Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Project Syndicate - Brazil Cannot Afford Bolsonaro’s Spending Cuts Oct 20, 2026 Laura Carvalho and Joseph E. Stiglitz

 Project Syndicate 

Brazil Cannot Afford Bolsonaro’s Spending Cuts

Laura Carvalho and Joseph E. Stiglitz


“The damage would not be limited to pensioners and welfare beneficiaries. A reduction in social spending equivalent to 1.5% of GDP would be likely to wipe out 2.7% of GDP in the first year and 3.2% over two years, based on standard estimates of fiscal multipliers. That would be enough to turn a slowdown into a recession.


Simulations of much smaller cuts have found that lost growth drains tax revenue, leading to more cuts in a vicious downward spiral. The first to feel the pinch would be informal workers, street vendors, app drivers, and small business owners whose sales depend on customers having money to spend. Evidence from South America shows that spending-based fiscal adjustments have historically reduced economic activity and widened inequality.”


Brazil Cannot Afford Bolsonaro’s Spending Cuts

Oct 20, 2026

Laura Carvalho

 and 

Joseph E. Stiglitz

If he wins the October 25 runoff, far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro plans to slash public spending by as much as 1.5% of GDP. These cuts could push Brazil into recession, hurt workers and small businesses, and drain tax revenue—all without solving the country’s debt problem.


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NEW YORK—Brazil faces a stark choice on October 25, when far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva face off in the country’s presidential runoff.


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The economy looms large in any election, and here the two candidates offer vastly different strategies. While Lula has a proven track record, and Flávio does not, Bolsonaro’s approach mirrors that of his father, disgraced former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is now serving a 27-year prison sentence for an attempted coup. The son and his team have also said enough on the campaign trail to give us a clear idea of where Brazil would be headed under his leadership.


As economists who have long studied Brazil, we can be unequivocal: under Bolsonaro, unemployment will be higher, growth will slow, poverty will increase, and the middle class will be worse off.


Start with Bolsonaro’s promise to cut public spending by 1.5% of GDP. His team says Bolsa Família, Brazil’s cash-transfer program for households, would remain, but has not specified what would be cut. Given that the country’s budget is dominated by pensions, minimum-wage-linked benefits, health, and education, cuts of that magnitude could not spare them.


The damage would not be limited to pensioners and welfare beneficiaries. A reduction in social spending equivalent to 1.5% of GDP would be likely to wipe out 2.7% of GDP in the first year and 3.2% over two years, based on standard estimates of fiscal multipliers. That would be enough to turn a slowdown into a recession.


Simulations of much smaller cuts have found that lost growth drains tax revenue, leading to more cuts in a vicious downward spiral. The first to feel the pinch would be informal workers, street vendors, app drivers, and small business owners whose sales depend on customers having money to spend. Evidence from South America shows that spending-based fiscal adjustments have historically reduced economic activity and widened inequality.



The cuts would not even fix Brazil’s debt problem. About 53% of public debt is linked to the policy interest rate (Selic), and the country’s high interest rates owe more to inflation targets, a dysfunctional financial market, and currency volatility than to public spending. The primary deficit (spending excluding interest payments, minus tax revenue) has been near zero. Bolsonaro appears to believe that interest rates will magically fall dramatically without addressing the factors underlying them. Even if the Selic were to fall to 9%, which we consider unlikely under Bolsonaro, debt would continue to rise despite annual primary surpluses of 3% of GDP.


Compounding these problems are Bolsonaro’s proposed tax cuts. In a country plagued by extreme inequality, where those at the top pay a smaller share of their income in taxes, his proposed cuts could hamper long-term growth while worsening the country’s fiscal stance in the short run. Bolsonaro seems unaware of his policies’ macroeconomic consequences and, like Argentine President Javier Milei, does not care about correcting existing tax injustices.


The likely damage to Brazil’s economy and the slim prospect that Bolsonaro’s policies would reduce the deficit—which could actually grow if the downturn they induce is severe enough—did not stop markets from cheering his first-round victory. On the first trading day after the vote, the Ibovespa jumped 7.7% to a record high. But a stock-market rally is not the same as a growing economy, and it can quickly unravel in a recession or an institutional crisis, the risk foreign investors fear most.


