While the first demand has already been broadly accepted by the international community – though not by Ukraine, the latter two clearly push beyond the West’s defensive positions. It is no accident that Vladimir Putin appeared on the front lines on Wednesday for only the second time since the war began – and, for the first time, in combat fatigues. The negotiations, he is signalling, will not only be held in the Kremlin.

If indeed a letter has been passed to Washington laying out the maximal demands above, the second track of the negotiations will play out on the battlefield: the longer Russia stalls on a 30-day ceasefire, the more chance it has of totally recapturing the western region of Kursk, thus depriving Ukraine of one of its trade-able cards, not to mention morale.

Putin’s objection to foreign peacekeepers could be that familiar negotiating tactic: a maximalist demand, thrown out in order to be later “ceded” as a “concession” to the other side. The real goal – and the hard line – will be cementing the status of “Novorossiya”, the fruit of a war that has cost Russia so many tens of thousands of lives.

The findings were contained in a report from a joint investigation by two German newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, that alleged Merkel decided to keep the bombshell that she learned about in 2020 “under lock and key.” Merkel likely made the decision to keep the explosive report secret at least in-part because she did not want to help President Donald Trump’s re-election prospects in 2020 when much of the world resisted his well-founded claims that China was responsible for what happened.

The report noted that the phrase that Merkel repeatedly used to justify her failed policies — that she had “no alternative” but to do what she did — served as the inspiration for the Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

That means job opportunities and prosperity Denmark has NOT delivered. 4 out of 5 major parties want independence from Denmark. The debate isn't IF, it's WHEN. Now a pro-business party is in the driver's seat. But Trump's plan likely INCLUDES independence! Same as our deals with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Trump's plan could mean:

• Massive financial aid and US investment


• US passports and social services for Greenlanders


• Defense protection


• Employment for Greenland's impoverished youth

This isn't about "buying" Greenland. It's about strategic partnership and mutual benefit. And with anti-American leftists OUT of power, everything is now on the table.

“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD,” Trump wrote, adding that the hike would come into effect on Wednesday.

The president also demanded Canada drop what he had described as an “anti-American farmer tariff of 250% to 390% on various US dairy products,” as well as other “egregious” levies. A failure to comply will result in further action, namely the targeting of Canadian car production using measures set to “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business,” Trump warned.

"When my uncle was president, 3% of Americans had chronic disease. Today, 60% do. We have 66% of adults are diabetic or pre-diabetic, 38% of teens. When you and I were kids, Sean, the average pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime, over a 40 or 50-year career. Today, one out of every three kids in his office door is diabetic or pre-diabetic.”

“Diabetes and other mitochondrial diseases are now costing America more than our military budget,” he continued. “We spend two to three times on healthcare than what other countries do, and we have the worst outcomes. And it’s not — and we have the best medical system in the world. We are poisoning ourselves and it’s coming from, you know, principally these ultra-processed foods and what we’re trying to do, and this President Trump wants us, to have radical transparency and to incentivize companies like this one to switch to traditional ingredients like beef tallow.”

Donald Trump’s America is putting itself first, reshaping the world, trashing allies and waging idiotic trade wars. Europe, mired in decadence and welfarism, is interested primarily in our military know-how, nuclear umbrella and, as always, our fisheries. Russia is a fascistic empire whose advances must be halted. China is a hostile civilisation. India doesn’t really care. International institutions and courts serve as useful idiots for proto-Marxists keen to destroy the West.

We comfort ourselves with tales of how we can serve as a bridge between Europe and the US, or build a coalition of the willing in Ukraine. It’s inspirational stuff, but it would be madness to cling to the certainties of the past. It’s time for a total reset of our assumptions, of our understanding of history, of our modus operandi, of our international role.

The Atlanticists and the pro-Europeans alike are wrong. We should be friendly to the US and EU, but beholden to neither. America saved Britain during World War I; it rescued us from totalitarianism in World War II; it destroyed Soviet tyranny in the Cold War. It earned the eternal gratitude of mankind. But those of us who love America must acknowledge how the US ruthlessly exploited its participation in the wars to demolish Britain’s financial, maritime and geopolitical power. It treats its allies as vassals, rather than equals.

