The war in Ukraine is never going to be resolved

There are only three things I can say for certain about Putin's war in Ukraine. Russia is never going to win to Putin's satisfaction, Ukraine is never going to win to Zelensky's and his western backers'satisfaction and Europe will continue to suffer the wider consequences. It could be a forever war, the thing that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden vowed never again to get involved in. I think it is inconceivable that Putin will suddenly decide to call the whole thing off. His future depends on achieving something out of his invasion of Russia's neighbour. So far he has lost more than 60,000 or 70,000 troops, countless tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters, aircraft and several ships, and used up a huge percentage of Russia's ballistic and cruise missiles. Any other country might have decided, enough is enough, and go hard for a deal. But Putin doesn't want a deal because he didn't invade Ukraine in order to reach some sort of compromise. And Ukraine doesn't want a deal because it would inevitably mean giving up some sovereign territory and after more than seven months of courageous fighting and appalling sacrifices, Zelensky won't want to give an inch to the Kremlin autocrat. So the conclusion is, the war will go on for ever and ever, and when Ukraine achieves some success, like the drone and unmanned ship attacks on Sevastopol naval base (it's pretty clear it was after all the Ukrainians who did this and not Russian saboteurs) then Putin takes revenge by hammering Ukraine's cities with missile attacks - and suspending all grain shipments. Who suffered the most: Russia with a few burning buildings and a damaged ship or two, or Ukraine with the destruction of more homes and power stations and the loss of electricity and gas across the country, and the axing of the one and only deal Zelensky and Putin have agreed to which was of huge benefit not just to Ukraine but to the starving millions in Africa. One has to ask whether the drone attacks on the naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea were really worth it?

The misinformation war from Moscow

Propaganda, black or otherwise, misinformation, disinformation and downright lies have all played a role in every war since wars began. Moscow has been particularly adept at playing with the truth. In the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin propaganda machine has been heavily engaged in numerous claims and allegations and accusations. The allegation that Ukraine with western backing is building a dirty (radioactive) bomb, today's claim that the Black Sea Fleet HQ in Crimea has been bombed by Ukrainian drones (could be true but we don't yet know) and all the stuff about how the West is to blame for the war in Ukraine feed into Moscow's playbook that Vladimir Putin and not the poor people of Ukraine, is the victim of the war. After more than seven months it has got to the point where the Kremlin's allegations are getting more and more ludicrous. No one in the West believes a word but of course the Russian people, especially those who live out of Moscow, listen to their leader and trust him. If only they would see through the Putin lies and start protesting on a national scale, perhaps the Putin regime could come to a premature end. But that reamins a wholly unlikely scenario. So we have to put up with the nonsense which seems to get more outrageous as each day goes by. Meanwhile Putin has stopped Ukraine's grain exports because of the attacks on the Black Sea Fleet HQ which makes me wonder whether it was actually the Russians who carried out the sabotage in order to justify stopping the grain sales which are so vital to the Ukrainian economy and feeding millions of people in Africa. I know it seems far-fetched but there is a long history of Russia's security and intelligence services carrying out bombing attacks and killings and blaming whoever it wants to blame at the time. *I have a spy thriller with a strong Russian theme called Shadow Lives coming out as a paperback on November 30. The ebook version is now available for pre-orders at £1.99 from https://amzn.to/3TVLN7e. Pre-orders help me hugely to obtain a good Amazon presence!!

Russia's Black Sea fleet back in business against Ukraine

The Russian Black Sea fleet is back in business in the war in Ukraine with 12 warships and submarines now lined up firing cruise missiles at power stations and other critical infrastructure targets. Ever since the sinking in April of the flagship cruiser Moskva which was caught patrolling offshore within range of Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missiles, the Black Sea fleet has been under-used by Moscow’s commanders in Ukraine because of fears of further spectacular strikes against Russian warships. However, under the newly appointed Russian supreme commander, General Sergei Surovikin, there appears to have been a decision to involve the Black Sea fleet on a much grander scale than in recent months. Surovikin, a 56-year-old air force general, demonstrated his enthusiasm for targeting civilian infrastructure during Russian strikes against rebel anti-regime forces in Syria in 2019. Now he appears to have brought every aspect of Russia’s military assets in Ukraine and offshore in the Black Sea to focus on the destruction of Ukraine’s power facilities. The Black Sea fleet which withdrew to safer waters or returned to home ports after the loss of the Moskva now has two Grigorovich-class frigates and four Buyan-M-class corvettes, all armed with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles, operating off Ukraine. One of the frigates is believed to be the Admiral Grigorovich, the first of the class which is fitted with a vertical launch system for firing Kalibr cruise missiles. There are also six Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines firing upgraded Kalibr cruise missiles which have a range of up to 1,500 miles. The re-emergence of the Black Sea fleet in the war in Ukraine is a sign of new efforts to try and terrorise the population as winter approaches. In the early stages of the war the fleet’s warships and submarines were used almost daily. On March 24 for example, Kalibr ship-launched cruise missiles destroyed a military fuel storage site near Kyiv. The following month a Kilo-class submarine was deployed for the first time, firing Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea at Ukrainian military targets. During its operation in Syria, the Russian navy fired nearly 100 Kalibr missiles at anti-regime targets. However, after the sinking of the Moskva whose coordinates had been confirmed to the Kyiv government by US intelligence reconnaissance aircraft, the whole of the Black Sea fleet took a back seat in the war. Ukraine followed up the attack on the flagship cruiser with a number of missile and drone strikes against smaller Russian navy ships. Several vessels were sunk. It had been assumed by western intelligence that the Crimea-based Black Sea fleet would play a vital role in providing back-up for an eventual amphibious assault on Odessa. But the expected assault never took place. The success of Ukraine’s own Neptune anti-ship weapons and Harpoon missiles donated by Denmark which sank a Russian supply ship, Spasatel Vasily Bekh, in June, were seen as humiliating blows for the Russian navy. The setbacks led to the sacking of the Black Sea fleet’s commander, Admiral Igor Osipov. He was replaced by Vice Admiral Viktor Sokolov.

