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New York Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How to Hide a 350-Foot Megayacht
Among all the radical policy shifts carried out during President Trump's first 100 days, perhaps the most astonishing was his reorientation of America's posture toward Russia. Support for Ukraine in the ongoing war was long a bipartisan article of faith, but Trump shattered that consensus almost immediately, first by ending the isolation of President Vladimir V. Putin with a direct phone call, and then with high-level talks in Saudi Arabia that cut Kyiv out entirely. The gravity of the change was made clear at the Munich Security Conference, where Vice President JD Vance took the stage to lecture European allies on their suppression of far-right parties — parties that, not coincidentally, have been sympathetic to or even explicitly aligned with Russia. By the time that Trump and Vance had a made-for-TV showdown with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office in late February, it was clear that Russo-American relations had entered a new and cozier era. Amid the fracas, it would have been easy to miss two lines, buried on the fourth page of a Justice Department memo, circulated two weeks into Trump's second term: An interagency task force, colorfully named KleptoCapture, would be disbanded. Though KleptoCapture was hardly a household name, its demise was portentous — it indicated the administration's unwillingness to fight the financial systems that not only allow Kremlin allies to disguise their wealth but also enable international drug cartels to operate with impunity, corrupt officials to launder money from bribes into luxury real estate and the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. himself announced the creation of the force in his 2022 State of the Union address, just one week after Russian tanks started streaming across the border toward Kyiv. For nearly a decade, the United States had been steadily issuing sanctions against a raft of wealthy Russians with close financial and political ties to the Kremlin. Now the task force's most ambitious goal was to confiscate their wealth, sell their assets and, whenever possible, send the profits to Ukraine. 'We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,' Biden declared, in a line that became something of an informal slogan. 'We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.' Andrew Adams, a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York who specialized in money-laundering investigations, was preparing to start a new job in the private sector when he got a call asking him if he wanted to lead the task force. He was given 90 minutes to decide. He said yes. Within 48 hours, Adams left New York for Washington, where he was handed the first of five cellphones, assigned an office and a laptop and introduced to his new colleagues in what he described as a succession of rapid-fire ''West Wing'-style walk-and-talk' chats as he shuttled from room to room. Soon he was helping draft new laws to expand the government's power to sell forfeited property and redirect the proceeds to Kyiv. KleptoCapture's basic concept was simple enough, but carrying it out would not be so straightforward. Once Adams and his team identified the yachts, luxury apartments and private jets of Russian billionaires, they would have to build cases to seize them. At a minimum, that meant proving who their owners were, which was no easy task. Practically every one of these assets existed in a byzantine realm known as the offshore financial system, where questions as simple as who owns what are obscured within labyrinths of shell companies, anonymous trusts and other legal structures. KleptoCapture was something new and ambitious, a serious effort to break through the offshore system and crack down on some of its most prolific clients. Prosecutors would be facing off against some of the world's wealthiest people — those with practically limitless resources at their disposal and legions of wealth managers, accountants and lawyers at their command. 'As a prosecutor, you're boxing with a blindfold on,' Adams told me. The task force's work would show that these defenses could be breached much more quickly and efficiently than many assumed, provided that enough political will was brought to bear. Though it's often called a system, the offshore world is really more of an archipelago — a constellation of territories and nations operating with the same general aim of helping wealthy people move and hide their money. This world encompasses places as diverse as Hong Kong, Dubai, the Isle of Man, South Dakota and Curaçao and includes not only notorious tax havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands but also institutions and jurisdictions in the hearts of the countries that usually rank highest in global transparency indexes. The system's roots lie in the regulation-dodging behavior of banks and currency traders, particularly after World War II, as well as the innovations of mobsters and fraudsters who found in small island nations a perfect conduit for dirty cash. Wherever it exists, the offshore system's basic mechanism is essentially the same: Set up a company — or another entity, like a trust — and then put someone else's name on the paperwork. This company, often layered on other companies in similarly opaque jurisdictions, can then be used to avoid paying taxes, debts or fines. Even if the authorities do find out about it, getting their hands on the assets will be so time-consuming and expensive that they probably won't bother. Offshore companies have helped drug-trafficking gangs launder their proceeds, dictators siphon kickbacks into Paris and London apartments and governments targeted by sanctions procure military equipment. The same jurisdictions also provide more aboveboard amenities, such as helping run-of-the-mill wealthy people and corporations lower their tax bills: Some three-quarters of Fortune 500 companies are estimated to have tax-haven subsidiaries. According to the Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group, as much as $32 trillion might be stashed in offshore accounts today, costing governments some $480 billion in lost revenue a year. U.S. authorities often waste months trying to coax records from an offshore registry, only to turn up another shell company, based in yet another offshore jurisdiction. Few countries have been as intimately intertwined with this system as Russia. The men who grew rich from the fire sale of state assets after the Soviet Union's collapse saw in offshore havens a means of keeping their newfound wealth out of the reach of capricious authorities. By the late 1990s, these newly minted 'oligarchs' were using shell companies to help funnel as much as $2 billion out of the country a month. A hallmark of Putin's early presidency was that he established his dominance over the oligarchs, targeting a number of them with criminal prosecution. But rather than sever Russia from the offshore system, he recast it as a dimension of state power. Anonymous companies have been used to disguise the fortunes of Putin's friends and family, bankroll Europe's far right, make payments to sympathetic journalists and funnel cash to pro-Russian politicians around the world, including in Ukraine. A 2017 paper estimated that as much as 60 percent of Russia's gross domestic product might be held in tax havens, six times the global average. Ukraine's elite, it's worth noting, are similarly prolific users of the offshore system. The Pandora Papers, a 2021 leak of nearly 12 million financial documents, showed that Zelensky himself, along with his partners in a television production company, were beneficiaries of a network of offshore firms, some of which were used to buy upscale London property. A central paradox of the offshore system is that its services are available to essentially anyone with enough money — meaning that, even as it benefits your friends, it can also empower your enemies. A nation's corporations and ultrawealthy citizens can use the system to minimize their tax bills and funnel dark money into campaign donations for politicians who then ensure that the system remains intact. On the other side of the ledger, rivals of that same country's government can use the system to dodge sanctions, fund proxies and launder illicit money. Consider Delaware, where former President Biden served as senator for over three decades. The ease with which anyone can set up an anonymous shell company in the state means it is often mentioned in the same breath as traditional offshore jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. Delaware has been used by ordinary corporations to dodge billions in taxes, but also by the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to run