Free Republic

There is a tendency these days to conflate successful diplomacy with garnering favourable headlines. Negotiating powder is rarely kept dry. Keeping an opponent guessing about one’s intentions and capabilities is secondary to issuing punchy soundbites that play well with the media. Politicians, feeling the hand of history on their shoulder, fall victim to grandiosity — until grim reality taps them on the other one. This is now happening to Sir Keir Starmer as he watches his vaunted “coalition of the willing” for a muscular European peacekeeping force in Ukraine evaporate. As reported in this newspaper, appeals from Britain and France...

Volodymyr Zelensky says he has again discussed the notion of deploying Western troops to Ukraine to face down future Russian aggression in a telephone call with his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron. The Ukrainian and French presidents continue to be the central nexus of organisation for a mooted deployment of Western troops to support Kyiv. Zelensky confirmed he had discussed the matter again with Macron on Monday evening. Announcing the call, Zelensky said the pair had discussed the battlefield situation and agreed to continue working closely on “achieving peace and developing effective security guarantees.” Zelensky said one of those guarantees...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Ukraine for the first time in more than two years Monday and vowed to keep supporting Kyiv in the war, just weeks after he was rebuked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for having a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The conflict is approaching a pivotal new phase, with the new U.S. administration of Donald Trump taking office next month and potentially determining the trajectory of the war after the president-elect´s pledge to end the fighting. Ukraine is sensitive to whether cracks might be appearing in the unity of its...