Now Trump has to take on Putin

There is no question that bombast sometimes works. President-elect Donald Trump warned hell would be unleashed if Hamas did not release its hostages and the war in Gaza did not end by 20 January, his inauguration day. He never explained what he had in mind to end the war, but he didn’t need to. The threat was enough. President Joe Biden and his national security team had done all the hard negotiating work for a deal but Trump’s stamp on it was conclusive. Can he now do the same with the war in Ukraine? Trump’s main obstacle is undoubtedly Vladimir Putin. The Russian president will be a far tougher nut to crack, especially since he has shown no real interest in any compromise settlement. Putin says he is happy to talk but he has already laid down his marker for a deal, effectively the retention of all the territory his troops have seized since 24 February, 2022, and an agreement by Kyiv’s western backers that Ukraine will never join Nato. Trump’s room for manoeuvre is limited. Bombast won’t do it, not this time. In fact, he has already had to drop his unrealistic pledge to stop the war on day one of his return to the White House. Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has provided, mistakenly in my view, his own timetable for bringing the war to an end, stretching the negotiating period to 100 days. Twenty-four hours or 100 days will make little difference to Putin who holds more cards than Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu had in dealing with Trump. Netanyahu had everything to lose if he snubbed Trump. It was in his personal, and Israel’s national, interest to curry favour with the incoming president. As a result, Netanyahu accepted the same deal which had been on offer, full stops and commas and all, since Biden outlined it in May. Keeping in with Trump was the priority for the Israeli leader. That’s why the president-elect can rightfully claim some of the kudos for the ceasefire which is supposed to start on Sunday. There is not the same Realpolitik at play with Putin. Sitting in his office in the Kremlin, the canny Russian leader will no doubt have taken on board the pressure that Trump and his transition team had been applying on Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire and hostage-release deal. It was also a unique situation, with the outgoing and incoming administrations working closely together for a common goal. After 20 January, Trump will be the sole dealmaker. It’s what he enjoys more than anything but will his style impress Putin? Will Trump in the White House force Putin to recalculate? Or will he play the new president along while reinvigorating his ‘special operation’ against Ukraine until his troops acquire even more ground and further undermine Kyiv’s bargaining potential in any future settlement negotiation? Trump has announced he will meet Putin. The last time the Russian leader met with an American president was in June, 2021, at a summit with Biden in Geneva. Eight months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, Putin has suffered heavy losses: 700,000 war casualties, a third of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed, 9,000 tanks lost, 100 combat aircraft shot down, and above all, the humiliation of failing to overwhelm an enemy which has grown in stature on the battlefield. In that time Ukraine has learned to adapt its warfighting techniques, with domestically-produced long-range drones and rockets while benefitting from continuous, albeit sometimes delayed, supplies of advanced western weapon systems. On the plus side for Putin, nearly three years of attritional warfare has handed him around 20 per cent of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the equivalent of more than 110,000 square kilometres, including Crimea which was annexed in 2014. About 1.5 million Ukrainians are living under Russian occupation. Even though Ukraine managed to seize and occupy 1,200 square kilometres of Russian territory in Kursk, it has to be said that at the negotiating table, Putin will have greater bargaining leverage than his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. But is Putin even ready to bargain? He is not trapped in a complex political and diplomatic cul-de-sac like Netanyahu. The Israeli leader needs Trump. Putin doesn’t. He has friends and allies elsewhere, especially Xi Xinping in China, Kim Jong Un in North Korea and the ayatollahs in Iran. Still, Putin is a pragmatist. He claims he ordered the 2022 invasion because he considered the expansion of Nato into Eastern Europe and potentially into Ukraine as a grave risk to Russia’s national security. The West accused Putin of unadulterated imperialism. He might see the arrival of Trump back in the White House as an opportunity to end the economy-ruining war in Ukraine, leaving him with large and strategic chunks of Ukrainian territory. A signed agreement could also exclude Kyiv from ever fulfilling its desire to become a member of the western alliance. If he doesn’t get that promise from the 47th US president, I doubt he will be in any sort of mood to do a deal.