Oops another bad decision by Sunak

Of course the economy is crucial and Rishi Sunak wants to devote his time to getting it right. But sometimes a leader of a country has to drop everything and be in the right place at the right time. The next climate-change summit for world leaders is on November 8 at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. But Sunak says he won't go because he will be too busy working on the economy. Perhaps he has forgotten that he is no longer the chancellor but is the prime minister. The prime minister should be at the climate-change summit even if it falls at a bad time for him, schedule-wise. It's just too important. Joe Biden will be there, Emmanuel Macron will be there, all the world's leaders will be there. But the UK will be represented by someone who isn't even in Sunak's cabinet. What will Biden think when he has to deal with some underling? It should be a time for all leaders to get together and discuss how to save the planet but the UK will not be suitably represented. It's another case of poor judgment oh dear. Something makes me think he will have to change his mind. Perhaps his first u-turn. Unless a u-turn over his choice of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary is to be his first one.

Oh dear, two bad judgments by Rishi Sunak

Trying to remain positive in this country is hard. Rishi Sunak's arrival in Number 10 Downing Street has provided most people - clearly not the Labour opposition or the few Liberal Democrats still in post - with a degree of satisfaction and relief. Yesterday was his big moment and he sounded fine, saying all the right things to please the markets and the Bank of England and his former employer, JP Morgan. But then he announced his hastily drawn-up Cabinet and he revealed two misjudgments which will cause him grief for sometime, perhaps throughout his time as prime minister. First, he sent Suella Braverman back to be Home Secretary after she had resigned following the briefest of sojourns at the Home Office under the Liz Truss government for sending official documents to unofficial end-readers. An extraordinary decision. Can you imagine what the civil servants at the Home Office thought when back she came, all forgiven. Sunak could have given her any other job except the Home Office and the Justice Department if he was determined to include her in his Cabinet. He said he wanted her there because she was experienced in that department. But she had only been Home Secretary for less than six weeks and in that time she warned that a trade deal with India would increase immigration and that was a bad thing. That was a massive PR error which must have angered Truss. No wonder she sacked her as soon as she had an excuse - the emails. But Sunak has still sent her back to one of the highest-profile departments. Not only was it inexplicably poor judgment but he will live to regret it when she says something else off-message in due course. Then there's Penny Mordaunt. Ok, she tried to defeat Sunak for the premiership but he shouldn't have taken his revenge by refusing to give her a better job. He merely sent her packing to do the same job as before, Leader of the Commons. No wonder she looked so pissed off. Again, why did he do it when he could easily have given her something more fancy. Perhaps he doesn't rate her in which case why give her a job at all? Apart from these two misjudgments he brought back all the old Boris Johnson ministers, Dominic Raab as deputy prime minister, Michael Gove as Levelling-up Secretary, etc etc. Where were the fresh, new young, exciting ministers? Perhaps there just aren't any!

A little bit of quieter, calmer politics please Rishi Sunak

I don't suppose there's a hope in hell of everyone in Parliament just calming down and getting on with making decisions that will benefit everyone. Labour will be in a tizz because after weeks of crying for a general election they are not going to get it which means they have at least two years of whingeing and bellyaching ahead of them while the one man they hoped wouldn't make it to Number 10 - Rishi Sunak - is now firmly esconsed on Day One of his premiership and looks like surviving until the next election. But let's hope Labour and leader Keir Starmer don't just bash the Tories non-stop for no good reason and allow Sunak to get the economy of this country back to a favourable state. After Boris and then Liz Truss it's a wonder we're not all begging for food in the streets. So please we want sensible decisions, nothing wild, a period of quiet, meaningful politics and no dramas. I realise of course that whatever Sunak does he can't act independently of the rest of the world, and the consequences of the Putin war in Ukraine will continue to undermine almost everything the new prime minister decides. But with Boris's instinctive glamour politics and Truss's unreconstructed back-of-the-envelope econmics gone out of the window, Sunak has the chance to govern this country in a more adult fashion. Here's hoping.

