Navigating the Vortex

Considering Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin now meet semi-regularly — twice already in 2025 — the annual meetings of their heads of government could be considered fairly unremarkable, routine events. When Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin visited China on November 3 and 4 at the invitation of Premier Li Qiang, it was the 30th iteration of a practice that started in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

But since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, these meetings have taken on a significant degree of geopolitical importance.

Together with the two countries’ interactions in organisations they dominate, like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the meetings serve as both symbolic reminders and operational enablers of the so-called no-limits partnership between Moscow and Beijing.

Mr Mishustin’s visit to Hangzhou and Beijing, which included an audience with President Xi Jinping, must be seen in a broader context.

It followed the first United States-China presidential summit of Donald Trump’s second term in office. On October 30 in South Korea, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping struck a temporary truce in their escalating trade war, climbing down on import tariffs and rare earth export controls.

While the two leaders discussed Ukraine, Mr Trump said that they did not touch on the subject of China buying Russian oil, which has helped fund the Kremlin’s war.

On October 23, Mr Trump had announced US sanctions on two of Russia’s major oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil — in a bid to pressure Mr Putin to the negotiating table. Tightening the screws on Russia was a departure from Mr Trump’s approach so far and the sanctions are scheduled to take full effect on November 21.

As a result, there have been some indications that state-owned Chinese refineries have begun to unravel at least some of their contracts with Russian suppliers. This may well be enough for Mr Trump to avoid imposing any further secondary sanctions on China which might otherwise undermine his efforts to negotiate a more favourable trade relationship with China.

Even if Mr Trump were more determined to use America’s significant economic leverage in pursuit of peace in Ukraine, China is unlikely to bow to any pressure.

On the contrary, the joint communique issued after Mr Li and Mr Mishustin’s meeting was unequivocal in reaffirming that “China and Russia will always regard each other as priority partners and … properly respond to external challenges,” including by making “all necessary efforts to cooperate with each other in opposing unilateral coercive measures.”

The joint communique also repeated the now customary formula that “China supports Russia in safeguarding its own security and stability, national development and prosperity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and opposes interference in Russia’s internal affairs by external forces”.

Rhetoric to one side, however, there is nothing to indicate a major step-change in Chinese support for Russia.

Nevertheless, Beijing continues to provide Moscow with several lifelines. First, China remains one of the major importers of Russian oil and gas, which provides much-needed foreign income for the Russian treasury. China is also reportedly a major supplier of so-called dual-use goods, including semiconductors and machine tools that are critical to sustaining Russia’s defence industrial base.

Second, a database of joint military exercises between Russia and China has recorded over 117 of them since 2003, with one-third over the last three-and-a-half years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

After some initial concerns, China also appears to have acquiesced to the military aid that North Korea has provided to Russia to date and that is likely to increase in the future. This was evident in the bonhomie between the three countries’ leaders at the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Beijing in September.

And last, China has been crucial in preventing Russia’s international isolation, by maintaining high-level, high-visibility links at the bilateral level and through multilateral efforts.

Officially, China remains committed to its February 2023 position paper on Ukraine, which starts with the assertion that the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld”. Beyond this rhetoric, however, China has done little to work towards an end to the war.

On the contrary, and the outcome of the Russia-China prime ministerial meeting suggests this, China’s approach appears to be aimed at providing enough support for Russia to help without directly and overtly supplying arms.

China, much like the West does with Ukraine, likely does just enough to keep Russia’s war machine going but stops short of any game-changing moves.

This is partly the result of Western pressure and the need to maintain a reasonable level of diplomatic and economic relations with both the United States and the European Union. But the continuation of Russia’s war against Ukraine also serves Chinese interests in another, equally important way.

It keeps the US at least partly engaged in Europe, and thus unable to fully commit to the Indo-Pacific and the rivalry between Washington and Beijing. And it keeps Russia firmly dependent on China, ensuring that Moscow will remain Beijing’s junior partner in a new bipolar order, rather than become a great power in its own right in a multi-polar international system.

This struggle over the future shape of the international order is far from over — and it will in part be decided on the battlefields of Ukraine where the guns are unlikely to fall silent anytime soon.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by Channel News Asia on November 13, 2025.

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The latest corruption scandal that has engulfed Ukraine could not have come at a worse time or in a more delicate sector of the economy for the increasingly embattled government of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine’s military is now clearly on the back foot in several key sectors of the frontline. Meanwhile, Russia’s campaign to devastate Ukraine’s energy sector is putting enormous pressure on the country’s infrastructure and bringing increasing hardship for ordinary Ukrainians as winter approaches.

The fact that the latest corruption scandal involves the energy sector is, therefore, particularly damaging to the government and to public morale.

Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption agencies have just released the findings of Operation Midas, a 15-month investigation into Energoatom, which is the state-owned operator of all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. With a total capacity of almost 14,000 megawatts, Energoatom is the largest electricity producer in Ukraine.

Anti-corruption investigators allege a large kickback scheme of between 10% and 15% of the value of supplier contracts, amounting to about US$100 million. Raids were carried out in 70 locations around the country on November 10. Seven people have been charged and five are in custody.

The mastermind of the corrupt scheme is alleged to be Timur Mindich — a businessman and film producer, who hastily fled Ukraine a day before the raids. What makes this very dangerous for Zelensky is that Mindich is the co-owner, with the Ukrainian president, of Kvartal 95 Studio, the media platform on which Zelensky established his pre-presidential fame as a comedian.

