Handing off a war
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What recent developments are happening in Ukraine?
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You're listening to Today Explained. Luke Harding at The Guardian has been covering the war in Ukraine since it started. We asked him what's changed in the past few weeks.
Yeah, it's really been hotting up on several fronts, political, military, internationally, on the battlefield. I visited recently in the northeast Kharkiv region, a place called Kupinsk, and also another front line near Sumy, where Ukraine has since August occupied a chunk of territory inside Russia.
At least 11 people, including two children, were killed by a Russian missile on Sunday night, Ukraine officials said. It hit a nine-story residential building in the northeastern region of Sumy.
There is full-scale fighting going on. It's... Loud.
A morning shattered by the eerie wail of air raid sirens and drones and missiles that were intercepted. And those that were not.
In Kupinsk, where I was, the Russians were a couple of miles away. They are sending drones into the streets to chase and hunt civilians. And Russia is winning the war in the east of Ukraine purely because of mass. It's got more of everything. It's got more men. It's got more tanks. It's got more warplanes. And, you know, meanwhile, of course, the other big development is Donald Trump.
I believe I will be able to make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly.
What that means, Kiev, the presidential administration of Volodymyr Zelensky is bracing for impact.
I believe that the war will end, and it will not end in the abstract. The war will end faster with the policy of the steam that will now leave the White House.
And interestingly, opinion in Kyiv about what Trump will mean for Ukraine is mixed. There's quite a strong faction, group of people who think that Trump might just be good news for Ukraine, that he might somehow bring about an end to the war.
I will get it solved in rapid order. And it will take me no longer than one day.
And managed to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin, because by now there was an enormous frustration with the Biden administration, with its policy of incrementalism, everything too little too late, with its caution, with the fact that it freaks out whenever Putin says the nuclear word. And some people think that Trump might just be the person to kind of change all this. There are other more cool-headed Ukrainians who think that Trump will be a disaster, that he will sell out Ukraine, to Russia and essentially enforce a kind of capitulation light, some kind of deal where Ukraine gives up territory, makes a commitment not to join NATO, and so on. But the countdown is on until January the 20th. We don't really quite know what's going to happen.
And in addition to the Trump development, we also have... some Biden-related developments, namely Biden giving Zelensky permission to do things they haven't been able to do to this point. Can you tell us a bit about that?
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