U.S. combatant commands around the world were also given the same directive.
CBS News reached out to the Pentagon and U.S. Africa Command on Tuesday, but has not received a reply.
American military airstrikes fall into two broad categories — deliberate and defensive, according to U.S. Africa Command's website. Deliberate strikes adhere to a multi-layered process of regulations and high-level vetting, which under the Biden administration ran through the Joint Staff and the executive branch.
Throughout the deliberate strike process, military lawyers review the compiled intelligence to determine if individuals are legal combatants under the law of armed conflict, to reduce the risk of civilian casualties and avoid targeted killings of innocent people mistaken for terrorist suspects.
Defensive airstrikes are used "in limited circumstances where U.S. or specifically designated partner forces are in imminent danger from hostile forces," according to U.S. Africa Commands website. These types of airstrikes are typically authorized by the combatant command, and the executive branch does not need to approve these strikes.
A leaked classified study from 2013, obtained by The Intercept, details how the U.S. government authorized drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia between 2011 and 2012 following presidential approval during the Obama administration — policies similarly implemented under Biden.
Before launching a strike, military commanders had to ensure it met a number of strict criteria and obtain approvals from seven decision makers — including the president. The individual targeted had to be confirmed as a member of an approved terrorist organization using two independent forms of intelligence. Civilian casualties had to be projected as minimal. And there could be no "contradictory intelligence" muddying the waters.
The process became a high-stakes roundtable. The task force that assembled the target package, the combatant commander, the CIA chief of mission, and the host nation all had to sign off on the airstrike. A single dissent along the way meant the operation would be halted.
It's not clear if these same provisions are included in the new directive. However, they did exist during Mr. Trump's first term, with some exceptions on approval by the host nation in countries such as Afghanistan.
The directive to U.S. Africa Command comes at a tumultuous time inside the Pentagon, following the firings by the Trump administration of the top judge advocate generals for the Air Force, Army and Navy. Traditionally seen as apolitical positions, these top uniformed Pentagon officials encompass a broad range of responsibilities, from overseeing criminal cases involving the rank-and-file to ensuring the top brass adhere to international laws of armed conflict.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Hegseth defended the removals, stating that they were necessary to ensure there were no "roadblocks to orders given by a commander-in-chief."
He added, "Ultimately, I want the best possible lawyers in each service to provide the best possible recommendations, no matter what, to lawful orders and are given, and we didn't think those particular positions were well suited, and so we're looking for the best."
Starmer wins warm praise from Trump - but fails to secure key concessions over Ukraine - live
Donald Trump praised Sir Keir Starmer as “a tough negotiator” - but the prime minister failed to secure key concessions over Ukraine in critical White House talks.
In a win for the prime minister, the US president said the two nations could end up with a trade deal without tariffs, and Sir Keir said he would work with the US on a new economic deal with artificial intelligence at its core.
Sir Keir opened his talks with Mr Trump with a charm offensive, delivering an unprecedented second royal invitation for a state visit, which the US president readily accepted. It was seen as a huge boost for the PM’s delicate negotiations.
But the president fudged his response when Sir Keir asked for a commitment of more US military support for security in Ukraine if a peace deal with Russia was agreed. The prime minister later said they had discussed a Ukraine peace deal that would be tough and fair.
Mr Trump indicated he would support the UK’s Chagos deal, despite uncertainty caused by fears that it could open up a vital UK-US military base, on Diego Garcia, to foreign interference.
The president said he and Sir Keir “get along famously” as they began their key talks.
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Trump’s visit with UK’s Starmer offers sobering preview for Ukraine
Trump lauded Britain’s leader but gave little ground, a day ahead of his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer flattered President Donald Trump with a basket of gifts on his first visit to the White House on Thursday, including commitments to spend more money on defense, lavish praise and a letter from King Charles III inviting Trump to a state dinner.
Trump was exceedingly pleased. But that didn’t mean Starmer got anything in return.
Trump appeared unmoved by Starmer’s desperate appeal for a stronger U.S. commitment to protecting Ukraine, if and when its war with Russia ends. Starmer, conscious that Trump has rejected pleas to provide “security guarantees” for Ukraine, has been asking for something less: a U.S. commitment to “backstop” European efforts to help defend Ukraine from any future invasion by Russia.
Trump said no to all of it.
“I don’t think so,” Trump said alongside Starmer in the Oval Office. “I think when we have a deal, it’s going to be the deal.”
The hard-nosed attitude offered a sobering preview to European allies hoping for an opening ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House visit on Friday, when he is expected to sign away a large chunk of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals to U.S. investors in hopes of winning Trump over.
Trump, sitting beside Starmer on Thursday, shrugged off questions about what, if anything, the U.S. would do to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he trusted the former KGB agent not to renege on a potential peace deal. He suggested that the economic agreement he’ll sign with Zelenskyy would be enough to hold Russia at bay.
“It’s a backstop, you could say,” Trump said of the minerals deal, coopting Starmer’s language. “I don’t think anybody’s going to play around if we’re there with a lot of workers.”
Perhaps most worrying for Starmer and other NATO allies was the president’s nonchalance about whether the U.S. would respond militarily in a situation where British troops were attacked in Ukraine.
“They don’t need much help. They can take care of themselves very well,” Trump said, before hedging slightly. “The British have been incredible soldiers, incredible military, and they can take care of themselves. But if they need help, I’ll always be with the British, okay? I will always be with them. But they don’t need help.”
Shortly after Trump made those comments in the Oval Office, a reporter asked him point-blank during the press conference a question that has weighed heavily on all of Europe — whether he supports Article V of the NATO charter, which deems an attack on any member an attack on all.
“I support it,” the president replied, suggesting it was unlikely to be invoked should a NATO ally be attacked while deployed in Ukraine. “I don’t think we’re going to have any reason for it. I think we’re going to have a very successful peace, and I think it’s going to be a long lasting peace. And I think it’s going to happen hopefully quickly. If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all.”
Asked if their talks succeeded in getting Trump closer to providing a military backstop to Europe’s security guarantees, Starmer said only that it had been “a very productive discussion,” noting that a peace deal “has to come first.”
He added: “Our teams are going to be talking about how we make sure that deal sticks, is lasting and enforced.”
Starmer’s visit comes days after French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a similar message during meetings with Trump on Monday: that Europe is ready to do more to shore up continental defenses and to aid Ukraine but that America’s military backing is still critical in keeping Putin in check.
The message comes as Trump has increasingly aligned U.S. interests with Russia, taking up Putin’s talking points about its invasion of Ukraine as Trump works to build an alliance with the rogue state.
Starmer, who returned Labour to No. 10 Downing Street last year after his party’s 14 years out of power in large part by appealing to disaffected, blue collar voters, approached Trump with warmth and deference during their initial appearance in front of the cameras. As Macron and others have, the prime minister credited Trump for shifting the conversation about Ukraine toward ending the war.
“You’ve created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach a historic peace deal, a deal that I think would be celebrated in Ukraine and around the world,” Starmer said to Trump during a press conference in the East Room following the talks. “That is the prize. But we have to get it right.
He tried to use that praise to subtly move Trump toward Europe’s view, a strategy that often prevents escalation with Trump but seldom results in changing his position.
“There’s a famous slogan in the United Kingdom from after the second World War, that is, that we have to win the peace,” Starmer said. “And that is what we must do now, because it can’t be peace that rewards the aggressor, or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran. We agree history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader.”
Even with Trump and Zelenskyy set to sign the minerals pact on Friday, an immediate end to the three-year-long war does not appear close. Russia has continued to bombard Ukraine’s capital and the Kremlin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, this week rejected any truce that would include EU peacekeepers on the ground in Ukraine or force Russia to freeze the war along current battle lines.
With the fighting ongoing and so much uncertainty about when and how the conflict could end, the U.S. and its top allies appear locked in a diplomatic Catch-22 when it comes to clarifying their future commitments. The U.S. wants to know more details about Europe’s willingness to back Ukraine militarily before it commits to anything else. But Europeans, still divided over how much to involve themselves directly in a postwar Ukraine, are eager to know that any peacekeeping missions will be backed by American hard power.
“I don’t like talking about phase two until I get phase one,” Trump said during the press conference. “Phase one is I have to make peace and we have to get Russia to agree. We have to get Ukraine to agree. And I think we will.”
Trump praised Starmer’s plan, unveiled earlier this week, to increase Britain’s defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP, urging the U.K. and other NATO allies to continue in that direction.
“The disaster in Ukraine shows exactly why it’s so important for the United Kingdom and other NATO partners to make large investments in their defense capabilities,” Trump said. “In many cases, 4 percent or 5 percent of GDP would be appropriate.”
Trump has continued to rule out putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine. But, as Starmer made clear, that isn’t what Europeans are asking for.
According to British officials, Starmer planned to ask Trump for aerial intelligence surveillance and last resort air cover in the event of another Russian incursion into Ukraine.
If they achieve nothing else, European leaders are at least asking for Trump not to further upend the status quo: to remain committed to NATO and Article V of the organization’s charter that deems an attack on any member an attack on all; not to cut Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite imaging service; to remain in contact with traditional allies despite a clear inclination toward diplomatic freelancing and engaging unilaterally with Putin.
Trump has shown he is unlikely to promise them anything. But he did offer his own personal tribute to the country that once boasted of its special relationship with the U.S.
As he opened his joint press conference with Starmer, he said proudly that he had restored a bust of Winston Churchill “to its rightful place,” the Oval Office.
Accelerating innovation, collaboration and delivery in undersea defence
In this guest article, Captain Adrian Pierce RN(Rtd) takes an overview of developments to secure the undersea battlespace.
Control of the seas has long provided significant advantages in times of peace and has been a decisive factor in many wars. In the modern world, over 80% of international trade moves by sea, 99% of digital data travels through undersea cables, and it is estimated that in excess of $10 trillion worth of financial transactions travel through these cables daily. The oceans therefore remain vital for economic security and so heavily influence Defence thinking.
As the world confronts the realities of 21st-century warfare, maintaining superiority at sea remains crucial, particularly as the West faces a complex myriad of hybrid warfare and grey zone attacks. Over the past couple of years, a spate of sabotage attacks against undersea cables, particularly in the Baltic Sea, have exposed the vulnerability of Europe’s undersea infrastructure.
In September 2022, Nord Stream 2 was blown up. In October 2023, Hong Kong-flagged Newnew Polar Bear dragged its anchor across the gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland. At the end of 2024, Finnish authorities seized control of the Eagle S. vessel – believed to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers – which was suspected of damaging the Estlink 2 power cable and four internet cables between Finland and Estonia on Christmas Day. In a distinct change of approach, these vessels were publicly named, and action was taken by relevant governments. This approach continued when in January of this year, Defence Secretary John Healey announced the Royal Navy was tracking and responding to the Russian intelligence collection ship, the Yantar, as it passed through British waters for the second time in less than three months and loitered in the vicinity of Critical Underwater Infrastructure (CUI).
The increased targeting of CUI by adversaries as a tactic of hybrid warfare intended to destabilise societies presents a major security challenge. The unpredictable nature of such sabotage makes it an attractive tactic for sowing confusion and doubt, complicating Europe’s ability to mount a unified and decisive response.
Tackling these threats therefore requires a new approach. The upcoming Undersea Defence Technology (UDT) exhibition and conference, taking place from 25th to 27th March in Oslo, arrives at a critical time. Showcasing the latest advancements in undersea technology, the event serves as a key forum for stakeholders from the international naval community to engage in constructive discussions, shaping policies and strategies to strengthen undersea maritime security.
Standing strong against common threats
Despite significant challenges, 2025 is shaping up to be a year of strengthened cooperation among allies. From a push for greater alignment between NATO’s European members to cutting-edge defence technologies showcased at both DSEI Japan (May) and DSEI UK (September), this year will see the defence and security community come together in greater numbers from across the world. Protecting our maritime borders and critical undersea infrastructure requires the same approach. Building resilience and credible deterrence against such sabotage requires collaboration between armed forces, governments, and industry.
We are seeing greater recognition of this, with the UK-led 10-nation Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), which recently activated Nordic Warden, a month-long advanced response option aimed at tracking potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitoring Russia’s shadow fleet. This was immediately followed by the ongoing NATO initiative Baltic Sentry, led from JFC Brunssum in the Netherlands, and the announcement of TF-X Baltic, which will augment Baltic Sentry with a fleet of autonomous and uncrewed Vessels.
As nations step up to play a greater role in maritime defence, it is essential to emphasise a collective, unified, and decisive response while building resilience against such threats. Trade shows like UDT therefore serve as a valuable tool to bring together key stakeholders under one roof, allowing experts to share insights and collaborate on solutions.
Future defence technologies
As attacks against CUI look set to become a preferred tactic of hybrid warfare, the technologies and strategies designed to counter them must also evolve at pace. This will be a central topic during UDT, ensuring that the West and its allies develop the appropriate and effective technologies to build resilience against these threats.
As vulnerabilities in Europe’s CUI have been made increasingly clear, European nations have taken proactive steps to safeguard their maritime borders. Efforts have been made to increase the pace that damage to undersea cables is found and repaired. In 2024, the French Navy deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle capable of operating at depths of up to 6,000 metres below the ocean surface, while the UK announced the launch of two surveillance ships to support underwater operations, including undersea surveillance and cable protection. RFA Proteus, the first of the two ships, formally entered service in October 2023.
Yet advances in technology are not limited to the protection of CUI. Innovations in surveillance, data acquisition, architectures and automation can be seen throughout and across the underwater domain, as exemplified by the Royal Navy announcing Project CABOT. This plans to deliver remotely operated and autonomous ASW capabilities, built around the new Type 92 Sloop (an uncrewed surface vessel) and the Type 93 (a drone submarine), allowing the UK to pivot to a vision of “Digitalisation of the North Atlantic”. (More on project CABOT to come in a future article)
However, security in the maritime domain does not happen in isolation. Building robust resilience relies on multi-domain integration. Much of the tech on display during UDT will therefore showcase the integration of land, maritime, air, space, and cyber domains. This will be further explored later in the year at DSEI, where there will be a focus on greater interoperability and integration across all domains, an effort that will involve both traditional and non-traditional companies.
Thus, while our navies are undoubtedly operating in an increasingly contested maritime domain, the collaboration we are witnessing across Europe, NATO, and allies, serves as a crucial asset. Events over the past couple of months in particular have reinforced and publicised the importance of securing our maritime borders, both for national, international, and economic security. Therefore, as government delegations, industry leaders, and defence experts gather in Oslo for UDT, improving undersea defence capabilities and establishing a cohesive and decisive strategy to deter threats will be at the forefront of conversation.
White House social media Trump-style: bad taste, sycophancy and trolling
The president’s official feeds are traditionally relatively sober but the 2025 version projects a petulant wannabe king
Traditionally the White House social media feeds have been a relatively sober way for administrations to communicate with the public. The X and Facebook accounts promote their presidents, but have tended to stop short of full-fledged propaganda.
Not any more. Under Trump’s presidency the White House’s digital communications have blasted past mere propaganda, to a level of bad taste and sycophancy that has shocked observers and prompted concerns that Trump sees himself as a monarch.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” the White House blasted out on X this month. The post featured a fake Time magazine front cover which showed a grinning, svelter-than-real-life Trump wearing a bejeweled gold crown.
The post referenced the Trump administration’s move to stop New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, introduced by the state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, in January. But the reaction mostly focused on the idea that the White House was promoting the president as a king – something which, for a country that fought a war to escape monarchy, represented a bold move.
“Revoltingly un-American”, Adam Keiper, executive editor of the conservative Bulwark news site, wrote on BlueSky. JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, reacted in a speech in his state’s capitol: “As governor of Illinois, my oath is to the constitution of our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.”
Hochul rebutted both the monarchist aspect and the argument that Trump will overturn the congestion pricing.
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years and we sure as hell are not going to start now,” Hochul said in a press conference.
“The streets of the city where battles were fought, we stood up to a king and we won. In case you don’t know New Yorkers, when we’re in a fight, we do not back down, not now, not ever.”
But the regal proclamation was the tip of the iceberg for the White House’s output.
On Wednesday, Trump faced a fresh backlash after he shared an AI-generated video which showed Gaza being from transformed into a glittery coastal city and depicted a topless Trump sipping a cocktail with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Set to a dance track with the lyrics “Trump Gaza is finally here”, the video showed, among other things, a gigantic statue of Trump in the center of a roundabout in the reimagined Gaza, some children being showered in paper money, and a man who looks like Elon Musk eating a sandwich.