weapons deals, Malaysian officials to drain public coffers and a Serbian drug lord to launder cash. Adversaries of the United States have long grasped this vulnerability. As Hal Weitzman notes in 'What's the Matter With Delaware?' Osama bin Laden himself once said that members of Al Qaeda were 'as aware of the cracks in the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their hands.' Washington's attitude toward the offshore system began to change as the Panama Papers, a 2016 leak from a Panamanian law firm, and other leaks illustrated the system's costs in granular detail: police officers unable to prosecute crimes, debts left unpaid, governments starved of revenue for schools and roads, all while dynastic wealth flowed frictionlessly from generation to generation. Though the first Trump administration was riddled with appointees and allies who availed themselves of the offshore system, Trump seemed to grasp that there was much to be gained and little to be lost by denouncing it. In a 2016 speech in Detroit, he promised to 'bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas.' Trump's first administration backed the Corporate Transparency Act, a landmark, bipartisan law enacted in 2021 that compelled shell companies registered in the United States to disclose their owners, which the White House hailed as 'important progress in strengthening national security' and 'supporting law enforcement.' The Biden administration accelerated this trend by shifting resources to fighting illicit finance and pushing forward major anti-money-laundering legislation, though it was stymied in the Senate. Under Biden, the White House explicitly accepted the argument, long made by experts, that the offshore system undermines the government's ability not only to collect taxes but also to enforce basic laws. 'This whole issue of offshores and beneficial ownership information — this is the last major stumbling block for law enforcement,' John Cassara, a former intelligence officer and Treasury special agent, told me. 'Who owns the yacht? Who owns the shopping center? Who owns the store? Whatever it is that they're going after — we don't know. There's too many roadblocks.' The Ukraine war redoubled the energy for reform. Everywhere, in the months after the invasion, the offshore system seemed to be coming unglued. Countries that happily accepted Russian dark money for years began to push through reforms: Cyprus, once known as Moscow on the Mediterranean for hosting some $200 billion of Russian money, invited the F.B.I. to help clean up its financial sector. Britain, a major repository of dark money, set up a registry forcing shell companies that hold real estate to say who actually owns them. (Historically, it has taken a leak like the Pandora Papers to learn that your landlord was, say, a member of Azerbaijan's ruling family.) Lawmakers even started pressuring the most notorious overseas tax havens in the Caribbean — many of which are British dependencies and territories — to open up their corporate registries. In the early days of the war, Brooke Harrington, a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College who specializes in offshore finance, mused in The Washington Post, 'It would be a consummate irony if Putin himself accomplished with his invasion of Ukraine what a string of devastating offshore leaks could not: the self-destruction of the offshore financial system.' Adams, the newly appointed head of KleptoCapture, had no illusions about the hurdles that the offshore system would present. Thanks to its robust protections, U.S. prosecutors had struggled to seize assets from far less formidable opponents than Russian oligarchs. Consider the case of Kevin Trudeau, an infomercial salesman ordered in 2009 to pay more than $37 million for making false claims in a weight-loss book. Trudeau stashed his money in a trust in the Cook Islands, a country of about 15,000 people in the South Pacific. For more than a decade, federal prosecutors struggled to get their hands on Trudeau's cash, even though he has served a prison sentence. 'Even the most powerful countries in the world,' Harrington told me, 'like the United States, which can drone-assassinate people from a mile in the air, can't collect debts from two-bit con men.' KleptoCapture's first major target represented a case in point. A little over a week after Biden's address, Adams and his team located a boat nearly as long as a football field floating in the waters off the Caribbean island Antigua. Named the Amadea (Latin for 'God's love'), the yacht featured an infinity pool, a movie theater and a helicopter pad. Worth roughly $300 million, it was one of the most expensive luxury boats ever made. The government had reason to believe the boat belonged to Suleiman Kerimov, a banking-and-mining magnate with Kremlin ties and one of Russia's richest men, with a fortune estimated at the time at nearly $16 billion. Kerimov was briefly detained in France in 2017 on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, but the case was dropped; the following year, he was penalized by U.S. sanctions for his ties to the Russian government. To seize the Amadea, the United States did not need to bring a case against Kerimov, but rather against the yacht itself, using the controversial tool of 'civil forfeiture,' which allowed authorities to confiscate and sell the vessel if they could prove a reasonable suspicion it had been involved in a crime — in this case, a sanctions violation. Ship-tracking data showed that the yacht was leaving Antigua on its way to Fiji, and the team knew there was only a narrow window to seize it before it ended up in Vladivostok or some other Russian port, where it would be unreachable. The F.B.I. hurried to put together a case, and the wind seemed to be at the agency's back. Support for Ukraine produced a 'sea change,' Adams told me, as authorities in countries that usually would have taken months or years to turn over information snapped into action to help the task force. KleptoCapture prosecutors were able to uncover records that they claimed showed that Kerimov owned the Amadea and that some $1.3 million had been spent on its upkeep. Because Kerimov was subject to U.S. sanctions and the payments had been routed through U.S. banks in U.S. dollars, they had grounds to seize the boat. When, on April 12, 2022, the Amadea pulled into Lautoka, a port town in Fiji's sugar-cane region, federal agents were waiting. 'This yacht seizure should tell every corrupt Russian oligarch that they cannot hide — not even in the remotest part of the world,' Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement. According to court documents, the agents discovered a world of nearly cartoonish opulence onboard — floors of 'delicate marble and stones,' 'precious woods,' a lobster tank, a pizza oven, a mosaic-tiled pool and what appeared to be a Fabergé egg. They also found a guest manifest, internal staff communications and crew members they grilled for information. (I reached out to Kerimov through the Russian Parliament, where he is a senator, and through a Russian lawyer who has represented him, but received no response. One of his representatives was previously quoted by the BBC as saying the allegation that he owns the Amadea was 'denied and unproven.') Before the Amadea started making headlines, Kerimov rarely surfaced in international media. In 2006, he was briefly the focus of tabloid scrutiny when he smashed a $650,000 Ferrari into a tree on the French Riviera. The Panama Papers tied Kerimov to a series of shell companies that had paid $200 million to another set of shell companies, which were in turn linked to Putin's childhood friend Sergei Roldugin, a cellist widely suspected of acting as a proxy for the president's wealth. The Pandora Papers connected Kerimov to another web of shell companies that funneled over $700 million through the Bank of New York Mellon over six years. Kerimov also apparently made use of the corporate secrecy offered by the United States itself: U.S. authorities claim he used 'a complex series of legal structures and front persons' to obscure his interest in a Delaware company that was used to manage over $1 billion in assets, which Bloomberg reported included a 1 percent share in Elon Musk's SpaceX, even after Kerimov was subject to sanctions. In the case of the Amadea, the government's success hinged largely on whether it could penetrate similarly opaque layers of secrecy to prove that Kerimov was the yacht's 'beneficial owner,' a term meant to differentiate between the people whose names are on the paperwork and those who actually call the shots. To mask Kerimov's beneficial ownership, the Justice Department said, the Amadea had changed hands through a series of transactions between shell companies in different jurisdictions, none of which make