Second time lucky Rishi Sunak

What a whirlwind success story for Rishi Sunak. He thought he would beat Liz Truss for the premiership but lost. Then Truss resigned and he started to fear that Boris Johnson, hurrying back from his Caribbean hols, would pip him to the post and return as prime minister. But Boris did one of those things which no one had anticipated. He realised after hours of talks with Rishi and others that while he might have a sporting chance of getting the necessary 100 Tory MPs to support his candidature, he would face nothing but problems if he returned to Number 10, including being accused of lying over the wretched Partygate (Christmas drinks during lockdown) scandal. So sensibly he decided to back out and leave the job to Rishi. So second time round the Asian Brit wins the top job at the age of just 42. It was surely the right decision. He has the treasury knowledge to get our economy back into shipshape condition. The global markets will be pleased. At last things are looking up. How Rishi is going to sort out the mess we don't yet know but Jerermy Hunt, chancellor (still), has laid the foundations and, of course, Truss has gone. She won't be given a Cabinet post I predict and can now spend more time with her husband who never had enough chance to find out where he was allowed to go in Number 10 before he and his wife were booted out. Such is the life of politicians and their spouses. King Charles III will be relieved. I am sure he was dreading having to welcome Boris back as prime minister and will be delighted that someone of Rishi's origins from his beloved Commonwealth is now in charge.

The leader to watch. No not Putin, Xi Zinping

Putin's time is up. Not immediately but sometime in the foreseeable future, perhaps a year or two. The war in Ukraine is never going to go his way and at some point Russians, both military, civilian and spooks, will get fed up with him. But President Xi Zinping, on the other hand, is pretty well boss of China for life now that he has been accepted for a third term in office. His grip on power is like superglue. You can't get him off you. It's extraordinary how one man can be so powerful in a country the size of China. But he is the supreme absolute ruler and anyone he doesn't like or approve of will just get marched off into the sunset. Look at poor old Hu Jintao, president of China between 2003 and 2013. He was sitting in a posh high-profile seat at the Communist Party Congress but then got strangely shunted out. He didn't look ill, so I guess Xi decided the old boy, aged 79, should go into retirement and stay there. One word from him and officials took him by the elbow and escorted him off the dais. There will be a lot that in the future. Anyone who dares raise even a fingernail in disloyalty will be shafted one way or the other. So for the rest of the world, especially the US-led West, we have to watch out for this man. He is power hungry, power dominated, and so single-minded that if he says it's time to sort out those damned Taiwanese, China's burgeoning aircraft carrier fleet will be on the move into the Taiwan Strait before you can say hot noodles.

The new Russian strategy, destroy all power stations in Ukraine

The Russians are now doing what I had assumed they would do on Day 1 of the invasion of Ukraine: They are destroying Ukraine's infrastructure and in particular they are turning the country into an icebox with no electricity and no gas. They did none of these things when they invaded on February 24. Nor did they launch a massive cyber strike to bring down all communications. Now there is a new overall supreme commander of the dwindling Russian forces in Ukraine and clearly his first order was, "bomb the hell out of every power station in the country". Ukraine is dark and freezing and the winter is approaching. The new Russian military boss, General Sergei Surovikin, must have been given carte blanche by Putin to bring the war to an end one way or another. Nukes are the last resort, but first make the Ukrainians shiver with cold and misery and power cuts. If this keeps up, Ukraine will be in a dire situation come the winter. Putin and his general will hope that once the lights go fully out, the Kyiv government will beg for mercy. They won't of course and the next supplies from the West to help them will surely be C-17 shiploads of generators. But the new strategy is devastating for the Ukrainian people. Putin claimed he didn't want to destroy Ukraine but he does want to destroy the willingness of the Ukrainian people to fight on. The next two months are going to be crucial. Putin is hoping it will go his way. But I suspect President Zelensky, the feisty Kyiv leader, has more tricks up his sleeve to undermine if not defeat Putin's objectives.

BoJo will be back

I really don't see anything stopping Boris Johnson from making a triumphant (well, not triumphant) return to Downing Street. He has interrupted his holiday in the Carribean for heaven's sake, so he must be reasonably confident. Whether Carrie, his wife, is happy I somehow doubt and I can imagine the conversation they must have had while gazing at the calm blue waters of the Carribean. "Do you really want to give up all the riches you are going to make as an ex-prime minister and all those trips we planned to go back to that hellhole?" she probably said. "It's my destiny," he must have replied. "The riches can come later.....er darling." So he's on his way back to sound out his colleagues about going for the Big Job again. He already knows, thanks to his fellow Etonian colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg, that he has been inundated with promises from Tory MPs to back him. Even Ben Wallace, the defence secretary who doesn't want the Downing Street job, has said he is leaning towards a Boris return. That's the new expression. The country, like it or not, is leaning towards Boris. Again.

Farwell Liz Truss, welcome back.....Boris?

