RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Significant progress made on Ukraine ceasefire – Putin aide

The US-brokered energy truce was a major step towards ending the Ukraine conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitirev, has said during his trip to the US.

Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, traveled to Washington to discuss further steps in normalizing bilateral ties largely suspended in 2022. 

“We are noting a positive dynamic in our relations,” Dmitriev told reporters on Thursday evening.

He added that “significant progress has already been made” towards reaching a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

“For example, under the leadership of presidents [Vladimir] Putin and [Donald] Trump, an agreement has been made to refrain from strikes on energy infrastructure between Russia and Ukraine. It is a first step to deescalate the Ukraine conflict,” the envoy said.

Following a phone call with Trump on March 18, Putin said that he had instructed the Russian army to halt attacks on Ukrainian energy sites for 30 days. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky later endorsed the arrangement.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev has been routinely violating the truce, including four attacks on Russia’s energy sites on Thursday alone. Ukraine has been targeting fuel depots, gas facilities, and elements of the power grid, the MOD said.

Kiev has claimed that it was following the energy truce and accused Moscow of striking the gas facilities operated by the energy giant Naftogaz.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia and Ukraine trade new accusations on breaches of energy truce

Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Wednesday of launching new attacks against each other's energy facilities, in violation of a U.S.-brokered moratorium.

Both sides said they were providing details of the alleged violations to the United States, which persuaded Moscow and Kyiv to agree to the limited truce last month as a hoped-for stepping stone towards a full ceasefire.

Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine had conducted drone and shelling attacks in the western Kursk region that cut off power to over 1,500 households.

In the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Luhansk region, the state gas company said that a Ukraine drone strike on a gas distribution station had left more than 11,000 customers around the town of Svatove with limited access to gas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian drone hit an energy substation in Sumy region and artillery fire damaged a power line in Dnipropetrovsk, cutting off electricity to nearly 4,000 consumers.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is impatient with both sides to move faster towards ending the three-year war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the fact that President Vladimir Putin had agreed the energy truce was evidence he was serious about engaging in a peace process - something that Kyiv and some of its European allies dispute.

Peskov said that Moscow would keep working with the Americans despite what he called daily Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Russia was breaking the energy truce and called on the U.S. to boost sanctions against Moscow, as Trump has threatened to do.

Ukraine said last month it was willing to accept a full 30-day ceasefire but Putin declined to agree to that, raising a series of questions about how it would be monitored and concerns that Ukraine would use the breathing space to mobilise more soldiers and acquire more weapons from the West.

RT/Reuters

He didn’t say when his father asked him, but I wonder what the old man must think in his grave. Jonathan Power is now 83 and arguably one of Europe’s most widely published columnists.

He was a young freelance journalist when his father asked him the question. Still, even if he had lived to see his son syndicated globally, including by some of the world’s most prestigious newspapers and magazines, I’m not sure his father would have retracted the question: when will you get a proper job?

Power’s father didn’t think of journalism as a job. Instead, he considered it a lens or a keyhole through which one looks at the world’s most notable jobs like engineering or medicine. A side hustle, in today’s language. That was perhaps the whole point of supporting him to study agricultural economics, a distant cousin – but a cousin anyway – of some of the world’s proper job routes, only for his son to go astray.

More than a betrayal

I’ve known Jonathan Power for over 25 years. But I met him again in his new book When Are You Going to Get a Proper Job? It’s a chronicle of his 60 years in journalism, which helped me understand why he once told me that I’d be better off being a plumber than hoping to make money from syndicated writing. It also helped me understand why my son regards journalism with courteous disdain.

But Power’s 227-page novel-like autobiography published by Noema in 2024 is more than a son’s betrayal of his father’s wishes. It’s also about relationships, love (especially eros), travel, religion and faith in the intrinsic goodness of the human being.

When Are You Going to Get a Proper Job? divides Power’s life into three main parts: his love/family life, his travel encounters mostly related to his job as a foreign correspondent or human rights advocate, and his quest for the essence of life.

The heart is not smart

Power is a passionate husband and a doting father but a woefully unlucky lover. If you discount the tragic end of the Barnes in Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, in which Dickie Barnes is a principal character, Power’s account of his love and marriage life reminds you of how complications and unresolved issues in a marriage can undo even the best intentions, leaving emotional scars that won’t go away, even when it’s all over.

