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A foreign affairs expert’s bleak assessment of the state of global security Are we on the brink of a new world war? This bleak subject is increasingly invoked by leaders, soldiers and officials, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin to the heads of our military and intelligence services. It’s an urgent theme, then, for the FT foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman to explore in his latest survey of global diplomacy. Rachman draws his title from the expression, sometimes attributed to Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” – the idea being that conflict doesn’t much care whether we like to think about it or not: it will come knocking on our doors regardless. Clearly, humanity is in a particularly unsafe spot right now, but seeing our security issues laid out like this, catalogued and mapped and analysed, they seem almost overwhelming. To summarise: the most powerful, nuclear-armed states – the US, China and Russia – are led by unscrupulous, self-dealing “strongmen”, each of whom is playing with the nationalist “Great Again” politics epitomised by Trump. Democracy is being rolled back around the world, and even bastions of liberalism such as the UK, France and Germany seem vulnerable to takeover by the Putin-friendly far right. The so-called rules-based international order and its institutions – the UN, the WTO, Nato – are being deliberately undermined by the aforementioned strongmen, and are as weak now as they have ever been. Continue reading...

If the U.S. pulls back from NATO, that could dramatically increase the chances Vladimir Putin launches atomic attacks to reconquer territories once part of Soviet Russia.

A first tanker carrying Russian diesel to the United States under a new import agreement has set sail, the Kremlin said Friday, two weeks after President Donald Trump said he struck a deal with President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

A tanker loaded with diesel fuel set sail Friday from Russia for the United States, the first shipment since President Donald Trump agreed a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release more fuel into the global market.

The Kremlin said Friday that the first tanker carrying Russian diesel to the U.S. under the new import agreement has set sail, just two weeks after President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin finalized the deal.

In a push to close deals, Trump has pivoted toward Putin.

Russia has sought to separate the war in Ukraine from potential business deals and diplomacy with the United States. Its efforts now appear to be working.

Europe’s leaders can no longer trust a word that comes out of Washington. No more slaps on the wrist – we need concrete steps to punish Trump Historical comparisons are always inexact. No one conflict precisely mirrors another. Yet Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries more than a noxious whiff of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt in Munich in 1938 to head off war with Nazi Germany. To be fair to the former UK prime minister – and history largely hasn’t been – his peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France who, like him, were desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the first world war. Trump enjoys no equivalent public support for his treachery . Nor does he face the prospect of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and utterly contemptible. US-Russian talks on agreeing the shoddy terms of a precedent-setting American sell-out of Ukraine are at an advanced stage, after meetings in St Petersburg this week. Trump has zigzagged over the war ever since returning to office. Now, panicked by record-low poll ratings , he seems determined to scapegoat Ukraine and force its de facto capitulation. Recent steps – his shocking decision to fund Putin’s war machine by buying Russian diesel, his waiving of tougher sanctions, his mysterious, lethal interruptions in US satellite and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and his renewed attempt to oust Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – mark Trump out as the skulking Judas, the craven Brutus of the modern age. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. All that’s lacking is an umbrella. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

US envoy Steve Witkoff hailed Vladimir Putin as a “true humanitarian” after the Kremlin released a 74-year-old retired teacher accused of fighting for Kyiv and agreed to trilateral talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Stephen Hubbard’s release is welcome, but it doesn’t change Russia’s hostility to U.S. interests.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that officials would be ready to resume peace talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States after Nov. 10.

The Trump administration praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” for releasing a detained US citizen, the latest White House move to curry favor with Russia in its efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin agreed Wednesday to resume trilateral negotiations with Washington and Kyiv on ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said. The Russian leader has agreed "in principle" to resume the talks after Nov. 10...

The Russian leader has agreed "in principle" to resume the talks after Nov. 10, Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters following a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff.

Russia on Wednesday released a retired American teacher who had been imprisoned on charges of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. The release of Stephen Hubbard had ...