Nothing is out of the question in this country of mine. Boris could possibly be summoned back to Number 10 to serve once again as prime minister after Liz Truss's spectacular fall from grace. King Charles who said "oh dear, oh dear" the last time he saw Truss for a private audience at Buckingham Place will no doubt be saying "oh dear for heaven's sake" when he next sees her to receive her resignation after just 45 days in office. I expect the late departed Queen could hardly believe it when she had to receive Boris's resignation and shortly afterwards Truss's take-over premiership all in one day - 24 hours or so before she finally had enough and passed from this life, much to the shock and dismay of the whole world. The former Prince of Wales and now King Charles III has had only a few weeks to take over the reins of the reign before confronting his first constitutional crisis. Oh dear indeed. If Bois gets anointed as the prime minister the second time round, poor old Charles will be almost lost for words. But perhaps: "Oh it's you again, prime ministe, welcome back." There are other candidates of course. The super-ambitious Rishi Sunak, former chancellor, will want to push everyone else out of the way and is no doubt selling his wares too all and sundry to persuade them to let him be the sole candidate, so he can get on with doing what he promised to do the last time he campaigned for the Number 10 job which was exactly the opposite to what Truss was promising and which Jeremy Hunt has kindly announced as HIS idea. Hunt won't be standing for the premiership for some reason although I can't blame him. So there is also Penny Mordaunt who as far as I know isn't an economist, Ben Wallace who doesn't want it, he says, and possibly Tom, Dick and Harry. Fill in the surnames. So if not enough people want Sunak, not yet anyway, dear old Boris could be back. I can just see him turning as he enters through the famous door, waving to adoring crowds (actually hugely cynical reporters and TV crews) and reentering Number 10 like a Churchillian beast.

If Nato never gives in what will Putin do?

Vladimir Putin has always had much bigger ambitions than just seizing Ukrainian territory. He wants Nato driven back from eastern Europe, he wants disunity between the US and its Atlantic partners, he wants Russia to be a bigger power capable of knocking the US off its global perch and he wants a new order in the world, dominated by Moscow and his friend in Beijing. He has always hated America and thinks it's time the US was no longer able to dictate anything in the world. Ukraine is important to Putin but only as part of his overall plan to change the structure of the world and put himself at the top of it. It's a big, nee huge, concept and despite all the battlefield setbacks in Ukraine I reckon he still thinks he's on the way to achieving his dream. This is why he is threatening to use nuclear weapons, not to try and end the war in Ukraine like the US did in Japan in 1945, but to put the whole world, especially the western part, on notice that he is ready to resort to even the most extreme method to bring the international commúnity under his wing. It's that bold an ambition. Essentially, he wants to rule the world, and he's not really bothered about Ukraine putting up a fight. If he really wanted he could launch every ballistic missile he has left, plus the ones coming from Iran soon, to obliterate Ukraine. He is holding back in the hope that either Ukraine or Washington/Europe will cave in and play homage to him. If he doesn't get his way, I still don't think he will shelve his global dream whatever happens. Ukraine is just the first step.

Putin is fighting back

Vladimir Putin is fighting back and I reckon he thinks he's in with a chance to improve things on the battlefield before winter sets in. There are two reasons for this. First, his missile bombardment followed by kamikaze drone attacks on Kyiv and other cities have caused terror and fears for the future. Just what he wanted. And second the first batches of the 300,000 mobilised reserve troops have arrived and are settling in to help defend towns and cities taken from Ukraine. All the intelligence and defence experts are saying that the reservists are ill-trained, badly equipped and lacking in motivation. But while that may be the case with the basic troops, Putin has mobilised a lot of reservists who have skills which could play a crucial role in boosting Russian defences. This will include technical skills. So the combination of kamikazi harassment and more troops pouring in might just give Putin the edge he has been desperately searching for and blunt the Ukrainian counter-offensives. The poor Ukrainians have got to put up with electricty blackouts and shortage of water supplies because of the deliberate Russian targeting of critical infrastructure. So conditions are deteriorating. The war is going to get worse, much worse for the Ukrainians over the next few months unless the current counter-offensives in the south and east make a significant breakthrough, such as seizing back of the southern city of Kherson. If they do that, the Russians will be trapped in the south. But it's going to require a huge effort and right now progress is very slow. Meanwhile, Putin is hoping his "special military operation" is getting somewhere at last.

How to deal with Iran's kamikaze armed drones?