I started reading Power’s 15-chapter book from Chapter 4, entitled “My long-time friend, Nigeria’s Big Man”, but quickly returned to Chapter 1, “I and Me.” I should have started here. While I could easily relate to Chapter 4, which deals with Power’s over 40 years relationship with one of the troublers of Nigeria, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, “I and Me” explores a more universal, human conundrum: love.

“If only I had been more lucky, wise, sensible…,” Power writes. “I never found the clarity of mind, the right sound or (the) perfect female. I died with no money in the bank.” He was talking to himself.

The women in his life

Two women dominate the first more than 20 years of Power’s love story: Anne and Mary Jane. He met Anne when they both worked on Martin Luther King’s staff, and he met Mary, the stewardess, on the plane. He was attracted to each woman for a different reason – Anne was his philosophical soulmate, and Mary, who came after, was the Beyonce missing in Anne.

When the tests came after three children with Anne and one with Mary – all girls – the gardens of the marriages were undermined by the foxes of irreconcilable individual differences. The endings were bitter. In Power’s earlier novel, The Human Flow, he quoted Chimamanda Adichie as saying, “You don’t fall in love. You climb up to love.” Power climbed but fell badly.

Man on the road

The book is more than a failed love story told by a journalist with a heartfelt, almost naïve honesty. Power’s travel diary is remarkable, not just for his travels but also for the purpose, people, sights, sounds, and smells, as well as the impact of a few of the dramatic moments, like when he was almost stranded in the Caribbean after losing his guide, and later, his wallet.

His visits to Tanzania, Nigeria, Brazil, Guatemala, and India make for fascinating reading. Curiosity took him on some of these visits, but the quest for the truth, the desire to make a difference by chasing down the main actors – sometimes at significant personal risk – kept him returning to the trail.

Journalism did not discover the law of gravity, invent the submarine or split the atom. However, this improper job can also be gratifying by occasionally presenting the opportunity to change the course of history by engaging those who sometimes deploy scientific inventions or power in devastating uses.

Who knows what the world might have been if Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward hadn’t played their part in exposing Watergate or if Oriana Fallaci hadn’t tackled the Shah of Iran?

Walking a tightrope

From Chapters 3 to 10, Power writes about his relationship with former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and how Ujamaa fell far short of its redemptive promise despite the iconic leader’s best intentions.

A chunk of Power’s diaries on his encounters with influential people is devoted to his friendship with Nigeria’s former President Obasanjo, whom he met in the retired general’s first life as military president.

The dynamic of Power’s relationship with Obasanjo is quite interesting. He stroked Obasanjo’s ego when asking testy questions, for example, about allegations of human rights abuses against Nigeria’s military – the most appalling of which was in Odi – almost spoiling the interview.

The relentless stream of presidential guests sometimes threatened his interviews. Still, he managed to navigate it as he navigated his host’s tempestuous mood by sometimes enduring his self-adulatory game of squash. Obasanjo is a bundle of contradictions, nice and nasty in unequal measure.

Yet, Power managed to get away with openly complimenting the “gorgeous breasts” of Obasanjo’s wife and teasing him about the misuse of oil money, the bane of all Nigerian governments. Did Power get a pass because he might have contributed to saving Obasanjo’s life by speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on his behalf when Sani Abacha jailed the general on charges of coup plotting?

The spirit of Martin Luther King

Power’s visits to Brazil, where, as changes in the Amazon occurred, he observed significant shifts in power relations between peasants and clergy on the one hand and politicians, including Lula, who would later become president, on the other; his incisive conversations in New Delhi with Sonia Gandhi and Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad; and his encounter with Jimmy Carter that may have, by Andrew Young’s account, tangentially been responsible for Carter’s presidency are far more than one can get by viewing history from a keyhole.

The author’s early years of working on Martin Luther King’s staff in the ghetto slums of Chicago instilled in him the values of pursuing social change through peaceful means, fighting against injustice and discrimination, and fostering a society where everyone is treated with respect. 

Power’s views on US-Russia relations, sometimes sounding like a broken record, are also rooted in his sense of justice, respect and fair play.

A chastened life

These values come through, whether in his journalism or filmmaking – even intruding in his love quests, which perhaps explains why, despite the cost, he prioritised a peaceful breakup with Anne over a bitter divorce. The peacenik in him even sometimes brings him into a head-on collision with his improper job, journalism, which prefers to lead if it bleeds.