ownership records public. Nowhere on any of these documents was Kerimov's name to be found. Instead, the paper trail led to another Russian billionaire, Eduard Khudainatov, who was not a target of sanctions. (Khudainatov has since claimed to be the boat's rightful owner and retained a U.S. law firm to sue for its release.) Practically every one of the assets the task force seized provided a similar example of the tools the offshore system might offer its clients who were under sanctions. One $90 million yacht seized in Spain, the Tango, was purportedly owned by the oligarch Viktor Vekselberg through nested layers of companies and trusts registered in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and Russia. The ownership of two more megayachts, which U.S. authorities linked to Andrey Kostin, was apparently hidden behind opaque Cyprus investment funds on the eve of the sanctions imposed on him. The oligarch Oleg Deripaska had even reportedly been able to buy and sell a music studio in California thanks to the use of shell corporations. The fact that Kerimov's name was nowhere to be found on the Amadea's papers was not particularly relevant, prosecutors argued: Interrogations of crew members, internal staff communications and other documents seized in the raid made it clear Kerimov was really calling the shots. The oligarch and his family had not only started sailing on the boat just after the usage rights were sold but also made changes like selecting new carpets and reading lamps and having the gym remodeled. Kerimov's children approved a new pizza oven and spa beds. One crew member was even instructed to keep a couple of pairs of Kerimov's favorite Nike trainers on board at all times. (Khudainatov's lawyers dispute these characterizations and contend that Kerimov's family merely chartered the boat.) While the court case dragged on, the U.S. government was obligated to keep the Amadea in good condition — which, in this case, meant mooring fees and maintenance costs that amounted to nearly $1 million a month. The Amadea had the potential to be the task force's signature triumph. Instead, it began to generate critical headlines, as the fees piled up. In December, The Washington Post published an article based on records it obtained detailing the Justice Department's upkeep expenses. 'The U.S. Seized a Russian Yacht,' the headline read. 'Now You're Paying for It.' This was the state of affairs when Trump stormed back into office in February. Since then, the president's open embrace of Russia has been accompanied by a similarly open defense of the legal loopholes that allow wealthy Russians and others to hide their money. On March 2, in a shift from the first Trump administration's explicit support for the Corporate Transparency Act, Scott Bessent, the secretary of the Treasury, said the department would not enforce the law — in what he called a 'victory for common sense.' The administration has also ordered the Justice Department to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which banned businesses from paying bribes, and has imposed cuts on agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service, that investigate tax evasion and money laundering. 'The pace of change and unraveling of a lot of the protections and safeguards related to dirty money coming into the United States has been pretty dizzying,' Ian Gary, the head of the FACT Coalition, a transparency advocacy group, told me. The administration's permissive attitude toward corporate secrecy may at some point create friction with other aspects of its agenda. As the FACT Coalition points out, it's not just Russian oligarchs who use the offshore system — it's also fentanyl producers and international cartels. In 2023, Transparency International cataloged a series of recent cases in which anonymous shell companies, often registered right in the United States, were used to traffic fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine and launder hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds around the world. In one case, a major Chinese synthetic-opioid-trafficking gang used front companies registered in Massachusetts to ship fentanyl and other drugs to dozens of U.S. states. In another, Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel was able to launder bulk cash from U.S. drug sales through a network of companies set up in Wyoming. The same goes for geopolitics. Russia's elite are hardly the only ones to use the system. Iran has regularly used nested layers of anonymous shell companies to procure military technology, sell oil in defiance of sanctions, fund its allies — and even, in one startling case, to own a skyscraper in Manhattan for more than two decades. In March, the Justice Department filed a civil-forfeiture suit against an aircraft purchased through a shell company supposedly for the benefit of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. Cassara, the former intelligence agent, has testified to Congress on how China's use of offshore structures has fueled the fentanyl crisis, while Senator Mark Warner and Senator Mike Rounds have written about how Beijing has used companies whose owners are anonymous to expand its influence, thanks in part to the fact that setting these companies up in the United States is 'often easier than getting a library card.' China has reportedly also used them to steal intellectual property and dodge tariffs. KleptoCapture offered a powerful blueprint for how to combat these abuses. Over a month after the task force was disbanded, it scored a remarkable post-mortem victory: On March 10, the judge in the Amadea case, Dale E. Ho, agreed that Kerimov was the yacht's owner, and about a week later, he allowed the government to sell the boat. (The case is under appeal.) If it's sold, the Amadea would hugely bolster the amount of assets that KleptoCapture was able to convert to cash, which previously included just about $5.4 million confiscated from the pro-Putin media mogul Konstantin Malofeev in an uncontested case that predated KleptoCapture's formation and another half million from the sale of a precision machine known as a jig grinder seized from smugglers trying to bring it to Russia. (It is not clear whether the proceeds of the Amadea or any other assets the Justice Department eventually manages to sell will still be sent to Ukraine. In contrast to the sale of the jig grinder, which Monaco, Biden's deputy attorney general, hailed as a 'step for justice and restoration,' the Justice Department has not even issued a statement on its recent win.) By and large, anticorruption activists have cheered KleptoCapture's actions, framing them as proof that victories can be wrested from even the most determined and prolific clients of the offshore system. Due-process advocates, on the other hand, say it's worth considering what it took to pull off those victories. In the Amadea case, the task force confiscated the assets of a noncitizen who was operating outside the United States and whose 'crime' was a violation of sanctions — an inherently political designation, as the Trump administration's recent blacklisting of the International Criminal Court has made vividly clear. Civil forfeiture, which is what allows the Justice Department to sell the boat without a conviction, has been extensively abused domestically, particularly by local police departments, and has been called 'unfair, undemocratic and un-American' by the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the most common defenses offered by advocates of the offshore system is that it offers its clients a way to protect their rightful property from authoritarian regimes, whose prodigious legal powers allow them to take whatever they want, whenever they want it, on whatever grounds they please. Indeed, Russians first turned to the system largely to escape the caprices of their own government. For that reason, experts say the best way to rein in the offshore system while preserving due process is to pass transparency laws like the Corporate Transparency Act, which compel shell companies to disclose who owns them. The current dysfunction and partisan gridlock in Washington may make such laws seem unlikely, if not impossible, but Harrington, the Dartmouth professor, points out that the rapid change in attitudes that followed the Ukraine invasion shows how quickly and drastically the policy environment can change. Under sufficient pressure, wealth managers, lawyers and accountants were willing to cut ties with fantastically lucrative clients, while previously moribund anti-money-laundering agencies were inundated with new resources and staff. 'When social norms solidify around the idea that something is wrong,' Harrington told me, 'all of a sudden all kinds of things become possible, including the things we were told could never, ever, ever happen.'