It comes after Trump said he wanted the US to “own” Gaza, claiming the strip, which has been devastated by Israeli bombardment, could become the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
It might not even be the most offensive footage Trump has posted in recent weeks.
A video posted this month, captioned “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight”, featured officials laying out chains and shackles beside an airplane, before attaching them to faceless individuals.
“‘YAY! Other people suffering!’ This from the White House official page? America has fallen,” was one of the most liked responses.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a tingling sensation triggered in some people by soft noises, such as whispering, the tearing of paper, or the crinkling of chip packets. The video represented an effort by the White House to get on board with a trend – although ASMR creators were among those unimpressed.
Amy Kay, an ASMR YouTuber, told Huff Post she believed the video was an attempt to “own the libs”.
“Many go to ASMR for the human connection it provides in a disconnected world. It’s a caring and accepting corner of the internet, so seeing it perverted to ‘own’ anyone who happens to have empathy hurts my heart,” Kay said.
Another X post, published on Valentine’s Day, showed a scowling Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan on a pink card. “Roses are red violets are blue come here illegally and we’ll deport you,” the text said.
In the comments, some pointed to a Washington Post story that reported Musk, who was born in South Africa, worked illegally in the US, and an Associated Press article that alleged Melania Trump, the president’s wife, was paid for modelling jobs in the US before she was legally allowed to work in the country.
Voto Latino, a non-profit organization which encourages Latinos to vote, said the post had been “deliberately crafted to provoke and sow division”, but the struggles of immigrant families were not a joke.
The organization added: “Using a lighthearted holiday to demean and target communities is not only irresponsible – it is beneath the dignity of the presidency.”
The same Trump-as-king photo was also posted to the White House Facebook page – “this is absolutely insane” is currently the most liked response – along with the Valentine’s image.
Kate Berner, who was the White House principal deputy communications director under Biden, told the Associated Press that Biden “never would have allowed us to use language like that”.
“You can communicate aggressively, clearly in the way that real people talk around the country, and not in the way that’s disrespecting or degrading or something that we wouldn’t want our kids to mimic,” she said.
The branding is different from the White House feed under Trump’s first administration. That account was archived on 20 January 2021 after Trump left office, but is still available for viewing. The feed still championed Trump’s achievements, along with regular retweets of Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump. There were favorable media clips and flattering photos of the president. However, there were none of the aggressive memes that have characterized the new feed.
The 2025 style instead fits with the pugnacious first month of the Trump administration, which has been characterized by bombastic gestures which have excited and energized Trump’s base. A second benefit has been to upset, and distract, Democrats – a point made by the Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones on air.
“He is making fun of them! He doesn’t really think he is a king,” Jones said.
“He has mastered making them go crazy. He gives them a little bait, and he knows they’re not gonna focus on the issue. They’re going to focus on the name ‘king’.”
Just one month into Trump’s second term, there will probably be plenty more bait to come.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Russia isn’t the threat to the West that Starmer claims it is
The idea that Russia is ready or able to sweep through western Europe any time in the foreseeable future is not a serious proposition, writes Diane Abbott MP. Yet Europe is now in a frenzy of warmongering and agitation for higher military spending – and we’re falling for it
Cutting the aid budget to pay for a rearmament drive is the clearest expression of the completely wrong priorities of this Labour government. The distance between this policy and what might be called Labour “values” is a chasm. It will not add to our security and is morally indefensible.
The war in Europe began at least three years ago – and (many argue) much longer ago than that. So, why is it only now causing chaos in Berlin, Paris, London and other capitals? One of the strangest aspects of this political crisis is that there is now a possibility of the war coming to an end.
Clearly, for them, this crisis concerns the power and prestige of the European powers: principally Germany, France and Britain. In the US, Trump has recognised reality. Nato forces are not winning and could even be staring at defeat. That, plus other priorities – such as keeping both migrants and Chinese goods out of the US – is why he wants out.
However, European leaders seem to believe that a failure to defeat Russia undermines their standing in the world. For fading world powers, this is such a blow that all types of extraordinary and panicked measures are being considered.
We should lay to rest the idea that Russia poses a military threat to western Europe. We know that is impossible because Keir Starmer told us so. In a televised address, he enumerated the damage that has been inflicted on Russia; its economy has been weakened. It has also lost the best of its land forces, as well as its Black Sea Fleet.
This has been a prolonged and damaging war, with possibly hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. The idea that Russia is ready or able to sweep through western Europe at any time in the foreseeable future is not a serious proposition. No authoritative military analyst suggests that is the case.
Yet Europe is now in a frenzy of warmongering and agitation for higher military spending.
This is a full rearmament agenda which has little to do with Ukraine itself. Polls show Ukrainians want peace negotiations. Furthermore, without a US commitment to participating in – and funding – the war, Nato forces cannot win.
Starmer’s suggestion – that France and Britain place forces on the ground while the US offers them a security guarantee – has no prospect of success. It is opposed by both the countries which will determine the outcome of any peace negotiations: the United States and Russia.
The Anglo-French plan fails at the most fundamental level because it refuses to recognise reality. It is simply a rejigging of the current position, which is unsustainable. Including a security guarantee that is rather like the Article 5 provisions of the Nato charter simply adds to the air of unreality. It is this Nato expansion into Ukraine that Russia gives as its reason for the war. It is never going to agree to the plan, not unless there is a complete defeat of its forces.
Perhaps the worst aspect of this posturing, especially given how unlikely it is to be enacted, is the toll this will take on government spending. There is already budgetary restraint in Europe’s major countries, cuts to pension entitlements in France and outright austerity here.
The Starmer government is deeply unpopular following the cuts already made. There may be more to come in the spring statement. Cutting aid to some of the world’s poorest in order to increase military spending is an anathema to many in the Labour Party and beyond. Many of us will make the argument that if money can be found for the Ukrainian war, then why not pensioners, schoolchildren, poorer families or the NHS?
We should oppose the increase in military spending. It is an unnecessary distraction from the real crises facing Europe, especially Britain. We simply cannot afford further cuts in real pay – and in public services and public investment.
Economic regeneration must be the priority – and it cannot be achieved by increasing military spending, which has no useful economic impact. This stands in contrast to investment in housing, transport, infrastructure and public services such as the NHS and education.
Investment in these areas produces a far greater number of higher-skilled, higher-paid jobs – and real improvement in people’s living standards will follow. Increasing military spending at the expense of these areas – and at the expense of international aid – is a complete dead end.
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The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US?
So much of our intelligence and military systems are shared or reliant on the US – if it becomes the enemy, it is already inside the gates
All the talk now is of how we might defend ourselves without the US. But almost everyone with a voice in public life appears to be avoiding a much bigger and more troubling question: how we might defend ourselves against the US.
As Keir Starmer visits the orange emperor’s court in Washington, let’s first consider the possibilities. I can’t comment on their likelihood, and I fervently hope that people with more knowledge and power than me are gaming them. One is that Donald Trump will not only clear the path for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, but will actively assist him. We know that Trump can brook no challenge to his hegemony. Russia is no threat to US dominance, but Europe, with a combined economy similar to that of the US, and a powerful diplomatic and global political presence, could be.
Putin has long sought to break up the EU, using the European far right as his proxies: this is why he invested so heavily in Brexit. Now Trump, in turn, could use Putin as his proxy, to attack a rival centre of power. If Trump helps Russia sweep through Ukraine, Putin could then issue an ultimatum to other frontline and eastern European states: leave the EU, leave Nato and become a client state like Belarus, or you’re next. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán might agree to this. If Călin Georgescu wins in Romania in May, he might too.
What form could US support for Putin in Ukraine take? It could involve intelligence sharing. It could involve permanently withdrawing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service from Ukraine, which is strategically crucial there, while making it available to the Russian armed forces. Already, the US government has threatened to nix the service if Ukraine doesn’t hand over its minerals, as reparations for being invaded. This is how Trump operates: blackmailing desperate people who are seeking to defend themselves against an imperial war, regardless of past alliances. In the extreme case, Trump’s support for Russia might involve military equipment and financial backing, or even joint US-Russian operations, in the Arctic or elsewhere.
Now consider our vulnerabilities. Through the “Five Eyes” partnership, the UK automatically shares signals intelligence, human intelligence and defence intelligence with the US government. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that the US, with the agreement of our government, conducts wholesale espionage on innocent UK citizens. The two governments, with other western nations, run a wide range of joint intelligence programmes, such as Prism, Echelon, Tempora and XKeyscore. The US National Security Agency (NSA) uses the UK agency GCHQ as a subcontractor.
All this is now overseen by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, in charge of the CIA, NSA and 16 other agencies. After she recited conspiracy fictions seeded by the Syrian and Russian governments, she was widely accused of being a “Russian asset” or a “Russian puppet”. At what point do we conclude that by sharing intelligence with the US, the UK might as well be sharing it with Russia?
Depending on whose definitions you accept, the US has either 11 or 13 military bases and listening stations in the UK. They include the misnamed RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, actually a US air force base, from which it deploys F-35 jets; RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, in reality a US NSA base conducting military espionage and operational support; RAF Croughton, part-operated by the CIA, which allegedly used the base to spy on Angela Merkel among many others; and RAF Fylingdales, part of the US Space Surveillance Network. If the US now sides with Russia against the UK and Europe, these could just as well be Russian bases and listening stations.
Then we come to our weapon systems. Like everyone without security clearance, I can make no well-informed statement on the extent to which any of them, nuclear or conventional, are operationally independent of the US. But I know, to give just one example, that among the crucial components of our defence are F-35 stealth jets, designed and patented in the US. How stealthy they will turn out to be, when the US has the specs, the serial numbers and the software, is a question that needs an urgent answer.
Nor can I make any confident statement about the extent to which weapons designed here might be dependent on US central processing units and other digital technologies, or on US systems such as Starlink, owned by Musk, or GPS, owned by the US Space Force. Which of our weapons systems could achieve battle-readiness without US involvement and consent? Which could be remotely disabled by the US military? At the very least, the US will know better than any other power how to combat them, because our weapons are more or less the same as theirs. In other words, if the US is now our enemy, the enemy is inside the gate.
Much as I hate to admit it, the UK needs to rearm (though cutting the aid budget to find the money, as Keir Starmer intends, is astonishingly shortsighted). I reluctantly came to this conclusion as Trump’s numbers began to stack up last July. But, if they are fatally compromised by US penetration, rearmament might have to begin with the complete abandonment of our existing weapons and communications systems.
This may need to start very soon. On 24 February, the UN general assembly voted on a Ukrainian resolution, co-sponsored by the UK and other European nations, condemning Russia’s invasion. Unsurprisingly, Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Hungary and several small and easily cowed states voted against it. But so did the US and Israel. This, more clearly than any other shift, exposes the new alignment. An axis of autocracy, facilitating an imperial war of aggression, confronts nations committed (albeit to varying degrees) to democracy and international law.
For many years, we have been urged to trust the UK’s oppressive “security state”. Yes, this security state is yanked around like a fish on a line by the US government, with such catastrophic outcomes as the US-UK invasion of Iraq. Yes, it is engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens. But, its defenders have long argued, we should suck all this up because the security state is essential to our defence from hostile foreign actors. In reality, our entanglement, as many of us have long warned, presents a major threat to national security. By tying our defence so closely to the US, our governments have created an insecurity state.
I hope you can now see what a terrible mistake the UK has made, and how we should have followed France in creating more independent military and security systems. Disentangling from the US will be difficult and expensive. Failing to do so could carry a far higher price.
Как известно у Мелкобритании есть два основных союзника: финансы и флот.
А.п. предлагает Вашему вниманию интересную статью выражающую точку зрения по модернизации мелкобританского флота под озвученные задачи Кира Стамера.
А.п. приносит Уважаемым коллегам свои извинения за то, что не смог перенести на форум весь иллюстративный материал статей, обильно представленный таблицами, т.к. таблицы являются активными вставками, а не самостоятельными графическими изображениями.
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Could the Royal Navy be expanded if there was the political will?
In this guest article, Mark Scott argues that significantly growing the RN is not an insurmountable challenge. The rationale for a stronger force is not the main focus of the piece, instead, the emphasis remains on the methodology required to achieve such an expansion.
Background
Despite widespread support for a stronger Navy, such aspiration remains unrealised, hindered by prevailing economic concerns. The discourse surrounding fleet expansion frequently encounters objections related to construction costs, personnel recruitment and retention, infrastructure needs, and long-term maintenance expenditures. A culture of “pessimistic realism” has permeated this discussion, where the prevailing view focuses on identifying reasons for inaction rather than exploring possibilities. This analysis aims to challenge these economic objections and argue against self-imposed limitations. Rather, an approach based on ambitious yet achievable economic planning is proposed.
This article sets out a costed justification for implementing a feasible new ‘Two Power Standard’. While the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which stipulated that Britain’s navy should be larger than the next two largest navies combined, is no longer viable in contemporary times, an alternative approach is proposed. Specifically, it is suggested that the RN could be expanded to exceed the combined strength of the next two largest European naval powers – France and Italy.
Such an expansion would result in the RN comprising about 95 major combatants. Additionally, the force could be increased to approximately 50,000 personnel, with a 50% wage increase across all ranks, alongside enhancements to shipbuilding and training infrastructure. This ambitious expansion remains economically feasible within the current fiscal environment, requiring only a 10-16% annual increase in defence spending, equating to an additional £4.88 – £7.11bn annually – comparable to two weeks of NHS expenditure.
A larger fleet would undeniably enhance operational capabilities, provide broader deployment opportunities, improve personnel retention, and address strategic concerns related to diminishing US military support in Europe but deeper analysis is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, the objective is to outline a clear framework demonstrating how such an expansion could be practically realised, offering a structured response to those who claim such ambitions are infeasible.
Fleets compared
The following tables show the current compositions of the British, French and Italian navies. Allowances should to be made for ships about to be commissioned, but this is counterbalanced by those about to be decommissioned. Mine warfare and vessels under 1,000 tonnes are excluded.
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Proposed RN fleet expansion
It is clear the RN does not compare well with the Europeans. Although having the largest fleet in Europe in terms of displacement, hull numbers matter and tonnage alone is a poor means of assessing strength. The proposed expansion to meet a new Two-Power Standard aims to rectify this imbalance by increasing the fleet to nearly 100 major combatants, ensuring a well-rounded naval force capable of meeting future strategic challenges.
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The goal is a balanced fleet with enough redundancy to allow for, maintenance and combat losses. This shows how a 90+ platform fleet could be achieved by Britain, the exact composition and use can be debated by others.
In the second part of the article, we consider the hurdles that would need to be overcome to deliver such a fleet.
1. Cost of construction
The primary objection to naval expansion centres on the financial burden of ship construction. Many advocate for a more conservative, cost-effective approach, arguing that extensive fleet development is economically prohibitive. The ‘why it can’t be done’ mindset, conditioned by endless reductions and de-scoping must be countered by demonstrating that such an expansion is both affordable and sustainable. It is important to stress that the UK could attain a new Two Power Standard, it is not expensive, and sometimes optimism and ambition are more realistic.
The projected cost of acquiring the additional 62 RN vessels and a proportional expansion of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), alongside 126 additional F-35 aircraft, amounts to about £70bn. Spread over a construction period of 15-20 years, the annual expenditure would range between £3.5 – 4.6bn – representing only a 7 -9% increase in the existing defence budget.
Note, that the proposals for 3 additional aircraft carriers are flexible and they could be acquired over a longer 20-25 timeframe rather than in the 15-20 years for the other platforms.
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2. Personnel
Recruitment and retention difficulties are frequently cited as potentially the most significant impediment to fleet expansion. Given existing challenges in maintaining adequate personnel levels, it is argued that an enlarged navy would exacerbate these issues. The solution lies in improving recruitment incentives and retention measures, the most effective of which is a substantial increase in wages.
A proposed 50% wage increase across all ranks would serve as a powerful recruitment and retention mechanism. Military personnel undertake demanding, often hazardous roles, and compensation must reflect the unique nature of their service. Civilian employment opportunities offering similar pay structures present direct competition, making an enhanced wage structure imperative for sustaining personnel numbers.
The table below outlines the specific personnel requirements and estimated wage expenditures associated with this proposal. This implies a minimum recruitment requirement of 10,114 additional sailors, with a maximum requirement of 19,244. Both numbers assume that all ships will be crewed at all times, so tend towards over-estimating actual service requirements.