The book ends the way it starts: with existential questions about love, life and meaning, viewed from Power’s Swedish soul chastened by adventures. If the world was his oyster, the book is the reader’s shucker. As I look for a proper job, the book’s unpretentiousness and light touch in attempting to answer life’s difficult questions will make me read it again.

** Ishiekwene is the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of Writing for Media and Monetising It.

Amanda Mactas

Surely you are no stranger to a fashion faux pas, but when it comes to jetsetting, there are a handful of faux pas you don't want to be a victim of either. Acting like it's your first time in a security line, hovering around the gate before your flight even begins boarding, and overpacking so you have to open your suitcase and shove things into your carry-on at the last minute are just a few of the things that are unfortunately way more common than they should be. But when it comes to your behavior on the actual aircraft, following proper etiquette can play a big role in whether your flight attendants want to get out their parachutes or not.

Aside from bringing aboard stinky snacks, there is more to airplane dining etiquette than meets the eye. If you're not one of the many people who bring their own food on the plane, chances are you take your pick from the on-board menu. However, before you press that call button, there are a few items you might want to add to your no-fly list. We spoke to flight attendants to find out what food and drinks you should never order on the airplane...and for good reason.

Coffee Or Tea

If you wake up on a redeye or have a super early morning flight, it might be your instinct to grab that much-needed caffeine boost once you're seated. But former flight attendant Alex Quigley strongly suggests thinking twice before ordering a cup. As he explains, airplanes utilize "potable" water tanks, and often, that water sits there for a long, long time. "There's no telling how often or when the tank has been cleaned last," he tells Delish. "This is a beast for bacteria. Plus, we were never allowed to pour the remaining coffee brewed into the drain of the airplane and were usually instructed to pour the coffee out into the toilet." Yes, you read that correctly. This entails bringing the pot into the bathroom to dispose of the coffee. "I can be honest and say I NEVER knew or saw anyone empty and refill or wash them out in between trips," he noted. Excuse me while I go vomit.

Strong-Smelling Snacks

Flight attendants specifically called out corn nuts, even though they are sometimes served in flight. "They are pretty tasty, but some of them stink the second you open the package," an anonymous flight attendant tells Delish. "We actually serve them in our first-class snack basket. The roasted barbecue flavor [is the worst]. When you open the bag, it smells like something is burning on the plane." We'd avoid other onion, garlic, or barbecue-flavored chips or snacks, too. No one likes a stinky plane.

Meat

Oftentimes, you'll have a selection of meal options to choose from on your flight. Quigley suggests avoiding any meat dish. "You're putting the trust of storing any meat in the flight attendant's hands, and as we all know, delays happen, and mechanical issues happen; so if you run into a situation where there's a possibility the cooked meals aren't actually being stored appropriately or have exceeded the storing time allotted for the meal," you can be in for trouble, he says. "Food poisoning on a plane? No thanks!"

Gas-Inducing Foods

"Avoid!" Quigley exclaims. "Air in the airplane is circulated, it's never fresh. That means if someone passes gas, you're breathing that in over and over again, so this is more so for common decency," he explains. This means cutting back on dairy, beans, fatty foods, green veggies, and sodas. Additionally, gassy food combined with the air pressure on an airplane can cause you to feel even more bloated, making you even more uncomfortable on what is likely an already not-so-comfy flight.

Alcoholic Beverages

We get it. Sometimes, you just want to sit back, turn on your TV monitor, and relax with a nice, cold drink in your hand. But, according to Quigley, "You're not actually doing yourself a favor by drinking on a flight." The combination of high altitude and alcohol can make you feel light-headed and can cause you to feel more drunk than were you on the ground. "When pressure is decreased in the airplane, the body can't absorb oxygen as well," Quigley explains, resulting in feeling not-so-good overall. Another flight attendant specifically calls out Bloody Marys. They tend to be super salty, which further dehydrates you on the plane. It's also best to avoid anything mixed with orange juice, as it tends to be high in acidity, which can upset the stomach. "I always tell folks to drink water," she tells us.

Women’s Health

Oil prices dropped $2 on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on trading partners, stoking concerns that a global trade war may dampen demand for crude.

Brent futures fell $1.97, or 2.63%, to $72.98 a barrel by 0033 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down $1.98, or 2.76%, to $69.73.