But another future is possible. Three years ago, the market expected Brazil’s economy to grow by just over 1% annually. Instead, GDP grew by 3.2% in 2023 and 3.4% in 2024. Inflation, which peaked at 12.1% in April 2022, fell to 4.22% by August. Unemployment declined to 5.3% in 2026, while poverty and extreme poverty reached record lows. Even the stock market has performed well, rising by roughly 70% since January 2023.


These trends reflect the success of Lula’s economic policies. The new Bolsa Família lifted an estimated 6.5 million people out of poverty and extreme poverty. Real minimum-wage increases, associated with a larger wage share, boosted incomes for workers and pensioners. A progressive tax reform exempted low- and middle-income households from income taxes while raising the minimum tax rate for high earners, helping to reduce income concentration at the top. Yet primary deficits shrank to almost zero. And inflation would have fallen even further were it not for reckless wars by Russia and the Trump administration.


There is still much to be done. It won’t be easy, but Brazil can create fiscal space by eliminating tax deductions that benefit mostly the richest 10%, reining in parliamentary amendments, and raising the effective minimum tax on the super-rich.


That fiscal space should fund strategic investment in public transport, housing, and care infrastructure. These investments would make everyday life more affordable by reducing commuting costs and childcare expenses, while lower interest rates would reduce borrowing costs for families and entrepreneurs.


Over the past four years, Brazil has shown that growth and fairness can advance together. The choice facing voters on October 25 is whether to build on that progress or reverse it.



Laura Carvalho is Director of Economic and Climate Prosperity at the Open Society Foundations and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of São Paulo. Her research focuses on the intersection between macroeconomics and development economics, particularly the relationship between economic growth and income inequality. She wrote a weekly column for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, and is the author of Valsa Brasileira: do boom ao caos econômico (Todavia, 2018).


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Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Writing for PS since 2001

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Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, is a former chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000), former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, former co-chair of the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, and lead author of the 1995 IPCC Climate Assessment. He is Co-Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and the author, most recently, of The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society (W. W. Norton & Company, Allen Lane, 2024).


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AP NEWS ALERTS - October 21, 2026 - Putin agrees to resume trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US next month

 

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Foreign Affairs - New Issue OutNovember/December 2026 - How Russia Sees the World Now The Kremlin’s New Mental Map Is Changing the War in Ukraine—and the Confrontation With the West -- Dmitry Adamsky - October 21, 2026

 Foreign Affairs  - 

New Issue OutNovember/December 2026

Read Now 

How Russia Sees the World Now

The Kremlin’s New Mental Map Is Changing the War in Ukraine—and the Confrontation With the West

Dmitry Adamsky

October 21, 2026



Russian President Vladimir Putin observing military exercises in Chebarkul, Russia, October 2026

Alexander Kazakov / Reuters


DMITRY ADAMSKY is Professor at Reichman University and an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University. He is the author of The Russian Way of Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War.


In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s strategic thinking was shaped around several core ideas. It viewed the United States as its principal geopolitical rival, an adversary that had encouraged Kyiv to impose strategic defeat on Moscow. It considered Europe and NATO largely as an extension of American power. And it saw nuclear muscle flexing as efficient means to exert coercive pressure.


Today, after nearly five years of war, and 22 months of the second Trump administration, the mental map guiding Russian strategy has changed. First, Russia now sees Europe, instead of the United States, as its principal geopolitical adversary, a shift that has driven Russia’s defense establishment to call for an approach known as “castling” to deal with the main threats. Related to this, Moscow now attributes new strategic agency to Europe itself because of the dramatic military modernization taking place in many European countries and the growing interest among some European leaders in developing or extending their own nuclear deterrent. A third shift concerns Russia’s theory of deterrence: Moscow’s traditional understanding of nuclear coercion is giving way to new thinking about nonnuclear strategic deterrence using advanced conventional weapons systems aimed at Europe.


These new lines of thought, which have gained prominence among influential defense intellectuals and policy experts close to the Kremlin over the past year do not need to be endorsed in formal security doctrine to matter. As the past decade has shown, ideas circulating within Russia’s national security establishment have shaped how officials frame problems, define options, and ultimately make major strategic choices. The three recent shifts in Russian strategic thinking will likely play an important part in how Moscow approaches any negotiation to end the war, as well as how it manages future escalation and competition with Europe and the United States.


As the Trump administration steps up its efforts to engage Moscow, it is now negotiating with a Russian leadership whose strategic mindset has evolved considerably since 2022. For the United States, understanding Russia’s new mental map will not only be crucial to any attempt to find an off-ramp with Moscow. It will also be essential to reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation between Russia and Europe and to ensuring strategic stability on the continent in the years to come.


