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4 days ago
- Politics
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Russia's ‘Pearl Harbour' has left Putin's attack plans in tatters
Wars have always forced innovation. From Hannibal at Cannae and Alexander the Great at Gaugamela to the SAS commandos of the desert campaign in the Second World War, tactical breakthroughs have shattered enemy complacency and changed battle strategy for ever. Sunday's extraordinary Ukrainian attacks against Russia's strategic bomber force – arguably one of the most important raids in the history of modern warfare – will have a similar effect. The rules of war have just been rewritten, and the consequences will be felt globally. The most immediate impact will be felt in Russia, where the illusion of invincibility that hung over its long-range aviation fleet has been so spectacularly sundered. Officials in Kyiv reckon they have destroyed or damaged up to a third of Russia's most prized air assets, planes that have wrought devastation in Ukraine for so long. The two principal consequences of Operation Spider's Web, as Ukraine has christened it, can be broken down into the psychological and the strategic. Both will shape the way Vladimir Putin is able to wage war. Perhaps most significantly, the raid will complicate Moscow's strategy of raining bombs on Ukrainian cities. Russia has been reliant on its Tupolev bombers, which can fly thousands of miles and carry nuclear or conventional warheads, to conduct large-scale cruise missile attacks. Moscow will find this harder to do if it has lost a significant number of its strategic bombers, according to Fabian Hoffman, a missile technology expert at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based think-tank. 'To generate this type of force power, you need these big bombers that can carry multiple cruise missiles,' he said. 'If you take out the bombers, then you really limit Russia's ability to launch these types of attacks.' During the largest sorties, multiple bombers take to the air to fire dozens of cruise missiles from different locations in an effort to overwhelm Ukrainian defences. For such missions to succeed, Russia has to operate a strict rotational system: for every bomber in use, a second is undergoing short-term repairs, while a third is in long-term maintenance, according to military analysts. Russia has relatively few strategic bombers, with most independent experts estimating no more than 90 in operation. Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their army of quadcopter drones had destroyed 13 Russian aircraft – 12 of them strategic bombers – a figure echoed by Russian military bloggers. Another two dozen may have been damaged, though to what extent remains unknown. Credit: Via Reuters Given the scale of the raid, it seems likely that while Russia will still be able to mount cruise missile attacks on Ukraine, it may have to do so with reduced frequency and intensity. In addition, Russia will be forced to divert resources to protect facilities far from the front, straining its war machine. The psychological consequences are just as significant. For more than a week, Ukraine has endured some of the most intense Russian bombardment of the war. Its frontline cities lie in ruins, while Russian forces have been advancing relentlessly – if glacially – for more than a year. The brazenness and ingenuity of Operation Spider's Web will lift spirits, just as earlier Ukrainian spectaculars did. The sinking of the Moskva, flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, in 2022, and the maritime drone assaults that forced the Russian navy largely to abandon the Crimean port of Sevastopol are the most memorable of these. Operation Spider's Web – in which the jewels of Russia's air force exploded into fireballs 2,600 miles from the Ukrainian border – may well eclipse both. The mission will likewise damage morale in Russia. It did more than burn planes: it also scorched Russia's national confidence. Moscow will not be able to replace its losses quickly or easily. The Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers that made up most of the losses are no longer being produced. Russia is still making the Tu-160 – the largest and heaviest bomber in the world – but production is so slow that one or two enter service each year. The losses may also force Moscow into making choices it would rather avoid. Russia's long-range bombers fly around the world to menace the edges of Nato airspace and maritime waters. Putin may now have to sacrifice his desire to project military power globally in order to maintain full aerial pressure on Ukraine. This dilemma will be welcomed in Western capitals – yet Ukraine's June surprise will be causing sleepless nights outside Russia. Military planners everywhere will now be fretting about the security of their own air forces. Many Western countries have concentrated their air assets in ever fewer bases to save money. Aircraft are frequently parked on aprons with no protection from the skies. Western governments now face the unpleasant prospect of having to invest heavily in hardened aircraft shelters and counter-drone systems. This will be both expensive and time-consuming – but until it is done, prized Nato assets will remain vulnerable to any malign state or non-state actor with a handful of cheap kamikaze drones. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Business Mayor
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Trump to press Putin to end 'bloodbath' in Ukraine