Trump touted April 2 as "Liberation Day," bringing new duties that could overturn the global trade system.

Both benchmarks settled higher in the previous session but turned negative over the course of Trump's press conference on Wednesday afternoon in which he announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the United States and higher duties on dozens of the country's biggest trading partners.

"We know it will be negative for trade, economic growth and thus oil demand growth. But we don't know how bad it will be as the effects come a little bit down the road," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB.

Imports of oil, gas and refined products were exempted from U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.

Trump's tariff policies could stoke inflation, slow economic growth and intensify trade disputes, possibilities that have weighed down oil prices.

Reinforcing bearish sentiment, Energy Information Administration data on Wednesday showed U.S. crude inventories rose by a surprisingly large 6.2 million barrels last week, against analysts' forecasts for a decline of 2.1 million barrels.

Reuters

The World Bank says a total of $1.13 billion loan request from Nigeria has been approved.

According to details from the bank’s website on Wednesday, three different financing requests were approved in March, for projects targeting quality education, household and community resilience, and improved nutrition.

The World Bank said $80 million was approved for the ‘Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria 2.0’ project, and $552 million for the ‘HOPE for Quality Basic Education for All programme’, on March 31.

Further checks by TheCable showed that on March 28, the lender also approved a $500 million loan for Nigeria’s ‘Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus Programme’.

On February 28, the federal government said it was expecting to receive new loans from the World Bank, totalling $2.2 billion in 2025.

According to the Washington-based financial institution’s project list, the $2.2 billion will cut across six different projects.

The multilateral lender gave Nigeria $1.5 billionin 2024 for a number of significant development initiatives meant to strengthen the country’s ability to mobilise resources and maintain economic stability.

Nigeria’s loan exposure from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) reportedly rose to $17.1 billion as at September 30, 2024.

According to the IDA’s financial statement for September 2024, Nigeria maintained the third spot in its top 10 borrowers’ list.

Although Nigeria’s exposure dropped to $16.8 billion as at December 31, 2024, the West African nation retained its position as the third-largest debtor to the World Bank’s IDA.

The Cable

The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, has urged governors to treat other Nigerians residing in their states as indigenes.

He made the call during his Sallah homage to governor Ahmed Aliyu at the Banquet Hall, Presidential Lodge, Sokoto.

He said in Sokoto all Nigerians are treated as indigenes, an act that gives Nigerians residing in the state a sense of belonging.

“In Sokoto, we don’t have non-indigenes, but rather members of the resident communities,” he said.

The monarch, therefore, called on other states to copy this pattern so as to further foster sustainable peace, harmony and good brotherhood among all Nigerians.

While stressing the need for state governors to give much emphasis in protecting the lives and property of their subjects, Abubakar described security as the basis upon which all societies could progress.

“In Sokoto, we appreciate what the Governor is doing and we’d like to assure him of the support of the traditional institution so that he can continue the good work he’s doing of transforming our State.

“The Governor and our security agencies are doing their best and this has made the state to record tremendous improvement in the fight against banditry,” the Sultan added.

Responding, Governor Aliyu reassured his administration’s determination to do everything humanly possible to make the state safe and secured.

He blamed unemployment especially among the youths as responsible for the insecurity being recorded in many parts of the country.

“This administration has so far trained and graduated thousands of youths and women in different trades so as to make them productive members in the society.

“I want to assure you that we would soon embark on another massive skill acquisition programmes to engage more unemployed youths in our modest attempt to reduce restiveness among our youths,” he pledged.

The governor further reassured the people of the state that his administration would continue to prioritize Islamic affairs, adding that more Mosques and Islamiyya schools would continue to receive the desired attention from the state government.

He thanked the people of the state for their prayers and support to his administration.

Daily Trust

Israel to seize parts of Gaza as military operation expands

Israel announced a major expansion of military operations in Gaza on Wednesday, saying large areas of the enclave would be seized and added to its security zones, accompanied by large-scale evacuations of the population.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said troops were seizing an area he called the Morag Axis, a reference to a former Israeli settlement once located between the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, some 3-4 kilometres from the southern border.

"Because we are now dividing the Strip and we are increasing pressure step by step so they will give us our hostages," he said in a video message.