The scandal, therefore, once again involves very close allies of the president. It risks tainting by association. But it also leaves him open to questions of whether he could have acted sooner about the allegations.

The way in which this latest scandal unfolded also indicates that it is the manifestation of a much deeper conflict going on behind the scenes between elite groups vying for control of the last valuable state asset – the energy sector.

It is the latest in a chain of events that goes back to the summer months, when Zelensky’s Servant of the People parliamentary faction tried to terminate the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies. Mass protests by young Ukrainians forced the government to backtrack on the decision.

At this point, rumours about the existence of secretly taped conversations involving Mindich began to circulate in the Ukrainian media. However, no details of the content of the conversations were released at that time, leaving any allegations of corruption to the realm of speculation.

As the government came under increasing pressure after massive Russian air strikes against the energy sector on October 10 which left Ukraine’s population without electricity for almost an entire day, the mud-slinging began in earnest. Attention focused on Volodymyr Kudrytsky, the former head of Ukrenergo, the main operator of Ukraine’s electricity grid.

Kudrytsky, an outspoken figure in Ukraine’s pro-western and anti-corruption civil society, was detained on October 28 on suspicion of fraud relating to his alleged involvement in a 2018 plot to embezzle the equivalent of US$1.6 million from state funds. The investigation against him was conducted by the State Audit Service of Ukraine and the State Bureau of Investigation, which are directly subordinate to Zelensky.

Kudrytsky has robustly defended his record against what he alleged were politically motivated attacks designed to shift the blame for the devastation of Ukraine’s energy grid by Russia’s air campaign away from the government. While Kudrytsky has been released on bail, the case against him remains live.

Whatever their outcome in legal terms, the rumours circulating against Mindich and the attacks against Kudrytsky appear, for now at least, to be classic smear campaigns aimed at assassinating reputations and damaging the people and agendas associated with them.

As they pit pro- and anti-Zelensky camps in Ukraine’s elite against each other, the latest corruption revelations shine a spotlight on the power struggle over who controls the state’s most valuable assets and the levers of power in Ukraine. If Zelensky’s enemies cannot remove him from power, then his ability to rule can at least be severely constrained by targeting close allies like Mindich.

Another of Zelensky’s top advisers, justice minister German Galushchenko is also being investigated as a result of Operation Midas. Galushchenko is the former energy minister of Ukraine. He and his successor in the post, Svitlana Hrynchuk, both resigned.

This elite infighting, which is engulfing a sector that is critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue resisting Russia’s aggression, is astounding in its disregard of the existential crisis engulfing Ukraine. While its outcome, for now, is unclear, several important conclusions can already be drawn from it.

The return to a competitive political process with freedom of speech, media, and association, which was suspended as a result of the war, is vital. Fears of playing into the hands of Russian propaganda by revealing corruption in Ukraine simply enable corrupt officials to further abuse their power and damage the country’s prospects of prevailing against Russia.

More direct involvement of the EU and the US is needed in fighting corruption in Ukraine. Corruption reduces funds that can be allocated to the war effort. It also fuels public pessimism in donor countries about the effectiveness of their continuing support. The latest corruption scandal is not just “extremely unfortunate”, as the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, put it. It is further evidence of how endemic and systemic the problem is in Ukraine.

Because of this, corruption also has a major and negative impact on public morale and has been hugely damaging for recruitment to the armed forces. A recent survey found that 71% of Ukrainians believe the level of corruption has increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Monthly desertion rates from the army now stand roughly at the level of two-thirds of new recruits — 21,000 deserters compared to 30,000 sign-ups. This is not sustainable for Ukraine’s defence efforts, and is part of the reason for some of the recent setbacks at the frontline.

If it ever was, this is now no longer just about the country’s reputation and its prospects of European integration. Cleaning up Ukrainian politics — and being seen to do so — is now as essential for Ukraine’s survival as shoring up its air and ground defences against Russia.

Tolerating corruption is a luxury that Ukraine can no longer afford if it wants to survive as an independent country.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on November 13, 2025.

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Ukraine is having a tougher than usual time at the moment.

On the frontlines, the battle for Pokrovsk is raging, and it does not look like Ukraine is winning it. Nor do things look good for the country’s energy resilience after months of an intensive Russian air campaign targeting key infrastructure. According to the UN, this could trigger another major humanitarian crisis in the already war-ravaged country.

The geopolitical picture looks equally grim. The delivery of long-range Tomahawk missiles, sought by Kyiv for months now, has again been ruled out by US president Donald Trump. What’s more, after his meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in South Korea on October 30, Trump said that the US and China would work together to end the war in Ukraine.

The possibility of a productive collaboration between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on peace in Ukraine, let alone its successful conclusion, is remote.

And even if there was a Washington-Beijing sponsored deal, it would not be in Ukraine’s favour. This became clear a few days later. During a high-profile two-day visit of the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, to China on November 3 and 4, Beijing showed no signs of backing out of its partnership with Russia which is key to sustaining the Kremlin’s war machine.

Nor does the continuing delay in approving an EU loan to Ukraine worth €60 billion and backed by frozen Russian assets bode well for Kyiv. The disbursement of €1.8 billion from the EU’s Ukraine facility and a commitment by Germany to increase its aid to Kyiv next year by €3 billion are, of course, welcome demonstrations of European support. But they are not of the magnitude required to plug Ukraine’s budget deficit.

Given all this bad news, it was no surprise that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, leapt at what, on the surface, looked like good news in the European commission’s latest assessment of Kyiv’s progress towards EU membership. Yet, more careful analysis of the 2025 commission report suggests that positive news, if any, is in the presentation, not the underlying facts.