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The following breakdown outlines RN (including Royal Marine) personnel. It presents the number of servicemen and women at each rank and details the average remuneration for each. This provides an approximate total for defence expenditure on personnel wages. The total spending has been adjusted to accommodate the necessary increases, resulting in an estimated additional expenditure of between £1.33 – £1.9bn per annum.
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Note: there is no data for OF-7 and above. Details of their exact remuneration are elusive, but at any rate, there are so few of them that their inclusion would not skew the data. An objection may be raised that this would put RN personnel on a higher wage than their equivalents in the Army and Royal Air Force. This is true, but well within the remit of Parliament to decide and would function as another lever to encourage recruitment and retention.
3. Infrastructure requirements
A common argument suggests that Britain lacks the necessary infrastructure to construct such a large number of ships. However, shipbuilding facilities can be developed, as demonstrated by nations such as the Republic of Korea, Japan, and China. While the political will required for such an endeavour lies beyond the scope of this analysis, the focus here remains solely on the financial implications of infrastructure development. Recently, both BAE Systems and Babcock expanded their shipbuilding facilities. The cost of these improvements amounted to £300 million for BAES over five years and £155 million for Babcock in Rosyth over ten years. The higher cost associated with BAES’ expansion reflects the extensive improvements required, including dredging the Clyde to accommodate the Type 26 vessels.
Similarly, the construction of Liverpool’s most recent large-scale container terminal, Liverpool2, cost £400 million. This project involved developing infrastructure for heavy container shipping, including a deep draught, extensive berthing space, cranes, and transport connections. This undertaking was significantly larger in scale than what would be necessary for a naval shipyard and may be contrasted with the c£100 million spent on upgrading Portsmouth to accommodate the QEC aircraft carriers. Nevertheless, this provides a useful reference point for the cost of a project of this magnitude.
To establish the required infrastructure, it is reasonable to assume that BAES, Babcock (and possibly Navantia-Harland & Wolff) would need to further invest in their shipyard facilities. Using the higher end of estimated costs, an additional £300 million investment for each company is projected. Furthermore, additional naval base infrastructure would be necessary to accommodate the expanded fleet.
Based on the high-end estimates of BAES’ recent improvements and the cost of Liverpool2, the total projected expenditure for these developments would be £1.8 billion. Assuming a construction timeline of three years, similar to Liverpool2, this equates to an annual cost of £0.6 billion. This estimate is deliberately conservative and represents a one-time capital investment. However, for financial planning purposes, an ongoing allocation of £0.6 billion per year is included to account for additional infrastructure enhancements, particularly the expansion of training facilities to meet the increased personnel requirements. The economic benefits that such investments would generate for local communities are not considered in this calculation.
4. Long-term maintenance costs
The total lifetime maintenance costs of a warship is typically around 2-3 times the construction cost, spread over 30-40 years including capability upgrade. From this metric, we can establish a minimum and maximum cost of the lifetime price of running a New Two Power Standard: the minimum maintenance cost, of 2 times the production cost over a life of 40 years, comes to £2.2bn per year, while the maximum lifetime annual maintenance cost, of 3 times production over 30 years, comes to £4.4bn. This accords well with the MoD’s own assessment in 2015 of the yearly cost of Royal Navy vessels which falls in the middle of these two figures.
Support costs are only incurred once each ship has been built. You would not expect to pay £0.38bn per year for a carrier to be constructed (assuming a ten-year build process), plus £0.2 – 0.37bn for maintenance for a total of £0.58 – 0.75bn. Instead, we would pay £0.38bn for 10 years of construction, after which we would pay £0.2 – 0.37bn per year per carrier. Therefore when determining the total yearly defence increase, we need only take the highest of the minimum or maximum estimate of either the construction or maintenance costs, we do not add them together.
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Conclusion
The proposed additional 62 RN vessels, 21 RFA vessels, 126 additional F35s, up to 20,000 extra sailors, the development of further shipbuilding infrastructure and berthing facilities, plus a 50% wage rise for everybody, totals something between: £4.88 – 7.11 bn per year. That is a 10-16% increase in yearly defence spending, equivalent to 10-16 days of the NHS’s annual budget. (The minimum figure takes the minimum construction cost, with the minimum wage increase cost, and the £0.6 billion per year for infrastructure. The maximum figure takes the maximum maintenance cost, the maximum wage increase cost, and the £0.6 billion for infrastructure.)
For a relatively small increase in defence spending, we could have a vast naval expansion. The number of platforms, sailors, and supporting defence infrastructure could be significantly increased, along with a concomitant recruitment and retention bonus of a 50% pay rise. A larger fleet would obviously provide better national security but this is only a sample ORBAT that could be refined by deeper operational analysis and requirement setting. More ships doing more operations would doubtless offer better career opportunities and together with increased pay would improve retention. The decision not to have a New Two Power Standard is, fundamentally, a political one, not an economic one.
Licence to kill: could a James Bond horror emerge when book copyrights expire?
Character and plots of Ian Fleming’s original literary works become open for public use in most countries in 2035
Amazon may have captured James Bond, paying billions to get creative control of the super spy, but a clock is now ticking that means 007 – or at least a version of him – could escape into the wider world in a decade’s time.
The character and plots of the original literary works by creator Ian Fleming become open for public use in most countries in 2035, raising the prospect of Bond starring in rival film and TV stories of espionage, comedy or even horror.
Bond is one of a host of Hollywood heroes with looming or past copyright dates – including Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse – prompting an ideas arms race between those looking to cash in on newly available global brands and rights holders creating spin-off intellectual property that remains protected.
Since Sean Connery first appeared in Dr No in 1962, the 25 films in the 007 franchise have grossed more than $7bn globally. Getting hold of the fifth most valuable franchise of all time was a major motivation for Amazon’s $8.5bn purchase of the Hollywood studio MGM, which jointly owned the rights alongside Eon Productions, in 2021, the year the last Bond film hit cinemas.
Last week, Amazon shelled out a further $1bn-plus to wrest full control from Eon, in an effort to get 007 back on the big screen.
It will need to move fast before Bond potentially faces his stiffest competition yet – himself. Under UK and European law, copyright to literary creations expires 70 years after the author’s death, at the start of the subsequent year. Given Fleming died in 1964, having penned 12 Bond novels and two anthologies, Amazon has a short window of exclusivity.
“There is a real opportunity for interested parties to make use of the fact that the rights in the James Bond books will soon lapse,” says Chris Froud, a partner and patent attorney at the European IP firm Withers and Rogers. “Companies can take advantage of this by reworking plots and characters and commercialising them for a second time.”
However, any big-screen additions to the original books remain legally protected, such as the famous 007 gun-barrel logo, characters such as Jaws, flirtatious banter with Moneypenny and clever remarks when the super spy makes a narrow escape or sees off a henchman.
From 1 January 2035, those bold enough to look to exploit “book Bond” would still be able to use the character and famous traits such as his “The name’s Bond, James Bond” motto, driving an Aston Martin, and ordering his martinis “shaken, not stirred”. But care would need to be taken not to have Bond drink Bollinger – 007’s go-to champagne in the films – as Fleming’s paper spy was a Taittinger man.
While Bond’s boss M is also a staple of the books, it is debatable whether any would-be 007 copycat creation could show Q as a gadget supremo. And any depiction of Bond’s arguably most famous adversary in the film franchise, Blofeld, would have to see the super-villain appear with hair – and without signature white cat – as he was originally presented in the novels.
“Companies will need to be cautious in how they go about exploiting Bond,” says Froud. “The James Bond films are so well known and embedded in popular psyche it would be difficult to separate this knowledge from any new works that creative companies might wish to develop based on the content of the books alone. Any mistakes could attract copyright infringement claims from the owners of the films.”
Recent examples of the exploitation of the copyright of globally known characters suggest there are those who are willing to take such risks. When the Disney-controlled rights to AA Milne’s much-loved Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain on 1 January 2022, the Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds appeared a day later in a US parody ad featuring “Winnie-the-Screwed” – a bear who finds he has been overpaying for his phone bill.
In March 2023 a UK-based production company, Jagged Edge, felt emboldened enough to release the controversial horror film Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey. Shot over just five days, the story features Pooh and Piglet going on a murderous rampage after being abandoned by Christopher Robin.
The successful release – it made almost $8m on a budget of £20,000 – has spawned the so-called Twisted Childhood Universe, also known as the Poohniverse, to create slasher horror films based on well-known characters whose copyrights have expired. The slate of releases and upcoming films includes two Blood and Honey sequels, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, Bambi: The Reckoning and Pinocchio: Unstrung, and will culminate with an Avengers-style ensemble called Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, coming out next year.
Scott Jeffrey, the producer of the films and Jagged Edge’s founder, says he has never faced a legal challenge from Disney and would love to add Bond to his list of horror makeovers in the future.
“When the first film blew up we worried if we had done it by the book, and luckily we had,” he says. “But we did a horror version to keep it as far removed as possible, we wouldn’t have gone near doing a kids’ film. Bond can join the queue. Flipping James Bond on his head would be so interesting, doing something different, twisted – making him the villain.”
Even Walt Disney’s most famous creation, Mickey Mouse, has not been spared. On 1 January last year the copyright to Steamboat Willie, Mickey’s earliest persona from the 1928 movie of the same name, expired.
Months later the horror film The Mouse Trap was released, while Screamboat – about a late-night boat ride in New York that becomes a struggle for survival when a “seemingly harmless mouse transforms into a dangerous monster” – is due to premiere this April.
The producers repurposing Winnie and Mickey did so on the basis of American law, which protects intellectual property in the US for 95 years from the year of publication. Pooh was technically still under UK copyright for a few more years, but Jagged Edge struck a deal to allow the release. The legal difference means Amazon’s Bond trademark is safe in the US for decades to come. Fleming’s copyrights will not start entering the public domain there until about 2048, given his first book, Casino Royale, was published in 1953.
However, Hollywood has its own mega-franchise expirations looming, with the biggest in the next decade belonging to Warner Bros and DC Studios. Control of Superman and Lois Lane are set to end in 2034, Batman in 2035, the Joker in 2036 and Wonder Woman in 2037.
Once again wannabe exploiters will have to at first stick to the original versions of the characters, which means no film additions such as the sidekick Robin and Kryptonite, and Superman only being able to leap great bounds, not fly.
Hollywood has been preparing for the cliff edge with innovations – such as introducing characters from The Authority, a comic series that only launched in 1999, in the upcoming new Superman film.
“I want Batman so bad,” says Jeffrey. “It is something I feel you could do a lot with. And Superman … I wish the bigger companies, the people with proper money, were doing a horror spin-off of their own characters, it would be interesting. You see the same types of films made over and over and it is boring.”
Amazon, Eon Productions and Ian Fleming Publications were approached for comment.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Russian state media briefly enters Oval Office during Zelenskyy meeting
The White House did not address how the unapproved reporter was able to gain access to the Oval Office.
The White House last week announced that “all journalists deserve a seat” in the Oval Office press pool. For a fleeting moment on Friday, that included the Russian state media.
A staffer from TASS, a Russian outlet that often promotes glorified coverage of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, was briefly in the room for President Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. American media mainstays Reuters and the Associated Press were not granted access.
According to the White House, the Russian reporter’s presence was unplanned.
“TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official said. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary. He is not on the approved list for the press conference.”
The White House did not address how the unapproved reporter was able to gain access to the Oval Office.
The moment marks just the latest turn in the ongoing saga of the White House backlash against mainstream news. Trump has increasingly tightened media access to the White House, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week announcing that the administration would control who has access to the White House in the Oval Office press pool – not the independently-elected White House Correspondents Association long tasked with making those decisions.
It also comes as Trump increasingly aligns himself with Putin — and criticizes Zelenskyy — prompting concern that the U.S.’s new ally on the global stage is the Kremlin.
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Trump v. Zelensky White House Tussle! Prof John Mearsheimer.
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Trump-Zelenskyy talks cut short after heated exchanges in Oval Office - summary
•
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House has been cut short after he got into a heated exchange with US president Donald Trump and vice-president JD Vance, who accused him of “disrespectful” behaviour during their talks in the Oval Office.
• In a social media update, Trump said he has determined that
Zelenskyy “is not ready for peace if America is involved
, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations”, and said
the Ukrainian leader “disrespected the United States
of America in its cherished Oval Office”. “He can come back when he is ready for peace,” he added.
• In their earlier talks, Trump repeatedly told Zelenskyy that he was
“gambling with the lives of millions, with the third world war”
, and telling him to stop holding out for further security guarantees saying “you’re either going to make a deal or we are out”.
• Trump appeared to mask differences by drawing false equivalence between the two sides of the war and positioning himself
“for both Ukraine and Russia”
as he pursues a peace deal, in stark contrast to Zelenskyy’s comments about Putin as a “killer” and “terrorist” who invaded Ukraine, and with whom he was not ready to compromise on the Ukrainian territory.
• The pair
repeatedly clashed
over their view of Russia and the negotiations, as well as the extent of the European support for Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy has left the White House moments ago, with the press conference between the two leaders, where they were expected to sign a deal on minerals, also cancelled.
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Ukraine Russia war latest: Trump accuses Zelensky of ‘gambling with World War 3’ in mineral deal press conference
Volodymyr Zelensky has left the White House after the meeting to sign a critical mineral deal descended into chaos
Volodymyr Zelensky has left the White House after a critical meeting between Donald Trump collapsed in dramatic fashion with an extraordinary shouting match in the Oval Office.
Taking to Truth Social after the tense showdown, Mr Trump accused the Ukrainian president of having “disrespected” the US and of being “not ready for peace”.
...
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Trump-Zelensky summit explodes: "He can come back when he is ready for peace"
The main event of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the White House was supposed to be the signing of a minerals deal, but it quickly devolved into a heated argument with President Trump and Vice President Vance.
The latest:
After an explosive Oval Office meeting in front of the press, Trump released a statement saying that he had determined Zelensky is "not ready for Peace if America is involved." The joint press conference between the two leaders was canceled.
• "He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
• Zelensky departed the White House about two and a half hours after he arrived, and the minerals deal was not signed.
Driving the news:
The Trump-Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office started with statements from both leaders and then questions from the press.
• After around 40 minutes, a reporter asked Trump why he engaged with Russian President Vladimir Putin and distanced himself from Ukraine.
• Trump replied that if he didn't show a balanced approach, he wouldn't be able to get a deal. "You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, 'hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?' It doesn't work that way," Trump said.
• Trump then said Zelensky has "tremendous hatred" towards Putin and "it is very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate." He added: "I understand that, but I can tell you the other side isn't exactly in love with him, either." As Trump was speaking, Zelensky moved in his chair and looked more and more upset.
• Vance weighed in and said the way to end the war is through diplomacy. Zelensky then spoke directly to Vance, recounting the events since Russia's initial invasion in 2014 and all the failed diplomacy and Russian violations since then. "What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you talking about?" Zelensky asked.
At that point,
the meeting devolved into a shouting match, with Vance accusing Zelensky of disrespect and of misleading visitors by taking them on "propaganda tours," and Zelensky noting Vance had never visited Ukraine.
• Zelensky then said that every country at war had problems and the U.S. would likely feel that some day too.
• Trump cut in and said Zelensky was "in no position to dictate what we're going to feel."
• "You're not in a good position ... you're gambling with the lives of millions of people, you're gambling with World War III ... and what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country, that's backed you," Trump said, as Zelensky crossed his arms and tried to interject.
State of play:
The visit comes as the Trump administration pushes for a ceasefire in the war between Ukraine and Russia, to be followed by peace negotiations.
• Zelensky said at the top of the meeting that the U.S. was "on our side" from the beginning of the war "and I think that Trump is on our side."
• He said he is sure U.S. assistance to Ukraine will continue, adding: "This is crucial for us."
• But he drew Trump's ire by objecting to the ceasefire plan, saying Putin had repeatedly broken ceasefires in the past.
Between the lines:
Trump denounced Zelensky as an unpopular "dictator" earlier this month and falsely blamed him for starting the war. He had softened his tone significantly ahead of the meeting before today's blow-up.
What to watch:
The signing of the minerals deal did not take place, and its status is unclear. Trump said at the top of the meeting with Zelensky that the deal was "fair" and it "a big commitment by the U.S."
• "The problem is, I've empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don't think he'd be a tough guy without the United States," Trump warned Zelensky. "Your people are very brave, but you're either going to make a deal or we're out, and if we're out, you'll fight it out."
• The U.S. wants to use the minerals "for all of the things we do, including AI and including weapons and the military," Trump said.
Zoom in:
The minerals deal is a framework agreement that lays out general details about the economic partnership the U.S. and Ukraine are establishing.