He said the move, which would cut off Rafah from Khan Younis, would give Israel control of a second axis in southern Gaza in addition to the so-called "Philadelphi Corridor", running along the border with Egypt, which Israel sees as a key line preventing the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

Separately, the Israeli military said troops had completed the encirclement of the Tel al-Sultan area near Rafah and killed dozens of militants. It had also found two rockets as well as a launcher aimed at Israeli territory.

But there was no sign of an end to the operation and the head of the Israeli military, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, said it would continue "at a deliberate and determined pace".

"The only thing that can halt our further advance is the release of our hostages," he said in a statement.

Earlier on Wednesday, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that troops would be widening their operation in Gaza to clear out militants and infrastructure "and seize large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel".

The Israeli military had already issued evacuation warnings to Gazans living in some southern districts and Palestinian radio reported that the area around Rafah was almost completely empty following the evacuation orders.

"As of today, 64% of Gaza is under active forced displacement orders or falling within the so-called 'buffer zone'," said Jonathan Whittall, the top U.N. aid official for Gaza and the West Bank. "Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza."

Gaza's Health Ministry said at least 60 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, with 19 people including children killed in a strike at a U.N. clinic being used to house displaced people.

Israel's military said it had struck a building previously used as a clinic that it said was serving as a Hamas command and control centre to plan attacks, and that the military had used surveillance to mitigate the risk to civilians. Hamas denied using the building and called the Israeli accusation that it did so a "blatant fabrication".

Reuters video of the aftermath of the strike showed blood on a floor as rescue workers removed bodies on stretchers.

At the site of another strike in Khan Younis, Rida al-Jabbour held up a tiny shoe and pointed at a blood-spattered wall as she related how a neighbour had been killed along with her three-month-old baby.

"From the moment the strike occurred we have not been able to sit or sleep," she said, describing how rescue workers were unable to separate the remains of those killed.

BUFFER ZONE

Katz's statement did not make clear how much land Israel intended to seize or whether the move represented a permanent annexation of territory, which would heighten pressure on a population already living in one of the most crowded areas in the world.

But the push reinforced Palestinian fears of a permanent displacement and the imposition of full-scale Israeli military control over the coastal enclave.

According to Israeli rights group Gisha, even before the operation Israel had already taken control of some 62 square kilometres or around 17% of the total area of Gaza, as part of a buffer zone around the edges of the enclave.

Israeli leaders have said they plan to facilitate voluntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza, after U.S. President Donald Trump called for it to be permanently evacuated and redeveloped as a coastal resort under U.S. control.

"It seems like Netanyahu will not stop his war on Gaza until we are displaced," said Amer al-Farra, who said he had been displaced eight times during the war. "With God's will we will remain steadfast."

Israeli leaders have been encouraged by signs of protest in Gaza against Hamas, which has controlled the enclave since 2007, and the expanded operation appeared at least partly aimed at increasing civilian pressure on its leaders.

"I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to eliminate Hamas and return all the kidnapped," Katz said in his statement. "This is the only way to end the war."

WAR EXPANDS

Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza on March 18, after two months of relative calm during a U.S.-backed truce to allow the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since and Israel has also cut off aid to the enclave, saying much of it was being taken by Hamas.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemns the reported killing of more than 1,000 people since the truce collapsed, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday. Guterres is also increasingly concerned about inflammatory rhetoric on the seizure of land by Israel.

"All parties must comply fully with international law at all times. Civilians must be respected and protected. The denial of lifesaving aid must end," Dujarric told reporters.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to get talks aimed at ending the war back on track have so far failed to make progress and the military's return to Gaza has fuelled protests in Israel by families and supporters of some of the hostages.

As the operation in Gaza has escalated, Israel has also hit targets in south Lebanon and Syria, with a strike on a Hezbollah commander in a southern suburb of Beirut on Tuesday that further strained fraying ceasefire agreements which largely halted fighting in January.

The head of Israel's domestic intelligence service Ronen Bar said there was "a direct link" between the operation in Gaza and the strikes in Beirut.

Israel invaded Gaza after thousands of Hamas-led gunmen stormed communities in southern Israel in an attack that killed 1,200 people according to Israeli tallies, and saw 251 taken as hostages.

The Israeli campaign has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, and ravaged the Gaza Strip, forcing almost the entire population of 2.3 million from their homes.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin conscripts 160K men as Russia eyes Ukraine offensive

Russia has initiated its largest military draft in 14 years as reports indicate Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing a spring assault on Ukraine despite ongoing peace negotiations to end the three-year war. 