The Iranian-made Shahed-136 armed rones currently being launched against Ukraine gives Russian troops four advantages: they are small, hardly visible on radar, can be fired from a long distance, fly low and are therefore more difficult to detect and, with an 88lb explosive warhead, pack a considerable punch. However, they are not sophisticated weapons.They have no precision-guided systems on board. They are believed to have only commercial-class satellite navigation. The Shahed-136 has the ability to loiter over a target but can only hit stationary objects. So, provided Ukraine has the appropriate detection capabilities, they can be shot down with basic anti-defence systems. The Ukrainian military has already achieved a number of successful hits with their Soviet-built radar-guided ZSU-23-4 Shilka anti-aircraft system which has four 23mm auto-cannons. However, the new challenge comes from what are commonly called drone-swarm attacks where a target is struck with dozens of low-level kamikaze (no going back) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Those which get through air defences can deliver multiples of 88lb “bombs” on selected large civilian or military targets, creating terror as well as destruction. Nato members and other countries are rushing to provide anti-air systems that will help Ukraine to confront the swarm-drone threat. Sophisticated systems, such as the US Patriot anti-missile weapon, are not the answer. They are exclusively designed to shoot down ballistic missiles. What Ukraine needs are more advanced systems developed to combat the growing use of armed drones on the battlefield as well as for wider aerial threats posed by fighter aircraft, bombers and cruise missiles This is where the American NASAMS weapon (national advanced surface-to--air missile system) should be able to play a significant role in protecting Ukrainian cities from the Iranian kamikaze drones. NASAMS are already deployed in the US and a number of other countries for homeland defence. The Pentagon is sending two of the systems and is accelerating their delivery to help against the kamikaze drones The UK is supplying AMRAAM (advanced medium-range air-to-air missile) rockets which can be used with the NASAMS air defence system. One question is whether Israel will officially help in supplying anti-drone weapons to Ukraine. Israel has led the way in designing special systems for this threat and has them deployed along its borders with Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. It has been reported that an Israeli defence contractor has sent such systems to Poland and they may have been transferred to Ukraine. The Israeli government has so far refused to sell advanced arms to Ukraine.

Biden steps out of line to criticise Liz Truss

Did Joe Biden do one of his familiar gaffes by criticising Liz Truss's economic policy or did he think his pennyworth on the subject that is rocking the United Kingdom would help America's closest (or used to be ) ally? Well it clearly won't help Truss who is spending the weekend at her (not for long) prime ministerial residence, Chequers, talking no doubt very earnestly with her new chancellor Jeremy Hunt about basic mathematics, ie making stuff add up. To be fair to Biden the US economy is going along very nicely, but it was a bit smug of him and not very alliance-friendly to kick her when she is down. It was a fair old wallop from the president of the United States. He tried to explain that an economy as large as the UK's needed to be in step with America's for everyone's sake. Sensible but still a smack in the mouth for poor old Truss who now looks so hang-dog that you do worry about her mental state. She will do her best to stay as prime minister but to be told by Biden that what she and her ex-chancellor announced only a few weeks ago was "a mistake" should finally make her sit up and abandon the lot and start again. This is pretty much what Hunt will be telling her in no uncertain terms at Chequers. If Truss IS kicked out by her party, Biden will have played a role. Personally, I think he should have shut up and not answered the question he was asked on TV.

Is Putin trying to be benevolent?

Vladimir Putin's announcement that he has no plans for more large-scale bombardment of Ukraine (for the moment) was intended, I suppose, to put the people of that poor suffering country at ease. Like a sortof benevolent gesture. Well no one is fooled by that. Putin says he doesn't want to destroy Ukraine but the multiple ballistic and cruise missiles he launched at cities and towns across Ukraine in the last week gave a very different picture of what Putin wants. Basically he wants the people of Ukraine to be overwhelmed by fear and terror. He certainly achieved that over the last week. But above all his message given to reporters about calling off the mass bombardment was for the Kyiv government: you try and bomb my beautiful Kerch Strait Bridge again and you will get more of this missile bombardment. It's going to take months to repair the damage to the bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea and Putin is desperately anxious to deter Kyiv from having another go, or doing something else that would cause him humiliation. I suspect the Kyiv government will answer his "benevolence" with an even greater surge in fighting to drive Putin's troops out of Ukraine.

Can Liz Truss ever stabilise the UK economy?

In her four answers to questions at her press conference today after she had sacked the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, the month-old prime minister, made it clear that she had a duty to stay on as boss in 10 Downing Street because she felt it was vital to stabilise the economy. Excuse me? Truss and her former chancellor have done more in the last week to destabilise the economy than anyone I can think of in recent or even far-off history. Yet she didn't appear to see the contradiction. She destabilised the economy massively with her tax-cutting gamble but still believes she is the one to bring growth and prosperity to the country. All four questions were roughly the same: how can she stay on as prime minister and why hasn't she apologised for messing up the economy. Her replies were pretty much word for word the same. She wanted to "deliver" growth and was determined to stick with her economic mandate that persuaded Conservatives to vote for her rather than Rishi Sunak while at the same abandoning two of the highest-profile components of her "mini-budget" in order to calm the markets. Again she didn't see the contradiction. Many commentators are now saying she has to go and one even claimed she would be gone by the end of the weekend. That's probably tosh. She showed absolutely no sign of considering leaving Number 10 and, quite cleverly, appointed Jeremy Hunt, former foreign secretary and health secretary, as the new chancellor who will no doubt try and reverse even more of the mini-budget pledges. So unless lot of boring men in grey suits come to cart her off in a removal van I suspect she will fight to stay on, using the argument that it's best for economic stability for her to remain prime minister and complete her mandate....eventually. Boris Johnson must be chortling.