• The agreement says Ukraine and the U.S. will now negotiate more detailed arrangements for the joint fund.
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12 стульев. Экзекуция.
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President Trump Meets And Ukrainian President Zelensky Have Fiery Meeting In Oval Office.
Ukraine has ‘significantly degraded’ Russian Black Sea fleet
The UK Ministry of Defence has released a new intelligence update on the war in Ukraine, detailing the severe impact of Ukrainian operations on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The report, published on 27 February 2025, highlights how Ukrainian forces have significantly constrained Russia’s naval power, forcing major shifts in strategy.
The update states that before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow viewed its Black Sea Fleet as a key component of its maritime dominance. However, after three years of war, this fleet has been significantly weakened.
“Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia’s leadership almost certainly perceived the Russian Federation Navy and the Black Sea Fleet as integral components of their maritime power. After three years of war, Russia’s naval capabilities in the Black Sea have been significantly constrained through highly effective Ukrainian operations.”
Despite being vastly outnumbered at the start of the war, the Ukrainian Navy has inflicted significant losses on Russian forces, using a combination of drone attacks, anti-ship missiles, and naval raids. The UK intelligence update confirms:
“Since 24 February 2022, Ukrainian forces have destroyed or damaged at least 24 Russian vessels operating in the Black Sea. This includes the sinking of the Black Sea Fleet flagship, Slava-Class cruiser ‘MOSKVA’, which had previously been described as a cutting-edge air defence platform.”
The loss of Moskva, which was the largest Russian warship sunk in combat since World War II, was a major symbolic and operational blow to Russia’s fleet.
Russia Forced to Relocate its Black Sea Fleet
As a direct result of Ukraine’s targeting of Russian warships and infrastructure, the Black Sea Fleet has been forced to relocate its major assets from its historic base in Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, in the eastern Black Sea.
“As a result, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has been forced to move all of its major assets from its historic base in Sevastopol to Novorossiysk in the Eastern Black Sea. Russian units operating in the region have also been forced to adapt their tactics and change the areas in which they operate.”
This represents a major shift in Russia’s naval strategy, as Sevastopol was historically the centre of Russian naval operations in the Black Sea. The relocation to Novorossiysk suggests Moscow is seeking greater security for its remaining warships, following a string of devastating Ukrainian attacks on Crimean naval infrastructure.
Despite these setbacks, the UK intelligence update warns that Russia retains the ability to conduct long-range missile strikes on Ukraine from the Black Sea.
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Britain is a powerful country – but let’s not be silly
Britain is often portrayed as a nation in decline, but its global influence and capabilities remain significant. As one of the world’s leading nations, the United Kingdom still punches above its weight on the international stage.
However, a wake-up call is echoing through Whitehall and the military ranks: the UK’s Armed Forces require urgent reform. Strengthening defence is not merely a matter of increasing spending or acquiring the latest high-tech weapons – it is about fixing the fundamentals.
From recruiting and retaining skilled personnel to ensuring tanks are operational and troops have adequate ammunition, the basics matter most.
This opinion piece explores why Britain remains a formidable country, not to be underestimated, yet why overhauling defence fundamentals must be the priority before investing in new hardware. We will compare the UK’s approach with those of key allies and adversaries to provide a broader perspective on Britain’s situation.
The goal is a balanced, factual analysis of how the UK can maintain its global standing by ensuring its defence forces are fit for purpose.
Influence in Perspective
Britain today retains many attributes of a global power. It has the world’s sixth-largest defence budget and, until recently, was the second-highest military spender in NATO after the United States. Germany’s recent surge in funding has nudged the UK into third place, yet Britain remains one of NATO’s top contributors.
London fields advanced military capabilities that few nations possess: a nuclear arsenal, a world-class Royal Navy (including two new aircraft carriers), a modern air force operating fifth-generation jets, and highly trained special forces.
Crucially, the UK is one of only two European nuclear powers (alongside France) and has decades of combat experience, from the Gulf War to Afghanistan. These assets underpin Britain’s role as a leading NATO member and a permanent seat holder on the UN Security Council.
Beyond hard military power, the UK wields extensive soft power and diplomatic influence. British culture and education – from the English language to the Premier League and world-renowned universities – ensure the UK remains among the most influential nations. Britain consistently ranks near the top in global soft power indices. Its close alliances amplify its reach: the “special relationship” with Washington, intelligence-sharing partnerships such as Five Eyes, and deep ties across the Commonwealth and Europe all afford Britain an influence disproportionate to its size.
As one analysis noted, “the country’s potential for real global influence should not be underestimated.” Even as rising powers such as China and India grow in stature, the UK remains a key player in shaping international events.
Importantly, Britain has demonstrated leadership in recent crises. It was among the first to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, providing thousands of anti-tank weapons and training Ukrainian troops. The British Army leads NATO’s battlegroup in Estonia, protecting Europe’s eastern flank. The Royal Navy has maintained a presence in the Indo-Pacific to uphold freedom of navigation. All of this underscores that Britain is far from a minor player – it is a nuclear-armed, diplomatically influential nation with proven military capabilities. In short, Britain remains a global power, and its allies continue to look to London for leadership in security matters.
However, prestige and high-end assets alone do not guarantee readiness or effectiveness. Behind Britain’s formidable image, cracks have begun to appear in the foundation of its Armed Forces. Being a global power means little if the nation cannot fulfil its commitments with capable, well-prepared military forces when it matters.
This is why attention is now shifting to the state of the UK’s defence forces – and why serious reforms are required to ensure Britain’s power rests on solid ground.
Urgent Warning Signs
Despite its global status, the UK’s military has been strained by years of budget constraints and dwindling personnel. The British Army, in particular, has seen its resources and manpower reduced to concerning levels.
At approximately 75,000 active-duty soldiers (plus around 25,000 reserves), the Army is at its smallest size in modern history. To put that in perspective, the US Marine Corps alone is larger than the British Army, as former American General H.R. McMaster bluntly observed.
While Britain has focused on elite equipment and niche capabilities, it has steadily cut “boots on the ground” in recent decades. This shrinking land force raises alarms about the UK’s ability to sustain operations or deploy at scale. Indeed, Britain’s own Defence Secretary recently admitted that the country was “not ready to fight a war,” warning that if the UK is not prepared for conflict, it cannot deter one.
A House of Lords inquiry in 2024 delivered a stark verdict: the war in Ukraine was “a wake-up call, laying bare the gap between [Britain’s] ambition and reality” as a military power. The Lords committee found that the UK Armed Forces “lack the mass, resilience and internal coherence” required to credibly deter adversaries or sustain prolonged conflict.
Put simply, Britain’s military is too small, insufficiently resilient, and not well-integrated for the challenges it may face. These are fundamental issues that no amount of advanced jets or cyber weapons can resolve.
One critical problem is recruitment and retention. The Army has struggled to attract new recruits to fill its ranks – and to retain experienced personnel. A recent parliamentary report concluded that the size of the Army is “inadequate,” pointing to excessive bureaucracy that makes recruitment more difficult than necessary.
Cumbersome enlistment processes, such as excessive medical screening hurdles, discourage eager applicants and slow the intake of new soldiers. At the same time, too many trained servicemembers leave mid-career, citing frustrations over pay, family life, and morale. Surveys of British troops reveal that low pay, high housing costs, and difficulty accessing childcare are key reasons many consider leaving the forces.
These personnel shortages directly undermine operational strength. The UK may have some of the best fighter jets in the world, but without enough pilots and technicians, they are of little use.
This is why defence reform must begin with investment in personnel and basic capabilities. Britain needs to streamline its recruitment process and improve conditions for military families to retain talent.
Encouragingly, plans are in place for a package of measures – likely including better pay, improved housing, and enhanced family support – aimed at boosting retention in the forces. These steps are long overdue. A modern military requires a steady pipeline of motivated recruits and satisfied veterans who choose to stay.
Strengthening the Foundation of British Power
Britain stands at a crossroads in defence policy. It remains a powerful nation – economically, diplomatically, and militarily – with global reach and responsibilities. However, to maintain this status in an increasingly dangerous world, the UK must ensure its defence capabilities align with its ambitions. The first step is recognising the hard truth: there are structural problems in the Armed Forces that money alone will not fix without reform.
More funding is essential; years of budget constraints have left British forces too lean. Yet how that money is spent will determine success or failure. Simply acquiring the latest high-tech weapons is not a solution.
Instead, Britain should focus on the fundamentals: increasing personnel numbers, investing in training and exercises, maintaining and upgrading existing equipment, and rebuilding stockpiles of ammunition and fuel. These are the unglamorous necessities of military power. They may not generate headlines, but they win wars and prevent them.
Britain has faced similar challenges before and adapted accordingly. Now is the time to do so again. A UK that fixes its Armed Forces’ foundations – ensuring recruits are in barracks, rounds are in artillery tubes, and fuel is in the tanks – will remain a formidable force in global security.
Britain owes it to itself and its allies not only to spend more on defence but to spend wisely on what truly matters.
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
JUST IN: Trump Departs On Air Force One En Route To Palm Beach, Florida.
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Журналист Fox News спрашивает: «Если бы у вас была возможность вернуться в Белый Дом прямо сейчас, вы бы вернулись?»,
Зеленский: «Нет».
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Zelenskyy Gives Interview to FOX NEWS after White House Scandalous Meeting
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BREAKING NEWS: Trump Speaks To Reporters After Fiery Oval Office Clash With Ukraine's Zelensky
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«Украина - это Минас-Тирит»
Зеленского после конфликта с Трампом поддержали главком ВСУ Сырский и ряд украинских топ-чиновников.
«Вооруженные Силы – с Украиной, с народом, с верховным главнокомандующим», – заявил Сырский.
«Президент борется за нашу страну, за каждого, кто защищает справедливый и долговременный мир. Поддерживаю президента, отстаивающего интересы нашего героического народа. В каждой ситуации. Точка. Мы благодарны тем, кто рядом. Тем, кто понимает, что Украина – это не просто точка на карте. Это Минас-Тирит, защищающий мир от зла (Минас-Тирит - город из «Властелина колец», который осаждала армия орков из Мордора - Ред.)», – написал глава Офиса президента Ермак.
«Зеленский имеет смелость отстаивать то, что правильно», – заявил глава МИД Сибига.
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‘This is the point you resign’: Former U.S. National Security Advisor calls on Marco Rubio to resign.
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Today was not a good day for American diplomacy, says fmr. U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul.
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Мир стал ближе или дальше после провала визита Зеленского в Вашингтон?
Перепалка Зеленского с Трампом уже породила комментарии о том, что теперь завершение войны откладывается, так как Зеленский прямо отказал Трампу в прекращении огня.
Однако это не единственный сценарий.
То, что Зеленский против перемирия, это как раз не является новостью.
Новостью является то, что столь жестко за перемирие выступил Трамп, публично разнося Зеленского за его нежелание завершить войну.
Накануне европейская "партия войны" в лице Макрона и Стармера приложила немало усилий, чтобы попытаться убедить Трампа все ж таки продолжить поддержку Украины и согласовать американские гарантии безопасности для европейских миротворцев.
И хоть Трамп ко всему этому отнесся скептически, однако его тон в отношении Зеленского и Украины в целом стал гораздо мягче.
И поэтому Зеленский ехал в Вашингтон с вполне понятной программой: убедить Трампа снять требование скорейшего перемирия, а сосредоточится на усилении "переговорных позиций" Киева через подтверждение продолжения поставок оружия, выдачи гарантий миротворцам и, возможно, усиления санкций против РФ. Ради всего этого Зеленский и был готов подписать «сделку по недрам», чтоб подыграть самолюбию Трампа.
И, собственно, главная перемена, которая произошла сегодня вечером после перепалки, это то, что теперь ни у Украины, ни у европейцев уже нет иллюзий, что Трамп поменяет свою позицию относительно необходимости прекращения огня и станет выполнять описанный выше "план Зеленского".
Трамп практически прямым текстом сказал Зеленскому две вещи. Первая - общение возобновится только тогда, когда Зеленский будет готов к миру. Второе - если Зеленский к миру не будет готов, то США "уйдут". То есть - прекратят помощь.
И теперь перед Зеленским стоит развилка из двух вариантов.
Первый - продолжать вести линию «войны до победного конца», но уже с огромным риском потери американской помощи и нарастающей конфронтацией с руководством США (что помимо прочего создает почву для все более тесного сближения Вашингтона и Москвы). И с надеждой лишь на помощь Европы, готовность которой чем-то, кроме слов поддержки, компенсировать отсутствие американских поставок под большим вопросом.
Второй - принести Трампу глубочайшие извинения и согласится на предлагаемую им схему скорейшего прекращения огня.
Ближайшие публичные заявления Зеленского покажут, в каком направлении он решил двигаться.
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Провал Зеленского в Вашингтоне. Последствия.
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Скоро будет Мир. 28.02.2025.
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Trump: Zelensky GAMBLING With WW3, Sen. Graham DEMANDS Ukrainian President RESIGN
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LIVE SOON: White House press briefing
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Госдеп США прекращает программу поддержки восстановления энергетической инфраструктуры Украины, сообщает NBC News.
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Офис Зеленского решил отменить его выступление в Гудзоновском институте (Hudson Institute) в Вашингтоне — CBS News со ссылкой на организаторов мероприятия.
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BREAKING NEWS: Graham Says He's 'Never Been More Proud Of The President' After Zelensky Meeting
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Ряд европейских лидеров высказал поддержку Зеленскому после его скандала с Трампом.
Премьер Испании Санчес заявил, что Европа не должна отворачиваться от Украины, несмотря на скандальную встречу Зеленского и Трампа в Белом доме.
«Украина, мы с тобой», – написал он.
«Дорогой Зеленский, дорогие украинские друзья, вы не одни», - заявил в Х польский премьер Туск.
«Есть агрессор, которым является Россия, и народ, на который напали, – это Украина», — написал президент Франции Макрон.
Тем временем Трампа раскритиковали американские демократы.
«Трамп и Вэнс выполняют грязную работу Путина», – заявил лидер демократов в Сенате Шумер.
«Извините, президент Трамп. Мы верим в демократию, а не в авторитаризм», – написал сенатор США Берни Сандерс.
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Перепалка Зеленского с Трампом разрушила усилия Макрона и Стармера, которые пытались уговорить президента США продолжить поддержку Украины. В победителях - Путин, написала военный редактор Sky News Дебора Хейнс.
«Ожесточенная и публичная ссора между Дональдом Трампом и Владимиром Зеленским стала катастрофой для Украины и ее европейских союзников и триумфом для России. Трудно было смотреть на зрелище, когда президент США ругал своего украинского коллегу и заявлял, что тот играет в азартные игры с Третьей мировой войной, показанное по телевидению в Овальном кабинете», – написала Хейнс.
«Трудно представить себе больший контраст между дружескими сценами между сэром Киром Стармером и Трампом и уничижительными высказываниями американского президента в адрес Зеленского, порой обращавшегося к нему так, словно он был непослушным школьником. Президент Украины, скрестив руки, изо всех сил старался высказаться, но он явно вел проигрышную битву. Этот необычайный срыв гораздо серьезнее, чем просто телевизионная драма», – добавила она.
«Американская поддержка Украины имеет решающее значение, если Киев хочет выдержать войну России. Великобритания, Франция и другие европейские союзники Украины работали сверхурочно, чтобы попытаться удержать Трампа на своей стороне… Похоже, все это разрушено или, в лучшем случае, находится под серьезной угрозой. Если Трамп в гневе прекратит всю свою военную поддержку Украины, способность Киева противостоять российским военным силам серьезно снизится. У европейцев нет возможности заполнить пустоту. Единственный, кто выигрывает в этом сценарии, – это Владимир Путин», – считает Хейнс.
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То, что Зеленский в своем первом комментарии не стал далее хайповать на теме и оппонировать Трампу, а пытается сгладить скандал и даже благодарит его, показывает, что он понимает глубину своего провала, несмотря на бодрые заявления его окружения.
А потому, видимо, будет пытаться как-то восстановить отношения с Трампом.
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Провал Зеленского в Вашингтоне. Последствия для Украины.
Визит Зеленского в Вашингтон закончился грандиозным провалом. Он публично поругался с президентом США, хотя цель визита была обратная - договорится с Вашингтоном о продолжении помощи и о гарантиях безопасности.
Причем скандал спровоцировал сам Зеленский своей грубостью в отношении Вэнса (до того и Трамп, и Вэнс вели себя достаточно спокойно и уважительно в отношении Зеленского).
По итогу, как пишут американские журналисты, Трамп просто выгнал Зеленского из Белого дома.