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Joint US-Russia statement following Riyadh meeting not adopted due to Ukraine's stance, Moscow claims
Russia has claimed that a joint statement following consultations between the Russian and American delegations in Riyadh was not adopted because of Ukraine's stance. Source: Vladimir Chizhov, First Deputy Chairman of the Defence and Security Committee of the Federation Council [the upper chamber of the Russian parliament], on Kremlin-aligned Russian TV channel Rossiya 24, as reported by European Pravda Details: Chizhov described the meeting in Riyadh as a link in the chain of Russo-American communications, which began with a telephone conversation between Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. "They [the delegations in Riyadh] sat for 12 hours and seemingly agreed upon a joint statement, which, however, was not adopted because of Ukraine's position, which is also very typical and symptomatic," he claimed. Background: Earlier, Grigory Karasin, Chairman of the Federation Council's Committee on International Affairs, commented on the meeting between the two delegations in Saudi Arabia on 24 March, stating that the conversation was challenging but ultimately beneficial for both Moscow and Washington. According to Russian propaganda media outlets, the Moscow-Washington meeting lasted 12 hours with breaks. Reports indicated that a joint statement would be issued later. The Kremlin stated that the primary focus of the discussions with the US delegation in Saudi Arabia was the resumption of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, from which Russia withdrew in 2023. On Tuesday 25 March, the Ukrainian and American teams once again met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a potential truce between Kyiv and Moscow. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why the Trump-Putin bromance could finally topple Iran's ayatollahs
It was by far the biggest and most destructive use of American military might of his second presidency. Last weekend, the 'war ending' president Donald Trump ordered US forces into action in Yemen, bombing the Houthis, who are blamed for attacks in the Red Sea. At least 53 people were killed. But this show of force was not simply about keeping the shipping lanes open. It was a message – a gauntlet thrown down – to another country entirely. 'Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN,' Mr Trump announced on social media. 'And IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!' The challenge is significant. Though less discussed than Gaza and Ukraine, Iran's nuclear programme is one of the biggest problems in Mr Trump's inbox. In 2018 he killed off the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that gave Iran sanctions relief for curtailing its nuclear program. Since then, Tehran's officially-peaceful atomic projects have gone from strength to strength. Today, the regime has enough highly-enriched uranium to turn out weapons-grade material for at least five bombs. The lead time between an order being given and warheads rolling off production lines is estimated not in years but in weeks. On March 7, Mr Trump wrote a letter to the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei setting a two month deadline for a new nuclear deal to be signed. A day earlier, Israeli jets flew a joint exercise with American B52 bombers – one of only two aircraft capable of delivering the bombs needed to hit and destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. The other aircraft, the B2-Spirit, was used in the weekend strikes on Yemen. The messaging is clear: a decades-long effort to prevent an Iranian bomb is reaching crisis point. Only Mr Trump can decide whether to avert it through diplomacy or military means. But the difficulty is that both options will put him at odds with a man he has now appears to be cosying up to: Russian president Vladimir Putin, ally of the ayatollahs. Now the question is: will Russia defend the clerics in Tehran, or sacrifice their regime on the altar of Russo-American rapprochement? The early signs are that there is plenty for the ayatollahs to worry about. When Trump and Putin spoke at length this week, in an ostensible effort to end the Ukraine war, there was cosy talk that the Middle East was 'a region of potential cooperation to prevent future conflicts'. Immediately afterwards Vladimir Putin contacted Iran to offer his services as an intermediary with the Americans. The Russians 'said Trump wants to talk and is preferring it over war,' one regime insider told The Telegraph. The nightmare scenario in Tehran is that Putin may withdraw his support for the regime in return for Trump's support over Ukraine, and that a Russo-American alliance could force it into humiliating compliance over the nuclear issue. The humbling of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28 remains a vivid warning. 'There is a big uncertainty around after what happened [to Zelensky] in the White House,' says the source. But the consequence of snubbing Putin and Trump's overtures is hardly more appealing. 'The offer [From Trump for ending the war on Ukraine] feels like being stuck on a two-way road [where] one path leads to war and destruction and the other leads to humiliation. Yet, no one here wants to reject any offer from Putin – yes, it's a difficult situation,' adds the source. Nor is there any guarantee that, for an already weakened regime, humiliation is survivable either. Iran has seen more than a dozen dynasties come and go in the two-and-a-half millennia since Cyrus the Great founded the first Persian empire. Some, like Cyrus's first empire, fell to foreign invasion. Others, like the Pahlavi monarchy overthrown in 1979, to internal strife. Most collapses have also involved economic dysfunction and environmental crisis. Indeed, irrigation on the Iranian plateau has been essential to the survival of every dynasty since drought contributed to the decline of the Achaemenid empire more than 2,000 years ago. Each challenge alone is capable of toppling Iran's rulers. But in 2025, the Islamic Republic of Iran is grappling with all of them at once. In the past year, it has suffered humiliating military defeat: Israel's humbling of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the fall of Bashar al Assad in Syria, has left its much-touted 'Axis of Resistance' in tatters. Israeli airstrikes on Iranian territory last year severely depleted the air defence network and the machines that make rocket fuel for surface-to-air missiles. The economy is in free-fall: inflation is running at over 35 per cent. In November, the government introduced two-hour rolling blackouts in response to a critical fuel shortage – an astounding sign of weakness in the oil- and gas-rich country. And an under-reported, but severe and years-long, drought has produced crippling water shortages. Taken together, these reverses have left the regime shrouded in a profound crisis of legitimacy that limits its leeway for unpopular but necessary economic reform, and could eventually bring down the entire revolutionary project. 'The fall of the regime is a perennial question. But this year feels different,' said a Western official who has worked closely on the Iran file. Inside the country the feeling is much the same. 'The situation is very difficult…they feel the regime has never been as weak and incapable as it is now ... It has become desperate and incapacitated,' said Mohammad Rasoulof, an exiled film director, of the mood of his friends and relatives back home. 