The European commission notes in its report that Ukraine has made progress in all of the 33 different chapters of the accession negotiations.

That the commission found no instances of standstill or backsliding is as remarkable as it is commendable given that the country has achieved this in the shadow of Russia’s aggression since February 2022.

Yet, in many areas, progress is modest at best. For example, in relation to the fight against corruption the commission reports that recent developments “cast doubts on Ukraine’s commitment to its anti-corruption agenda.” This is primarily a reference to attempts by Zelensky’s government to limit the independence of the country’s anti-corruption institutions. These triggered massive public protests last summer and forced a partial government climb-down. Concerningly, the commission also notes “political pressure on anti-corruption activists” and “harassment and intimidation of journalists”, including “cases of strategic lawsuits … related to journalistic investigations”.

Closely related, the report laments that a “public procurement law was not adopted” and that a public-private partnership law that was passed by parliament has “significant gaps vis-à-vis EU standards.”

Regarding the fight against serious and organised crime, the commission similarly states that “the freezing and confiscation of criminal assets remain very limited.” Other shortcomings concern limited progress on decentralisation, lack of transparency in recruitment to civil service positions, the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, and the persistence of torture and ill treatment in the prison and detention system.

On the one hand, it is not surprising that these shortcomings exist. Ukraine has been fighting an existential war for almost four years. The country has only been a candidate country for EU membership since June 2022. Accession negotiations only started in December 2023.

Yet it is the persistence of these highly visible, easily exploitable problems related to fundamental values of the EU that are causing concern. Almost identical issues were raised in the European commission’s opinion on Ukraine’s membership application in 2022, in its 2023 report on the country’s alignment with EU norms and laws, and in last year’s progress report on the accession negotiations.

It may be an exaggeration to claim that Ukraine is experiencing a turn towards a more and more autocratic style of presidential government under Zelensky.

But there clearly are signs that war-time politics in Kyiv has a darker side that does little to bolster the country’s credentials for EU membership. This provides easy ammunition for Ukraine’s detractors inside the EU. Chief among them is Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose obstruction tactics have frustrated European commission efforts to progress on accession negotiations with Ukraine.

In addition to Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have also defied the commission on the implementation of an updated trade deal with Ukraine. The intra-EU opposition to Ukraine has now been further strengthened by the formation of a Eurosceptic, hard-right populist government coalition in the Czech Republic.

The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, continues to insist that membership for Ukraine by 2030 “is a realistic goal”. The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, however, was more guarded. She noted that “future accession treaties will need to contain stronger safeguards” to “reassure our citizens in the Member States that the integrity of our Union and democratic values are ensured, also after the accession.” In an interview with the Financial Times, she said that she did not “want to go down as the commissioner bringing in the Trojan horses”.

This sentiment was also reflected in the European commission’s general report on enlargement that accompanied the individual country reports. “Future Accession Treaties”, the commission stated, “will need to contain stronger safeguards against backsliding on commitments taken in the accession negotiations, as well as requirements for the new Member States to continue to safeguard and make irreversible their track record on rule of law.” Given the less than flattering detail in Ukraine’s 2025 progress report, this suggests that the tough times for Ukraine are likely to continue, and not just in its war with Russia.

As the future of the EU and Ukraine have become ever more closely intertwined since February 2022, there is also a bigger question for the Union here — how to balance holding the line on its membership standards and enabling Ukraine to hold the line against Russia. The answer to this question will have profound implications for Europe well beyond the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on November 5, 2025.

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Following another week of diplomatic flip-flopping in the United States, Ukraine’s European allies did not disappoint when it came to the fulsomeness of their diplomatic rhetoric. Yet concrete action to strengthen the capabilities Ukraine needs to win the war remained at a snail’s pace.

After a less than successful meeting in the White House on October 17 between the American and Ukrainian presidents, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s European allies once again scrambled to respond to US equivocation with public affirmations of support for Kyiv.

A meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, October 20, a summit of EU leaders on Thursday, October 23, and a gathering of the coalition of the willing on Friday, October 24, provided plenty of opportunities for such statements. For good measure, the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, paid a visit to Washington on October 21 and 22, before joining the leaders of the coalition of the willing on Friday, October 24.

The core message from all these meetings was that where the Trump administration sends ambiguous signals, Ukraine’s more steadfast European supporters are still keen to demonstrate their mettle.

When they met on Monday in Brussels, EU foreign ministers had a packed agenda. On Ukraine, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, reiterated the bloc’s support for what she described as “Trump’s efforts to end the war” and condemned Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

The following day, Tuesday, October 21, brought diplomatic whiplash, when it transpired that there had been another apparent shift in the White House. The planned Budapest summit between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was postponed until further notice. The supposed host, Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly prime minister, Viktor Orban, and Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, maintained that preparations for the meeting were continuing. But Trump was unequivocal. He would not waste time on a meeting if a peace deal was not a realistic prospect.

In an unusual moment of clarity, the US president then appeared to realise that he needed to demonstrate actual consequences for Russia obstructing a peace agreement. On October 22, the US announced sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil companies – Rosneft and Lukoil. This was the first sanctions package imposed by the US on Russia in Trump’s second term.

There is a grace period until November 21 to allow for the necessary winding down of transactions with, and divestment from, the two companies. Nonetheless, the mere announcement of the sanctions has already led to major Indian and Chinese clients beginning to pull out from their deals with these two Russian energy giants. Additional sanctions against Russia’s banking sector and companies involved in oil infrastructure are apparently also being contemplated in the White House.