«Белый дом говорит, что «украинцы умоляли о перезагрузке», но Рубио и Уолтц сообщили им, что Зеленскому нужно покинуть территорию Белого дома и вернуться, когда он будет готов к миру», - пишет в X журналистка Fox News Джеки Хайнрих.
И хоть провала можно было бы избежать, если бы Зеленский сдержал эмоции, нужно признать, что такой итог визита является в целом закономерным.
Зеленский против скорейшего завершения войны. Он готов прекратить огонь только в обмен на гарантии безопасности, подразумевающие вступление США в той иной форме в войну, в случае нападения РФ, которые Вашингтон не намерен давать. Зеленский ощущает себя героем из древних легенд. Давидом против Голиафа, который является щитом, защищающим западную цивилизацию. Для него цель - сокрушение и полный разгром России, для чего он хочет мобилизовать все силы Запада.
И такая точка зрения последние три года была доминирующей в западных политкругах и в СМИ. И Зеленский привык, что его все чествуют как величайшего героя и полностью поддерживают его на пути "войны до победного конца".
Но на Западе (да и в остальной части мира) всегда была и есть совсем другая точка зрения. И за последний год она усилилась.
Она исходит из того, что шансы Украины победить Россию мизерные, а шансы Киев потерпеть поражение увеличиваются. Она исходит из того, что продолжение боевых действий при поддержки Украины Западом чревато сползанием мира к третьей мировой войне с угрозой ядерного конфликта и уничтожения цивилизации. Никто в мире не готов идти на такой риск ради Украины. Наконец, она исходит из того, что для Запада, да и для всего мира, с Россией выгоднее торговать, а не воевать.
И, с этой точки зрения, скорейшее завершение войны - это не "капитуляция", о которой говорит Зеленский и западная "партия войны", а спасение для Украины. А заодно и закрытие портала, через который мир может войти в ядерную войну. И Зеленский, который выступает против этого, в рамках данной концепции, не Давид, и не щит, а "президент Михаил Бозек" из сериала "Мадам госсекретарь", который провоцирует Третью мировую войну.
Трамп является самым ярким представителем этой линии, но далеко не единственным.
И, пожалуй, впервые столкнувшись с этой линией в публичной дискуссии, Зеленский "поплыл". И актер в нем победил главу государства. Он ощутил себя на сцене и решил высказаться, как умеет. Последствия не заставили себя ждать.
Безусловно, Зеленский организует пиар-кампанию, чтобы показать, что в Вашингтоне он "защищал интересы нации" и что "весь народ должен ради выживания объединится вокруг своего президента" (и уже идут подобные сообщения). Также наверняка моральную поддержку окажут некоторые европейские страны и западная «партия войны». Однако сути это не меняет.
Зеленский рассорился с крупнейшим партнером Украины. И сделал огромный подарок Путину, главная задача которого - лишение Киева американской помощи, что резко ослабит позиции ВСУ на поле боя и, соответственно, кардинально ухудшит переговорные позиции Украины.
И этот, самый опасный для Украины сценарий, при котором война продолжится, но уже без поддержки США, сегодня стал намного ближе.
Собственно, Трамп об этом и заявил практически прямо.
«Или мы подписываем соглашение, или мы уходим», - сказал Трамп.
Может ли Зеленский ещё переиграть ситуацию, согласится на завершение войны и вернутся к переговорам?
Не исключено.
Но после сегодняшнего перфоманса условия этих переговоров и мирного урегулирования, будут хуже. В том числе и лично для Зеленского.
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WATCH: Zelenskyy leaves White House after Trump 'kicked him out'
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РФ штурмует границу Сумской области, Трамп очертил схему завершения войны, зачем США "редкозем"28.02
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The Duran: Zelensky HUMILIATED, Sells Ukraine to Trump's TRAIN WRECK Deal as Putin Tightens Grip.
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Scott Ritter: Trump Admits Russia Won, Putin CRUSHES Ukraine–NATO in TOTAL Collapse?
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plane lands in UK ahead of major summit in London.
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Ukrainians reflect on contentious Oval Office meeting between Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy
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Local Ukrainians react to Friday's heated meeting between U.S. and Ukraine
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Russia Ukraine War | Ukrainians React To Trump Zelensky Spat | Trump Zelenskyy Meeting | N18G.
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Minnesotans and Ukrainians march for Ukraine after tense Oval Office debate.
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"Le Monde": los Ukrainy bardziej niepewny niż kiedykolwiek po kłótni prezydentów
Francuski dziennik "Le Monde" ocenia w sobotę, że los Ukrainy stał się "bardziej niepewny niż kiedykolwiek" po kłótni prezydenta USA Donalda Trumpa z prezydentem Ukrainy Wołodymyrem Zełenskim.
"Katastrofa dla Ukrainy. Jaskrawy pokaz administracji Trump. Lodowaty powiew w kierunku Europy. Dar dla Moskwy. Te wszystkie stwierdzenia są usprawiedliwione, jeśli chodzi o starcie Trumpa i Zełenskiego przed kamerami w Gabinecie Owalnym - ocenia "Le Monde". "Rozbieżne priorytety dwóch przywódców, niesłusznie zademonstrowane publicznie, postawiły Kijów w sytuacji bezprecedensowego narażenia w bloku zachodnim" - dodaje dziennik, podkreślając "pęknięcia" w tym bloku.
"Le Monde" ocenia, że "szlachetna obrona Zełenskiego faktów i wartości będzie próżnym symbolicznym poświęceniem, jeśli jego kraj zostanie porzucony przez Stany Zjednoczone". Jednak - zastrzegł - Zełenski "nie chciał ustąpić w sprawie zasadniczej - umowa o minerałach nie ma wartości bez amerykańskich gwarancji bezpieczeństwa i jest tylko pierwszym krokiem".
Dziennik "Ouest-France" zastanawia się, czy Zełenski nie stał się ofiarą zasadzki. "Nie można tego udowodnić, ale trudno o tym nie myśleć" - zauważa. Podkreśla poruszenie w stolicach euoropejskich, zaniepokojonych zmianą stanowiska USA wobec Rosji. "Europejczycy są odtąd na pierwszej linii, by zapewnić stabilność wschodu kontynentu, a bez Stanów Zjednoczonych obecnie nie są w stanie tego zrobić" - wskazuje dziennik.
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NYT: dostawy amerykańskiej broni do Ukrainy prawie ustały i mogą się całkowicie zakończyć
Wszelka pomoc USA dla Ukrainy, w tym ostatnie dostawy amunicji oraz sprzętu wojskowego autoryzowane i opłacone za czasów prezydenta Joe Bidena mogą zostać wkrótce anulowane – stwierdził w piątek przedstawiciel administracji prezydenta Donalda Trumpa, cytowany przez "New York Times".
Urzędnik miał powiedzieć to po zerwaniu w piątek rozmów prezydenta USA Donalda Trumpa z prezydentem Ukrainy Wołodymyrem Zełenskim w Białym Domu.
NYT poinformował, powołując się na wyliczenia Pentagonu, że w amerykańskim budżecie pozostało ok. 3,85 mld dol. z zatwierdzonych przez Kongres USA środków pomocy militarnej dla Ukrainy.
Cytowany przez gazetę były wysoki rangą urzędnik ds. obrony w administracji Bidena powiedział, że sprzęt, który Ukraina kupiła ostatnio od amerykańskich firm zbrojeniowych, zostanie wysłana w ciągu najbliższych sześciu miesięcy. Jak zauważono, po tym okresie wsparcie ukraińskiego wojska będzie zadaniem wyłącznie krajów europejskich i pozaeuropejskich.
Dziennik przypomniał, że Ukraina "była zależna od dostaw broni z USA, począwszy od dnia, w którym wojska rosyjskie przekroczyły granicę (24 lutego 20202 r.), kiedy to administracja Bidena ogłosiła, że przekaże Kijowowi broń o wartości 350 mln dol. z zapasów Departamentu Obrony".
Według NYT Pentagon przez kolejne trzy lata wysłał 71 dostaw pomocy wojskowej z posiadanych przez niego zapasów o wartości 33,8 mld dol. "Obejmowało to ponad trzy miliony 155-milimetrowych pocisków artyleryjskich, dziesiątki tysięcy kierowanych rakiet artyleryjskich i pocisków przeciwpancernych, tysiące pocisków przeciwlotniczych, tysiące pojazdów opancerzonych i dziesiątki czołgów" - wyliczono.
Jak zauważono, od czasu inauguracji prezydenta Truma w styczniu 2025 r., nie ogłoszono żadnych nowych dostaw pomocy wojskowej dla Ukrainy.
Oprócz dostaw sprzętu, USA przeznaczyły 33,2 mld dol. w ramach programu o nazwie Inicjatywa Wsparcia Bezpieczeństwa Ukrainy zapewniającemu środki, które Kijów może wykorzystać wyłącznie na zakup nowego sprzętu wojskowego bezpośrednio od amerykańskich firm zbrojeniowych. Za rządów Bidena te transze były ogłaszane co 44 dni. Ostatnia z nich została ogłoszona 30 grudnia 2024 r.
Jak czytamy na łamach NYT, po piątkowym fiasku rozmów w Gabinecie Owalnym, przedstawiciel administracji Trumpa poinformował, że prezydent USA może w najbliższym czasie podjąć decyzję o zakończeniu nawet pośredniego wsparcia, w tym finansowania ukraińskiej armii, wymiany informacji wywiadowczych, szkolenia ukraińskich żołnierzy i pilotów oraz utworzenia centrum zarządzania pomocą międzynarodową w amerykańskiej bazie wojskowej w Niemczech.
"Takie działania byłyby szokującym porzuceniem kraju partnerskiego (Ukrainy), który znajduje się w trudnej sytuacji, i oznaczałaby kres poparcia (ze strony USA)" - ocenił amerykański dziennik.
Według danych Instytutu Badawczego w Kilonii państwa europejskie przeznaczyły do tej pory 138 mld dol. na wsparcie działań wojennych Ukrainy, podczas gdy USA przekazały 119 mld dol. na pomoc wojskową i humanitarną.
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Зеленский улетел из США в Британию.
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Самолет должен приземлиться в лондонском аэропорту Станстед около 11 утра по местному времени (около 14:00 мск).
В Лондоне Зеленский в воскресенье должен принять участие в организованном премьер-министром Британии Киром Стармером саммите европейских лидеров, который теперь приобрел еще большую значимость.
В преддверии саммита британский министр торговли Дуглас Александер в программе Any Questions на BBC Radio 4 заявил, что сцены в Овальном кабинете не только «глубоко тревожат и отрезвляют», но и «самым резким образом» демонстрируют степень изменения «мира, в котором мы все жили последние 80 лет».
Он также назвал президента Зеленского «самым смелым политическим лидером в Европе со времен Уинстона Черчилля».
А глава европейской дипломатии Кая Каллас заявила, что теперь «стало ясно, что свободному миру нужен новый лидер».
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The Trump-Zelenskyy slugfest was shocking. What does Ukraine do now?
For the Ukrainian leader, there’s no coming back from the debacle. His country’s best hope now lies with Europe
No matter their position on the Russia-Ukraine war, people who view the televised encounter between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office will likely be shocked. It didn’t morph into a full-on screaming match, but it came close.
The meeting might have gone sideways anyway, but JD Vance’s presence ensured that it became ugly – and quickly. The vice-president spoke over Zelenskyy, accused him of ingratitude for the assistance provided by the United States (“Have you ever said thank you?”) and of disrespecting Trump, his host, and, for good measure, scolded him for litigating his country’s case in public. That raised the temperature – a lot.
To be fair, the Ukrainian president shouldn’t have sprung the trap Vance set. He might have said that he had in fact expressed his gratitude in the past, wished to do so again, and was pleased to be in the United States to have a direct discussion with Trump, a man he regards as a strong leader.
Yuck, you might say: that would have been obsequious and undignified. True, but there are two rules for anyone meeting Trump, especially when the press corps is on hand: use flattery and avoid arguments.
The formula works.
Consider Keir Starmer’s Thursday meeting with Trump, in a similar public setting. The British prime minister played Trump like a violin. He nodded earnestly, smiled and delivered the coup de grace by whipping out of his pocket King Charles’s letter inviting Trump to visit the UK and underscoring how important a gesture it was. Trump, momentarily taken aback, beamed with pride and gushed over the UK and its monarch.
Was Starmer genuflecting? Yes. Was it a bit queasy to watch him? Yes. Did his approach work? Absolutely. It was a masterly lesson in Trump-handling.
It’s too late for Zelenskyy to try the Starmer method. He and Trump didn’t hold a press conference; a state dinner was scarcely possible after the Oval Office fiasco; the US-Ukraine mineral deal is likely dead – and Zelenskyy left.
Where does Ukraine go from here?
The video of what happened between Trump and Zelenskyy will course through the news cycle for a few days and make for dinnertime discussions – or quarrels – but it won’t elicit attention for long.
Yet for Zelenskyy, there’s no coming back from this debacle. Trump holds grudges, doesn’t forget slights and never forgives.
Leave aside the mineral deal; Trump has slammed Nato’s door shut in Ukraine’s face. Kyiv had best abandon all hopes of ensuring its postwar security through a place in the Atlantic alliance, especially given that other members, such as Hungary and Slovakia, are already determined to lock it out.
There’s more bad news for Ukraine. It might have hoped that a mineral accord worked out with the Trump administration could pave the way for American arms sales paid for by Ukraine with its mineral revenues. That is now all but impossible.
So how can a Ukraine that’s been shut out of Nato and won’t get any sort of American security guarantee, or even US arms, ensure its postwar security? It must look to Europe.
Zelenskyy’s idea of a 200,000-strong “army of Europe” peacekeeping force won’t work. Europe can’t field a ready-for-battle army anywhere near that size. It’s not just a matter of insufficient troops. Having relied comfortably on American protection for over a generation, Europe had the luxury of neglecting its defenses. Consequently, it lacks the firepower (aircraft, armored personnel carriers, tanks and artillery) and logistical capabilities to field a force that can defend Ukraine if Russia attacks again.
Yet Europe can help Ukraine build a well-trained army with top-flight weaponry – one that Russia will find an even tougher opponent than it does now.
To be sure, the Russian army is scarcely facing defeat in Ukraine; nor are its economic problems so severe that it can’t fight for much longer. Yet the performance of Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine has been far from stellar. Russia has just entered year four of a war with a far weaker country – one that just about every military expert thought would be overrun in weeks, even days.
Europe, with its world-class defense industries and resources for training troops, can help build Ukraine’s future army so that Russia must reckon with a far more powerful adversary than the one it has fought since 2022. The purpose of that army wouldn’t be to defeat Russia’s but rather to deter it by raising the cost, in blood and treasure, that it would have to pay to prevail.
Trump can abandon Ukraine without endangering American security. Europe can’t and therefore has a stake in Ukraine’s security. Both Ukraine and Europe now have a Trump problem. They should turn it into an opportunity for defense cooperation.
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Keir Starmer speaks to both Trump and Zelensky after their fiery Oval Office feud threatens to derail Ukraine peace deal
Sir Keir Starmer has expressed his 'unwavering support for Ukraine' after speaking with both Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky following their blistering row.
The Prime Minister's intervention came after a terse exchange in the Oval Office between Zelensky and the US president on Friday afternoon.
The two leaders abandoned plans to sign a minerals deal which would have given further US support in exchange for access to Ukraine's natural resources.
Following the clash, a No 10 spokeswoman said: 'The Prime Minister has tonight spoken to both President Trump and President Zelensky.
'He retains unwavering support for Ukraine, and is doing all he can to find a path forward to a lasting peace based on sovereignty and security for Ukraine.
'The Prime Minister looks forward to hosting international leaders on Sunday including President Zelensky.'
Sir Keir's comments come after he met with Trump yesterday and lavished praise on the US president's efforts to bring about a peace deal.
He also handed Trump a letter from the King inviting him for an unprecedented second state visit.
Meanwhile, Labour minister Douglas Alexander warned Friday's Oval Office spat between Trump and Zelensky puts the world in 'dangerous and uncharted waters'.
He told the BBC: 'That exchange was deeply troubling and sobering that we witnessed tonight. The only winner from the division of the West is going to be Putin.
'And it demonstrated frankly, in the starkest possible terms, the extent to which the world that we have all experienced over the last 80 years has changed beyond recognition.
'We are in dangerous and uncharted waters this evening.'