The typical British worker would be £4,000 per year better off if productivity growth and wages in the UK had matched those of the US, said Max Mosley, economist at the Institute. “Economic stagnation over the past decade is now threatening the UK’s position as a place for a high standard of living. A combination of weak productivity growth driving near zero growth in real wages and cuts to welfare has resulted in a situation where we are neither delivering prosperity through high wages nor security through welfare,” he said. “That the poorest in our country now fare worse than those in nations once considered less affluent is a stark indictment of the UK’s economic social model.”

The irony, of course, is that Trump – persona non grata in polite European society – warned Germany back in 2018 that their dependence on Russian gas was a strategic liability. He was laughed at. Four years later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. It's incredible to see the same leaders who were content to let Putin pick apart Ukraine piece by piece until it was too late now decry Trump’s strong-arming and accuse him of appeasement.

Whatever security guarantees there are must be ironclad. Future Russian aggression must be deterred, not merely punished after the fact. And European leaders must take a hard look at their own failings – because, for all the condemnation of Trump’s tactics, his crude warnings about European negligence proved devastatingly accurate.

And here lies the uncomfortable truth: barring some unforeseen military miracle, Ukraine will likely have to cede the territory Russia now holds. Moscow won’t voluntarily withdraw, and Kyiv, despite its extraordinary resistance, is not winning. This is not fair, nor just – but it is reality. So, where do we go from here? A ceasefire is not a victory, nor is it justice. But the alternative – an endless war with no clear path to success – is worse.

No. There’s method here. The new administration is willing to risk a downturn – or “transition” – because it believes it can and must reset the US economy. The theory, tying together Right-wing anxieties about economics and culture, is that America is a drug addict, hooked on state spending/money printing and foreign imports. The stock market has been riding an unsustainable high triggered by Joe Biden’s handouts. Last week, at a speech in New York, Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, urged a “detox period” to kick these nasty habits.

“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream,” he argued; it’s prosperity, mobility and security. The Trump tariffs are designed to be a foreign policy tool – ie, bully Mexico into policing its border – but also to generate revenue; shift from buying things from abroad to making them at home; and to punish bad behaviour by friends who dump their goods in the US market while penalising imports from America.

Trump is thus pursuing a classic conservative strategy of shifting power and wealth from the state to the private sector, with the long-term goal of deficit reduction. Bessent said: “If we bring back more manufacturing, if we have cheap energy, good tax policy, deregulate, we will end up with a strong dollar,” which one assumes also means minimal inflation. It’s this or declining growth and bankruptcy. A civilisational turning point.

Meanwhile, foreign firms, including US allies and even Taiwan, are helping fuel China’s naval expansion. Over 75% of the output from China’s top-tier shipyards is purchased by non-Chinese entities, meaning that the very countries that should be strengthening their own shipbuilding capabilities are indirectly contributing to China’s military buildup. This is an alarming reality. The more foreign capital that flows into these Chinese shipyards, the more China’s naval power grows, further tilting the balance of power in the Pacific and beyond.

The erosion of US and allied shipbuilding capabilities cannot be overstated. It’s not just a matter of losing production capacity — it’s about national security and economic stability. If America is to maintain its status as a global leader, it must stop enabling China’s rise and start rebuilding its own industrial base.

He told PLSA delegates: “With my historian hat on, if I was writing a history book in 100 years' time about these times, then chapter one would be the post-war world 1945 to 1990. That was the Cold War, a dangerous time, but a stable time in many ways."

He said: “Chapter two would be 1990 to about 2015 which was a very lucky quarter of a century to be around. We still had 9/11, we still had the political crisis. It wasn't completely trouble free, but we thought liberal democracies would continue.”

“But now we can see, from about 2015 onwards, Brexit, Trump, Russia, pushing back China, that we entered a new chapter, chapter three. Where chapter one was dangerous and chapter two was exciting, we are now in chapter three of our history, and it is exciting and dangerous at the same time, and that is a very different period of history that we are now going to be living through.”