After much deliberation to overcome internal divisions, the EU followed suit. On October 23, Brussels announced its 19th package of sanctions against Russia. This also targeted an oil trader and two refineries in China, as well as banks in Central Asia.

In addition, the EU confirmed that a decision had been taken on the rules of the transition to a complete ban on any Russian gas imports. This will take full effect at the end of 2027.

All these efforts are critical to increasing pressure on Russia and are long overdue. But their immediate effect is uncertain.

Russia has responded with the usual performative defiance. It has tested a new nuclear-powered missile and carried out a readiness drill for the country’s nuclear forces, overseen directly by Putin.

With Russia’s air and ground wars against Ukraine continuing unabated, the other major challenge for Kyiv’s allies is providing assistance to the embattled country.

Here, progress has stalled. The US continues to withhold permission for Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets deep inside of Russia. The mooted supply of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine by the US has been scotched. Meeting with leaders of the coalition of the willing on Friday, Zelensky kept pressing for deep-strike weapons, stressing that when the US threatened to supply Tomahawks to Ukraine, Putin was willing to negotiate.

Even more pressing is the issue of how to cover Ukraine’s financial needs.

Kyiv’s most recent estimate of the country’s unmet external financing needs for 2026-27 stands at US$60 billion (£45 billion).

At the European Council meeting on October 23, leaders reiterated their commitment to “continue to provide, in coordination with like-minded partners and allies, comprehensive political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people”. However, crucially, no agreement was reached on how the necessary funds would be mobilised.

There is strong support for using frozen Russian assets to assist Ukraine, including from the coalition of the willing and the US. A proposal to provide Ukraine with a loan secured by these frozen Russian assets has been around for some time.

However, that proposal has not yet been finalised due to two major obstacles. The first is Ukraine’s refusal to accept EU conditions that while some of the money could be used to buy weapons, none of the funds should be spent on procuring them from the US. The second, and more critical, issue is a demand from Belgium — where most of the frozen Russian assets are held at the Euroclear securities depository — for robust guarantees that the burden for any Russian litigation and retaliation be collectively shared by EU members.

Despite all the signalling from the EU’s leadership in the run-up to last week’s gathering in Brussels that these two major obstacles to approving the loan were being overcome, the meeting ended with EU leaders postponing a decision to their next meeting in December.

At the end of yet another week of concentrated attention on Russia’s war against Ukraine, the outcome was a repetition of recent behaviour. The Trump administration flip-flopped and the coalition of the willing produced little more than a statement of intent to continue their support for Ukraine. The track record of Kyiv’s European partners to slow-walk the necessary goods for Ukraine’s defence continues. There is mounting evidence suggesting that they will not stretch themselves to go beyond securing Ukraine’s immediate survival.

Unsurprisingly, a credible pathway to ending the war with a just and stable peace is still lacking.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on October 27, 2025.

We hope you’ll share Navigating the Vortex with anyone you think might find it of interest. Also, you can listen to our podcast editions via the website and on all major podcast platforms, including:

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Within twenty-four hours last week, US president Donald Trump performed yet another pivot in his approach to the Russian war against Ukraine. It is almost customary for him now to first express anger and frustration with his Russian counter-part, Vladimir Putin, then to threaten severe consequences, and finally to find some imaginary silver lining that, in his considered view alone, justifies backing down and essentially dancing to the Russian dictator’s tune again.

The latest iteration of this by now very predictable sequence of events unfolded as follows. Back in September, while he was still busy pushing his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to be awarded the Nobel peace prize, the US president began to envisage a Ukrainian victory against Russia that would see Kyiv reclaim all territories lost to Russia’s aggression beginning with the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

To make this happen, there was suddenly talk of US deliveries of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which would have enabled strikes against Russian military assets and energy infrastructure far beyond the current reach of most of Ukraine’s weapons. Despite some doubt about the logistical feasibility of such deliveries, especially in sufficiently large quantities, there was a widespread expectation that the necessary details were being worked out during two phone calls between Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on October 11 and 12. A deal was meant to be announced after their meeting in the White House, scheduled for October 17.

Yet, the day before that meeting, Trump, apparently at the Kremlin’s request, took a phone call from Putin. Over the course of two hours of flattery and promises of reinvigorated trade relations, the Russian president managed to get Trump to back off his threat to supply Ukraine with Tomahawks.

This message was promptly delivered the following day to the Ukrainian delegation led by Zelensky. While clearly not as disastrous as their first encounter in the White House in February this year, Ukraine’s humiliation was clear. Not only were Tomahawks taken off the table, but Kyiv and its European allies are essentially back to square one and the very real possibility of a deal between Putin and Trump.

Or rather two deals to be hammered out by senior officials first and then sealed at another Trump-Putin summit in Budapest. The first deal would likely be on the broader terms of a peace settlement. After the meeting with Zelensky, Trump posted on his social media channel that Russia and Ukraine should simply accept the current status quo and stop the fighting. Trump thus appears determined — again — to stop the fighting in Ukraine on the basis of a compromise between Russia and Ukraine. A compromise, however, which means that Ukraine would lose as much as 20% of its internationally recognised territory — something that Kyiv and its European allies have repeatedly rejected as unacceptable.

The second deal would be on resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. This is something that Trump has been keen on for some time and suggests that more severe sanctions on Russia and its enablers, including India and China, are unlikely forthcoming any time soon.

