Russia

To avoid being confronted in the Channel, growing numbers of tankers are travelling around the UK’s west coast, according to Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin of the Royal United Services Institute, suggesting that the UK’s current rules of engagement act as a meaningful deterrent. These ships still reach their destinations, but longer routes add time and cost. The Ministry of Defence says Russian oil revenues have reached their lowest level since the start of the war in Ukraine."

By openly validating several of Trump’s core criticisms of Europe, Zelensky’s Davos speech both flatters Trump and underscores Europe’s strategic hesitancy,” said Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “This rhetoric is not, on its own, likely to rupture Ukraine’s relationship with its European partners given the depth of relationship. Yet it is undeniably a daring move as Europe has been Ukraine’s most consistent and reliable ally.”

President Trump has moved rapidly to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, casting an end to the war as the signature achievement that would define his presidency and cement his reputation as a peacemaker. To that end, he has escalated the diplomatic track quickly, engaging in direct talks with President Putin and exerting heavy pressure on Kyiv to agree to his timelines and parameters for a deal...Yet despite this pace, the parties are not anywhere closer to a substantive peace agreement, largely because Moscow has refused to offer meaningful concessions or dilute maximalist territorial demands that remain fundamentally unacceptable to Ukraine...Negotiators have made progress on the architecture of security guarantees for Ukraine, but the core obstacles, above all Russia’s insistence on recognition of its claims over the Donbas region and beyond, remain unresolved and are explicitly described by Kyiv as the ‘most difficult point’ in the talks...So far, the Trump administration has concentrated its leverage on pushing Kyiv to show flexibility, while applying little to no sustained pressure on Moscow to soften its position, which leaves the overall dynamics of the peace process essentially unchanged despite the flurry of high‑level diplomacy."