Rebellion in the UK Conservative party

As each day goes by, the plottings emerging from within the Conservative party have become so hysterical that it will be a wonder if Liz Truss survives another week as prime minister. There has been nothing like this in the history of government in the UK. After one budget which, when announced, catapulted the value of the pound downwards, placed everyone's pensions at risk and sent the markets into panic, Truss appears on the verge of either being ousted as prime minister as well as her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng or being forced to reverse everything that was announced to "make the economy grow". And if she is forced to drop her tax reductions scheme it will be so humiliating she will have to resign anyway. I suspect what will happen is that Kwarteng will make one more U-turn to calm the markets but try and hang on to the rest of the Truss economic proramme. That won't calm the Conservative MPs who are in rebellious mood and are talking of chucking her out and her chancellor and replacing them with Rishi Sunak, Truss's main rival for the job of prime mnister, and Penny Mordaunt who also tried to win the 10 Downing Street race. But can they really do that? Just throw her out and change the leader? Surely the right constitutional decision would be to hold a general election so the country can decide? But if that were to happen, the Conservatives would lose big time and they would all be confined to opposition status for the next decade. Truss and Kwarteng must be contemplating their future like never before. Whatever happens it's humiliating not just for them but for the reputation of the whole country in the eyes of the world.

Ukraine is becoming a supremely well armed nation

Ukraine is fast becoming one of the best armed countries on the planet. First, the Kyiv government has received so many of the West's most advanced weapons that the warfighting equipment sent by Putin for his invasion strategy have failed to cope. All they have managed to do with some success is fire medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine but always from a safe distance across the border in Russia or Belarus or the Black Sea. Second, Ukraine has captured huge quantities of Russian equipment, from tanks and armoured vehicles to rifles and ammunition. In fact the Ukrainian military has been overwhelmed with abandoned tanks. The Russian tank crews have just hopped out and run. Now Nato members are sending loads of air-defence systems and I have no doubt that in the next few months Russian fighter aircraft and comabt helicopters are going to be incraesingly shot out of the sky. Putin now knows for absolutely sure that Nato is not going to back down in supporting Ukraine, so President Zelensky can be confident of making the Russian invasion force suffer. In just seven months Ukraine has been transformed from a medium-ranking military power equipped with mostly old Soviet weaponry, plus some cleverly designed domestic systems, to a seriously competitive nation able to fight off a country which thought it was a military superpower but patently is not.

Russian foreign minister offers talks with Biden

The good thing about the reported offer by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, to have talks with the Biden administration about ending the war in Ukraine is that it shows Putin is now desperate to bring his disastrous "special military operation" to a close to avoid further humiliation. The bad thing is that Putin and Lavrov cannot ever be trusted and all they want is to save face while still hanging on to as much of Ukrainian territory as possible. But that is never going to happen so any talks would be a waste of time. What this is really about is Putin is trying to blame Biden and the US for the war or at least for the continuation of the war and if the US refuses to negotiate with him, he will tell the world that he tried to bring peace but Biden wanted the war to carry on in order to try and destroy Russia. Putin's latest gambit is so transparently false that it should be dismissed. The US State Department has effectively done this. So let's focus on why Putin has come up wkth this offer after seven months of war. He is losing and losing badly and he needs someone else to blame.

Putin did what I predicted

Putin ordered a mass missile retaliation against Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine, just as I predicted yesterday. It wasn't a difficult prediction. Putin has been coming under fire from the most extreme elements in Russia to be more aggressive against Ukraine and also to use nuclear weapons. The attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia to Crimea gave him the opportunity to appease his strongest critics who appear to want Ukraine bombed back to the Stone Age. Putin will feel he has got his critics back on side. This is dangerous for Ukraine and for the West. While the attack on the Kerch Bridge was an amazing spectacular, it has given Putin added momentum to be even more vicious and violent against the Kyiv government. I doubt he will stop now. He will be so determined to keep Crimea that any further attacks by Ukraine on the Kerch Bridge or Crimea itself are likely to be met with similar attacks on Ukrainian cities. I still think it unlikely Putin will turn to tactical nuclear weapons but he will keep threatening to use them to try and deter Ukraine from becoming too ambitious. The attack on the Kerch Bridge was a turning point. But I'm afraid to say it has given Putin even more of an appetite to punish and overwhelm Ukraine.

What will Putin do now?

Putin is to convene his national security council tomorrow and high on the agenda will be the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge by a huge explosion. Putin has called it an act of terrorism by Ukraine, so I expect he has already decided what to do by way of retaliation. He may listen to the views of the national security council but he wwill have made up his mind. As for accusing Ukraine of an act of terrorism, what are the missile attacks on housing blocks if not terrorism? The whole invasion of Ukraine is a monstrous act of terrorism. But Putin won't see it that way of course. He will justify it in his mind as a necessary measure in his special operation. He will also no doubt justify whatever retaliation he has decided on for the explosion on Kerch Bridge as an appropriate response. No one knows what he will do, not even his advisers because they know by now that their president does what he wants when he wants. I fear that he will take revenge on the capital, Kyiv, because it symbolises for him the first major failure in his war plan. He was sure he could take Kyiv in days and gave little thought to Volodymyr Zelensky. He never imagined for a moment that Zelensky would become a great war leader and that Ukraine would fight so hard. Zelensky and his armed forces stand in the way of victory, and the Kerch Bridge attack is the latest humiliating blow to Putin's reputation and legacy. So I definitely fear for the Ukrainian capital. I hope I'm wrong.