Before Zelensky’s trip to Washington, there appeared to be some genuine hope that a ceasefire could be established as early as November. But Trump’s arrangements with Putin do not mention a ceasefire at all and make an end to the fighting conditional on a deal between the American and Russian presidents, which Zelensky is then simply expected to accept. This will put further pressure on Ukraine which continues to suffer from daily attacks against critical infrastructure that are particularly harmful to the country’s economy and civilian population and foreshadow another difficult winter.

So far so bad for Ukraine. But this was not an accidental outcome that could have gone the other way, depending on the whims of Trump. Ever since the US president appeared to shift gear in his approach to the war in late September, the Kremlin carefully prepared the ground for a rapprochement between the two presidents — with a mixture of concern, threats, and a good dose of flattery.

The goal of this rapprochement, however, is not a better peace deal for Russia, which Putin surely knows is unrealistic. Rather, it appears, the Kremlin’s main goal was buying itself more time for the continuation of its costly but at least somewhat successful ground offensive along the frontlines in Ukraine’s Donbas region where Moscow does not control all of the territory it has formally annexed.

And buying time is best achieved by preventing the US from fully backing the position of Ukraine and its European allies. In this context, the choice of venue for a potentially deal-clinching summit between Trump and Putin is also interesting. Given Hungary’s location, it will not be possible for Putin to get to Budapest without travelling through NATO airspace and through the airspace of countries that are at least candidate states for EU membership. This will put serious pressure on the EU and NATO to allow Putin passage or otherwise be seen as obstructing Trump’s peace-making efforts — a narrative that the Kremlin has been peddling for some time and that is part of its strategy to disrupt the Transatlantic relationship.

Putin may well feel that he has scored important points by delaying, yet again, more decisive US support for Ukraine. Yet, it does not bring him closer to victory — because Trump’s latest turnaround, difficult as it may be for Kyiv to stomach, does not bring Ukraine closer to defeat. In Ukraine, mobilization is in full swing and domestic arms production is increasing. Ukraine is further helped by the commitment of more than half of Nato’s member states to invest in the so-called Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List of critical weapons and ammunitions that Nato allies have agreed to purchase on Ukraine’s behalf from the US.

There are three key take-aways from the diplomatic flurry over the past few weeks.

First, for all of Putin’s bluster, the threat of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles clearly had an effect. Putin made a move to reach out to Trump, thereby exposing an obvious vulnerability on Russia’s part.

Second, and this barely needed confirmation, Trump is not a dependable ally of Ukraine or within the Transatlantic alliance. He clearly has not given up on the possibility of a US-Russia deal, including one concluded behind the back and at the expense of Ukraine and its European allies.

Finally, Zelensky may be down again after his latest fruitless encounter with Trump, but Ukraine is definitely not out. After all, Trump was right that Russia is a bit of a paper tiger and Ukraine can still win this war, or at least negotiate an acceptable settlement. Until Europe steps up, however, the key to achieving this remains in the White House.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on October 20, 2025.

We hope you’ll share Navigating the Vortex with anyone you think might find it of interest. Also, you can listen to our podcast editions via the website and on all major podcast platforms, including:

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the White House on October 17 hoping to secure long-range Tomahawk missiles that United States President Donald Trump had recently said he was considering supplying to Kyiv.

He left empty-handed, his hopes thwarted by a surprise, lengthy phone call between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Mr Zelenskyy was en route to Washington.

In his two-hour conversation with Mr Putin, the Russian leader warned Mr Trump again that sending such weapons would “damage relations” between US and Russia. He also piled on the praise for Mr Trump’s peace efforts in the Middle East and offered the prospect of another high-profile summit, this time in Budapest.

Hours later, at his meeting with Mr Zelenskyy, Mr Trump said the Tomahawks were “a big deal” and that the US did not want to “be giving away things that we need to protect our country”. He also called on both sides “to stop the killing, and make a DEAL!”

The shift in tone was unmistakable. During two phone calls between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy the previous weekend, the two presidents apparently discussed the terms of American supply and Ukrainian use in some detail. This followed an apparent shift by Mr Trump in late September when he suddenly announced that he thought Kyiv was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

Clearly frustrated with his inability to push Russia and Ukraine to make a deal, it looked like Mr Trump was decisively pivoting towards Kyiv and considering approving Mr Zelenskyy’s requests for long-range strike capabilities. These discussions clearly had the Kremlin sufficiently worried to reach out to the White House and request the phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin.

If the Kremlin’s objective was to take Tomahawks off the table and re-engage more positively with Mr Trump, it seems that Mr Putin has succeeded. At least for the time being, there is no sign that the US will imminently deliver Tomahawks to Ukraine.

There has always been some doubt about the ability of the US to deliver them in the quantities needed by Ukraine. And as they are now mostly used by the US Navy, there was uncertainty about the availability of sufficient land-based launchers as well.

While their range and destructive potential would have provided a significant uplift to Ukraine’s ability to strike military targets deep inside Russia, it is far less certain that they would have proven to be the kind of game-changer to force Russia into meaningful negotiations with Ukraine.

They would have complemented existing Ukrainian capabilities and extended their range, enabling Ukrainian forces to attack command centres, air bases, logistics hubs, training grounds and military supply lines far behind the front lines.

But it would probably have required dozens, if not hundreds, of successful strikes to put decisive pressure on Mr Putin. These strikes would have had to be executed in quick succession to prevent Russian air defence systems from adapting. And there would have needed to be a credible threat of a sustained campaign. All of this now seems an even more remote possibility.

