News & Comment

I think there was a desire on the Russian side to show that Russia is not isolated, it still has allies and friends, and this is a message that they’ve always wanted to push. India has been a very important part of that... And then the Russians want to secure long term sales for their defence industry, because they have put their defence companies into eight to 10 years of debt and forced them to invest their own money into expanding production capacity, when they can only make 2.8% profit selling to the Russian government during the war. So, they need customers after the war. Otherwise, a lot of these businesses are going to collapse and the Russians suffer an economic shock. So, the Russians are trying to lay this foundation to secure their economy and their military industrial base. On the Indian side, I think the government will have wanted to message the Americans and others, that, ‘we have these relationships’, that they’re important and that ‘we have options’ and that ‘you can’t just coerce us...But there wasn't a big public announcement about weapons and so on. I think there probably were more substantive conversations held in private but not announced. And I suspect that is because officials didn’t want to antagonize the US."

We are already in a kind of confrontational conflict with Russia and that they are using obvious military force to put pressure on European countries that are supporting Ukraine whilst also conducting classic subversion, sabotage and other covert actions in Europe. But we're not looking at an imminent Russian invasion of European NATO territory and giving that impression probably both downplays existing European military capability, it reduces our deterrent effect, but it also doesn't look that credible and probably causes some people to switch off. So that's what I mean when he I say that there is a delicate balancing act here. Now on Ukraine...The general view is that the Russians will be too tempted to... try and come back for more...some kind of temporary ceasefire might work, but it would require the Europeans to demonstrate they can put their forces where their mouth is in terms of a reassurance force"

Maduro is an expert in hanging on ... The US knows Maduro very well. Donald Trump dealt with Maduro from 2017 to 2021 he tried to create an exit for Maduro, a political one through elections. That didn't work, and I think Trump has learned his lesson in order on how to deal with Maduro this time."