Global Economy May 20, 2025 Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. Mikhail Metzel | Evelyn Hockstein | Via Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump will speak separately with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday in hopes of ending the 'bloodbath' in Ukraine, amid concerns over Washington's ongoing push to broker peace-making. 'HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END,' Trump wrote on his Truth social media platform Saturday in his customary all-capitalized comments. The subject of the call will be trade and stopping the 'bloodbath' of Russian and Ukrainian deaths, he said. His call with Putin will take place at 5 p.m. Moscow time (10:00 a.m. E.T.) and will take into account the outcome of negotiations carried out last week in Istanbul, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to Google-translated comments carried by Russian state news agency Tass. The U.S. mediation is set to happen after representatives from Russia and Ukraine held their first face-to-face talks since 2022 in Istanbul last week, as part of downgraded discussions that had originally been hoped to bring together Moscow and Kyiv's heads of state. Putin and Trump ultimately spurned the meeting, which culminated in an agreement to exchange prisoners of war, but failed to progress the peace process. Talks to end the three-year war in Ukraine have languished in recent months, despite a U.S. drive to materialize Trump's pledge to achieve peace urgently. Threats from Trump that Washington could withdraw from the diplomatic process in the absence of an imminent resolution have raised concerns that the White House might diminish its critical military and humanitarian support for Ukraine. Trump, whose revived dormant relations with the Kremlin after years of frigidity under his predecessor Joe Biden's administration, has recently turned tack on his reluctance to directly criticize Putin, increasingly levying the possibility of further sanctions on Moscow and backing a Ukraine and Europe-endorsed call for a 30-day ceasefire. The contours of a temporary truce or permanent peace proposal have remained elusive, amid maximalist Russian demands and Zelenskyy's unwillingness to entertain potential territorial concessions. 'The U.S. has presented a strong peace plan and we welcome the Prisoner of War exchange agreement reached in Istanbul. Let's not miss this huge opportunity. The time for ending this war is now,' U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media Saturday, following a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. 'He explained to me that they are going to be preparing a document outlining their requirements for a ceasefire that will then lead to broader negotiations,' Rubio said in a later TV interview with CBS. 'Obviously, the Ukrainian side is going to be working on their own proposal. And hopefully that will be forthcoming soon.' Yet the signs of Washington's dwindling patience with the stalled process linger. 'We don't want to be involved in this process of just endless talks. There has to be some progress, some movement forward,' Rubio stressed. On Sunday, Zelenskyy also met with Rubio and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, decrying on social media the 'low level delegation of non-decision-makers' deployed by Russia to Istanbul last week, adding that he reaffirmed that 'Ukraine is ready to be engaged in real diplomacy and underscored the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible.' Sidelined throughout much of the recent peace brokering, European officials have raced to engage with the White House, with British, U.S., Italian, French and German leaders discussing Trump's upcoming engagement with Putin during a call on Sunday. 'Looking ahead to President Trump's call with President Putin tomorrow, the leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,' a British government readout said. 'They also discussed the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and peace talks.' READ SOURCE
Business Mayor
10-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
The U.S. and China are set for icebreaker trade talks. Here's what to expect
U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, U.S Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Switzerland's President Karin Keller-Sutter, Swiss Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin pose during a bilateral meeting between Switzerland and the United States, in Geneva, Switzerland, May 9, 2025. Martial Trezzini | Via Reuters The stakes are high for the U.S. and China's icebreaker trade talks this weekend as the outcome could reset the future of economic relations between the world's two largest economies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are scheduled to meet with Chinese lead economic representative and Vice Premier He Lifeng in Switzerland on Saturday. Analysts say a comprehensive deal is unlikely to come out from a single meeting, however, they are hopeful that a partial rollback of the sky-high tariffs will be on the table. Both sides have been looking for a pathway to de-escalation, as the economic toll of tariffs have become increasingly difficult to ignore. The U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter this year amid mounting concerns that the economy will slip into a recession with higher inflation and unemployment. And while the Chinese economy grew a better-than-expected 5.4% in the first three months this year, major banks have slashed their full-year