Putin has called up 160,000 men as part of the country’s bi-annual conscription drive as Russia seeks to beef up its military ranks.

According to the legislation, citizens aged 18 to 30 will be called up for mandatory military service through June 15. The spring draft marks the largest conscription campaign since spring 2011, when 200,000 men were called up for service. Last year, 150,000 men were called, following 134,500 in 2022.

The Kremlin and Defense Ministry insist the latest conscripts are not being sent into combat and that the draft is unrelated to the war in Ukraine. Russian authorities say troops deployed to Ukraine only include volunteers who signed contracts with the military.

Some draftees, however, fought and were taken prisoners when the Ukrainian military launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August.

Putin said late last year that Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

It comes as a report suggests the Kremlin is preparing a six- to nine-month offensive across the Ukrainian front, potentially stretching over 1,000 kilometers, according to The New Voice of Ukraine. Potential targets include Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya oblasts, as well as the Kursk Oblast, where they’ve seen recent success.

The offensive is also aimed at maximizing pressure on Ukraine and strengthening the Kremlin’s negotiating position in ceasefire talks, Ukrainian government and military analysts said.

Meanwhile, U.S.-led talks attempting to broker a ceasefire deal appear to have stalled. The U.S. has struggled in its efforts to secure an immediate 30-day ceasefire, despite Moscow saying it agreed with a truce "in principle." 

Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer who specializes in Russia’s war-fighting strategy and Putin’s thinking, told Fox News Digital that Putin’s goal with his conscription drive is to prolong the fighting.

"There’s no ceasefire and no peace plan between Russia and Ukraine to be had," said Koffler, the author of a best-selling book "Putin’s Playbook." "What President Trump seeks is regretfully, unachievable. Putin's goal is to keep fighting, in order to compel Ukraine to capitulate."

Trump is trying to secure a peace and rare earth minerals deal, while on Sunday the president said he did not think Putin was going to go back on his word for a partial ceasefire.

Koffler, meanwhile, said the latest conscription numbers are intended to ensure that the correlation of forces on the battlefield and in reserves, continues to favor Russia. 

"Now that Germany and France are considering to deploy reassurance forces into Ukraine, Putin is factoring in those numbers, so he is increasing his force's posture, to deter such a deployment or failing to prevent it by force."

"Putin has prepared Russia for a long, protracted conflict, in which he wants the Russian forces to be ready to fight till the last Ukrainian and the last missile in the NATO arsenal," Koffler said.

She said Putin is also considering the possibility of having a direct kinetic war with NATO, in the event that NATO decides to deploy forces into the theater in Ukraine. 

"So, he intends for these mobilization numbers as a deterrence value and battlefield utility, if it comes to that."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine continuing attacks on Russian energy facilities – MOD

The Ukrainian military has launched new attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, despite claiming it complies with a US-brokered truce on such strikes, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Two incidents have been registered in Russia’s Kursk Region, where Ukrainian drones targeted a substation and damaged a power line in the area, the military said. The attacks inflicted material damage and cut some 1,500 customers off the grid, it added.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are systematically launching strikes with drones and artillery systems on Russian energy infrastructure against the backdrop of statements by various representatives of the Kiev regime, starting with [Vladimir] Zelensky, about compliance with restrictions on strikes on Russian energy facilities,” the ministry said.

Later in the day, Luganskgaz, an energy company operating in Russia’s Lugansk People's Republic, reported a Ukrainian drone attack on one of its facilities. The attack hit a gas distribution station, sparked a fire and disrupted supply to more than 11,000 customers, the company said in a statement. Gas supply has already been partially restored after the attack, it added.

Ukraine violates the US-brokered energy truce on a daily basis, the ministry claimed.

The partial ceasefire was proposed by US President Donald Trump during a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in March. The Russian leader accepted the proposal, immediately ordering the country’s troops to halt such attacks. At the time, the Russian military said it had to shoot down seven of its own kamikaze drones that were en route to Ukraine’s energy facilities when the order was issued.

Last week, Moscow revealed a comprehensive list of energy facilities subject to the 30-day truce. The agreement could be prolonged, Russia has noted, adding that if either party violates the deal, the other can consider itself free from any obligations.