Gaza ceasefire agreed but so fragile

When there's a deal in the Middle East, you can never be absolutely sure it will hold or even start when it's supposed to. So fragile and precarious is Benjamin Netanyahu's control of political power in Israel, that the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, forged after 15 long months of brutal war in Gaza, is hanging in the balance. Netanyahu's coalition with two extreme right political figures could collapse because the most exreme of all is threatening to resign and bring the government down. Washington is still convinced the deal will go through, that the Israeli cabinet will approve the ceasefire, but it's going to take a night of arguing and persuasion to make it happen. But even if the cabinet says yes, the initial six-week ceasefire will every day be a shaky affair. But for the sake of the Palestinian people and for the families of the 100 hostages still being held, alive and dead, by Hamas, the deal has to survive. There is no other way. And if Netanyahu's government collapses, and he loses his job, so be it.

Pete Hegseth's TV clout will get him confirmed as Pentagon chief

Pete Hegseth didn't come across as a likeable next-door-neighbour type when he appeared before the Senate armed services committee for his confirmation appearance as nominated defence secretary. But he demonstrated the sort of pazazz and confidence you get after years of appearances as a presenter on Fox News. He oozed pazazz, often overtalking senators trying to get their picky questions out. It didn't seem to matter what the senators accused him of, he either ignored them or gave answers that bore little relation to the question or just praised Donald Trump. He has clearly changed his mind on a lot of things, especially his pronounced views spelled out in the past about how women should NOT be allowed to serve in combat roles. The answers he gave yesterday on this issue didn't amount to a total U-turn but, effectively, he tried to reassure the committee that he wouldn't ban women in such roles provided they were up to it. It's a bit of a double-header answer because the military has always said there was no question of lowering standards for women. Those women who have passed the qualification tests for getting frontline combat roles have all been tough cookies. So, presumably, under a Hegseth command, these women, and others who pass the tests, will carry on being combat soldiers or sailors. The fact that he wasn't absolutely clear on this point was an example of his clever presentation of facts and views nurtured from his career as a television presenter. So, call it bluster or ommision, Hegseth held his own with the senators, some of whom seemed a bit out of their depth with such a smart nominee. Yes, it will be Hegseth for the Pentagon. Marco Rubio will sail through for the job of secretary of state. The next tricky one will be Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. Like Hegseth, she is a veteran, but there are a lot of senators, not all Democrats, who don't like her or trust her.

Will Donald Trump be less scary in his second term?

I think the chatty, smiley, laughing moments between Donald Trump and Barack Obama at President Jimmy Carter's funeral service said it all. The Washington establishment is less apprehensive about having Trump back in the White House. Obama was so relaxed with Trump next to him that he was rewarded with a glare from Kamala Harris in front of him. Having been defeated by Trump in the 2024 election she is still in no mood to be nice to, let alone, cosy up to the president-elect. Obama knew the cameras would be on him and Trump and yet he chatted away as if he was the best of friends with Trump, the man he has previously referred to as a danger to US democracy. Yes, I think people in very senior positions are hoping that Trump will have learned from his first term in office and will this time round be less strident, less muddled, less autocratic and more presidential. They may be right. The US definitely needs a huge boost in confidence and global influence and if Trump can sort out Putin and Ukraine and get Gaza back for the Palestinian people without Hamas and occupying Israeli troops, then the smile on Obama's face might stay put. Of course it could all go wrong. Putin might just say Niet to a deal with Zelensky and the Gaza war could carry on although on a less ferocious scale. But one thing that is absolutely certain, when Trump stands in front of the microphone as president he is not going to sound like poor old Joe Biden whose husky and fragile voice often just got drowned in muddled words.

Will Pete Hegseth's nomination be confirmed?

