The UK has resupplied Ukraine with more Storm Shadow missiles [has hit Bryansk Chemical Plant, one of Russia's biggest] for long-range strikes inside Russia — Bloomberg.
The move ensures Kyiv is stocked for winter.
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Britain’s deliveries come as Trump again ruled out sending Tomahawk missiles.
Storm Shadows — range 250 km — have helped Ukraine strike deep targets, including a Russian chemical plant hit in October.
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The missiles are made by MBDA and guided by GPS, terrain mapping, and inertial systems.
They can fly low and evade radar. Their exact number sent to Ukraine remains undisclosed.
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PM Keir Starmer says Ukraine’s position is “improving” after Trump sanctioned Russian oil giants.
“We’re in a better place,” he told Bloomberg.
The UK aims to show Putin that Western resolve will outlast Russia’s economy.
McFaul: If Russia stayed quasi-democratic and integrated with Europe, it could be one of the most important countries now.
Instead, Putin overreached in Ukraine. He wrecked Russia's economy and slaughtered young people. His autocracy and imperialism set Russia back decades. 1/
McFaul: One of Putin’s top officials told me in 2014: ‘We care more about Ukraine than you Americans do.
And we have longer attention spans than you.’ I think about that every day. I hope he’s wrong, but some days, I fear he’s right. 2/
McFaul: Putin doesn’t have the military or economic power of the U.S. or China.
He’s number 3 militarily, number 11 economically. But with the limited power he has, he’s willing to use it to burn it all down. 3/
Serhii Plokhy: What Putin is doing now to Ukraine would be like Trump claiming not Canada but Britain.
Because that’s where the origins of the political system, language, and ideas Americans see as their own were born. A state on the periphery reclaiming its former metropole. 1/
Plokhy: Ukrainian nation is led by a president with Jewish background, a Crimean Tatar as defense minister, and an ethnic Russian general from Russia.
Ukraine’s political nation has become immune to the language-and-religion card — united across ethnic and linguistic lines. 2/
Plokhy: Before invading Ukraine, Putin wrote a long essay claiming Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
He borrowed this idea from 19th-century imperial historiography — trying to drag a 1800s model of the Russian nation into the 21st century. It’s insane. 3/
Timothy Snyder: Putin’s idea is that in 862 Russia came into being and there was no Ukraine then. So there’s no Ukraine now.
Zelenskyy represents a people who don’t want to give up themselves, their land, or sovereignty. Trump treats it like a real-estate deal. But it’s not. 1/
Snyder: I don’t think it [the outcome of war] is up to Trump. When he talks about Tomahawks, he’s just asking the Russians to bribe him. My eye is on the battlefield.
Ukraine is doing okay. As long as we don’t let them down, eventually, the Russians will break. 2/
Snyder: Ukraine’s lesson is simple - you just keep doing the thing that you’re doing.
You never know when you’re about to win. You win by doing it every boring day. Even if you’re depressed, even if people you know died. 3/
Singaporean PM Lawrence Wong: We are in a messy transition to a post-American multipolar world.
China is a risen power that will not converge with Western norms. Europe must step up as a major power in its own right — or risk being sidelined in the new global order. 0/
Wong: China will find its own path to modernity. It’s no longer just a rising power. It’s a risen one.
But it cannot yet replace America’s global role. There’s no new leader. We’re in a messy, unpredictable transition that may last for years. 1/
Wong: America is stepping back from its role as global insurer, but no other country can or will fill the vacuum. The old rules no longer apply, and the new ones haven’t been written. 2/