Zelensky publicly backed the idea of the truce shortly after it was first announced, appearing to reiterate his commitment to the deal last week. However, the Ukrainian leader never publicly mentioned any specific orders to the country’s military despite hailing the truce as a purported “victory”for Kiev.

Reuters/RT

Years ago, I had an unforgettable experience of nearly witnessing a lynching at Iwo Road in Ibadan. It was a typical day, and while standing at a bus stop, a woman two paces away suddenly shouted that her purse had been snatched. She held the clothes of the man standing beside her. Before you knew it, the place had transformed. A crowd quickly gathered around, many of them young men who seemed to have magically sprouted from thin air. From ordinary guys going about their lives, they instantly transmuted into the judiciary and were ready to execute a self-designated mandate. They stripped the accused, kicked him, beat him, and demanded he return the purse.

Perhaps the most amazing transformation for me was a man who had stood beside me at the bus stop. While I was still puzzled at the events unfolding around me, this guy had found a huge stone and was yelling at the crowd to clear a path for him—he was going to smash the skull of the accused! Fortunately, the accused man managed to escape while those who had arrested him were still deciding on how to lynch him. I do not know if he was guilty of stealing the purse or not, but I am thankful that he did not die that day.

Every time I have told this story to friends, I have also wondered how and when that man transmuted from just another person at the bus stop to a potential killer. Was that even a real human man or a gnarled monster walking around at noonday like some mythological fables report? Imagine a man ready to commit murder, maybe just an hour after leaving his home in the morning. If he had managed to participate in killing that man, would he still have proceeded through the rest of his day like nothing had happened? Would he have gone back home to his family at night (if he had one) and continued life like he had not just killed a man?

Since the news emerged about how a vigilante group in Uromi, Edo State, lynched 16 hunters after tagging them kidnappers, I have returned to that incident to once again ask how men become the monsters who set up bonfires to burn their fellow humans. What (and when) is the moment of their transfiguration? It is when a situation like the Uromi incident occurs that we realise that there are many subhuman mongrels among us, some of them able to transfigure into monsters who can lynch a person in an instant. They lynched not one, not two, not three, not even four humans!

One must wonder about the kind of people who would keep throwing one person after the other into the fire (while some equally depraved people thought it was worth recording the pain and agony of the victims on their camera for later distribution). If there was no moment at which any internally controlling ethical code restrained them, then it is also probably not the first time they have lynched people. Those vigilantes must have played at being the law for so long that they started imagining themselves to be truly one. This unfortunate incident is one of the many fallouts of the state recession in the public sphere. When you have a country where security can no longer be guaranteed by the state, all sorts of maniacs will step in to fill the void.

This distressing incident has also thrown up the fault lines of ethnicity and religion between the northern and southern regions of the country. One only needs to read Nigerians from the two divided halves of the country as they bicker over the deaths to see how they are gauging their respective regional civilisation from the responses to the distressing event. It seems to me that northerners see the Uromi incident as an opportunity to take down the smug superiority of snobbish southerners who have typically imagined themselves to be socially superior. Now that the so-called civilised South has displayed a similar primitive behaviour that, if it had happened in the North, would have been filed as one more example of their cultural backwardness, they are practically celebrating their vindication along with mourning the demise of the victims.

For the southern commenters, the incident is not only distressing but also embarrassing as they must justify themselves before people who never apologise for the lynching that happened in their territory. And they are right because the Uromi incident is similar to that of Deborah Samuel, the Christian student who was lynched in 2023 by some religious fundamentalists who admitted their crime on video. Unlike this ongoing case, where the southerners are condemning the lynching and calling for justice, I do not remember the northerners doing the same. Many northerners, including their prominent clerics, justified the killing of Samuel. A presidential candidate who dared to condemn the murder had to withdraw his statement when they threatened his presidential ambition! The Edo State Governor, Monday Okpebholo, is running all over the place and promising the family of the victims compensation, something that is unlikely to happen if the situation were reversed.

The court freed Samuel’s killers, and that woman did not get justice. Nobody in the government dared to touch them because of politics. In the wake of the Uromi incident, some of them are still doubling down on their justification for lynching that woman. If they cannot see her humanity, then on what moral grounds do they stand to demand justice for the Uromi victims? Yet, not wanting to be outdone, they bring up the case of Adamawa woman Harira Jubril, the pregnant woman who was killed along with her children in Anambra State by some unidentified gunmen. It is bad enough that she, too, never got justice; it is also horrible that her story is cheaply weaponised by those who merely want to score political points against a rival group.