The Pivot To Europe

One of the most notable trends in Russian strategic thought over the past year has been the emergence of the idea of “castling.” A term borrowed from chess, castling in geopolitics describes the repositioning of forces and resources to optimize a state’s strategic posture. Moscow’s defense experts have used the concept to describe a strategy for dealing with a new reality: for the first time since World War II, they have argued, Europe, rather than the United States, has become Russia’s principal geopolitical adversary. According to this view, European countries are now the principal source of Ukraine’s military capacity, political resolve, and strategic resilience; it is Europe and not the United States that has made Ukraine its proxy and is encouraging Kyiv to pursue Moscow’s strategic defeat.


As a consequence, Moscow must direct coercive pressure at Europe—its elites, its decision-making centers, and its critical infrastructure. By doing so, Russia can instill into Europe’s calculus what theorists in Moscow call a “deterring fear”: a European reluctance to antagonize Russia through further support to Ukraine. Such action, they argue, can also rebuild Russian credible deterrence for long-term competition with the West, which is now centered on Europe.


Castling does not imply a change in Russia’s overall objectives, which remain the same as those invoked by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time of the 2022 invasion. These include banning NATO enlargement to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics; rolling back NATO’s eastern flank; and restricting NATO military exercises, as well as the conventional and nuclear deployments of NATO members, near Russian borders. The difference is that Russian coercion must now be aimed at Europe rather than the United States to achieve these objectives.


Along with this revised assessment of Europe, Russian strategists have interpreted the Trump administration’s own strategic stance as evidence that Asia has replaced Europe as the principal theater of U.S. strategic competition. They point to the administration’s reluctance to back Ukraine, its desire to terminate the war, and its continued overtures to the Kremlin. The administration’s decision in mid-October to provide sanctions relief to Russia and apply new pressure on Ukraine amplify this view in Moscow. Russian strategists also assume Washington seeks to solidify its control of the Western Hemisphere and views China, not Russia, as its primary long-term adversary.


Moscow believes that Washington is thus seeking to reduce its commitments in secondary theaters—particularly Europe and the Middle East—in order to concentrate political, military, and organizational resources on Beijing. As Russia sees it, the new American assertiveness in Venezuela, Cuba, and the Caribbean is unsurprising. By contrast, the current war in Iran—the biggest U.S. military engagement in recent years—has been read in Moscow as an unintended deviation from the new direction of U.S. policy, one that Washington seeks to correct as soon as possible. Whether this reading reflects actual American intentions matters less than that it has become a prevailing understanding in Moscow.


NUCLEAR CURIOSITY

A related trend in Russian discourse is a growing fixation on what defense experts refer to as Europe’s “nuclear curiosity” and new military assertiveness near Russian borders. Specifically, Russian strategists have been concerned by the French and British governments’ modernization of their nuclear programs and apparent readiness to wield them more assertively. Moscow has also noted the prospect of French or British nuclear guarantees extending to European states and nonnuclear European capitals considering the development of nuclear options of their own.


Russian sources identify Germany, Poland, and the Nordic-Baltic states as “nuclear curious,” whether in pursuing nuclear-threshold status or seeking protection under French and British nuclear umbrellas. In this regard, comments by Polish officials in early 2026 expressing support for a Polish nuclear deterrent have been particularly noted. Russian strategists have also closely monitored discussions by Paris and London about offering extended deterrence to the continent as an alternative to the U.S. umbrella.


From Moscow’s perspective, any new attempt by a European state to become a nuclear power would cross a redline and could potentially create a casus belli. Moreover, Europe’s growing assertiveness on nuclear issues is happening in parallel with the deployment of conventional deep-strike precision weapons near Russian borders. For NATO, this more active European posture mitigates the risk of Washington shifting away from its European allies, but to Moscow it signals that Europe could potentially undertake strikes aimed at disarming Russia’s nuclear arsenal or decapitating its leadership.


To Russian analysts, these various developments also suggest Europe’s growing strategic autonomy from the United States. Traditionally, Moscow has viewed Europe largely as a “parking lot” for U.S. forces: a region of the world that is relevant but strategically subordinate to Washington. That assumption is changing. Along with the perception that Europe is now Russia’s principal geopolitical adversary, the continent’s increasing strategic autonomy, including on both nuclear and conventional issues, has become a crucial variable in Russia’s calculus. According to Moscow’s defense intellectuals, Russia may need to change its posture to contain this trend, including by seeking new tools to keep Europe at bay and to coerce it below the nuclear threshold.