'Iran's regional ambitions, whereby it really had wrought all this chaos in the region, have really fallen to pieces over the last year. This is of major significance. 'At the same time it is clearly apparent that there are huge divisions within the regime itself. There are those who believe that it's no longer possible to keep confronting the world this way. There are those who think that getting the nuclear bomb is an absolute must. [And] there are those who think that we need much stronger relations with China and Russia.' It is not only staunch regime critics like Mr Rasoulof who can see legitimacy falling away. Iran's top judge recently acknowledged that rampant corruption is eroding the regime's key support among its base. Remaining popular backing would sour, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i warned fellow officials, 'if we fail to control our greed'. The situation is so desperate, one senior Iranian official told The Telegraph, that Khamenei must choose between negotiating with America to ease the economic pain, or finally building a bomb as the ultimate insurance policy. 'Those are the only ways for the regime to survive,' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Current indecision over which path to choose, he added, is 'driving the regime toward collapse'. Ultimately, regime change is most likely to come from within. And in many ways the scene seems set for a new revolution. Parallels between the fragility of today and the circumstances that led to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 are not exact. Yet there are similarities. At the end of the 1970s an inflation shock coupled with sharp austerity policies came as an unpleasant surprise to a population accustomed to rising living standards. It is not difficult to find middle-class Iranians suffering just such impoverishment today. And many of the older generation see direct parallels with the fall of the Shah. 'I saw a revolution happening right here before my eyes,' one bookstore owner on Tehran's Enghelab (revolution) street told The Telegraph by phone. 'And I won't die before I see another.' The class of small traders and shopkeepers called bazaaris played a key – possibly the decisive – role in the 1979 revolution. The 68-year-old, who said he used to close his shop to join the people on the streets in the days leading up to the revolution in 1979, said he now felt 'fooled' by the promises made by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. 'It seemed like a good decision at the time, but if I had known this would be the outcome, I would never have done it,' he said. 'The people are turning away from the regime, and the regime is becoming more brutal – they can't hold on, just as the Shah couldn't,' he said. The bazaaris today do not have the economic or political clout they had 45 years ago, and their regrets today do not constitute a rebellion. But regime insiders say they know a moment of maximum revolutionary danger is fast approaching. At 85, Khamenei, the current supreme leader, is nearing the end of his life. Earlier this year he was photographed wearing what looked like a bullet-proof vest under his robes, suggesting that he fears someone may try to give nature a helping hand. However he eventually dies, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, a crucial paramilitary force loyal to the regime) assumes his demise and the appointment of a successor will be accompanied by an enormous anti-regime uprising. 'The suppression of protests you have seen in recent years is just a warm-up for the ultimate one, which will happen after the death of the supreme leader,' a member of the IRGC's auxiliary Basij militia told The Telegraph last year. One reason the regime is so worried about that uprising is that it is likely to bring together dissidents from across the political spectrum. Iranian and foreign pundits generally agree that Khamenei's most likely successor is his second son Mojtaba. Some believe Mojtaba has plans for a set of reforms modelled on the policies of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The goal would be to take enough modernising steps to repair relations with the West and the Iranian public as a means of cementing the regime's grip on power. Mojtaber, however, is no reformer. He is well regarded in the IRGC and his inner circle includes some of Iran's most ideologically extreme clerics. So his appointment will certainly provoke a backlash from both anti-regime Iranians and regime loyalists appalled at the prospect of the revolutionary republic turning into another hereditary monarchy. They will not succeed, the militia man confidently predicted. The IRGC will use 'force to silence any opposition to Mojtaba's leadership,' he said. What does all this mean for Donald Trump as he tries to head off an Iranian bomb? The first is that he has genuine economic leverage. 'I think certainly 'maximum pressure' if it's re-implemented in the way it was last time, would accelerate the process of economic collapse,' said Professor Ali Ansari, head of the centre for Iranian studies at St Andrews University, referring to the merciless sanctions regime Mr Trump resumed on Tuesday. Mr Trump's first exertion of maximum economic pressure, after he quit the original nuclear deal in 2018, drove Iran's oil exports to near-zero by the end of his first term. It caused economic chaos, but failed to force Iran back to the negotiating table. This time, many with inside knowledge of the Tehran theocracy are convinced the country cannot survive another round, and that negotiating, cautiously, for sanctions relief is imperative. 'I believe that we should negotiate with everyone except the Zionist regime [Israel] – but we must know America better,' said Mohammad Javad Zarif, the reformist former vice president who as foreign minister negotiated the 2015 deal. Shortly after making those comments he was forced to resign following a backlash from hardline opponents, underlining the deep divisions inside the regime. If it comes to military action, most observers assume Mr Trump would rather Israel do the actual bombing. Israel's air force has been rehearsing the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities for more than a decade, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has several times come close to ordering the raid. Israeli forces did some of the preparatory work in October, when they destroyed Iranian S-300 air defences around Tehran. The Russian role here is also important. Vladimir Putin's backing – or at least acquiescence – would make the mission much safer. But there remain major challenges. For a start, suppressing air defences, providing fighter cover and hitting the targets would require a fighter package of 100 aircraft and take all of Israel's aerial refuelling capacity, a 2012 study by the US Congressional Research Service found. That alone is not an insurmountable obstacle for an air force as large and well trained as Israel's. But the size of the bombs required does present a problem. Israel's US-supplied 'bunker buster' bombs, like that used to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in October, are designed to penetrate up to six feet of reinforced concrete. Iran's Fordow enrichment plant, however, is built into a mountain beneath an estimated 89 metres of solid rock, and the regime has built underground 'missile cities' in every province. The only known non-nuclear weapon in existence that could hit a target like that is a six-metre, 12-ton monster called the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The MOP was developed, and is exclusively operated, by the United States for exactly this job. It is so massive it can only be carried by American heavy bombers like the B2 Spirit or the B-52, neither of which Israel possesses. So American involvement is probably inevitable. Hence the recent high-profile deployments of both aircraft. Beyond that, the success of the mission would depend above all on reliable intelligence. Over the past year, Israel has demonstrated remarkable intelligence penetration of Iran's security services, so it is possible its intelligence agency Mossad is able to identify hidden sites. But if Israeli and American spies miss just one underground facility, or the bombs fail completely to destroy the ones they have identified, the mission could prove fruitless. Some anti-regime Iranians believe such a bombing raid might be enough to destroy Khamenei's remaining credibility. Many, however, are less certain. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran after the 1979 revolution ironically legitimised the new regime – as Iranians, including monarchist remnants, rallied to defend the nation. Another problem with regime change is that there are no obvious alternative leaders inside Iran. The hope of finding a pragmatic partner inside the regime may be illusory. And none of the plethora of would-be leaders outside Iran have much credibility inside. Reza Pahlavi, the Pahlavi crown prince, campaigns for a democratic transition from exile in the United States. But for all the fatigue with the mullahs, there's little enthusiasm for a return to monarchy. 'It would be like eating something you've already thrown up,' one recent Iranian exile said. Pahlavi himself sensibly plays down the prospect of a royal restoration, though his supporters dream of it. Most toxic of all is Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) and self-styled Council of National Resistance. While her well-oiled (and funded) PR machine has had some success in styling her as a leader-in-waiting in the West, inside Iran she and the MEK are almost universally hated as terrorists and traitors for siding with then- Iraqi-leader Saddam Hussein in his unprovoked invasion in the 1980s. A report commissioned by the US government in 2009 concluded the organisation operated like a cult. Change, then, is most likely to come from Iranians themselves. As Mr Rasoulof notes, that could 'be a long, painful road'. But, as the people of neighbouring Syria can testify all too vividly for the ayatollahs' comfort, it could come very, very quickly. 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Telegraph
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Why the Trump-Putin bromance could finally topple Iran's ayatollahs
It was by far the biggest and most destructive use of American military might of his second presidency. Last weekend, the 'war ending' president Donald Trump ordered US forces into action in Yemen, bombing the Houthis, who are blamed for attacks in the Red Sea. At least 53 people were killed. But this show of force was not simply about keeping the shipping lanes open. It was a message – a gauntlet thrown down – to another country entirely. 'Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN,' Mr Trump announced on social media. 'And IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!' The challenge is significant. Though less discussed than Gaza and Ukraine, Iran's nuclear programme is one of the biggest problems in Mr Trump's inbox. In 2018 he killed off the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that gave Iran sanctions relief for curtailing its nuclear program. Since then, Tehran's officially-peaceful atomic projects have gone from strength to strength. Today, the regime has enough highly-enriched uranium to turn out weapons-grade material for at least five bombs. The lead time between an order being given and warheads rolling off production lines is estimated not in years but in weeks. On March 7, Mr Trump wrote a letter to the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei setting a two month deadline for a new nuclear deal to be signed. A day earlier, Israeli jets flew a joint exercise with American B52 bombers – one of only two aircraft capable of delivering the bombs needed to hit and destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. The other aircraft, the B2-Spirit, was used in the weekend strikes on Yemen. The messaging is clear: a decades-long effort to prevent an Iranian bomb is reaching crisis point. Only Mr Trump can decide whether to avert it through diplomacy or military means. But the difficulty is that both options will put him at odds with a man he has now appears to be cosying up to: Russian president Vladimir Putin, ally of the ayatollahs. Now the question is: will Russia defend the clerics in Tehran, or sacrifice their regime on the altar of Russo-American rapprochement? Destruction or humiliation The early signs are that there is plenty for the ayatollahs to worry about. When Trump and Putin spoke at length this week, in an ostensible effort to end the Ukraine war, there was cosy talk that the Middle East was 'a region of potential cooperation to prevent future conflicts'. Immediately afterwards Vladimir Putin contacted Iran to offer his services as an intermediary with the Americans. The Russians 'said Trump wants to talk and is preferring it over war,' one regime insider told The Telegraph. The nightmare scenario in Tehran is that Putin may withdraw his support for the regime in return for Trump's support over Ukraine, and that a Russo-American alliance could force it into humiliating compliance over the nuclear issue. The humbling of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28 remains a vivid warning. 'There is a big uncertainty around after what happened [to Zelensky] in the White House,' says the source. But the consequence of snubbing Putin and Trump's overtures is hardly more appealing. 'The offer [From Trump for ending the war on Ukraine] feels like being stuck on a two-way road [where] one path leads to war and destruction and the other leads to humiliation. Yet, no one here wants to reject any offer from Putin – yes, it's a difficult situation,' adds the source. Nor is there any guarantee that, for an already weakened regime, humiliation is survivable either. The final straw Iran has seen more than a dozen dynasties come and go in the two-and-a-half millennia since Cyrus the Great founded the first Persian empire. Some, like Cyrus's first empire, fell to foreign invasion. Others, like the Pahlavi monarchy overthrown in 1979, to internal strife. Most collapses have also involved economic dysfunction and environmental crisis. Indeed, irrigation on the Iranian plateau has been essential to the survival of every dynasty since drought contributed to the decline of the Achaemenid empire more than 2,000 years ago. Each challenge alone is capable of toppling Iran's rulers. But in 2025, the Islamic Republic of Iran is grappling with all of them at once. In the past year, it has suffered humiliating military defeat: Israel's humbling of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the fall of Bashar al Assad in Syria, has left its much-touted 'Axis of Resistance' in tatters. Israeli airstrikes on Iranian territory last year severely depleted the air defence network and the machines that make rocket fuel for surface-to-air missiles. The economy is in free-fall: inflation is running at over 35 per cent. In November, the government introduced two-hour rolling blackouts in response to a critical fuel shortage – an astounding sign of weakness in the oil- and gas-rich country. And an under-reported, but severe and years-long, drought has produced crippling water shortages. Taken together, these reverses have left the regime shrouded in a profound crisis of legitimacy that limits its leeway for unpopular but necessary economic reform, and could eventually bring down the entire revolutionary project. 