Still convinced they are the bigger victims, the southerners start to reel out the many cases of Fulani herdsmen attacks on villages, farmlands, and their communities. They list the deaths and the destruction caused by Fulani herdsmen who have been rampaging through communities in Nigeria, mostly unchecked. This self-justification by matching northern stories of injustice with southern stories of injustice eventually spirals into an endless loop of barbarism, bloodletting, and unleashed monstrosity.

In trading stories of injustice for injustice, these people also catalogue the injustice the nation has committed against our collective humanity. Notwithstanding their motivations, their exchanges are an indictment of a nation that cheaply discounts our lives, and—by failing to pursue the outstanding debts owed to our murdered compatriots—serially indicates that we are simply not worth the trouble of the pursuit of justice. In fact, one can say the reason the Federal Government swooped into action in the case of Uromi is the fear of reprisals by irate northerners, and not because they deemed the lives of those 16 hunters worthy enough to merit justice.

What is saddest about these fiery exchanges is that the compiled evidence is being misdirected and misused by people wanting to balance out tribal wrongs rather than indict the real culprit: Nigeria, a country that has failed to establish a standard of righteousness, of justice, of truth, of integrity, and the ascriptions of full value to our lives. Consequently, we have too many among us who have been driven over the edge, deeply traumatised by the harassments of our Nigerian lives, but have not yet found the mouth with which to tell the story. They think they are normal because they can still type coherent sentences on social media, but the truth is that they are bleeding internally from the wounds of our national existence.

Punch

Can anyone actually afford to live in the UK anymore? That’s the burning question posed by social media influencer Prudishfish in a now-viral video that has set off a storm of discussions about the country's economic future. Her blunt advice to young people—"If you're under 40, leave the UK"—has struck a chord with thousands, igniting debates on social media about rising costs, declining quality of life, and an exodus of the wealthy.

Millionaires Are Leaving—Should You?

In the video, Prudishfish highlights a troubling trend: a staggering 10,800 millionaires left the UK in 2024 alone, making it the second-highest wealth outflow in the world, just behind China. That’s more than double the previous year’s numbers—roughly one millionaire packing their bags every 45 minutes.

This isn’t just a niche issue affecting the ultra-rich. The exodus translates to a significant loss of taxpayers, with one millionaire’s tax contribution reportedly equal to that of 49 average taxpayers. The departure of the wealthy has sparked concerns about economic stability, public funding, and the government's ability to sustain social services.

According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, Britain is on track to lose 17% of its millionaires by 2028, marking the largest decline among 36 countries analyzed. With real estate included in the equation, the UK could see more than half a million high-net-worth individuals relocating in just five years.

Social Media Backs the Bold Statement

While Prudishfish’s advice may sound extreme, social media users seem to agree. The video has racked up nearly a million views, with commenters sharing their own experiences of feeling financially squeezed in the UK.

"Blame this government and the previous one; they destroyed the UK," one frustrated user wrote.

"I left in 2016. Switzerland is awesome, and I'm on track to be a millionaire in a year or so," boasted another.

A third user, who had spent 17 years in the UK, explained why they were packing up for Australia: "Everything now costs more for nothing amazing. We stopped eating out because pub food is overpriced and terrible. Train travel? A joke—nearly £300 for a return ticket from Oxford to Cornwall. In Australia, you can travel four hours by train for around £5."

A Symptom of a Bigger Problem?

The UK’s economic challenges have been making headlines for years, from skyrocketing rent and home prices to rising taxes and stagnant wages. But the mass exodus of the wealthy, combined with a growing number of disillusioned young professionals considering a move abroad, signals a deeper crisis.

The government’s recent move to end the resident non-domicile taxsystem, which allowed foreign-born residents to avoid paying UK taxes on overseas income, has been cited as a major factor behind the millionaire migration. However, many argue that it's not just the ultra-rich who are feeling the squeeze—middle-class professionals and young workers are also struggling to see a viable future in Britain.

Prudishfish’s video may have started as a thought-provoking take on the numbers, but it has turned into something much bigger—a wake-up call for those who feel trapped in an economy that no longer works for them.

For some, leaving may be the best option. But for others, the real question remains: Is the UK doing enough to keep its talent and wealth from slipping away?

Economic Times