The statement from Downing Street followed a show of unity from Europe's political leaders, supporting Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen were among the leaders to express solidarity with Mr Zelensky.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for 'respectable diplomacy' following the meeting, and said a 'divided West only benefits Russia', while SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn suggested the offer to Mr Trump of a second state visit should be revoked.
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‘The insolent pig finally got a proper slap’: Russia celebrates Trump’s Zelenskyy takedown
A meeting between the American and Ukrainian presidents in the Oval Office blew up earlier Friday.
Russian leaders cheered after President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance dealt Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a brutal smackdown in the Oval Office Friday, reveling in the public breakdown of relations between the U.S. and Ukraine.
Trump turned on the wartime president during a meeting that he had previously touted as a historic moment in which Zelenskyy would sign a framework to a deal that would let the U.S. share revenue from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Dmitry Medvedev — the former Russian prime minister and president and deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council — was quick to dance on the grave of the U.S.-Ukraine partnership.
“The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office,” Medvedev wrote on X. “And @realDonaldTrump is right: The Kiev regime is ‘gambling with WWIII.’”
He also added in a message posted to his Telegram channel that Zelenskyy got “a fierce scolding in the Oval Office,” and called the embattled leader a “cocaine clown.”
“The ungrateful swine got a hard slap in the face from the owners of the pigsty,” Medvedev wrote. “That’s a good thing, but not enough,” he added repeating the popular Russian narrative likening the Ukrainian government to Nazis.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also chimed in on the name-calling, writing in Russian on Telegram: “How Trump and Vance exercised restraint and didn’t punch this scumbag is a miracle of restraint.”
Konstantin Kosachev, deputy chairman of Russia’s senate, called Zelenskyy the clear loser in the showdown at the White House.
“Zelenskyy lost this round with a deafening crash. And he will have to crawl on his knees for the next one,” Kosachev wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskyy has so far kept quiet on his Friday afternoon lashing, opting instead for a note emphasizing his gratitude on X — after Trump repeatedly scolded him for not being “more thankful.”
“Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people,” Zelenskyy wrote. “Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.”
Though Friday’s meltdown marked the most public display of frustration between Trump and Zelenskyy, there have been rising tensions between the two leaders — encouraged on by Russian officials.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave Trump an approving nod last week when he slammed Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections” and falsely claimed he started the war with Russia, saying the American administration “understands” the Kremlin’s “position.”
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‘Free world needs a new leader’: Europe defends Zelenskyy after Trump attack
France, Germany and Poland all make prompt declarations of support as Europe fears Trump’s alignment with Putin.
BRUSSELS ― European leaders on Friday rallied to defend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance subjected him to a tirade of withering and infantilizing abuse in the Oval Office.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
In what may prove to a significant turning point in the tottering postwar Western alliance between Europe and the United States, the Europeans pushed back against Washington’s increasing alignment with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Trump's browbeating of Zelenskyy.
“There is an aggressor, which is Russia and a people who have suffered aggression, which is Ukraine,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, hitting back at Trump’s attempts to treat the two sides evenly. “You have to respect those who have been fighting since the beginning because they are fighting for their dignity, their independence, for their children, and for the security of Europe.”
Macron also noted that the U.S. had not been the only country to support Kyiv, stressing that it was also backed by European countries, Canada and Japan.
In the Oval Office, Trump told Zelenskyy his refusal to concede to Russia at the negotiating table was “gambling with World War III.”
Later, Macron told Portuguese television: “If someone is playing World War III, his name is Vladimir Putin.”
Major rift
Germany's almost-certain next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, struck a similar tone addressing a tweet directly to “Dear Volodymyr in which he vowed to stand with Ukraine “in good and in testing times.”
Over the past weeks, Europe has been steeling itself for a major rift with Washington over Trump’s hectoring treatment of Ukraine and its leader.
While European leaders have been pushing for a comprehensive deal in which the U.S. would offer postwar security guarantees, Trump has resisted such suggestions and has concentrated his efforts on boasting that he can get Ukraine — rather than Russia — to repay America for aid through a deal on critical raw materials.
Leaving little doubt of his preference for Putin over Zelenskyy, Trump slammed the Ukrainian leader as a “dictator” while hailing Russia's leader as trustworthy. Trump has also adopted the Kremlin’s positions that Kyiv should not join NATO and should give up invaded land.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a message to Zelenskyy insisting, “Dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone,” while the office of Sweden's prime minister said: “You are not only fighting for your freedom but also for all of Europe’s.”
The Czech Republic, Spain, Latvia and Lithuania all sent similar messages of support.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted: “Be strong, be brave, be fearless. You are never alone, dear President@ZelenskyyUa.” In coordinated communication, the presidents of the European Council and Parliament sent out the same message.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stressed that his country stood behind Ukraine, saying “their fight is our fight,” while Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp underlined support for Ukraine would come in the form of “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.”
Italy’s hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni, a close Trump ally, called on Europeans not to allow deep divisions to open up with Washington and said Rome would, in the hours ahead, call for an EU-U.S. summit to get diplomacy back on track.
“What is needed is an immediate summit between the United States, European states, and allies to talk frankly about how we intend to deal with the great challenges of today, starting with Ukraine, which together we have defended in recent years,” she said.
As it is, some European leaders will meet among themselves in London on Sunday at the invitation of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Zelenskyy is due to join them. A spokesperson for Starmer said he'd spoken to Zelenskyy andTrump on Friday night.
Starmer “retains unwavering support for Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán took the opposite approach, thanking Trump for standing “bravely for peace."
“Strong men make peace, weak men make war,” he posted on X.
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Prezydent Francji: jeśli ktoś igra z trzecią wojną światową, to ten ktoś jest w Moskwie
Prezydent Francji Emmanuel Macron oświadczył w piątek, że jeśli ktoś "igra z trzecią wojną światową", to osoby tej trzeba szukać w Moskwie. Macron skomentował w ten sposób słowa prezydenta USA Donalda Trumpa podczas gwałtownego sporu z przywódcą Ukrainy Wołodymyrem Zełenskim.
Macron w wywiadzie dla portugalskiej telewizji powiedział, że osoby, która "igra z trzecią wojną światową" nie trzeba "szukać w Kijowie, a raczej w Moskwie". Dodał następnie, że jest gotów "otworzyć dyskusję" na temat europejskiego odstraszania nuklearnego. Francuskie media dodają, że słowa o takiej dyskusji mają związek z propozycjami Friedricha Merza, lidera niemieckiej Unii Chrześcijańsko-Demokratycznej (CDU) i najprawdopodobniej przyszłego kanclerza RFN.
"Jeśli koledzy chcą iść w kierunku większej autonomii i zdolności odstraszania, to powinniśmy otworzyć tę dyskusję, głęboko strategiczną. Ma ona elementy bardzo wrażliwe i poufne, ale jestem gotów, by taka dyskusja została otwarta" - powiedział francuski prezydent.
Wcześniej w piątek Macron zaapelował, by szanować "tych, którzy walczyli od samego początku" i przypomniał, że agresorem w trwającej wojnie jest Rosja, a naród ukraiński - ofiarą.
Podczas spotkania Trumpa z Zełenskim w Białym Domu i wspólnej konferencji prasowej doszło do gwałtownego sporu między przywódcami. Odłożono następnie planowane wcześniej podpisanie dwustronnego amerykańsko-ukraińskiego porozumienia o eksploatacji złóż minerałów; miał być to najważniejszy punkt wizyty Zełenskiego. Zełenski opuścił Biały Dom. Trump w mediach społecznościowych zamieścił komentarz, w którym wezwał ukraińskiego prezydenta do powrotu "kiedy będzie gotowy na pokój". Zarzucił mu też brak szacunku dla Stanów Zjednoczonych.
Kaja Kallas's Urgent Call: Strengthening EU Defense Without Undermining NATO.
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Поможет ли Европа Зеленскому в конфликте с Трампом?
То, что перепалка Зеленского с Трампом сыграла сильно в пользу Путина, так как поставила Украину на грань разрыва отношений с крупнейшим партнером (США), со вчерашнего вечера активно пишут западные СМИ. Писала об этом и «Страна».
Но еще одна большая польза для Кремля состоит в том, что своими действиями Зеленский провоцирует углубление конфликта между США и Европой. Отношения внутри Глобального Запада и без того крайне непростые. А конфликт Зеленского с Трампом, который побудил многих европейских лидеров занять позицию в поддержку Киева (и, следовательно, против Вашингтона), стал сильным дополнительным фактором раздражения.
Более того, не исключено, что Зеленский это напряжение еще более усугубит, попытавшись заручиться поддержкой Европы, настраивая ее против Трампа в духе вчерашнего заявления Кайи Каллас «свободному миру нужен новый лидер».
Также вчерашний конфликт провоцируют раскол внутри США. Многие демократы и близкие к ним СМИ поддержали Зеленского. В то время, как республиканцы (включая тех, кто до последнего времени выступал за поддержку Украины вроде Грэма и Волкера) резко его осудили.
В украинской блогосфере уже распространяется по этому поводу радостные ожидания в духе «американцы увидели, что Трамп - это «отстой», а Зеленский герой, поэтому они теперь заставят Белый дом продолжать поддержку Украины или устроят Трампу импичмент или свернут через Майдан».
Но оправдаются ли эти ожидания?
Начнем с ситуации внутри Америки. Украина всегда была далеко не в приоритете внимания американских избирателей и вряд ли они будут слишком уж сильно возмущены тем, что Трамп прекратил тратить на Украину деньги налогоплательщиков. И уж тем более вряд ли они соберутся из-за этого на Майдан, рискуя развязать в своей стране гражданскую войну. Другой вопрос, что попытки Зеленского сыграть на внутриамериканском противостоянии (если они продолжатся и усилятся), могут привести к крайне жесткой реакции Белого дома в отношении украинской власти.
Что касается давления на Трампа, то после вчерашних событий полностью обнулен главный аргумент, который ему приводили сторонники продолжения поддержки Украины: «нельзя допустить, чтоб Украина превратилась в новый Афганистан. Это будет большим позором для Трампа, покажет слабость и его, и Америки».
После перепалки в прямом эфире и после отказа Зеленского от извинений, «афганский сценарий» (то есть поражение Украины в войне) для Трампа будет не «позором» и не «демонстрацией слабости», а наоборот - поводом показать всему миру, что бывает с теми, кто его не слушается и ему перечит. «Позором» для него скорее станет продолжение помощи Украине после того, как Зеленский вступил с ним в публичный конфликт, а потом ещё и отказался извиняться.
Теперь перейдем к Европе. В Украине популярна точки зрения, что после перепалки в Вашингтоне европейцы, которые и до того Трампа не любили, жестко станут на сторону Украины, сформируя антитрамповский альянс. Причем, не исключено, что во главе с Зеленским.
Однако данное утверждение, мягко говоря, крайне спорное. Европа, очевидна, не готова к полному разрыву со Штатами. Она не готова брать на себя ответственность за собственную безопасность без участия США. Лондон и Париж боятся даже миротворцев в Украину посылать после окончания боевых действий без гарантий их защиты со стороны американской армии.
С американцами у Европы много вопросов, которые для нее сильно важнее украинских дел. Это и торговые отношения (угроза введения пошлин), и расходы на оборону, и, в целом, отношения внутри НАТО. Поэтому крайне маловероятно, что, ради поддержки Зеленского, европейцы будут готовы ставить под риск отношения с США.
Также в Европе, на фоне призывов к миру со стороны Трампа, усиливаются позиции тех, кто выступает за скорейшее завершение войны в Украине и примирение с РФ. И это не только Орбан, Фицо или же внесистемные силы вроде АдГ. Желание восстановить импорт российского газа высказывают, например, и немецкие промышленники.
Да, в политических кругах Европы еще сильна точка зрения, что европейцам нужно затягивать войну в Украине, потому что если она закончится, то «Россия тут же нападет на ЕС».
Однако эта позиция все больше подвергается критике.
Так как в случае прекращения американской поддержки Киева и, тем более, в случае разрыва отношений Европы с США из-за нежелания украинских властей и европейцев способствовать Трампу в деле установления скорейшего мира в Украине, угроза безопасности для ЕС только усилится. Россия в таком случае может одержать победу в войне, а без американской поддержки европейцы вряд ли смогут противостоять россиянам в случае прямого конфликта.
Поэтому и раздаются призывы к европейским лидерам: не противиться миротворческим усилиям Трампа, а, наоборот, поддержать их, добившись прекращения огня в Украине и не допустив, таким образом, ни разгрома ВСУ, ни разрыва отношений с США.
В любом случае, значимость отношений с Америкой для Европы намного выше, чем с Украиной.
И, в этом плане, фраза Трампа о том, что на руках у Зеленского мало козырей не так уж и далека от действительности.
По сути, козырь у Зеленского на руках сейчас только один – это боеспособные ВСУ. Но насколько долго они сохранят боеспособность в случае прекращения американской военной поддержки и в условиях туманных перспектив увеличения европейской поддержки – вопрос открытый.
Trump’s Still Talking About Buying Greenland. Here’s Where That’s Headed.
Of all the priorities Donald Trump has set since returning to power, his fixation on Greenland has ranked among the most mystifying.
The president’s insistence that the U.S. should “own and control” the world’s largest island has unsettled its inhabitants and inspired his allies to imagine it as America’s 51st state. It has also raised a host of questions about why and how a possible U.S.-Greenland union could come to be.
POLITICO Magazine recently traveled to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, and came back with answers.
1. Can Donald Trump actually buy Greenland?
Well, not really. The days have long passed since you could outright purchase a huge chunk of territory from a European power in the new world. What the United States did when it purchased Alaska from Russia in the middle of the 19th century is just not in line with today’s international legal norms and standards.
There’s also no clear legal path toward doing so. The people of Greenland have too many rights over their own self-determination for an outright purchase. That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing Donald Trump can do regarding Greenland.
2. So, what can he actually do?
One of the more plausible ideas that’s been gaining some traction in Trump-leaning foreign policy circles is what’s called a compact of free association. This is a sort of arrangement that the United States already has with some small island nations in the Pacific. It’s short of actually forming a union with Greenland — or making it a 51st state — but involves special privileges for both the U.S. and the other nation involved.
In the case of Greenland, things are a bit more complicated because for the time being, at least, Greenland is an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark. That means that they have a lot of rights to self-determination, but its foreign policy is determined by Denmark.
But even for something like a free association agreement to work, there are a lot of other steps that would have to occur. First, there’s a process that’s been laid out for Greenland’s eventual potential independence from Denmark. There would have to be a referendum in Greenland supporting independence. There’s not even total agreement about exactly how that process would work. Then having achieved full independence, Greenland would then have to choose to enter into a free association agreement or some other kind of special arrangement with the United States.
3. Why Greenland? What’s in it for the United States?
Well, it’s really big. It’s not so far from the U.S. — it’s actually 13 miles from Canada at their closest point, and it’s strategically located in the Arctic. Arctic ice has been melting. Russia has become more active in that region. China, though it’s not an Arctic nation, has also become more active in the Arctic. So, the United States has a military and strategic interest in having a greater presence in that part of the Arctic. There’s already an important American air base in the north of the island, and in the south of the island there are deposits of rare earth minerals. As the world seems to be de-globalizing to an extent — and strategic economic blocs are forming — a source of rare earth minerals that is not in China, that’s near the United States is potentially very valuable.
President Trump, so far, hasn’t directly articulated those strategic goals, though some in his administration have.
4. What’s in it for Greenland?
The United States is an economic and military power next door. The U.S. is already guaranteeing Greenland security. A closer military relationship would cement that guarantee and trade relationship with the largest, most dynamic economy in the world. Another potential benefit would just be the right of people from Greenland to live and work in the U.S.
That being said, I was on the ground in Greenland in December, and there was not a huge amount of appetite for a big deal with the U.S. anytime soon. One researcher based in Greenland showed me a recent survey where a majority of Greenlanders said they would like to have closer relations with the U.S., but even more Greenlanders said that they’d like to have closer relations with all sorts of other countries, including Iceland and Canada.
So, if President Trump is relying on a popular groundswell in Greenland to get this deal across the finish line, he’s still got some convincing to do.
5. Is a deal actually going to happen?
Probably not.
An outright purchase or a free association agreement remains a long way off. But Donald Trump clearly has the attention of the governments of Greenland and Denmark, and so all sorts of potential measures involving greater military or economic integration could easily be on the table. There could still be some form of a deal that would see maybe more trade or better or more strategic bases in Greenland for the United States.
How reliant is Ukraine on US weapons as Trump threatens to withdraw support after Zelensky clash?
