Is Trump plotting to meet Kim Jong-un?

He's in the reguon, so why not fix a meeting with Kim Jong-un? It just could happen, Donald Trump with his old sparring partner, Kim Jong-un. All the focus is supposed to be on Trump meeting up with Xi Zinping, and that will definitely go ahead. But the whispers are that Trump is reaching out to the North Korean leader to try and resuscitate a relationship that went pretty sour the last time they met up, in Hanoi during Trump's first term in office. Nothing much came of it and the "friendship" went down hill after that. Now, Trump beieves it's time to revive it. It will certainly make big headlines which Trump loves. I suspect Kim Jong-un who does very litle these days except build more and more nuclear weapons would probably enjoy a bit of worldwide publicity. He'll be guaranteed that if he shakes Trump's hand. But Trump has to be careful not to downplay his planned meeting with Xi Zinping. The Chinese president-for-life won't take kindly to being outshone by That Man in Pyongyang. But the temptation for Trump is too great and I'm sure Marco Rubio, his ever-present secretary of state and national security adviser, is even now on the phone to Kim or his senior acolytes to fix it all up.

China and the US heading for trade breakthrough

Just when it looked like an all-out trade war between China and the US, it seems the two sides have had constructive discussions for a deal which means when Donald Trump and Xi Zinping meet this coming week, it should be all smiles and bear hugs. This is the way Trump does business, and the Chinese leader has been copying him. So, initially it was all tariff war, tarrif war and then out of the blue, Washington and Beijing step back and a deal is done. I don't know whether this is the best way of doing business but it seems to work in Trump's case. It was Beijing that dealt the biggest blow when China announced new restrictions on the export of its vast supply of processed rare earth metals which would have had a major negative impact on the production of a huge range of goods, such as mobile phones, electric cars and solar panels. Trump was so angry he started talking about imposing enormous tariffs on China. However, the brinkmanship game has come to an end, and Trump and Xi Zinping will be back to being friends. The poor stock market doesn't know where to look. It's up one moment and then plunging down the next. But the Trump/Xi session during the US president's Asia tour should settle the waters and bring a bit of calm back to the world economy.

The world's biggest carrier goes to the Caribbean

Naval action in the Caribbean, with American or British, warship, has for years been associated with counter-drugs operations. The Royal Navy has often found itself grabbing several tons of cocaine from dodgy boats criss-crossing the seas in the region. But what the US Navy is currently up to in the Caribbean is on a totally different scale. In the latest development, the Pentagon has sent the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, to the Caribbean, off the shores of Venezeula. This move has very little to do with firing at speed boats piled with bags of cocaine. You hardly need a 100,000-tonne carrier with up 90 aircraft of different sorts on board to attack drugs-carrying boats, or in one case, innocent Colombian fishermen, or so it's claimed in Bogota. The carrier is the mightiest symbol of American military power. So, its presence off Venezuela has a very different purpose. It's all about putting unbearable pressure on Nicolas Maduro, the ghastly dictator of Venezuela and friend of Vladimir Putin, to voluntarily go into exile. He's an accused drugs baron - accused by Washington - and the arrival of the carrier is intended to show him that his days are numbered. But will Trump use the fighter aircraft on board to bomb Maduros's palace in Caracas to provide extra incentive for him to leave the country? He just might, even though he claims not to want US forces to get involved in any wars ever again. Now, with the bust-up between Trump and Putin, I suspect the US president will be even more tempted to do some bombing in Caracas because he knows it will seriously upset the Kremlin boss. It's all politics, with a bit of drug-traffic-bashing on the side.

Putin has seriously misjudged Trump

Vladimir Putin thought he could play Trump along and get the US president to force Ukraine to give him everything he wanted. He thought Trump was his friend, that he would understand why he wanted to destroy Ukraine. He gambled that Trump represented his best chance of defeating Ukraine. But he got that wrong. He miscalculated. He went too far. Worst of all (for him) he has thoroughly annoyed Trump and made him look weak. Now that gamble, has failed. Trump, persuaded by a number of people, especially Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of Nato, has realised that being tough with Putin is the only way forward. He had been reluctant to use the oil sanctions stick although it has been on the table for months. But that phone call between Rubio and Lavrov was the final straw. He knew from that moment that Putin wasn't interested in peace and was just playing him along. Trump must have been very angry. So much for the special relationship he was supposed to have with Vladimir, as he likes to call him. Now the two are at loggerheads and that's bad news for Putin but it's also of course bad bews for Zelensky who will have to prepare his country and his people for another winter of bombings, death and destruction.