'The fall of the regime is a perennial question. But this year feels different,' said a Western official who has worked closely on the Iran file. Inside the country the feeling is much the same. 'The situation is very difficult…they feel the regime has never been as weak and incapable as it is now ... It has become desperate and incapacitated,' said Mohammad Rasoulof, an exiled film director, of the mood of his friends and relatives back home. 'Iran's regional ambitions, whereby it really had wrought all this chaos in the region, have really fallen to pieces over the last year. This is of major significance. 'At the same time it is clearly apparent that there are huge divisions within the regime itself. There are those who believe that it's no longer possible to keep confronting the world this way. There are those who think that getting the nuclear bomb is an absolute must. [And] there are those who think that we need much stronger relations with China and Russia.' It is not only staunch regime critics like Mr Rasoulof who can see legitimacy falling away. Iran's top judge recently acknowledged that rampant corruption is eroding the regime's key support among its base. Remaining popular backing would sour, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i warned fellow officials, 'if we fail to control our greed'. The situation is so desperate, one senior Iranian official told The Telegraph, that Khamenei must choose between negotiating with America to ease the economic pain, or finally building a bomb as the ultimate insurance policy. 'Those are the only ways for the regime to survive,' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Current indecision over which path to choose, he added, is 'driving the regime toward collapse'. A new revolution Ultimately, regime change is most likely to come from within. And in many ways the scene seems set for a new revolution. Parallels between the fragility of today and the circumstances that led to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 are not exact. Yet there are similarities. At the end of the 1970s an inflation shock coupled with sharp austerity policies came as an unpleasant surprise to a population accustomed to rising living standards. It is not difficult to find middle-class Iranians suffering just such impoverishment today. And many of the older generation see direct parallels with the fall of the Shah. 'I saw a revolution happening right here before my eyes,' one bookstore owner on Tehran's Enghelab (revolution) street told The Telegraph by phone. 'And I won't die before I see another.' The class of small traders and shopkeepers called bazaaris played a key – possibly the decisive – role in the 1979 revolution. The 68-year-old, who said he used to close his shop to join the people on the streets in the days leading up to the revolution in 1979, said he now felt 'fooled' by the promises made by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. 'It seemed like a good decision at the time, but if I had known this would be the outcome, I would never have done it,' he said. 'The people are turning away from the regime, and the regime is becoming more brutal – they can't hold on, just as the Shah couldn't,' he said. The bazaaris today do not have the economic or political clout they had 45 years ago, and their regrets today do not constitute a rebellion. But regime insiders say they know a moment of maximum revolutionary danger is fast approaching. At 85, Khamenei, the current supreme leader, is nearing the end of his life. Earlier this year he was photographed wearing what looked like a bullet-proof vest under his robes, suggesting that he fears someone may try to give nature a helping hand. However he eventually dies, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, a crucial paramilitary force loyal to the regime) assumes his demise and the appointment of a successor will be accompanied by an enormous anti-regime uprising. 'The suppression of protests you have seen in recent years is just a warm-up for the ultimate one, which will happen after the death of the supreme leader,' a member of the IRGC's auxiliary Basij militia told The Telegraph last year. One reason the regime is so worried about that uprising is that it is likely to bring together dissidents from across the political spectrum. Iranian and foreign pundits generally agree that Khamenei's most likely successor is his second son Mojtaba. Some believe Mojtaba has plans for a set of reforms modelled on the policies of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The goal would be to take enough modernising steps to repair relations with the West and the Iranian public as a means of cementing the regime's grip on power. Mojtaber, however, is no reformer. He is well regarded in the IRGC and his inner circle includes some of Iran's most ideologically extreme clerics. So his appointment will certainly provoke a backlash from both anti-regime Iranians and regime loyalists appalled at the prospect of the revolutionary republic turning into another hereditary monarchy. They will not succeed, the militia man confidently predicted. The IRGC will use 'force to silence any opposition to Mojtaba's leadership,' he said. Trump's options What does all this mean for Donald Trump as he tries to head off an Iranian bomb? The first is that he has genuine economic leverage. 'I think certainly 'maximum pressure' if it's re-implemented in the way it was last time, would accelerate the process of economic collapse,' said Professor Ali Ansari, head of the centre for Iranian studies at St Andrews University, referring to the merciless sanctions regime Mr Trump resumed on Tuesday. Mr Trump's first exertion of maximum economic pressure, after he quit the original nuclear deal in 2018, drove Iran's oil exports to near-zero by the end of his first term. It caused economic chaos, but failed to force Iran back to the negotiating table. This time, many with inside knowledge of the Tehran theocracy are convinced the country cannot survive another round, and that negotiating, cautiously, for sanctions relief is imperative. 