growth forecasts for the country to just around 4% — below the government's target of around 5%. Trump still might have more to lose, as the Chinese political system grants the country's leadership a 'higher pain threshold' and a 'greater degree of control over macro policy support in the short term,' said Dan Wang, China director at political risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group. Vice Premier He's main mission will simply be seeking clarity on what Trump wants and assessing whether the U.S. intends to hurt China's interests, Wang said. In what appeared to be a confidence boost ahead of the meeting, China released trade data that showed its exports surged 8.1% year on year in April on the back of a jump in shipments to Southeast Asian nations, shrugging off the 21% drop in outbound goods to the U.S. And on Friday, China's Commerce Ministry launched a 'special operation' to combat the smuggling of strategic minerals, including gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten and medium and heavy rare earths. Without naming specific entities, the ministry framed the operation as 'a crackdown on overseas entities that had colluded with domestic illegal personnel' to bypass the export control rules it had ratcheted up earlier this year. 'It serves as a useful reminder of the leverage China possesses as the negotiations are set to get underway in Geneva,' said Stephen Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and a former U.S. trade negotiator. China is the world's largest producer of several critical minerals crucial to making semiconductors, defense equipment and clean energy. As part of the retaliatory measures against Trump's tariffs announced last month, China has increased export controls of the metals. 'The sharpest arrow that China has in its quiver would be to restrict U.S. access to critical minerals that can't readily be sourced elsewhere,' Olson said. High on Washington's agenda is securing the removal of China's export restrictions on rare earths used to make magnets, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Another potential pressure point for Trump is China's vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries, which could pose risks to financial market stability, said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University. Beijing is likely to further trim its nearly $800-billion stockpile of U.S. government debt if it wants to turn up the heat on Trump, said Wu. Despite market speculation that China might unload its Treasury holdings to hit back at tariffs, a significant sell-off could also backfire. Such a move might strengthen the yuan, undermining China's export competitiveness, and lead to substantial losses on its dollar-denominated assets. Read More Beijing Signals Readiness to Talk to Trump's Team, Even Old Foes What to expect A partial reversal of tariffs is one of the most likely outcomes of the meeting, according to analysts who remain split on the extent of any adjustments and the pace of de-escalation. Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, projects that effective U.S. tariff rates on Chinese goods could be lowered from the current 107% to a terminal rate of 45% by year-end. Similarly, Tianchen Xu, senior economist at Economist Intelligence Unit, expects the U.S. and China to scale back their mutual weighted average tariff rates of around 50% in the near term. That's still elevated compared to the tariff rates of 10.9% on Chinese goods and 16% that China had imposed on American products before Trump returned to office, according to Xu's estimates. In recent days, senior U.S. officials have sounded an optimistic tone over the upcoming talks, saying they could ease the trade barriers that Trump raised last month. 'De-escalating, bringing those rates down to where they could, where they should be, I think it's Scott Bessent's goal,' Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told CNBC Friday. 'And that's what the president hopes is a good outcome, is a de-escalating world where we go back to each other and then we work on a big deal together.' During a White House press conference on the signing of a trade deal with Britain, Trump said of the Switzerland meeting, 'I think we're going to have a good weekend with China.' The U.S. president then said in a post on social media platform Truth Social on Friday, that '80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.' Chinese officials, on the other hand, have struck a firmer tone, reiterating the country's demand for the Trump administration to cancel all unilateral tariffs on China. A spokesperson for the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday that 'China will not sacrifice principle to reach [a] deal with U.S.,' while repeating that Washington must 'rectify its wrongdoing' by removing all unilateral tariffs. Comprehensive deal unlikely During the upcoming talks, China could still offer some 'sweeteners,' such as promises to step up its crackdown on fentanyl flows, said Xu, which could lead to a near-term removal of the 20% fentanyl-related tariffs Trump imposed. Both sides have sought to temper the economic pain from the exorbitant tariffs, exempting the levies on a range of goods, including consumer electronics, semiconductors and auto parts. China reportedly exempted import duties on select pharmaceuticals, microchips and aircraft engines from the United States. It has also created a 'whitelist' of U.S. goods that will be exempted from extra levies, according to Reuters. However, attempts to achieve a more comprehensive deal, similar to the Phase One deal signed during Trump's first term, will likely be 'lengthy and unproductive,' said Xu, as both sides have shown little appetite for compromise over respective strategic priorities and economic red lines. 