Trump piles on oil sanctions against Putin

President Trump has announced new oil sanctions against Russia after Moscow’s refusal to consider a ceasefire in Ukraine with the battlelines frozen as they stand today. Which Russian oil companies will be targeted? They have been named as Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two biggest oil companies. Rosneft is responsible for nearly half of Russian oil production. It is also the largest independent gas producer in Russia. Lukoil is the second largest oil company in Russia. The two companies combined account for more than three million barrels of Russian crude oil exported every day. Which countries still buy oil from Rosneft and Lukoil? A The two biggest importers of Russian oil are China, with about two million barrels a day, and India with 1.6 million barrels each day. But other countries still trading in oil with Russia include Turkey, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, South Korea, Brazil and Japan. Why does Germany still buy oil from Russia? Rosneft has stakes in several key German refineries. The German government took control of the refineries under a special trusteeship to safeguard energy supplies after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, 2022. The trusteeship allows Berlin to manage Rosneft’s stakes in the refineries. When the UK announced fresh sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil this month, a special licence was issued allowing banks and businesses to continue working with the German subsidiaries of Rosneft because they were under state control. How much money does Russia make from these companies? The Russian economy is dependent on the exploitation of its huge natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. Rosneft announced in August that its net income had fallen by 68 per cent to $3 billion for the first half of the year due to weak oil prices. Lukoil has also suffered from changing markets. In 2024, the company declared that net profits were down by 26.5 per cent to $10.12 billion. QWill this impact ordinary Russians? The main impact of the new sanctions is aimed at harming Russia’s war economy which has been created by President Putin to finance the war in Ukraine. But the sanctions will cause rising oil prices and this will affect the price of petrol across the country. This will be a double blow for the Russian people who have already been forced to join long queues at petrol stations because of a shortage of fuel following Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. Are Tomahawks off the table? A For the moment, Trump has said he will not be considering supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine because of the fear of escalating the war. But the request from President Zelensky remains on the table. Trump is likely to see how the new oil sanctions work in forcing Putin to negotiate an end to the war before returning to the Tomahawk issue. Which targets has Ukraine been striking inside Russia? A Even without long-range Tomahawks, Ukraine has successfully targeted oil refineries deep inside Russia, deploying home-made drones and cruise missiles. In recent months, helped by targeting data supplied by US and British intelligence systems, Ukraine has hit more than 20 of Russia’s 38 large oil refineries since January. This week, Ukraine used Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles to hit a Russian chemical plant which produces gunpowder, explosives and rocket fuel. The plant was in an industrial complex in Bryansk, about 240 miles southwest of Moscow. What other leverage does the US have left? The fresh oil sanctions will be a huge blow to Russia’s economy. But Trump could also further target countries still buying Russian oil by applying much larger secondary tariffs on China and India, the two biggest purchasers of Russian oil. India, in particular, could be forced to turn to the US for oil imports which would have a long-term impact on the Russian economy. BUY MY NEW SPY THRILLER, AGENT REDRUTH, PUBLISHED BY ROWANVALE BOOKS AND AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.

Putin not interested in peace

Well that didn't last long. All the razzmatazz and heightened expectations of a big, beautiful summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine blown to pieces by the Kremlin's total indifference. The phone chat between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and Sergey Lavrov, the crusty Russian foreign minister, sounded like a repeat of a very old record. Instead of talking ceasefire and peace, Lavrov just spouted the usual mantra about resolving the "root causes" of the reason for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Lavrov still refers to the "Nazi" regime in Kyiv, like he hasn't come to terms with the fact that Ukraine has been a democratic country now for years. So with Rubio and Lavrov getting nowhere, it was clear to Trump that a second summit with Putin, this time in Budapest, would be a waste of time. Trump is right. Putin has set his face against any deal with Zelensky unless it gives him absolutely everything he wants and probably a lot more. He's not going to do anything just to please Trump, and certainly not the Europeans who remain steadfast supporters of Zelensky. So the missiles and drones will keep flying. Putin doesn't want to talk about concessions, so Kyiv has little option but to keep attacking targets inside Russia which will further damage Putin's war economy. Whether that will force Putin to the negotiating table I seriously doubt. The war will go on and on. Meanwhile, Trump should focus all his energy on ensuring the Gaza ceasefire progresses towards a full peace settlement, and the faster, the better.

