Luke Harding

My sense is the Ukrainians have got an edge at the moment.

And what I mean by that is that they've been really whacking Russian ports, oil infrastructure, terminals.

And Russia is a big country and its air defenses are very stretched.

The Ukrainians using both sort of ballistic missiles and long-range drones are finding a way through.

So we've seen burning terminals in the last few weeks.

And also, I think, a strategy of victory, which is that essentially I was talking to someone today who was saying that the goal is to basically cripple Russia's economy so it can no longer finance its war.

The analogy is with Germany in the First World War, he was saying.

In other words, you know, there were never any kind of allied troops on German territory, but Germany basically collapsed.

And what Ukraine is trying to do is to make Russia collapse economically.

So it's got no oil, it can no longer fund its war.

And that is a path they think to victory.

Well, I mean, I think you're right.

I think that the consequences have been mixed, as you say, with oil now up to $100 a barrel and the Trump administration bizarrely lifting its kind of sanctions against Russian seaborne oil, which is already out there, that the Russians are seeing a windfall of many billions of dollars.

But on the other hand, as we were just discussing, that their oil export infrastructure is being smashed by Ukrainian drones.

So, yes, more money, but they have to export this stuff.

And meanwhile, what we've seen is really some incredible diplomacy by Zelensky.

I mean, he's toured the Gulf states.

He's signed long-range defense and production agreements with Saudi Arabia, with the UAE, and with others, basically offering to provide them with interceptor drones made by Ukraine, which can shoot down Iranian Shaheed missiles, the same missiles, by the way, that have been falling on this place, on Kiev, really since late 2022.

So what's interesting is the kind of paradigm

the idea that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine was basically holding out a sort of begging bowl for Western systems.