The latest humiliation for Vladimir Putin

How much more can Putin take before he realises he is not just humiliated in the eyes of Russians and the world but is facing one of the biggest defeats in the history of his country? The Kerch Bridge built at a cost of $3.7 billion, linking the Russian mainland to the annexed Crimea, has been severely damaged after what seems to have been a brilliant sabotage mission by the Ukrainians. This has been on the cards for months. General Philip Breedlove, forner Supreme Allied Commander Europe (Saceur), told me a few months ago that the bridge should and could be targeted. The Russians must have been expecting it and yet when it happened it clearly came as a surprise. The Russians are being outsmarted at every turn. A section of the road route along the 12-mile bridge has collapsed, hampering what has been a vital supply route for the Russian troops in southern Ukraine. It's a massive blow to Putin. He opened the bridge in 2018 and the huge explosion will be seen as another spectacular carried out by the Kyiv government to further humiliate the Russian leader. The sinking of the missie cruiser Moskva in April was of course the first spectacular. The second was the attack on a Russian airbase in Crimea. The Ukrainians are attacking at will and there seems to be nothing the Russians can do to stop them. President Zelensky, not that long ago a professional comedian, has become more and more bellicose and seems intent - and why not? - on driving every Russian soldier out of Ukraine, including out of Crimea. The way things are looking this might just be possible. But then what? Even the triumphant Zelensky must think ahead to what the future will be like if Russia suffers such a catastrophic defeat. Will this make the world a safer place or a hundred times more dangerous?

Biden should stop talking about Armageddon

Why is President Biden talking about Armageddon? Isn't this is falling into the trap set by Putin who wants to scare the West? Biden said this week that the possibility of nuclear Armageddon was as real as it was in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had already warned that Putin would face catastrophic consequences if he fired tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. But Biden went further when he painted the most frightening scenario, of a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia if Putin turns to tactical nukes. The fact is there is far too much scaremongering. All those reports this week about a special nuclear train on the move to Ukraine were just dangerous speculation. Sure, there was a train with armoured vehicles on board that come from a unit that is associated with nuclear weapons. But the unit has other roles too, and the Pentagon as good as dismissed the scare reports by saying there were no new developments that indicated Putin was preparing the ground for nuke use in Ukraine. So let's keep the scaremongering down. And please, Joe Biden, stop talkng about Armageddon.

The biggest warship in the world now on deployment

The first of a new generation of US aircraft super carriers costing more than $13 billion has set off for its inaugural deployment four years later than originally scheduled. USS Gerald R Ford, nuclear-powered and 112,000 tons, is 14ft longer than the current Nimitz-class carriers, making it the largest warship in the world. It has been designed with more than 20 new technologies including an electro-magnetic rather than steam-generated system for catapulting fighter jets off the flight deck. The carrier which suffered multiple technical mishaps since construction began in 2005 left the Norfolk naval station in Virginia to cross the Atlantic for exercises with allied navies including from France, Germany, Sweden and Spain. The exercises will take place in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean where Russian warships have been increasingly operating in recent months. The Gerald R Ford was accompanied by a strike group consisting of one cruiser, three guided-missile destroyers and supply ships. It's the first time in 40 years that the US Navy has deployed a newly-designed carrier. The Ford-class carriers will replace the Nimitz-class ships which have been in operation since the 1970s. The inaugural deployment of the next-generation super carrier comes at a time when China is making rapid progress in designing and constructing carriers to rival America's most powerful naval war-fighting platform. China still has only three carriers against America's 11. But the next class is expected to be nuclear-powered for the first time and it will also be fitted with electromagnetic catapults, copying the US Navy's design. The Gerald R Ford was formally commissioned in 2017 by President Trump who caused a stir in the navy when he denounced the new-style catapult system which was then suffering malfunctions and urged the return to steam. However, the Ford-class carriers use electromagnetic technology not just for the catapults but also for the elevators that bring weapons up from the lower decks to the aircraft on the flight deck. The elevator doors, like the catapults, suffered technical problems and played a key part in the construction delays. Construction of the next two Ford-class carriers, USS John F Kennedy and USS Enterprise, are well underway.

Putin and Lavrov living in cloud cuckoo land

Sometimes you have to wonder who is briefing whom in the Kremlin. Ukraine-based Russian journalists reporting from the frontlines are saying that Russian troops are on the run and losing ground in the east and south. It's so bad for the Russians in Kherson in the south that they are being driven into a geographic cul-de-sac with nowhere to hide. Either they will have to surrender en masse or they will die fighting. Thousands could perish. Yet back in Moscow Putin and his stooge Sergey Lavrov, the so-called foreign minister, are saying that all the land recently lost to the Ukrainians will be recovered and the four provinces supposedly annexed will be fully restored to Russian control and become part of the Russian motherland for ever. Is the defence minister Sergei Shoigu getting false reports from Ukraine and briefing Putin that everything is going smoothly or is he living in the same cloud cuckoo land as his boss and Lavrov? If the whole world knows that Russia is losing ground and troops in eastern and southern Ukraine, why are the Kremlin leaders so convinced that it is all going to change for the better soon? Sending more troops isn't going to help. They will just get slaughtered especially if they are the 300,000 extra recruits being mobilised who are being sent to fight with inadequate training and rusty old AK47 rifles. And there's no point in bombing the provinces to hell because there will be nothing left to annexe. So Putin and Lavrov, we are not fooled by your optimism. You are the ones being fooled or fooling yourselves. So good luck in cloud cuckoo land.