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky maintains that US support is vital to protecting his country against ongoing Russian aggression
After a fiery clash between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his US counterpart Donald Trump, White House officials have signalled that US aid to Ukraine could be cancelled immediately.
It is a Ukrainian concern that has been simmering for months but one Kyiv hoped it could allay with diplomacy.
As Mr Trump and his vice president JD Vance berated Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday night for not saying thank you for the past three years of support, that concern suddenly became a serious possibility.
In the aftermath of the unprecedented spat in front of the cameras, a Trump administration official said they were considering cancelling all help, including the final shipments of ammunition and equipment authorised and paid for during under Joe Biden’s tenure.
Below, we look at just how consequential that could be - and what weapons the US has been sending to Ukraine.
What are the figures?
Almost half of the £103 billion in military support sent to Ukraine by its allies has come from the US, according to estimates by the Kiel Institute. That figure is a little over £51 billion.
The second and third largest military supporters are Germany and the UK, who have sent £10bn and £8bn respectively.
If you calculate total military spending as a percentage of each country’s GDP, however, the US is much lower down the list of Ukraine’s backers. Its total support amounts to 0.296 per cent of its GDP, making it the 17th most significant military backer proportionate to GDP.
Denmark is Ukraine’s most significant military supporter measured against its GDP. It has sent around 2.038 per cent. The next four, in order, are Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland. These four countries all share a border with mainland Russia or its exclave Kaliningrad.
But if Ukraine lost the material heft of US support, it could prove devastating. This is why Mr Zelensky has been adamant that US security guarantees as part of a peace deal are the only means of preventing future Russian aggression. Europe’s support alone, he maintains, would not be sufficient.
In an interview last month, Mr Zelensky told NBC’s Meet the Press that they would have a “low chance” of survival without US support.
He reiterated that message on Saturday as he flew for talks with Keir Starmer at Downing Street, saying: "It's crucial for us to have President Trump's support. He wants to end the war, but no one wants peace more than we do.”
Demonstrations of how consequential a lack of US support can be are readily available. When the Republican members of the House of Representatives, under Mr Trump’s instruction, blocked for roughly eight months a military aid package for Ukraine proposed by Mr Biden, Russia made frontline advances with a significant advantage in artillery. Some soldiers put it at 10 to one.
It led to the fall of the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which the Russians have since used as a springboard to advance around 30 miles further to the outskirts of a city called Pokrovsk, a linchpin of the wider area’s defence.
Total US support, including financial and humanitarian aid, is in the range of £95bn, according to Kiel. The US department of defence, however, suggests the figure is as high as £145bn, which they say are funds “appropriated” for Ukraine. That covers US military training in Europe and replenishment of US defence stocks.
Compared with the rest of the world, the US share of total support for Ukraine is lower. The majority of support comes from Europe, with 49.5 per cent, while the US has supplied 42.7 per cent 7.8 per cent from other countries.
There is no evidence to substantiate Mr Trump’s claims that the US has sent $350 billion to Ukraine, nor has he attempted to prove it.
What weapons have the US sent to Ukraine?
US military support for Ukraine is vital not only because of its sheer volume but because Washington has acted as a diplomatic umbrella for European countries to send weapons of their own.
When Ukraine’s allies debated whether it would be too provocative to send tanks to Ukraine, for example, it was the US finally agreeing to send some of their Abrams, despite the logistical problems involved in training troops in how to use them, that opened the door for Germany to send their much more readily available Leopard tanks.
The list of total American weaponry sent to Ukraine is extensive. If you want to read the full list, click here.
The most significant pieces of equipment include:
• Three Patriot air defence batteries and munitions. These state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar systems have been vital to protecting Ukraine’s skies against Russian missile attacks
• Several hundred long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Ukraine has used these missiles, which have a range in the hundreds of miles, to strike targets deep inside Russia. They brought into range the Russian fighter jets firing devastating glide bombs, nicknamed “building destroyers”, from afar
• More than 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and ammunition. These systems have proved vital in fighting on the frontline
• 31 Abrams tanks and 45 T-72B tanks
• Millions of rounds of artillery, ammunition and grenades
• Hundreds of thousands of anti-tank and anti-armour systems were pivotal at the start of the war in allowing Ukrainians to repel Russia’s multi-prolonged attack on short notice
• Hundreds of armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, plus thousands of additional vehicles
• 20 Mi-17 helicopters
• More than 100 coastal and riverine patrol boats and anti-ship missiles.
King Charles shows solidarity with Zelensky in invite to Sandringham after Trump clash
Monarch’s show of support comes as Keir Starmer will attempt to pick up the pieces of shattered Ukraine peace talks at EU leaders’ summit
King Charles is to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at Sandringham on Sunday in a rare and dramatic sign of royal support.
The King’s invitation to the Ukraine president came a day after Donald Trump sparked worldwide outrage by insulting and abusing Mr Zelensky at the White House.
And it is only two days after Mr Trump accepted an invitation from the King for an unprecedented second state visit to Britain – delivered to him personally by Sir Keir Starmer.
King Charles’s impromptu meeting with Mr Zelensky will take place after the president meets Sir Keir, who is hosting a weekend summit of EU leaders on the Ukraine crisis.
The gestures by both the King and the prime minister are bound to be seen as the clearest possible signal that Britain is backing Mr Zelensky after his bitter fall-out with Trump.
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Великобритания предоставила Украине заем около 3 млрд долларов на оборонные нужды под доходы от российских активов.
Великобритания и Украина подписали соглашение о предоставлении кредита в 2,26 млрд фунтов стерлингов (около 2,84 млрд долларов). Минфин Украины объявил об этом вскоре после встречи президента Владимира Зеленского и премьер-министра Кира Стармера.
Указывается, что кредит будет погашаться за счет будущих доходов от замороженных российских активов, а использоваться он будет на финансирование закупок оборонных материалов, сообщает украинское ведомство.
Кредит является знаком «нашей непоколебимой и продолжающейся поддержки украинского народа», цитирует AFP британское заявление.
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Встреча Стармера и Зеленского закончилась, они тепло попрощались и ничего не сказали журналистам.
Как передает с Даунинг-стрит агентство PA, Кир Стармер и Владимир Зеленский вышли из резиденции. Стармер похлопал Зеленского по спине, проводил до машины Range Rover, обнял и затем помахал рукой на прощание.
Присутствовавшие журналисты кричали лидерам двух стран вопросы, но ни тот ни другой не стали на них отвечать.
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Starmer tells Zelenskyy UK 'stands with you' following Trump row.
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Zelenskyy arrives in Downing Street for Starmer meeting.
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A bigger victory for Putin than any military battle’: Russia gleeful after Trump-Zelenskyy clash
Putin stays silent but Russian politicians and media outlets crow with delight after the ambush of Ukraine’s leader
Russian officials and Moscow’s media outlets reacted with predictable glee to the dramatic clash between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump at the White House on Friday.
Posting on social media, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s deputy on the security council and former president, called the exchange “a brutal dressing-down in the Oval Office”.
He wrote: “Trump told the ... clown [Zelenskyy] the truth to his face: the Kyiv regime is playing with the third world war … This is useful. But it’s not enough – we need to stop military support [to Ukraine].”
In recent days, concern grew in Moscow as Trump seemed to lean toward a more Zelenskyy-friendly position following visits to Washington by the leaders of Poland, France and Britain, who urged support for Ukraine. Trump had indicated a willingness to back European peacekeepers in Ukraine – a move Kyiv and European governments saw as essential to preventing Moscow from reigniting the war, as it had after previous ceasefires.
But any worries the Kremlin may have had faded when Zelenskyy found himself ambushed by Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance.
“How Trump and Vance held back from hitting that scumbag is a miracle of restraint,” wrote Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, on Telegram.
There has been no comment so far from Putin, who has instead taken a backseat, likely watching the fallout unfold with satisfaction. “Putin doesn’t have to say much right now,” said a source familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking.
“It’s clear that he enjoyed the show and now believes he can push for even greater demands in Ukraine. That meeting was a bigger victory for Putin than any of his military battles since the start of the war.”
The source predicted that Putin is likely to call Trump in the coming days to argue that Zelenskyy is not someone who can be reasoned with and must be replaced – a sentiment already echoed by some in Moscow as well as Washington.
“The White House will now start looking more closely at other candidates for Ukraine’s presidency,” wrote Alexey Pushkov, a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, on Telegram.
Regime change in Ukraine has long been a goal for Putin, who has never hidden his desire to install a new leadership in Kyiv which is friendly to Moscow. On Telegram – the primary platform for political discourse in Russia – many influential pro-war bloggers echoed the rhetoric of Trump’s inner circle that portrayed Zelenskyy as an ungrateful child.
“Overall, the meeting in the Oval Office once again revealed the true face of Zelenskyy: ungrateful, arrogant, brazen, and boundless,” wrote Rybar, a popular account with links to the Russian defence ministry.
For Kremlin insiders, the incident also signified a fundamental shift in the global order, with a White House no longer seen as an enemy but rather as a partner to Moscow – one with whom business and politics can be conducted.
“Volodymyr Zelenskyy underestimated the scale of the shift that took place in American politics after Donald Trump’s arrival,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Russian foreign-policy analyst who heads a council that advises the Kremlin.
Lukyanov highlighted Friday’s moment when Trump declared that he was not on Ukraine’s side but viewed himself as a mediator in the conflict. “This is a fundamental shift,” Lukyanov added.
But there were also warnings in Moscow that, given Trump’s unpredictable nature, it was too early to declare victory.
“In the short term, this tragicomic exchange will undoubtedly weaken Zelenskyy’s position within Ukraine and give Russian diplomacy additional leverage in its dealings with the US,” said Anton Grishanov, a researcher at a thinktank affiliated with Russia’s foreign ministry.
“That said, Moscow and Washington still have divergent views on the settlement process, and Trump’s unpredictable temperament could bring plenty of surprises on the path to ending the conflict,” he added.
As the dust settles, it’s clear that Friday’s meeting delivered a major blow to Trump’s efforts to negotiate a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, while Russia prepares to escalate its offensive against a Ukraine on the verge of losing its most vital military support.
“The war continues,” Lukyanov concluded.
"Three strikes": Inside the Trump-Vance fury with Zelensky
The Oval Office shouting match Friday was shocking. But it wasn't too surprising to anyone close to President Trump or Vice President Vance.
Why it matters:
Privately, Trump sees Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a pro-Biden, ungrateful lightweight destined to lose to Russia.
• And Trump advisers believe Zelensky sees Trump as a pro-Putin, delusional fool destined to make him lose to Russia.
To Trump's team,
it was three strikes — and now officially out of favor — for Zelensky. In their eyes, Zelensky already had two strikes against him when he sat down with Trump and Vance.
• That was the backdrop for a conversation that would become perhaps the most epic televised foreign policy row in history — an argument that rattled Europe and vividly illustrated a sharp turn in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.
It began
with what Trump's team saw as Strike 3 against Zelensky: He disagreed publicly with Vance, who accused Zelensky of trying to "litigate" his case before the media.
• Vance said Zelensky didn't show enough thanks to the U.S. for funding Ukraine's defense — or to Trump for trying to bring peace.
• After a tense nine-minute exchange, it ended with Trump stopping the 50-minute meeting and essentially showing Zelensky the door.
Strike 2
came just before Friday's meeting, when Zelensky arrived at the White House without a suit or jacket, as requested. It was perceived by White House staffers as disrespectful.
•
Strike 1
, as first reported by Axios, came Feb. 15, when Zelensky publicly trashed a proposed mineral rights deal with Ukraine that he privately had discussed the day before in Munich with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
• The plan Friday was for Zelensky to sign a new version of the deal as part of a plan to end the war. That didn't happen.
The big picture:
At the heart of the discord is Trump's view of the conflict, which continues to challenge the United States' long-held alliances in Europe.
• Trump sees geopolitics in terms of negotiations between powerful countries and big personalities. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a coequal in this paradigm. Zelensky — the leader of a smaller country surviving thanks to American largesse — isn't.
Trump also approaches politics like a business deal or, as a former casino owner, as a type of poker. In one telling moment, he told Zelensky he had a bad hand without the U.S.
• "I'm not playing cards. I'm very serious," Zelensky said. Trump shot back: "You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people."
• Quick to temper and desiring of flattery, Trump demands a high degree of obeisance from supplicants. Zelensky didn't show that — and Vance was quick to try to put him in his place.
Trump's expectation of deference
from Zelensky is particularly high because of the massive aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine (an amount Trump inflates). The two have had a fraught relationship since 2019, when Trump was impeached for trying to leverage Zelensky for political gain against Joe Biden.
• Vance has long had antipathy for Zelensky and funding Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion. In his 2022 Senate race in Ohio, Vance ran on a platform of ending Ukraine aid.
• During the presidential election, Zelensky visited a Pennsylvania arms factory and signed missiles with President Biden. Vance cited that episode Friday, accusing Zelensky of "campaigning with the opposition."
Between the lines:
Democrats and European allies, who were far more aligned with Biden than Trump, were aghast at the Oval Office spectacle and at how Trump seemed to be shrugging off Putin's aggression against Ukraine.
• But Trump's close Republican allies loved the tag-teaming against Zelensky. White House officials said a message was sent.
• Zelensky "has refused to accept that people are tired of funding this war, and that there is a new sheriff in town," a senior White House adviser said. "He did not come in with that understanding of reality."
What they're saying:
Critics say Trump acted more like a crime figure than a president or law enforcement officer.
• "Trump runs the White House like a mob boss. He looks at Russia and China like they're other mob families; he sees Zelensky as a nobody," said Trump critic Lev Parnas, who was Trump's Ukraine fixer during the president's first term, spent time in prison afterward, then penned a tell-all book and a documentary.
• "He thinks [Zelensky] should just beg and then shut up," Parnas said.
• On Friday, "the wildcard was Vance," Parnas added. "I think [Zelensky] would've swallowed whatever Trump was gonna offer, but JD Vance set it off. ... He never liked Zelensky."
Vance advisers
say he hadn't plotted to blow up the negotiations, though one privately acknowledged he's "prone to think Zelensky is a liar."
• The meeting was largely uneventful until Zelensky addressed Vance directly and asked how diplomacy would work with a lying killer like Putin.
• "No one expected Zelensky to walk in there and act like such a petulant child, constantly frowning and shaking his head and DJT and JD had had enough," one Republican close to the administration told Axios via text.
• "I'm not sure this is salvageable," the senior White House adviser summed up. "Three strikes and you're out."
Zoom in:
Inside the White House, there was a feeling of unease among Trump advisers Friday when they saw Zelensky arrive without a business suit or a blazer. He was dressed instead in a three-button, skintight, long-sleeved black athletic shirt.
• "Wow look, you're all dressed up today," Trump said in a seemingly friendly way that advisers say masked annoyance.
• Brian Glenn, a conservative reporter and boyfriend of Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), seemed to voice the attitude of Trump's team in the Oval Office when he asked Zelensky, "Why don't you wear a suit? … Do you own a suit?" Vance laughed out loud.
• "I will wear a [suit] after this war will finish," Zelensky said. "Maybe something like yours. Maybe something better ... maybe something cheaper."
After Trump canceled a lunch
and press conference that was planned after the Oval Office meeting, Zelensky left the White House.
• Later he posted on X, thanking "POTUS, Congress and the American people" for the visit.
• That was interpreted differently by members of the administration. Some thought he was tweaking Vance for having scolded Zelensky. Others thought Zelensky was bending a knee.
What we're watching:
Whether Trump and Zelensky can get back to the negotiating table and arrive at a peace deal for Ukraine. If not, Friday's clash could go down in U.S. foreign policy history as even more significant than it already appears.
Цитата:
Zelenskyy Forgot the First Rule of Dealing With Trump
Flattery will get you everywhere. Insults will get you kicked to the curb.
When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was first elected in 2019, he proved to be a quick study on how to try to win over his American counterpart.
In one of his first conversations with President Donald Trump — yes, the “perfect phone call” that would later trigger impeachment proceedings — Zelenskyy claimed he wanted to “drain the swamp” in Ukraine and praised Trump for showing him how.
“You are a great teacher for us in that,” he said.
Fast forward almost six years — to a pivotal moment for his war-torn country’s future — Zelenskyy seems to have forgotten the first rule in dealing with Trump: Flattery is the coin of the realm — and perceived insults, especially in public, will quickly get you kicked to the curb.
So it went with Friday’s shocking Oval Office meeting, where Zelenskyy blundered into an on-camera debate with Vice President JD Vance before igniting Trump’s ire by disagreeing with him (or, as Trump allies saw it, lecturing him).