However, what is more significant is the symbolism behind Mr Trump’s conversations with Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskyy. The Russian president still seems to retain the ability to do just enough to prevent Mr Trump from decisively throwing his weight behind Ukraine’s war effort. If nothing else, he has bought Russia yet more time to pursue its war against Ukraine.

A new round of high-level talks between American and Russian officials is about to commence this week, with the US delegation to be led by Mr Trump’s Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. Mr Trump and Mr Putin agreed that they would then meet in person “to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end”.

No clear timeline has been attached to these talks, and no deadline has been set for a presidential summit. Not that deadlines and ultimatums have mattered much in the past, but not having any gives Mr Putin even more room to try and wear Ukraine down by continuing his attacks against critical infrastructure and making further territorial gains along the frontlines in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

It also means that any ceasefire is off the table for now, as are direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. If anything, we are now much closer again to Mr Putin’s likely preferred scenario of negotiating an end to the war against Ukraine through a deal with the US, thereby cutting out both Kyiv and its European allies.

It is not clear how Mr Putin managed to resell this idea to Mr Trump, but the fact that he apparently has been able to do so underscores the volatility of Mr Trump’s approach to ending the war. What is more, Mr Putin may not even want, let alone need, his latest ploy to work. He is still convinced that because of Russia’s manpower advantage, Moscow can ultimately defeat Ukraine militarily. All he needs to do to achieve this, is to keep the US out of the war. And he has just done exactly that, again.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by Channel News Asia on October 20, 2025.

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Drone incursions into Poland. Fighter jets in Nato airspace. Little green men —notorious for their role in the Russian take-over of Crimea more than a decade ago — in a remote corner of Estonia. Election interference in Romania and Moldova. These are just a few examples of the tools Russia has been using in the past few weeks as part of a much broader strategy variously referred to as the Gerasimov doctrine, non-linear war, or new-generation warfare. What lies behind these terms is the very worrying and very real “weaponisation of everything” in Moscow’s strategy to reshape international order.

As a foreign and security policy, this kind of hybrid warfare predates the full-scale invasion in Ukraine. It was most obvious in Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. But it has intensified since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The spectrum of policies the Kremlin pursues includes information operations, such as propaganda and disinformation campaigns. It involves attacks on critical infrastructure, such as undersea cables or the use of drones to disrupt air traffic, and malicious cyber-attacks. There have also been assassination campaigns against defectors and dissidents, for example in the UK. Last year, a murder plot against the CEO of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, was foiled by US and German intelligence services.

While struggling to retain its traditional influence in post-Soviet regions like the South Caucasus and Central Asia, Russia has also sought to extend its influence elsewhere, such as in Latin America or Africa. But the main focus of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare campaign is Europe, which has become a key battleground in Moscow’s attempts to restore Russia to its erstwhile great-power status and reclaim a Soviet-style sphere of influence.

At the heart of these efforts is the war against Ukraine. For Russia, victory in this war is more than the mere military defeat of Ukraine and the permanent weakening of the country along the lines of Moscow’s frequently stated war aims, which include the annexation of one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, limits on the country’s armed forces, and preventing it from joining Nato. While clearly important for Russia, such a victory simultaneously needs to signal its own omnipotence — to prevail over a Nato- and EU-backed Ukraine — and western impotence to prevent Ukraine’s defeat.

The Kremlin needs to weaken the west in order to win the war against Ukraine.

In this sense, the intensification of the Kremlin’s hybrid war against Kyiv’s European allies is a tool Moscow uses as part of its broader war effort. But weakening the west is also an end in itself, because a strong EU and Nato alliance would prevent Russia from reclaiming its sphere of influence in central and eastern Europe.

While Europe may only be slowly rising to the challenge of upping its defence game against Russian aggression, the simple numbers do not favour Russia: the size of the EU’s economy is roughly ten times the size of Russia’s, and its population is more than three times that of Russia.

The EU’s defence expenditure in 2024 stood at just under $400 billion, up 19% from 2023, and equal to 1.9% of member states’ GDP. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia, by comparison, spent $145 billion, or (an ultimately likely unsustainable) 6.8% of its total GDP. In terms of purchasing-power parity, Russia still marginally out-spends the EU, but not if non-EU Nato members like the UK and Norway are factored into the equation.

So far, Russia has not been able to decisively out-perform Ukraine’s military on the battlefield.

With the transatlantic alliance — and hence US support — still by and large intact and a more assertive coalition of European allies backing Kyiv emerging, this is unlikely to change soon. That is why Russia employs its wide range of hybrid warfare tools against European societies: to sow doubt over their ability to prevail, to cause perceived hardship that makes supporting Ukraine unattractive, and to support populist allies who promote pro-Russian narratives, be they government parties in Hungary or Slovakia or opposition parties in Germany and elsewhere.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, the logic is likely very simple: using the full spectrum of hybrid warfare signals sufficient Russian capabilities and the will to deploy them that makes the costs for supporting Ukraine unacceptable for Europe. With European support ebbing away, Russia will either defeat Ukraine outright on the battlefield or force the country into humiliating concessions. Either outcome will damage European credibility and morale and allow Moscow to set the terms of a reshaping of the continent’s security order along the lines of one of the Kremlin’s favourite talking points — indivisible security.

Belaboured again by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in his speech at the annual meeting of the Valdai discussion club – a gathering of Russian and pro-Russian foreign and security policy analysts – indivisible security simply means a prioritisation of Russian interests over those of its neighbours, in other words a western recognition of a Russian sphere of influence.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that recognising such a Russian sphere of influence would satisfy the Kremlin today in the same way as it may have satisfied Soviet rulers during he cold war.

