The World That Was

Adrian Olivier,

Sunday 16 February – Sunday 23 February:

On Sunday, Ukraine’s military said Russian troops had sharply stepped up their attacks in eastern Ukraine. The main attacks were concentrated near the imperiled logistics hub of Pokrovsk. Kyiv’s military reported 261 combat engagements with Russia over a 24-hour period on Saturday, easily the largest number recorded this year and more than double the roughly 100 per day it reported in previous days. “Today was the hardest day of 2025 at the front,” the Ukrainian DeepState military blog wrote late on Saturday. Russia’s military on Saturday reported the capture of the village of Berezivka, northeast of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian reports did not mention the village, but its Sunday evening report said the adjacent settlement of Vodiane Druhe was one of several under attack in the area. Russian forces have seized a swathe of territory to the south of Pokrovsk and are now pushing upwards to its southwest, threatening a main supply route into the outpost, the capture of which could open up more lines of attack for Russia. 

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting of European leaders inside the Élysée Palace to discuss Ukraine after he held a 20-minute call with U.S. President Donald Trump. After Monday’s meeting, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on X that Europe was “ready and willing” to provide security guarantees to Ukraine and “to invest a lot more in our security.” The U.K.’s Starmer said that Europe would play its role in securing any emerging peace but that the U.S. must provide a backstop to European security guarantees. The U.S. has signalled it wouldn’t put troops in Ukraine or commit to entering the conflict if European troops came under attack. Washington is also opposed to Ukraine joining NATO. A second day of talks was held on Wednesday in a bid to coordinate a European response. Macron spoke to several leaders of the EU countries, as well as Canada, Iceland, and Norway, with most taking part via video conferencing.

On Tuesday, the U.S. and Russia agreed to open talks to settle the war in Ukraine after a meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh. The Russian side was represented by veteran diplomats Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and foreign-policy advisor Yuri Ushakov as well as Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The U.S. side was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff, a close friend of Trump’s who made his fortune in real estate and who has served as a special envoy to the Middle East and now Russia. Ukraine, left out of initial discussions, is demanding to be a party to the talks and has said it won’t be obliged to agree to a peace deal negotiated in its absence. Because Russia is pushing for broad discussions touching on regional security in Europe and maybe the Middle East, various rounds will include representatives from Europe and possibly beyond. Waltz and Rubio described a process in which a newly formed U.S. team would meet directly with its Russian counterparts and consult with Ukraine and European allies about important issues. The Trump administration will also appoint a special envoy to talk to the Russians, according to Ushakov. Russia says it wants a redrawing of borders and recognition by the West of its annexation of four provinces of Ukraine, large parts of which are still under the control of Ukrainian forces. More broadly, Russia wants the removal of U.S. and European sanctions and an end to Western encroachment on its borders with the expansion of NATO to former Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations. Russia has demanded that Kyiv accept permanent neutrality and has said Western troops on Ukrainian soil as part of a security guarantee is unacceptable. 

On Wednesday, Denmark announced plans to significantly increase its military spending to 3.2% of GDP. Denmark’s $5 billion annual defense budget will get a $7 billion injection over two years, according to the plan, making the country the first European nation outside Poland and the Baltics to commit to spending more than 3% of gross domestic product on its military. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Denmark was in a hurry to strengthen its military to defend itself and avoid a war amid threats from Russia. “If we can’t get the best equipment, buy the second-best. There is only one thing that counts, and that is speed,” she said in a press conference on Wednesday. “Buy, buy, buy.” “The security situation in Europe demands swift political action. That is what Denmark is doing today,” Jesper Møller Sørensen, the Danish ambassador to the U.S., said to the Wall Street Journal. Denmark’s spending pledge is the first significant boost to defence outlays announced since the U.S. administration staked its ground at the Munich Security Conference. It also comes on the heels of a Danish intelligence report assessing Russia could start another major European war within five years—if European militaries remained relatively weak. 

On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is “years, not decades” away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed. Microsoft said the Majorana 1 chip it has developed is less prone to those errors than rivals and provided as evidence a scientific paper set to be published in the academic journal Nature. Microsoft’s Majorana 1 has been in the works for nearly two decades and relies on a subatomic particle called the Majorana fermion, whose existence was first theorized in the 1930s. That particle has properties that make it less prone to the errors that plague quantum computers, but it has been hard for physicists to find and control. Microsoft said it created the Majorana 1 chip with indium arsenide and aluminum. The device uses a superconducting nanowire to observe the particles and can be controlled with standard computing equipment. 

On Thursday, a news conference that was planned to follow talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy was cancelled Thursday as political tensions deepened between the two countries. The event was originally supposed to include comments to the media by Zelenskyy and retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, but it was changed at the last minute to a simple photo opportunity where the two posed for journalists. They did not deliver statements or field questions as expected. The change was requested by the U.S. side, Ukrainian presidential spokesman Serhii Nikiforov said. Recent feuding between Trump and Zelenskyy has bruised their relations and cast further doubt on the future of U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the eurozone economy continued to flatline in February, torn between signs of revival in Germany and a sharp decline in France, according to business surveys. The euro area’s composite purchasing managers’ index–which gauges activity among manufacturing and services companies in Europe’s largest economy–held at 50.2, the same as in January, a survey compiled by Hamburg Commercial Bank and S&P Global said on Friday. That was a little weaker than economists’ expectations of 50.5, from a poll by The Wall Street Journal. Coming in just above the 50 no-change mark, the survey indicates activity expanded this month, if only slightly. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, had its second straight year of contraction in 2024 but is showing signs of recovery in the early part of this year, ahead of a national election on Sunday. Investor confidence ticked higher this month in the hopes that the new government might be more capable of policy action to solve the country’s economic slowdown after the incumbent coalition fell apart over disagreements on fiscal policy. But in Germany’s neighbour, France, activity sank to a 17-month low, according to the PMI data. The setback of the economy comes as a potential surprise given the recent easing of political uncertainty after Prime Minister Francois Bayroupassed a 2025 budget. Activity in the U.K. also nearly flatlined, with private-sector employment falling the most since 2020. 

On Saturday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said preparations are underway for a face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking to Russian state media, Sergei Ryabkov said a possible Putin-Trump summit could involve broad talks on global issues, not just the war in Ukraine. “The question is about starting to move toward normalizing relations between our countries, finding ways to resolve the most acute and potentially very, very dangerous situations, of which there are many, Ukraine among them,” he said. Ryabkov added that U.S. and Russian envoys could meet within the next two weeks to pave the way for further talks among senior officials. 

On Sunday, German opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won a lacklustre victory in a national election which saw a record-breaking voter turnout of 83.5%, the highest since unification in 1990. Alternative for Germany came in second place, nearly doubling its support. Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats. Merz said his absolute priority will be “to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.” “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program. But after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” The continent, he warned, must urgently strengthen its defences and potentially even find a replacement for NATO — within months.