Tomorrow is Pete Hegseth's big day. He is to come up before the Senate armed services committee seeking confirmation of his appointment by Donald Trump as the upcoming president's defence secretary. It was an extraordinary but not suprising choice by Trump, going for a Fox News preenter (and forces' veteran) rather than an established Pentagon type. But Senate confirmation has been up in the air because of all the accusations against him, including alleged sexual abuse, mismanagement of funds and heavy drinking. Not an ideal reputation you might think for becoming the Pentagon chief, with three million or so people, military and civilian, under his charge, and a budget of close to $850 billion. But Hegseth is Trump's chosen man for the job and Republican senators would be brave if they rejected his nomination. It would only take three Republicans to say no, along with every member of the Democratic party and independents. There must be some Republicans with doubts but have they all been won over by Hegseth and Trump who have been busy on the phone and in private meetings to corale them all into the right camp. The questions are going to be tough but my prediction is that Hegseth will win through and will be confirmed as Pentagon boss. He will have a lot, a helluva lot, to learn. Apart from the Pentagon he will also be in overall charge of Cyber Command and the hugely powerful National Security Agency. He must be licking his lips.

Could the war in Gaza be coming to an end?

So many hopes of a hostage-release and ceasefire over the last few months but all came to nothing. Is it different now? Are all the political strings coming together to bring this terrible war to an end? A week to go before Donald Trump becomes president. A last week for Antony Blinken, the outgoing secretary of state, to finally push for a deal in Qatar. Perhaps a realisation by Hamas that this is the best time to do a hostage deal before Trump arrives. All these possibilities are in the wind and there may be a satisfactory outcome. But it is probably too optimistic to hope that the war itself will come to a complete stop. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, thinks there is still work to do to eliminate Hamas once and for ever. Even though the Israelis say they have killed 17,000 Hamas fighters, that means maybe the same number again are still alive and fighting. Will Netanyahu be satisfied with that? The total figure of dead in Gaza is said to be 46,000 but that will include the 17,000 dead militants. The rest are Palestinian civilians, men, women and children. This is a terrible slaughter of innocent people and has to end. The heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, are now in Qatar where they will negotiate indrectly with Hamas. They will never actually meet face to face but use Qatari middlemen to do the exchanges. It's a weird system but it has worked in the past in other highly sensitive negotiations. For Blinken, it's his last chance of returning to Washington with a deal that could see the release of 30 or 40 hostages and a ceasefire, although probably only lasting a week or so. Then what? Then it will be in the hands of the new Trump administration to get the remaining hostages released and try to bring a final end to the war.

Ukraine fighting to hang on to Kursk

One of President Zelensky's boldest moves was to send troops over the border into the Kursk region of western Russia and grab territory. It looked initially like this would be a short-lived mission, just to cause Moscow maximum embarrassment. Well it did that all right, emphasised by the fact that Putin had to call on North Korea to help with soldiers to fill the gaps in his infantry strength to try and drive the Ukrainians away. So far, five months into the Kursk operation, Ukrainian troops are hanging on and keeping the Russian and North Korean troops at bay. It's a remarkable achievement and means that if or when Donald Trump has a session with Putin to try and bring the war in Ukraine to an end, Zelensky will have his Kursk card to play to force the Russian leader into territorial concessions in Ukraine itself. In the war in Ukraine Russia has been steadily gaining ground in the east. But as long as the Ukrainian forces in Kursk refuse to budge, Putin will have to take that on board when the territorial bargaining begins. Trump's special envoy on Ukraine and Russia, Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, has said he hopes to bring the war to an end within 100 days of Trump taking office. That is not what Trump wanted. He promised to have it all sorted out on his first day in office. That was always regarded as blarney by those who have been intimately in the war effort in bith Kyiv and Washington. However, it sounded good, especially during the election campaign. Now Kellogg has admitted it might take a little longer. But is even 100 days - ie sometime in May - realistic? It might be if the battle for Kursk still goes Ukraine's way. It looks like it will.