On the contrary, a Russian victory in and beyond Ukraine would most likely encourage dreams of further expansion. In fact, as some of Russia’s leading foreign policy thinkers put it in this year’s annual report of the Valdai club, the very purpose of war may have changed from victory to “maintaining a balance necessary for a period of relative peaceful development”.

If turned into actual policy, the kind of hybrid warfare the Kremlin has pursued against Europe for more than a decade, becomes a permanent feature of Russia’s relations with Europe. This is a vision that exposes the limits of Russia’s aspirations – managing chaos and loving disorder – and the dangers they imply for the rest of the world.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on October 16, 2025.

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And the winner is … not Donald Trump. This is probably going to be the enduring memory of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

This year’s recipient is María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition movement. The Norwegian Nobel committee awarded her the prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.

Machado’s efforts clearly are laudable, and she certainly deserves praise for her personal courage standing up to Venezuela’s strong-man ruler, Nicolas Maduro. Following the announcement of her award, Machado took to social media and dedicated her “prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

This, and her previous gratitude to Trump for targeting the Maduro regime, might explain why the reaction from the White House has been relatively uncombative. Trump himself reposted Machado’s tweet praising him as one of her opposition movement’s main allies.

Shortly afterwards, however, he could not help himself and thanked Russia’s president Vladimir Putin — a long-time supporter of the Venezuelan regime — for statements after the announcement of the award to Machado that questioned the Nobel prize committee’s choice and praised Trump’s peace-making efforts.

The choice of this year’s winner aside, the entire process surrounding the award has been highly unusual in the way that it has involved very public lobbying for a particular candidate and that candidate’s self-promotion.

Trump used every conceivable opportunity, including his speech before the UN general assembly on September 23, when he reiterated an earlier claim to have “solved seven wars”.

These claims have been widely called into question. And with good reason, as tenuous ceasefires are the closest that Trump got in some of the actual wars in which he intervened.

For more on the substance of Trump’s claims, listen to my interviews on:

This would not necessarily have ruled Trump out from the competition — the criteria do not require success but also allow for effort to be rewarded. Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will specified that the peace prize should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

Yet even if the Nobel committee had prioritised effort over accomplishment, Trump’s chances for success were remote, given that nominations annually close on January 31, which was barely a week into Trump’s second term. By then he had arguably played a role in a temporary ceasefire in the war in Gaza, but most of his subsequent claims had yet come to pass.

It is also questionable that Trump’s nominators did much to promote his cause. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and the country’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, are unlikely to have had much, if any, influence on the Norwegian Nobel committee.

There have been controversial choices for the Nobel peace prize before.

Henry Kissinger won the prize in 1973 for ending the Vietnam war, together with Le Duc Tho, the principal Vietnamese negotiator who declined the prize. But while he negotiated the end of the war in Vietnam, he was, among other things, also notorious for a devastating bombing campaign against Cambodia from 1969 to 1973.

Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed Ali was awarded the 2019 prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea”. That, however, did not stop him from fighting a vicious civil war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which has cost the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Trump clearly would have looked better in comparison to Abiy and Kissinger. But compared to three past US presidents who won the prize — Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese war, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for founding the League of Nations, and Jimmy Carter in 2002 for decades of work promoting peaceful conflict resolution, democracy, and human rights — his track record of success is shakier.

While he deserves some credit for his efforts and at least some temporary successes, Trump himself has no spotless track record as a peacemaker.

His eight months in office since he re-entered the White House for a second term in January 2025 are hardly an advertisement for “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”, as required by the prize criteria.

Trump has threatened to annex Greenland, incorporate Canada as the 51st state into the US, joined Israel in bombing Iran during the so-called twelve-day war, and carried out a deadly campaign of airstrikes against alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers.

This mixture of peace-making and warmongering sets Trump apart from the fourth US president winning the prize — Barack Obama in 2009 “for efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. This, too, was a controversial choice at the time because it was mostly aspirational given Obama’s lack of a track record.

Perhaps the best outcome of the 2025 Nobel prize saga and the fact that Trump did not win might be that the US president now doubles down in his peace-making efforts.

He has gone on the record having ended seven wars and now has another potential success with the Gaza ceasefire deal. If he wants to remain in contention for the 2026 award, he can’t afford for his grandiose claims to be proven wrong.

And if he succeeds, even in preventing any of these conflicts from flaring up again, a service to peace will have been done and it shouldn’t matter that it was done by Trump or what his ultimate motivation was.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on October 10, 2025.

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With almost all of the votes counted in yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Moldova, the ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity of President Maia Sandu has achieved a slim overall majority of just over 50% of the vote.

More importantly, perhaps, it has garnered more than twice the votes of the main pro-Russian opposition party Patriotic Bloc, which has just under 25% of the vote.

While Sandu’s party, as expected, did very well in the diaspora vote with almost 80% of votes cast in its favour, it also convincingly beat the Patriotic Bloc in the vote in Moldova with 44% versus 28%.

In another sign of the changing tide, the party also doubled its vote share in the Russian-controlled break-away region of Transnistria.

Turnout in the elections, however, has been low again. Just over 52% of eligible voters went to the polling stations. This is slightly higher than in the three previous parliamentary elections in 2019, 2020, and 2021, but below the turnout in the second round of last year’s presidential elections.