MENACING GESTURES

To align with Russia’s new mental map, Russian defense intellectuals and military officers have been examining how to make Moscow’s coercive threats more effective. During the first years of the war, Russia’s nuclear muscle flexing and hybrid warfare failed to prevent Ukraine’s allies from funneling financial support, military aid, and targeting intelligence to Kyiv. This approach also failed to deter Ukraine’s land incursions into Russia and strikes on symbolic Russian targets and Russian strategic infrastructure, let alone compel Kyiv to surrender.


Today, NATO is preoccupied with Russia’s escalating cross-domain coercion, or what U.S. and European analysts call hybrid warfare. But that is only one part of the Russian approach. As Moscow concentrates on Europe as the new primary threat, it is also drawing on new tools of coercion that Russian experts call nonnuclear strategic deterrence. For Russian military authors, NNSD involves using advanced conventional capabilities, including precision-guided weapons, drones, ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile systems, as well as “weapons based on new physical principles”—a Russian catchall term for electromagnetic-pulse and high-power microwave weapons to deter and compel adversaries.


Conceptually, NNSD belongs to what Russian experts refer to as the “art of strategic gestures,” a euphemism for using, or threatening to use, nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities to deter and coerce an adversary. The concept is not new. Since the early years of this century, Russian strategists have tried to develop conventional alternatives to nuclear deterrence. But until the full-scale war in Ukraine began, in 2022, these ideas remained underdeveloped. NNSD has emerged from the lessons learned during the conflict.


The Kremlin regards Ukraine as part of a broader struggle over Europe’s strategic order.


From the outset of the war, Russia used tactical ballistics, cruise missiles, and hypersonic capabilities, which it has paired with drones and maneuver warfare. But even when coupled with the threat of nuclear coercion, this approach underdelivered, in the view of many Russian analysts. As a result, as the war has become entrenched, in particular since 2024, Moscow has shifted its focus to more advanced ballistic salvo waves, including strikes using Russia’s intermediate-range Oreshnik ballistic missile.


Drawing on this experience, Russian military theoreticians center NNSD on using massive, deep, precision strikes against the adversary’s critical military, political, and economic infrastructure. The strategy, they suggest, should be aimed not only at Ukraine but also at its European supporters. Although the exact contours of NNSD are still emerging, the concept appears to be more escalatory than the hybrid warfare and deniable asymmetric campaigns that Russia is currently pursuing in Europe.


This is more than a peripheral theoretical discussion. There are already indications that NNSD has gained traction among Russia’s senior military officers: for example, since 2025, the flagship journal of Russia’s general staff, Military Thought, has published several articles on the subject. All the branches of the Russian military are also developing their own versions of NNSD and are seeking to claim a comparative advantage in its execution. This interservice competition may increasingly normalize what constitutes acceptable coercion below the nuclear threshold and shape targeting priorities, as well as escalation management.


THE COERCION THRESHOLD

As the Kremlin sees it, the war in Ukraine began as an attempt to impel Europe to reshape its security architecture. Yet the strategic landscape confronting Moscow today may look even more threatening than the one it sought to change in 2022. Washington needs to recognize that the Kremlin regards Ukraine not as a discrete conflict but as part of a broader struggle over Europe’s strategic order. Any U.S.-led effort to broker an off-ramp in Ukraine will need to reckon with Moscow’s emerging castling logic and its mounting anxieties about Europe. A settlement that addresses the immediate battlefield while leaving Moscow’s wider frictions with Europe untouched is likely to provide only a temporary pause in this larger conflict. Washington needs to understand that Russia’s nonnuclear coercion has become a part of its ongoing deterrence strategy against Europe rather than simply a feature of the war itself.


Even if Moscow engages in negotiations to end the war, it is likely to continue using military coercion against Ukraine, as well as Europe. It will do so for several reasons: to align the terms of the settlement with Russian interests, to refine Russia’s emerging theory of nonnuclear strategic deterrence, and to force Europe to adopt a different security architecture. Russia may therefore undertake precision strikes on critical infrastructure, and even possible decapitation attempts, as well as calibrated attacks of varying intensity in Ukraine, alongside diplomatic engagement. By using such tactics, Moscow will be seeking not only to gain leverage in negotiations with Kyiv but also to restore its strategic deterrence with Europe. In response, Europe, doubting the credibility of the Trump administration’s commitments and seeking to demonstrate its own resolve, may decide to escalate.