'We severely doubt the possibility of the U.S. and China reaching something close to the Phase One trade agreement reached in 2020—a model that has been discredited in the eyes of senior US officials,' Xu added. China had alleged it fulfilled the terms under the Phase One trade deal that Trump struck with Beijing during his first presidential term, while claiming the U.S. violated certain mandates in the agreement. The deal required China to boost purchases of U.S. goods by $200 billion over a two-year period, but Beijing did not meet the targets as the Covid-19 pandemic hit. 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Ya Libnan
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Russia tests U.S. patience as Trump rushes to clinch Ukraine peace deal in first 100 days in office
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff , a Russian American during a meeting in Moscow, Russia, April 25, Kormilitsyna | Via Reuters Nearing the tone-setting 100 th day of his second administration at the end of April, U.S. President Donald Trump has ramped up pressure on Russia and Ukraine to end their three-year conflict at the steep price of territorial concession. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, a former real estate mogul turned Kremlin whisperer, arrived in Moscow on Friday. Footage carried by Russian state news agency Tass showed he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin — whom he has encountered thrice prior — at a fragile time in the Moscow-Washington relations that have only thawed since Trump's January return to the White House. The Kremlin has so far approached U.S.-sponsored Ukraine peace negotiations — which resulted in a partial, ill observed ceasefire on energy infrastructure last month — with amiable intractability, avoiding ire that Trump has largely directed at Ukraine's leadership for its hesitations throughout the talks and its insistence over explicit security guarantees. The Washington leader has repeatedly called out his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy for overestimating his leverage in both the conflict and the discussions, as well as — earlier this week — disregarding the possibility of renouncing Crimea. But intensifying Russian attacks against Kyiv earlier this week following a lull over the Easter holiday led Trump to take a rare shot against Putin on Thursday. 'I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,' Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform. 'Not necessary, and very bad timing,' the White House leader added. 'Vladimir, STOP!' 'I didn't like last night, I wasn't happy with it,' Trump said in a separate press briefing. 'We're putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that.' Trump's frustration has been stoked by the stalling pace of U.S.-led peace diplomatic efforts which Washington has indicated it could be close to abandoning. On Wednesday, intended talks in London between U.K., French, German, Ukrainian and U.S. officials were downgraded after the withdrawal of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Witkoff. 'We've issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it's time for them to either say 'yes' or for the United States to walk away from this process,' U.S. Vice President JD Vance said earlier in the week. The silhouette of the U.S.′ final peace offer remains elusive, although Axios reports the latest framework offers Russia U.S. recognition of Moscow's occupation of Crimea, the lifting of sanctions imposed since 2014 and Ukraine's renunciation of ambitions to join the NATO military alliance — a critical long-held objective the Kremlin invoked as underpinning its 2022 invasion. In return, Ukraine would secure a coveted security guarantee against further Russian incursions, part of the Kharkiv region — one of four annexed by Russia in the three-year conflict — and aid to rebuild. CNBC could not independently confirm the terms of the framework and has reached out to the White House for comment. If they materialize, the framework conditions will imply a stark shift in tone for Ukraine, whose leadership has persistently excluded the possibility of territorial concessions. Vance earlier this week signaled that peace required 'at a broad level the parties saying: we're going to stop the killing, we're going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.' He elaborated, 'The current lines, somewhere close to them, is where you're ultimately, I think, going to draw the lines in the conflict. Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give some of the territory they currently own. They're going to have to be some territorial swaps.' Zelenskyy this week struck back at the notion of surrendering sovereign land, saying categorically, according to a translation, that 'Ukraine does not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea. There is nothing to talk about. It is beyond our Constitution.' But Ukraine's top brass appears more grudgingly open to the possibility: 'In one of the scenarios is, what you say, to give up territory. It's not fair but for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be [a] solution. Temporarily,' Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a TV interview with BBC News. CNBC