'I believe that we should negotiate with everyone except the Zionist regime [Israel] – but we must know America better,' said Mohammad Javad Zarif, the reformist former vice president who as foreign minister negotiated the 2015 deal. Shortly after making those comments he was forced to resign following a backlash from hardline opponents, underlining the deep divisions inside the regime. If it comes to military action, most observers assume Mr Trump would rather Israel do the actual bombing. Israel's air force has been rehearsing the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities for more than a decade, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has several times come close to ordering the raid. Israeli forces did some of the preparatory work in October, when they destroyed Iranian S-300 air defences around Tehran. The Russian role here is also important. Vladimir Putin's backing – or at least acquiescence – would make the mission much safer. But there remain major challenges. For a start, suppressing air defences, providing fighter cover and hitting the targets would require a fighter package of 100 aircraft and take all of Israel's aerial refuelling capacity, a 2012 study by the US Congressional Research Service found. That alone is not an insurmountable obstacle for an air force as large and well trained as Israel's. But the size of the bombs required does present a problem. Israel's US-supplied 'bunker buster' bombs, like that used to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in October, are designed to penetrate up to six feet of reinforced concrete. Iran's Fordow enrichment plant, however, is built into a mountain beneath an estimated 89 metres of solid rock, and the regime has built underground 'missile cities' in every province. The only known non-nuclear weapon in existence that could hit a target like that is a six-metre, 12-ton monster called the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The MOP was developed, and is exclusively operated, by the United States for exactly this job. It is so massive it can only be carried by American heavy bombers like the B2 Spirit or the B-52, neither of which Israel possesses. So American involvement is probably inevitable. Hence the recent high-profile deployments of both aircraft. Beyond that, the success of the mission would depend above all on reliable intelligence. Over the past year, Israel has demonstrated remarkable intelligence penetration of Iran's security services, so it is possible its intelligence agency Mossad is able to identify hidden sites. But if Israeli and American spies miss just one underground facility, or the bombs fail completely to destroy the ones they have identified, the mission could prove fruitless. The fallout Some anti-regime Iranians believe such a bombing raid might be enough to destroy Khamenei's remaining credibility. Many, however, are less certain. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran after the 1979 revolution ironically legitimised the new regime – as Iranians, including monarchist remnants, rallied to defend the nation. Another problem with regime change is that there are no obvious alternative leaders inside Iran. The hope of finding a pragmatic partner inside the regime may be illusory. And none of the plethora of would-be leaders outside Iran have much credibility inside. Reza Pahlavi, the Pahlavi crown prince, campaigns for a democratic transition from exile in the United States. But for all the fatigue with the mullahs, there's little enthusiasm for a return to monarchy. 'It would be like eating something you've already thrown up,' one recent Iranian exile said. Pahlavi himself sensibly plays down the prospect of a royal restoration, though his supporters dream of it. Most toxic of all is Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) and self-styled Council of National Resistance. While her well-oiled (and funded) PR machine has had some success in styling her as a leader-in-waiting in the West, inside Iran she and the MEK are almost universally hated as terrorists and traitors for siding with then- Iraqi-leader Saddam Hussein in his unprovoked invasion in the 1980s. A report commissioned by the US government in 2009 concluded the organisation operated like a cult. Change, then, is most likely to come from Iranians themselves. As Mr Rasoulof notes, that could 'be a long, painful road'. But, as the people of neighbouring Syria can testify all too vividly for the ayatollahs' comfort, it could come very, very quickly.
The Independent
10-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Trump saying ‘Ukraine may not survive' is a dire warning
Donald Trump is a unique political phenomenon. Certainly, no-one does peace-making like the 47th president of the United States. A showman as much as a businessman before he entered politics, Trump treats diplomacy as a spectacle. When his predecessor in the White House, the 28th president Woodrow Wilson, denounced 'secret diplomacy ' as the cause of the First World War and called for 'open covenants of peace openly arrived at', he could not have imagined how Trump would seize the 24-hour news cycle to promote his 'plan' to end the war in Ukraine. Fox News is the US president's favoured outlet for updates on the negotiations. In one interview, he warns menacingly, 'Ukraine may not survive' unless… only to follow up with impromptu remarks on Air Force One to the same channel that 'Ukraine's going to do well, Russia's going to do well. Some very big things could happen this week'. Talks are happening in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia tomorrow between Trump's emissaries and Putin's men, with a Ukrainian team down the corridor – and President Zelensky offstage elsewhere in Riyadh. That the world's three major oil producers might find something to talk about and make deals over, apart from what America and Russia might agree on regarding Ukraine, is not irrelevant to its fate. President Trump has made clear that Ukraine's potential in rare earth minerals is a price which Kyiv will have to pawn for peace, but actual energy prices can be decided now by the Big Three producers. While backdoor deals may be being made in Riyadh, Ukraine looks set to effectively receive a Russo-American ultimatum: keep the rump of your country for the price of disarmament and neutrality. Ukrainians dislike the traditional English name for their country, 'The Ukraine', which translated its meaning as 'The Borderland'. Soon, it could become a buffer state. Maybe the least bad outcome for Ukraine today would be a peace rather like the one that Stalin granted Finland 85 years ago. Everyone remembers the Winter War between Finland and the USSR – or thinks they do. Stalin invaded at the end of November 1939, intending to replace Finland's government with a puppet one led by a Soviet Communist of Finnish origin, but the Red Army got a bloody nose – rather as Putin's troops did in 2022. But people forget Russia's numbers broke the Finnish resistance and Stalin took chunks of the country. However, the Kremlin left the Finns alone and free at home after 1945, so long as they were neutral. 'Finlandisation' was a term of contempt in Nato for decades before the Russian attack on Ukraine and the country's decision to renounce non-aligned status. Yet that robust Finland – democratic and defensible – could show the way for a viable post-war Ukraine. Today's occupant of Stalin's office in the Kremlin may not be so forgiving as his predecessor. Putin could well calculate that a peace deal rammed down Zelensky's throat could choke Ukrainian patriotic solidarity. Even if the public could accept the amputation of Crimea and the south-eastern regions for peace, could the hardline nationalist militias integrated into the Ukrainian Army stage a coup to stop it? Civil conflict would delight Putin but would kill chances of US and EU support for a post-war Ukraine. Ukraine played such a big role in his impeachments that Trump has a personal motive to end the war at any cost to Ukraine, regardless of future risks to it or even to Nato allies in Eastern Europe's 'tough region', as he calls it. But Team Trump is also on board for what would be a rewriting of the global order, not just a redrawing of the Russo-Ukrainian border. As Trump said, 'Some very big things could happen this week.'