Washington should thus be prepared for the possibility that stepped-up efforts to terminate the war may coincide with heightened security risks in Europe. Given that the dynamic between Europe and Russia is now characterized by pervasive mutual suspicion, conspiracy theories, and expectations of war, there is a growing danger of inadvertent escalation. Actions by either side that are intended as limited coercion, signaling, or leverage might be misread, thus triggering a self-reinforcing action-reaction cycle in which each side’s effort to restore deterrence instead erodes it. Paradoxically, this dynamic could emerge precisely at the moment when all sides—including the Kremlin—are seeking an off-ramp. Both Europe and Russia risk crossing a “culmination point of coercion,” beyond which any additional threats to use force, or its actual use, could expand the war further.


For Russia and Europe, then, the main challenge will be to bolster deterrence without crossing this tipping point. For Washington, the primary task is not only to mediate the substance of a deal but also to learn how to choreograph negotiations amid ongoing military action. It will be imperative for U.S. officials to anticipate coercive moves by all sides without mistaking them for a rejection of diplomacy—and without allowing them to derail negotiations. Washington will need to help both Europe and Russia contain their use of coercion before the security dilemma locks them into a dangerous escalatory spasm.


Topics & Regions: Russia Ukraine Europe Diplomacy Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine



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BBC - Trump and Zelensky at loggerheads despite new optimism -- 22 hours ago -- Paul Adams Diplomatic correspondent

 

BBC - Trump and Zelensky at loggerheads despite new optimism

Paul AdamsDiplomatic correspondent
EPA (L-R) Finnish President Alexander Stubb, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store meet in Oslo. Zelensky and Witkoff are hugging.EPA
Witkoff and Zelensky met in the Norwegian capital

The hug that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff offered Volodymyr Zelensky before talks in Oslo is unlikely to have dispelled the Ukrainian leader's misgivings about the current direction of US policy towards his war-ravaged country.

Zelensky posted a video of the moment on social media, with the message "Ukraine is working for peace. I thank our partners for their support!"

But given everything that's happened this month, does the Ukrainian leader still regard Donald Trump as a partner?

The two men have never been close – that much is obvious – but have they now fallen out once and for all?

Both in rhetoric and actions, the past 10 days have seen evidence of a rupture as deep as any in their fractious relationship.

Just listen to the way they talk about each other.

"Zelensky's not a good guy for us to deal with," Trump told Newsmax last week.

The verbal assault has continued this week.

"Zelensky doesn't know what he's talking about," Trump told a reporter on Monday when asked what he thought of the Ukrainian leader's suggestion that striking a diesel deal with Russia put the US on the wrong side of history.

Such personal attacks are typical of Trump's sledgehammer approach to diplomacy. It's hard to know when to take them seriously.

In June, he lashed out at Israel's prime minister, using an expletive while criticising Benjamin Netanyahu's judgement. Four months later, he endorsed Netanyahu enthusiastically, calling him a "great warrior prime minister".

"Trump can always do another U-turn," says Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform. "But this does look bad."

Watch: Zelensky says US military intelligence sharing "works now"

For his part Zelensky has generally been circumspect in how he describes his unreliable but vital American counterpart.

But this month his frustration has been clear. Addressing a US congressional delegation, he spoke of "decisions on the American side that are hard to explain between friends" and voiced the fear that "some political decision has been made to slow down support for us."

Answering Trump's charge that he represented the principal obstacle to a negotiated settlement, Zelensky sounded more exasperated than ever.

"We have welcomed literally EVERY attempt by our partners to end this war with dignity," he wrote on Telegram on Monday.

But rhetoric aside, how bad is the relationship?

In some ways, we've been here before.

After their notorious televised bust up in the Oval Office in February 2025, at which Trump accused Zelensky of "gambling with World War III", the US suspended military assistance and restricted intelligence sharing.

The crisis only lasted a week. And when the Trump administration decided, later that year, that it no longer wanted to finance direct military assistance to Ukraine, a mechanism was put in place for European countries to pay for American equipment instead.

One exception, in the wake of this year's US war with Iran, has been badly needed US-made Patriot air defence missiles.

Amid a global shortage, the supply to Ukraine has slowed to a trickle, making it harder than ever for Kyiv to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.

