Nightly, for months now, Ukraine’s towns were pounded by way of relentless aerial assaults. Along with its grinding and attritional floor offensives within the east and south of the rustic, since early summer season, the Russian army has a great deal expanded its air offensive in opposition to centres of inhabitants, having a look to cave in morale and undermine the Ukrainian other folks’s will to combat on.
And as iciness approaches, so the ones aerial bombardments have focused Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Again and again in fresh weeks, entire towns were plunged into chilly darkness as energy crops, transmission traces and regional and native substations are broken or destroyed. Rolling energy outages at the moment are commonplace, reportedly lasting as much as 14 hours in some circumstances.
So the most recent political scandal to hit the federal government of Volodymyr Zelensky may just hardly ever have come at a worse time for his nation. And to make issues worse, it revolves round Ukraine’s power trade.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption companies this week launched the findings of Operation Midas, an 18-month probe into Energoatom, the state-owned operator of all of Ukraine’s nuclear energy crops, investigating allegations of bribes and kickbacks stated to quantity to US$100 million (£76 million). Raids had been performed across the nation and 7 other folks were arrested.
What makes this so unhealthy for Zelensky is that one of the vital other folks named within the probe is a former industry spouse of his. Businessman Timur Mindich used to be the co-owner, with Zelensky, of Kvartal 95 Studio – the platform on which the Ukrainian president made his identify as a comic sooner than he entered politics (paradoxically, beneath the cases, as an anti-corruption candidate).
Mindich is reported to have left the rustic, however he’s stated to have connections to a number of senior executive ministers. The scandal dangers tainting the already embattled Zelensky executive by way of affiliation.
What’s worse, as Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko provide an explanation for, is that just a few months sooner than this scandal exploded, Zelensky attempted to convey Ukraine’s unbiased anti-corruption companies beneath the direct regulate of his executive. He sponsored down within the face of enormous demonstrations, however this newest corruption scandal is more likely to weaken him additional.
He has already misplaced his justice minister, German Galushchenko, and effort minister, Svitlana Hrynchuk. And, as Wolff and Malyarenko indicate, the very last thing Zelensky wishes whilst his Ecu allies debate how one can carry desperately wanted budget to stay preventing is a whiff of corruption surrounding his management.
Having spent the day debating how one can carry the large quantities of cash Ukraine will want in 2026, it seems that that the EU is final in on a most popular possibility. The Ecu Fee thought to be two major choices. One plan is for both the EU to borrow €140 billion (£124 billion) the usage of its long-term price range as collateral. Every other is to make use of the frozen Russian property as collateral for a mortgage to Ukraine, to be repaid after the struggle if Russia can pay reparations to Kyiv.
An concept floated by way of Norwegian economists to make use of Norway’s €1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund to ensure the mortgage used to be temporarily scotched by way of the rustic’s finance minister, former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who stated that whilst Norway used to be satisfied to give a contribution, it would now not be answerable for all of the quantity.
The next step will probably be to soothe the fears of Belgium, which is the place the property are held by way of securities depository Euroclear, {that a} a success felony problem by way of Russia may just depart it chargeable for reimbursement. The Kremlin has already made noises to this impact.
Veronika Hinman, the deputy director of the College of Portsmouth’s army training group, believes that whilst the huge injection of budget will no doubt allow Ukraine to proceed to combat, it’s not likely to be decisive. “It cannot deliver the manpower, weapons or morale,” she writes.
Hinman describes the somewhat dire scenario at the battlefield, the place Russia is slowly however no doubt beating again the defenders out of doors key towns akin to Pokrovsk and Huliaipole. The invaders proceed to press for a step forward in those strategically vital cities, which might let them make a push into central Ukraine.
The state of the war in Ukraine, November 11 2025.
Institute for the Learn about of Warfare
Russia has been unsuccessfully seeking to seize each Pokrovsk and Huliaipole for lots of months (its troops in short entered Huliaipole on March 5 2022, simplest a few weeks after the invasion began, and had been driven again). However the combat seems to be an increasing number of lopsided, writes Hinman. Russia will have misplaced greater than one million troops – killed or injured – however it has massive reserves and its retooled struggle financial system seems to be bearing up rather smartly, regardless of US sanctions.
So the desire for extra money from the EU grows ever extra important, Hinman writes. However she worries that “in the end, this latest wave of aid may buy Ukraine time – but it’s unlikely to deliver victory”.
Trump: lawfare and international relations
In america, in the meantime, blows had been struck in a unique more or less struggle as a Florida prosecutor issued subpoenas to a variety of officers that america president believes are a part of the “deep-state” opposition to his presidency.
Whilst you have a look at the objectives of those subpoenas, which come with former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence respectable Peter Strzok, former FBI legal professional Lisa Web page and previous director of nationwide intelligence James Clapper, the considering turns into transparent. They all had been concerned within the federal investigation into alleged hyperlinks between Russian intelligence and Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
As we all know, beneath instruction from Trump, the Justice Division has already long past after a number of of the president’s enemies, together with former FBI director James Comey, former nationwide safety adviser John Bolton and New York legal professional total Letitia James.
It’s all a part of what has develop into referred to as the “grand conspiracy”, writes Robert Dover, knowledgeable in intelligence from the College of Hull. And it seems that as though the Trump management is gearing up for some severe lawfare.
As Dover observes, whether or not or now not those investigations in reality finally end up with someone going through court docket is, whilst now not immaterial, now not the entire level of the workout. In america, those investigations can take an enormous toll on their objectives: emotionally, financially and health-wise.
Dover issues to a brand new unit within the Division of Justice, the “weaponization working group”, whose director, Ed Martin, stated his process used to be to show and discredit other folks he believes to running in opposition to the president: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them.” This, writes Dover, is an entire inversion of the normal means of: “charge crimes, not people”.
It looks like any other step at the street to authoritarian executive, he observes.
The incumbent of the Oval Place of business, in the meantime, won the (somewhat) new chief of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, this week. He’s the primary Syrian chief ever to talk over with the White Area and the talk over with represents a substantial upward thrust to energy and respectability for anyone who, till a yr in the past, used to be main an rebel team in opposition to Syria’s Assad regime. His Hayat Tahrir al-Sham used to be, till July, proscribed by way of america as a terrorist organisation.
However, as William Plowright, a Syria skilled from Durham College, issues out, way back to 2015, former CIA director David Petraeus advised that america will have to believe running with the organisation which later turned into al-Sharaa’s team, Jabhat al-Nusra, in opposition to Islamic State.
New absolute best friends: US president Donald Trump and Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, on the White Area in Washington on November 10.
Related Press / Alamy
As Plowright observes, there are upsides for each Trump and al-Sharaa in placing up a running courting, now not least of which is that it might deprive Iran of its closest best friend within the area.