To state the obvious, Zelenskyy is a completely different man in a completely different situation than he was in 2019. Russia has invaded his country, massacred his people, kidnapped Ukrainian children and turned city after city into rubble. Nothing he said in the Oval Office Friday was false — and he has every right and reason to remind the world Ukraine was the victim of Russian aggression, not the cause of it.
To state what’s also obvious, Trump hasn’t changed a bit. Already suspicious of Ukraine before Zelenskyy was even elected, he now associates the country and its leader with his domestic political enemies, and he has mostly, if not completely, pulled the Republican Party behind him.
So if Zelenskyy wants to the U.S. to “stay with us, not with Russians,” as he put it in his Fox News interview after the disastrous Oval Office meeting Friday, he’s going to have to come to terms with the new reality of Washington: America’s posture toward Ukraine has drastically shifted under Trump and Vance, and even Zelenskyy’s longtime supporters say the quicker he realizes that, the better it will be for his country.
The immediate question, however, is whether he can overcome the anger of Trump and other White House officials over what happened Friday.
“I just don’t know what … Zelenskyy can do to mend the fences,” one White House official told me late Friday night. “Shaking his head, rolling his eyes? He’s trying to help you and he’s getting snide remarks in his own house?”
Another official, who like the others was granted anonymity to candidly describe the reaction inside the administration, said “everyone in the building — from the president on down — felt completely disrespected.”
“Today reflected many, many hours of many, many people’s lives in an effort to build a partnership. … Instead, look at where he is: Even fucking Lindsey Graham is talking about how fucked up he was,” the official added, referring to the hawkish South Carolina senator who criticized Zelenskyy immediately after the Oval Office blowup.
Some Trump critics have suggested without evidence that the Oval Office blowup was a premeditated trap laid by Trump and Vance intended to sink the U.S.-Ukraine alliance once and for all. That accusation is infuriating White House aides who worked on the arrangements for Friday’s meeting and scrambled to make sense of what had happened afterward.
“I don’t think anyone expected him to have the balls to show up and try to pick a fight with the toughest and biggest personality in world politics in public,” said a third White House official. “So I don’t think anyone perceived such a strategic misstep for a country that’s on the brink of annihilation.”
Insiders who know Trump well say the very idea he had planned a public ritual of humiliation for Zelenskyy, while not out of character for the president, belies an even more basic truth: Trump loves cutting deals — especially ones the rest of the world deem impossible.
The White House officials I spoke with Friday said Trump was eager to move forward with the mining-rights deal his team had negotiated with the Ukrainians. Some administration officials had suggested earlier in the week that the two leaders sign the deal before the meeting and use Zelenskyy’s Oval Office visit as a victory lap. But Trump wanted to make a spectacle of signing documents together live on camera, one White House official told me.
Was that expecting too much from Zelenskyy — to sit and smile while signing away a portion of his nation’s mineral wealth without getting security guarantees in return?
It’s easy to see why the Ukrainian leader would come in with a chip on his shoulder. In the span of a few months, his country’s greatest financial and military supporter has gone soft, with its new leader pushing him toward a peace deal while publicly floating terms favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin — including reneging on promises of NATO membership.
Trump administration officials, on the other hand, feel like they’ve been more than generous given the public sniping between the two leaders over the past weeks. Zelenskyy infuriated Trump last week with his public suggestion he was swallowing Putin’s disinformation — a response to Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine started the war — but two officials said the administration never demanded a public apology before allowing the mineral talks to proceed.
And they note, Trump himself had toned things down. He backed away from his suggestion that Zelenskyy was a “dictator” during his meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer the day before. And during the meeting Friday, neither Trump nor Vance brought up Zelenskyy’s recent slights or their long history of reservations about his country.
That is, until Vance suggested that diplomacy was the right way to handle Putin — and Zelenskyy questioned what kind of “diplomacy” he meant given that the Russian president has broken such deals in the past — an inquiry Vance clearly saw as a provocation.
“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance told Zelenskyy, adding, “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”
The meeting went off the rails even after Zelenskyy was advised to stick to the script during a private gathering with senators on Friday morning shortly before he headed to the White House.
“Everyone was giving him the same advice, which was get the deal done, don’t play games and be very appreciative of everything that Trump and the administration have done,” said a person familiar with Zelenskyy’s conversations with GOP senators. “Lead with, ‘Thank you for everything that you’ve done,’ and get the deal done.”
Now those pro-Zelenskyy lawmakers are frantically trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together. White House officials believe that Graham, who rode with Trump on Air Force One to Mar-a-Lago Friday night, will play a central role in finding out if an agreement is salvageable.
Graham himself told reporters Friday, “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again” and that the Ukrainian president “either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change.”
Zelenskyy’s decision to sidestep an opportunity to apologize in his Fox News interview didn’t help. But two senior White House officials told me that Trump meant it when he said Zelenskyy “can come back when he is ready for Peace.”
“He still wants a deal,” one said.
Цитата:
Russian state media briefly enters Oval Office during Zelenskyy meeting
The White House did not address how the unapproved reporter was able to gain access to the Oval Office.
The White House last week announced that “all journalists deserve a seat” in the Oval Office press pool. For a fleeting moment on Friday, that included the Russian state media.
A staffer from TASS, a Russian outlet that often promotes glorified coverage of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, was briefly in the room for President Donald Trump’s bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. American media mainstays Reuters and the Associated Press were not granted access.
According to the White House, the Russian reporter’s presence was unplanned.
“TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official said. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary. He is not on the approved list for the press conference.”
The White House did not address how the unapproved reporter was able to gain access to the Oval Office.
The moment marks just the latest turn in the ongoing saga of the White House backlash against mainstream news. Trump has increasingly tightened media access to the White House, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week announcing that the administration would control who has access to the White House in the Oval Office press pool – not the independently-elected White House Correspondents Association long tasked with making those decisions.
...
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Trump may be pandering to Putin, but we cannot roll out the red carpet for him
The friendship between America and Britain has always been a more delicate thing than it appeared to be, requiring much nurturing and mutual tolerance. But it has over time risen to great heights and done the world a great deal of good.
It reached its unrepeatable peak in 1941 when the two mightiest English-speaking nations found themselves together engaged against the most evil power the world has yet known.
In a brief but intensely moving speech given at the White House, Winston Churchill spoke of
‘the commanding sense of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals.
(выделено а.п.)
‘I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.
‘I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys’.
In truth, relations between Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt were often severely strained, on some occasions – notably on American demands for British gold and securities – coming close to open quarrels.
Roosevelt had, in the early years of the Second World War, strongly resisted Churchill’s pleas to enter the conflict fully on our side.
(выделено а.п.)
But no truly close relationship is perfect and the greater the trust the greater the strain it can bear.
Between 1941 and 1945 the two nations developed institutional links, diplomatic, military and cultural, which were more or less unbreakable.
After that war was over, a weaker, poorer Britain was still hugely important in the long struggle to defend freedom from the Soviet menace
(выделено а.п.).
We might not have been the global power which, in former days, had overawed every other nation with the reach and force of its Navy.
But we still possessed enormous soft power through the influence of our wise and skilled diplomacy,
the reputation for truthfulness and responsibility of the BBC (now tragically lost), our language and our reputation for fair dealing and respect for law.
(выделено а.п.)
Our intelligence services, rooted in centuries of experience, greatly outclassed those of our younger, richer rival.
(выделено а.п.)
Despite their supposed commitment to austere republican virtues, America’s governing classes also developed a strong admiration for Queen Elizabeth II and the dignity of the monarchy in general.
(выделено а.п.)
So relations between London and Washington have continued at a far higher and friendlier level than would be justified by our Gross Domestic Product, our population or the size and strength of our increasingly threadbare Armed Forces.
The friendship between the two countries has enabled us, as we are rather too given to saying, to ‘punch above our weight’ in the councils of world diplomacy.
With this history in mind, the advice of the Foreign Office to any incoming Prime Minister has been to get and stay as close to the policies of the White House as possible.
This is not always easy.
American policy in the Middle East was bound to supplant British interests there. Richard Nixon was a dangerous, unpredictable partner. Nobody could ever be sure what Ronald Reagan might do next. An increasingly global America got itself into quarrels in places where we might not wish to go. Bill Clinton didn’t necessarily regard Britain with love and affection despite his time here as a Rhodes Scholar.
On reflection we would have done better to stand aside from the Iraq invasion, during which members of the Bush administration made it clear they would have understood if we had done so.
And yet, in general, we have continued to be candid friends, sharing most objectives for the same reasons. Is this era over? Has a cool indifference, uninterested in the noble past, finally superseded the old closeness?
It might be so.
Our national friendship with the US will certainly not be sustained by the sort of performance put up by Sir Keir Starmer in Washington last week, or by the way he was treated in the Oval Office.
Sir Keir may have thought his diplomacy had influenced President Trump away from his brutal, cynical dumping of Ukraine.
Mr Trump appeared to have pulled back from his extraordinary and frankly odd dismissal of Volodymyr Zelensky as a ‘dictator’. The President’s body language and facial expressions were probably friendly, though it is always wise to watch this changeable person very carefully.
Sir Keir may have thought his delivery of a Royal invitation to a state visit, like a box of chocolates given by a suitor to a chilly recipient, would soften Mr Trump’s hard businessman’s heart.
But the global public humiliation of Ukraine’s President Zelensky the following day showed that Mr Trump had been patronising Sir Keir and toying with him.
Did he ever really mean to soften his position on Ukraine to please Britain? Did he ever really intend to sign the much-touted minerals deal with Ukraine?
(выделено а.п.)
Or was the meeting always likely to go wrong? How on earth did it come about that cameras and microphones were present for the encounter between Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance?
The Oval Office session began with some quite reasonable and even-tempered conversation and only developed into a car crash after it had been going on for some time.
Why did neither of the two American leaders try to steer the argument away from disaster once it was obviously headed that way? Whatever the answers to these questions, Sir Keir was left looking like the patsy in some sort of sting.
Yet Mr Trump still has his ‘truly historic and unprecedented’ invitation with a ride in the state coach, and perhaps still imagines he can bring his sidekick-in-chief Elon Musk in his baggage.
(выделено а.п.)
Such a spectacle is one of the few things we can give to Mr Trump that America cannot provide.
However, for the sake of our national dignity, the Prime Minister should now ask the King to withdraw this invitation, which was made in good faith and accepted – in public – in what turned out to be bad faith
(выделено а.п.).
This country has given unstinting backing to the United States over and over again, often when it hurt us to do so. We took seriously America’s argument that liberty and the safety of Europe were at stake in Ukraine.
Now, turning its entire foreign policy on a tiny dime, the US is voting with Russia and North Korea at the United Nations, and those who thought they were marching shoulder to shoulder in an important moral enterprise have been had for fools, defending a noble cause whose principal champion has deserted it with a sneer on his face.
It is interesting to wonder what Sir Winston Churchill would have made of this. It is reasonable to guess that he would have been grieved as much as he was angered. But he would have been angered, and so should we be.
Цитата:
Calls to cancel Trump's state visit to Britain: Put arrangements on hold until US President provides assurances about Ukraine's security, say politicians and military leaders
…
After Mr Trump was handed the state visit invitaton on Thursday, he said it would be an ‘honour’, adding that Charles was a ‘beautiful man, a wonderful man’.
But shadow home affairs minister Alicia Kearns last night said: ‘State visits should be conferred to the most honourable of allies, not to curry favour.
'No state visit should proceed until the steadfastness of the US’s commitment to her allies is assured. His Majesty should not have to carry the weight of Keir’s diplomatic failings.’
She called the Oval Office clash a ‘degrading spectacle’ and ‘performative bullying for a US audience’ by Mr Trump, adding: ‘Zelensky is fighting for the survival of his people: an innocent people being murdered by, a barbaric imperialist and dictator.’
However the Trump source said recalling the invitation would be ‘very unwise unless the UK wants to undo all the goodwill generated by the Prime Minister’s trip’.
…
‘President Trump thinks King Charles is a wonderful man and is very much looking forward to seeing him and other senior members of the Royal Family when he makes his historic trip.’
During the visit, Mr Trump is expected to be invited to address both Houses of Parliament – an honour he was denied on his previous trip in 2019. But last night one MP predicted a ‘sea of empty seats’ in protest.
No date has yet been set for the state visit and many sources said it should be put off until the UK and US saw eye-to-eye on Ukraine.
Former Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood, a joint British-American national, said: ‘It would be inappropriate to place the King in the position of hosting the President if US foreign policy shifts away from its long-standing support for Ukraine and toward alignment with Russia’s security objectives.’
Dickie Arbiter, who was a spokesman for the late Queen, said: ‘It’s difficult to rescind an invitation to an alleged ally of Britain. I feel the only option is to stall until such time the Government feels is right.’
Ex-MI6 head Richard Dearlove, agreed: ‘They don’t have to arrange the state visit straight away. They have got to let the dust settle.
'If Trump is that enamoured of the royal family... there is opportunity to try to rebuild bridges.’
…
Former Tory leader Michael Howard said it would be ‘extraordinarily difficult’ for the King given Mr Trump and Mr Vance’s ‘disgraceful’ behaviour, but added: ‘Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like to try to gain things for our country.
'We’ve got to see if we can moderate the behaviour of this dreadful administration. [The state visit] may be one of the ways we can exert a smidgen of influence.’
Labour peer George Foulkes said the visit should be postponed after Mr Trump’s ‘outrageous behaviour’, adding: ‘The diplomatic thing would be for the King to find himself busy for the next few months.’
Former Army commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, said: ‘The insensitive, cowardly and arrogant approach of Trump and Vance and their apparent appeasement of Putin is a huge concern.
'I am sure the King will not want to entertain [Trump] who currently appears to be on the side of evil rather than good.’
But constitutional expert Sir Vernon Bogdanor, said: ‘The meeting should go ahead. It would be an unprecedented snub to cancel it and would damage our interests.’
Last night No10 insisted the state visit would go ahead saying: ‘The only serious route to a secure, sovereign Ukraine is for all allies across the US and Europe to come together in action, not words.’
US fuel supplier cuts ties with American military in VERY strongly worded statement about Trump's Oval Office bust-up with Zelensky
A US fuel supplier has dramatically cut ties with the American military following Donald Trump's shouting match with Volodymyr Zelensky.
In a strongly worded statement, Haltbakk Bunkers said it made the decision due to Trump and JD Vance's surreal spectacle with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
It said it will no longer supply American military ships in Norway or those docking in Norwegian ports because it has a 'moral compass'.
'The United States is excluded based on their behaviour towards the Ukrainians,' it said, encouraging others to follow suit.
Zelensky's furious bust-up with the US President yesterday sent diplomatic ripples across the world.
Now the UK Prime Minister is acting as a bridge between the American premier and his European counterparts - with Zelensky calling their meeting 'meaningful and warm' today in huge contrast to what went down in the Oval Office.
Haltbakk Bunkers praised President Zelensky and said in a statement: 'We have decided to immediately STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports.
'No Fuel to Americans!', concluding their statement with the slogan 'Slava Ukraina' in support of Ukraine.
It referred to the televised event as the 'biggest s***show ever presented live on TV' and said 'it made us sick', according to the UK defence journal.
Haltbakk Bunkers supplies fuel to vessels calling at Norwegian ports, including NATO and allied forces.
…
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Уровень доступа: Вы не можете начинать темы, Вы не можете отвечать на сообщения, Вы не можете редактировать свои сообщения, Вы не можете удалять свои сообщения, Вы не можете голосовать в опросах
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Чего не хватает радио, чтобы увеличить свою долю на рекламном рынке? Аудиопиратство: угроза или возможности для отрасли? Каковы первые результаты общероссийской кампании по продвижению индустриального радиоплеера? Эти и другие вопросы были рассмотрены на конференции «Радио в глобальной медиаконкуренции», спикерами и участниками которой стали эксперты ГПМ Радио.
Деловая программа 28-й международной специализированной выставки технологий и услуг для производителей и заказчиков рекламы «Реклама-2021» открылась десятым юбилейным форумом «Матрица рекламы». Его организовали КВК «Империя» и «Экспоцентр».
28 марта в Центральном доме художника состоялась 25-ая выставка маркетинговых коммуникаций «Дизайн и реклама NEXT». Одним из самых ярких её событий стал День социальной рекламы, который организовала Ассоциация директоров по коммуникациям и корпоративным медиа России (АКМР) совместно с АНО «Лаборатория социальной рекламы» и оргкомитетом LIME.
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