The Washington Post, quoting an unnamed Ukrainian official, said "only a couple" of Patriot interceptors remained in Ukraine's stockpile, and that the Trump administration had slowed down the process by which US allies seek approval to transfer their stocks.

Similar concerns have been voiced in the past, but the latest reports – not confirmed by US officials – come against an increasingly difficult backdrop for Kyiv.

Earlier this month, as Ukrainian negotiators arrived in Miami for talks with Trump's all-purpose envoys Witkoff and Jared Kushner, they were blindsided by the news that the president had just struck a deal with Vladimir Putin to open US markets to Russian diesel.

Experts questioned whether it would do much to drive down US petrol prices, ahead of congressional mid-term elections (the apparent motive), but as a signal of US displeasure over Ukraine's campaign of long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries and Washington's willingness to do deals with the Kremlin, it represented a stinging rebuke to Kyiv.

Watch: 'Time for Ukraine to get a new president', says Trump

Last Friday, Trump went further, waiving wide-ranging sanctions on Russia just two days before they were due to take effect.

Trump said the sanctions contained in the Graham Act (named after the former South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal supporter of Ukraine who died in July) would hinder his efforts to broker peace. But for Kyiv and its supporters this was another alarming sign that the White House was siding with the Kremlin.

"What the Trump administration is doing is providing carrots to the Russians and sticks to the Ukrainians," former US ambassador to Kyiv William Taylor told the BBC.

"It's inexplicable and saddening."

Kiriil Dmitriev, a senior Putin envoy, called it "an important and truly historic moment".

For Moscow, this felt like a welcome return to the "spirit of Alaska", a phrase much touted by Russian officials in the wake of the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage in August 2025.

Adding to the impression that Trump is turning his back on Ukraine is the allegation – again not confirmed by Washington – that the US has restricted the flow of intelligence and interfered with Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service.

Amid an escalation in Russia's drone and missile war on Ukraine's cities, Kyiv says advance warning provided by US satellite intelligence has been lacking.

"We didn't receive it during ballistic attacks for three days," Zelensky told NBC News.

On 12 October five Russian S-400 missiles hit Kyiv, reportedly before air raid sirens or mobile alerts had sounded.

The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, denied there had been any pause in intelligence sharing, blaming a "software problem" for the temporary lack of early warnings.

Similar uncertainty surrounds Ukraine's access to Starlink.

A week ago, Ukrainian officials reported that the system was being throttled, with terminals unable to maintain connections at high speeds, making it harder for Ukraine's military to intercept fast moving Russian drones.

Since the summer, Ukraine has struggled to cope with a wave of attacks by advanced, jet-powered drones.

It's not clear where any order to limit Ukraine's use of Starlink – or its military grade equivalent Starshield – originated. Reuters reported that it came from the White House.

Rubio said "no-one at the White House ordered anyone to slow down internet."

But the fact that such suspicions surface so frequently points to the lack of trust that continues to infect US-Ukrainian relations.

Much of this has its roots in Donald Trump's seemingly long-standing mistrust of Ukraine as a whole - and Zelensky in particular.

EPA russian strike on Kharkiv, 20 OctEPA
Russian strikes on Ukraine have continued unabated

A decade ago, Trump became convinced that Ukraine had tried to prevent him from becoming US president. Among a number of unfounded allegations was the suggestion that the US Democratic National Committee had a server hidden somewhere in Ukraine.

When Zelensky became president, three years later, he resisted Trump's demands that he investigate charges of election interference.

During a notorious July 2019 telephone conversation, Trump also asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, the man who went on to defeat him in the 2020 presidential election. Again, Zelensky refused.

At the time, the White House was withholding $391m (£290m) in military assistance to Ukraine, a juxtaposition that ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment.

Whether Trump's resentment over these historic slights continues to inform his current policy towards Ukraine is an open question, but it's clear that the roller coaster of US-Ukraine relations has taken another stomach-churning dip.

Following the talks in Oslo, Witkoff is taking a set of updated proposals to St Petersburg. All eyes will now be on Putin.

Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian leader, said the talks in Oslo had helped "to straighten out a few things."

"There's nothing to gain from… digging into what was said yesterday or a week ago," he said diplomatically.

Zelensky said the day had begun with a productive conversation with the US Secretary of State and indicated that the issue of early warning had already been fixed. He also sounded optimistic about Patriot missiles and Starlink.

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