Zelensky falls foul of Trump's changing moods

Keeping abreast of President Trump’s changing moods has never been so challenging, especially for Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart. Judging by reports emerging of their meeting last Friday in the Oval Office, Trump made it clear in somewhat candid language that Zelensky should give up the eastern Donbas region of his country or face destruction by Russia. Gone was the sunny prediction made by Trump only three weeks or so earlier that if Zelensky pursued the war with Russia, backed by Europe and Nato, he could win a famous victory and drive the Russians out of all the occupied territories. The sudden about-turn followed Trump’s two-hour phone call with President Putin last Thursday in which apparently the Russian leader stipulated that if the whole of Donetsk, one of two provinces in Donbas, was ceded to Russia he would consider a ceasefire. There was nothing new in Putin’s “solution” to end the war, but it seems Trump was persuaded that land-for-peace really was the answer, and he told Zelensky as much when the embattled Ukrainian leader flew to Washington, supposedly to argue his case for the US to supply him with 1,500-mile-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. European diplomats briefed on the Friday meeting told the Financial Times the volte face led to a “shouting match” between the two men, reminiscent of the public scolding Zelensky received at the hands of Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the White House in February. The US president, it was claimed, resorted to cursing and at one point threw aside maps of Ukraine which Zelensky had brought with him to underline a few geographical facts of life. The Tomahawk question was effectively dismissed by Trump as too escalatory, and Zelensky left Washington with nothing to show for his latest bout with the president other than an earful of “get-real” warnings. Poor Zelensky. All he could do was order his foreign ministry to set up an urgent meeting with the European coalition-of-the-willing partners and get them to have another go at trying to persuade Trump that conceding territory to Putin would be disastrous not just for Ukraine but for the stability and security of the whole of Europe. This second blow-up between Trump and Zelensky does not augur well for Ukraine. The two leaders hold directly divergent views about Putin’s intentions. Trump is convinced that Putin wants to end the war because of the damage it is doing to Russia’s economy, while Zelensky is adamant that the Russian president has no inclination to stop the fighting and that he is cunningly exploiting the US president to get what he wants. The planned summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest may well be promulgated as a last chance to reach a ceasefire and end the war. But judging by the revelations of the verbal bashing Zelensky received at the Friday meeting with Trump, Putin will feel confident that his demand for Donetsk will be at the top of the agenda. On Air Force One on Sunday, Trump denied to reporters that he and Zelensky discussed surrendering the whole Donbas region. “We think that what they should do is just stop at the battle lines. You have a battle line right now. The rest is very tough to negotiate,” he said. He added:” I said, ‘stop the battle, go home, stop fighting, stop killing people’.” Why does Putin want Donetsk so badly? The Russian president has been trying to seize control of the Donbas region, made up of two provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk , ever since 2014 after Moscow’s bloodless annexation of Crimea. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, Putin announced the annexation of four territories in southeastern and southern regions: Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. However, the declared annexations were premature. Today, although Luhansk is in Russian hands, Ukrainian forces still control key areas of Donetsk, around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and about 25 per cent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Fighting in these areas has been remorseless, with Russia making small gains. Donbas has strategic significance for Moscow. The port of Mariupol, for example, has access to the Black Sea. The region is also heavily industrialised and has rich farmland and mineral resources. A large proportion of the population are Russian speakers which Moscow claims is justification for the region to be Russian, not Ukrainian. This, of course is disputed. To counter Russian military advances in the east, Ukraine has devoted huge effort to building up its defences in the areas still controlled by Kyiv, and Zelensky has repeatedly said he would never agree to ceding Donbas to the Russians. On the face of it, there was every reason for Zelensky to return to Kyiv from his White House drubbing in a mood of gloom and despondency. He reportedly agreed that fighting should stop on current battlelines. But as the basis for a ceasefire, it seems unlikely that Putin will go along with it. Now all eyes will be on next week’s meeting of high-level Russian and American officials whose remit will be to find a formula for progress which can then be taken up by Trump and Putin at their Budapest summit. However, the omens are not good. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk summed up the dilemma succinctly in a post on X on Sunday when he wrote: “None of us should put pressure on Zelensky when it comes to territorial concessions. We should all put pressure on Russia to stop its aggression. Appeasement never was a road to a just and lasting peace.” BUY MY NEW SPY THRILLER, AGENT REDRUTH, AND READ ABOUT REBECCA STRONG, SPY EXTRAORDINAIRE (AMAZON, ROWANVALE BOOKS, WATERSTONES)