“Ukraine – Russia”

Until recently, when Russian drones strayed into Nato airspace during mass attacks on Ukraine, fighter jets would scramble, not to shoot them down, but to watch. The allies tracked the drones as they flew across the Nato border, either jammed off course or deliberately redirected to confuse Ukrainian air defences. In both cases, if the drones didn’t crash into a field somewhere in Romania or Poland, they always made it back to bomb Ukrainians, under the close watch of Nato’s best pilots on fully loaded warplanes.

In the eyes of Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky was once the wartime leader without any cards to play.

Yet after a private meeting between the two presidents on Wednesday, the American proclaimed Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN”.

A short time earlier, Mr Zelensky said he had some “good news” from the battlefield to share with Mr Trump.

The US president appeared to agree, describing a Russian economy in freefall and praising the strength of Ukraine’s armed forces for resisting an invasion that should have ended in victory within four days.

Donald Trump has said he is ready to impose sanctions on Moscow, but on the condition that all Nato allies agree to completely halt purchases of Russian oil and implement their own sanctions.

He also suggested members of the transatlantic alliance consider imposing tariffs of 50% to 100% on China for its purchases of Russian petroleum as a way to help end the war.

In a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, the US president wrote: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.”

EU KEEPS CALLING ON TRUMP TO PUT MORE SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA!

In Brilliant move, Trump says I AM READY WHEN NATO/ EU STOP BUYING RUSSIAN OIL! pic.twitter.com/h44hOACBR1

— TRUTH NOW ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@sxdoc) September 13, 2025

Russian drones sent into Polish airspace were reportedly heading to a NATO base used to supply Ukraine, it has been revealed.

Poland’s military was forced to shoot down drones in its airspace with the backing of military aircraft from NATO allies, the first time a member of the Western military alliance is known to have fired shots during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Drones crashed into several civilian homes as well as a military base for Poland’s Territorial Defence Forces.

WARSAW—Just before midnight on Tuesday, NATO sensors scanning for hostile aircraft spotted drones infiltrating Poland’s eastern border from Ukraine and Belarus.

Fighter pilots from the military alliance were already in the air preparing to lock on and shoot them down.

What unfolded over the course of the night marked a moment in North Atlantic Treaty Organization history: the first time its warplanes engaged Russian aerial weapons over an alliance member’s territory.

While the EU is pivoting to American LNG, the switch comes with a price premium and security of supply concerns.

Europe says it has turned the page on Russian energy, but 2025 data tell a different story: the European Union continues to import gas from Russia —above all in the form of LNG— and a fraction of crude thanks to exemptions on the Druzhba pipeline. In July, the five largest buyers transferred 1.100 billion euros to Russian suppliers; more than two-thirds was gas via TurkStream or LNG carriers. Hungary (485 M€) topped the list, followed by France (239 M€, all LNG), Slovakia (169 M€), Belgium (102 M€), and Spain (66 M€). One month earlier, the EU-wide total was 1.470 M€.

Timing is everything. After the Coalition of the Willing came together in Paris and vowed to provide Ukraine with security guarantees “the day the conflict stops”, Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately threw a spanner in the works, stating that Moscow would regard any Western troops deployed as “legitimate targets for strikes”.

While the Coalition may have seemed united at Thursday’s meeting, Putin will know that such ominous words will only exacerbate existing divisions inside the EU. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for example, is opposed to putting Western peacekeepers in Ukraine for exactly this reason, fearing that any attacks on them by Russian forces would require a Nato Article 5 collective response and so spark a wider conflict. Germany is also reluctant about sending its soldiers, while the UK and France’s enthusiasm is gung-ho verging on delusional.

It looks as if the war in Ukraine will go on for many years to come. And this will not be an accident. It may even be what the West secretly wants. We know this from an startling remark on Friday by Tony Radakin, the interesting lawyer who has just stepped down as head of Britain’s Armed Forces.

Sir Tony gave an unwise interview with the BBC’s impossibly grand Nick Robinson, a man so unclued–up on foreign affairs that he actually referred to the Russian army as the ‘Red Army’, as if Soviet Communism had not collapsed 34 years ago.

Admiral Radakin would not have made such a mistake. He is right at the top of Britain’s defence policy elite. Not only does he have a law degree. He qualified as a barrister and then collected an MA in international relations and defence studies, while serving in the Navy. Indeed, he studied so hard it is amazing that he found time to go to sea. Yet he did. And he became the ruler of the King’s Navy.

It seems that people would rather fight for a death cult than a democracy. At most, 15,000 foreigners have fought in Ukraine over the past three years. By contrast, an estimated 35,000 foreign fighters joined Islamic State, despite the risk of prosecution when they returned home.

Why have so few westerners joined up, given that Ukraine’s Polish border is just a £50 Ryanair flight away? The answer is that despite having a master showman like Volodymyr Zelensky as its recruiting sergeant, Ukraine’s International Legion was a disorganised shambles from the start. Zelensky announced the Legion’s creation just three days into the invasion. ‘This is the beginning of a war against Europe,’ he said, ‘against democracy, against basic human rights.’ But behind the scenes, his generals had no way of putting his lofty language into action. Zelensky hadn’t even told them of his plan before the announcement.

A total of 26 countries have agreed to participate in efforts to ensure Ukraine’s security once a peace deal with Russia has been struck, President Macron of France said on Thursday.

Macron said that the US, whose support is seen as vital for Europe’s attempts to prevent further Russian aggression in the future, was backing the plan.

He was speaking after a summit of the so-called Coalition of the Willing in Paris, which was attended by President Zelensky of Ukraine and co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer, although the prime minister took part remotely.

Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House, a key question has been what kind of support the US would continue to provide to Ukraine. Surprisingly for some, the US President has broadly followed Joe Biden’s strategy of giving Kyiv the weapons and ammunition it requests.

Two weeks ago, European leaders claimed that Trump  — reversing his previous stance — promised to contribute to a European “reassurance force” for postwar Ukraine. This week, White House officials told the Financial Times that Washington would provide “US aircraft, logistics and ground-based radar supporting and enabling a European-enforced no-fly zone and air shield for the country”. But will this really materialise?