At the end of the day, the results also reflect the long-standing, and by most accounts, deepening polarisation in Moldova between the pro-European and pro-Russian camps. The fact that Sandu’s party achieved an overall, and only slightly reduced majority again, indicates that its support base has held up remarkably well amid unprecedented Russian election interference and the serious economic problems that Moldova has faced for many years, but especially since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While slightly weakened compared to the 2021 parliamentary elections, achieving more than 50% of the vote — and probably gaining 55 seats in the 101-seat parliament — is a remarkable achievement for Sandu’s party in these circumstances. It demonstrates the strength of support for the country’s European path among the general population. If the results of other parties and party blocs that claim to be pro-European are taken into account, this means that a solid majority of Moldovans favour membership in the EU over closer ties with Russia.

The outcome of the parliamentary elections yesterday, as well as of the presidential elections last year, also demonstrates the limits of Russia’s influence campaigns.

Despite spending millions on vote buying and disinformation, Russia has not been able to turn Moldova into a country in which a majority of the population would want to jeopardise their European future.

This is an important signal well beyond Moldova and will be noted with significant relief in Chisinau, Brussels, and other European capitals.

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Donald Trump appears to have had a major change of heart regarding Ukraine. On the face of it, it looks like he has embraced outright optimism that Kyiv “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.

However, this came with the message that Europeans will need to be in the driving seat to make this happen. According to Trump, a Ukrainian victory depends on “time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO”.

The only US commitment is “to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them”. Most tellingly, Trump signed his Truth Social missive off with: “Good luck to all!” This is perhaps the clearest indication yet that the US president is walking away from his efforts to strike a peace deal.

It also suggests that he has given up on a separate deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But this is where the good news ends — and where the European-led coalition of the willing will need to deliver security and stability for the continent in an ever more volatile environment.

After several weeks of Russian incursions into Nato airspace, drones — thought highly likely to be linked to Russia — twice disrupted Danish airspace in the vicinity of Copenhagen airport. It felt like a presentiment of the dystopian drone wars predicted by Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in his speech at the UN general assembly in New York on September 24.

Putin’s continuing provocations are a brazen challenge to Kyiv’s European allies.

At the heart of this coalition of the willing, the European Union certainly has demonstrated it is willing to flex its rhetorical muscles to rise to this challenge. EU institutions in Brussels have never left any doubt about their determination that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine “needs to end with a just and lasting peace for Ukraine”, as Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president, put it most recently in her state-of-the-union address.

Beyond rhetoric, however, the coalition of the willing is facing a number of potential problems. Individually, none of them is insurmountable, but taken together they illustrate the unprecedented challenge Kyiv’s European allies are facing.

To begin with, the coalition of the willing is not a coherent body. Its membership includes members of Nato and the EU, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. But the United States is not among their number.

It grew from eight countries plus the EU and Nato in February 2025, to 33 participants in April, and 39 in September. Its relationship with the 57-member Ukraine Defense Contact Group of countries supporting Kyiv with military equipment, which held its 30th meeting in early September, is not entirely clear.

The lack of coherence in membership in the coalition of the willing is mirrored by different levels of commitment, whether that’s the willingness to deploy a reassurance force after a ceasefire in Ukraine — or the capacity to do so.

It’s also not entirely clear whether the leaders of the EU and Nato are speaking for all members of their organisations. Among EU and Nato members, Hungary and Slovakia, for example, have taken ambiguous stances when it comes to defending Ukraine and Europe against Russia.

These different levels of commitment also reflect partially conflicting priorities. European members of Nato are deeply — and not wrongly — concerned about US abandonment. Add to that fears of a disastrous trade war, and placating Donald Trump becomes a priority.

Doing so by buying US arms may please Trump and plug gaps in Europe’s ability to supply Ukraine. But it is perhaps not the best way of ensuring the urgently needed development of an independent European defence-industrial base.

Trump’s return to the White House swiftly ushered in the end of US largesse in support of Ukraine. Europeans have only partly filled that gap, with Germany taking the lead and the EU mobilising over €10 billion (£8.7 billion) in its current budget to 2027, with the aim to supplement efforts by member countries.

But it’s not clear how long these efforts will be sustainable in light of inflation and domestic spending pressures. France’s public finances are in distress, while Spain has openly defied Nato’s 5% spending target.

Part of the solution to these problems would be much swifter defence-industrial cooperation across the coalition, including with Ukraine.

Over time, this could help to build the indigenous defence-industrial capacity needed to produce military equipment at the scale required. But making up for critical gaps in manpower, dealing with the Russian drone threat, strengthening air defences and long-range strike capabilities, and replacing the potential loss of US intelligence support will not happen overnight.

Individual countries and the various multilateral forums in which they cooperate will need to decide how to balance three only partially aligned priorities. Europe — whether defined as EU, European Nato members, or the core of the coalition of the willing — urgently needs to upgrade its defences. Developing a European defence-industrial capacity at scale is integral to this.

Europeans also need to keep the US engaged as much as possible — literally by buying Trump off — because they currently lack critical capabilities that will take time for them to develop themselves. And while building better defence capabilities for themselves, they will need to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia to keep it from losing the war.

Europe needs to increase the money, develop the military muscle, and build decision-making mechanisms that are not mired in procrastination to win the proxy war that the Kremlin forced on Ukraine and its allies. To do so will ensure that Europeans are best placed to prevent Russia from broadening its war against Ukraine into a full-blown military confrontation with the west.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on September 25, 2025.

We hope you’ll share Navigating the Vortex with anyone you think might find it of interest. Also, you can listen to our podcast editions via the website and on all major podcast platforms, including:

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