Does Putin think he is winning his overall global strategy?

Putin has never been a one for narrow strategic thinking. So the invasion of Ukraine was not just about taking over a neighbour before it ended up in the hands of the hated Nato alliance and the dominating United States of America. It was also about putting Russia back in its rightful place, in his view, as a world player confronting the US, strategically, diplomatically and, crucially, ideologically. Putin has always had a grand vision. Ever since Mikhail Gorbachov caused the Warsaw Pact to collapse and the Soviet empire to wither away, he was determined to return the Russian Motherland to greatness. The invasion of Ukraine was all part of that and even though his army in Ukraine has failed abysmally, Putin is still making strides to ruin Europe's economies, deprive European homes of energy, force divisions in the western alliance and generally make everyone in the West fear him. The threat to use nuclear weapons is very much a key part of his plan to scare the West and keep the whole world guessing. In that sense he is winning his strategic plan and if western leaders don't see that and believe that Putin's defeats in Ukraine are proof that he is losing and that Russia is finished as a nation, then they should think again.

Can't imagine Putin will risk going nuclear

The Kremlin I'm sure is in turmoil, wondering what to do next to stall the Ukrainian military storming into the provinces in eastern Ukraine which Putin thinks he has annexed. There are all kinds of reports today of a nuclear-weapons train emerging from its hangar onto tracks and a submarine with a nuclear-capable super torpedo on board heading for the Arctic, all intended to scare the bejesus out of Nato and Washington. But this is Putin flapping around not knowing what to do and just turning to the one set of weapons which make him feel macho. Everything else has failed: his MiG and Su fighter jets, his tanks, armoured vehicles, warships, artillery and, above all, his army. So all he has left are his nukes, big ones, enormous ones and small ones. That's what he is doing right now, showing off the big stuff to prove to the world that he can still win his battle with the West. But I doubt Nato leaders are that impressed. Ok, several have warned that Putin might not be bluffing, but for heaven's sake if he really is contemplating firing off a nuke, then he must know he is finished. One way or another he will be severely punished and Russia will be more isolated from the rest of the world than North Korea. Any sensible Russian left in Russia will leave. Everything Putin has been accumulating for his pensioner days - villas, super yachts, fat bank accounts in Geneva - will be seized. Putin cannot want that. So he is now facing the biggest decision of his life: destroy everything or give up his war in Ukraine. For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24 I am beginning to think that if he doesn't end the fighting, others in the Kremlin will step in. Let's hope it's soon.

US will not abandon Ukraine whatever Putin does next

Everyone now seems to be talking about the risk of Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, is the latest top American official to declare that he sees this as a possibility. But in a TV interview he went on to repeat what Joe Biden has said on a number of occasions, that the US will continue to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes". But for as long as what takes? Victory for Ukraine over Russia? The total defeat of Russia? The liberation of all Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea? Or did Austin just mean that for as long as the war is going on in Ukraine the US will carry on supplying weapons without actually specifying the end game? There are a lot of imponderables here? What is Biden's objective in Ukraine and does it include making sure Russia can never again repeat an invasion of a neighbouring country? Remember, Austin said that several months ago and got ticked off by Biden. But surely that's what the White House would like? In which case the longer the war goes on the better the chance that everything Putin throws into Ukraine in terms of manpower and weapons will be destroyed, captured or surrendered. And that would pose a huge headache for Putin in the next ten years because he would no longer have a functioning army. Would that be a good outcome or a dangerous outcome. It would surely make it more likely that Putin WOULD turn to weapons of mass destrction to get his revenge and stay in power. So no one really knows what Biden, Austin and others really mean when they say the US and Nato will last the course, arming Ukraine "for as long as it takes". Still, as a declaration it should certainly scare Putin, or at least make him ponder his next move.

Putin's annexation programme is doomed to fail

When Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 he did it without a prolonged war. In fact not a shot was fired. Today is different. He has annexed four provinces in easten and southern Ukraine even though he hasn't yet occupied and conquered them, and shots are very much being fired - by Ukraine with US-supplied heavy artillery. I wonder if Putin sees the difference here. He is annexing territory which at this moment in time is being seized back by the Ukranian military. So the annexation is not only illegal, it is meaningless and someone should tell Putin that eastern and southern Ukraine are not like Crimea. Putin has made a fool of himself and if there are people with brains and a bit of courage in the Kremlin, they should whisper in his ear, "Mr President, Russia is a mockery in the eyes of the world, it is time to call this whole thing off".