There is a sense of impotent futility to the latest sanctions imposed by the UK on Russia in the wake of the Dawn Sturgess public inquiry report released today.

And it’s not just the UK.

For all Europe’s handwringing, rhetoric and sanctions, Vladimir Putin remains unmoved.

This week, he was more belligerent than ever, warning that while Russia does not want a war, if Europe starts one, it’s more than ready.

Ukraine war latest: Putin says Donald Trump has an agenda

As we approach a fourth year of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the world is operating under new management and new rules, but the penny has not yet dropped in Europe.

The much-vaunted ‘rules-based world order’ is falling apart. America, so long its guardian, has deserted it and is now in league more and more with Russia.

The Trump administration is more interested in the promise of renewed trading ties and business deals with Putin’s Russia, despite all its murderous faults.

Putin is winning on the battlefield, slowly but steadily, and Ukraine is running out of money. America has turned off the tap and is now acting as an arms dealer, selling Ukraine weapons via Europe.

Ukraine needs in excess of a hundred billion dollars a year to continue fighting. Europe is bickering over how to use frozen Russian assets to fund that.

And there is certainly no sign of European governments biting the bullet and asking taxpayers to do so instead.

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The alternative way of stopping Russia’s grinding advance is sending troops to Ukraine, which remains out of the question.

So for now, we have just words and sanctions instead.

Sir Keir Starmer may wring his hands about the “Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives” in the wake of the inquiry into Dawn Sturgess’s death in Salisbury in 2018. It holds the Russian leader “morally responsible” for the Skripal poisoning.

But if Europe is not prepared to put its money where its rhetoric and sanctions are, does this add up to much more than posturing?

European governments have for almost a year seemed in denial, acting like a cheated spouse. As America’s affections for Russia have become more and more obvious, Europe has hoped against hope to win back its partner.

The affair between Trump and Putin is now, it seems, in full sight.

America no longer wants to support either Europe or Ukraine, only to profit from arms sales to the conflict.

Tantalising deals dangled by Moscow are all it takes, it seems, to keep Donald Trump’s interest.

Substituting impotent sanctions and rhetoric for solid financial support for Ukraine at some point becomes worse than pointless.

It encourages Kyiv to carry on fighting, as Putin put it recently, “to the last Ukrainian” in the mistaken belief that Europe has its back.

The moment of reckoning approaches for Europe, but there is no sign of its leaders accepting that fact.

There is a desperate desire for normality in Gaza – for full shops, functioning hospitals, open schools, habitable homes and usable roads. For electricity that comes on reliably, skies that don’t hum with drones and days that don’t crackle with gunfire.

In Khan Younis, 54 couples got married at one enormous shared ceremony. The event attracted crowds who clambered on to a smashed-out building opposite the dais to wave at the brides and grooms, and to celebrate. Amid a grey landscape of dust and destruction, the image was one of colour and cheer.

It is a captivating vision of a better world, but it is an illusion. Gaza is still being ripped by tides of danger, violence and volatility. And it all sits within a cobweb of conflicting interests that makes security so precarious that you wonder how peace can ever return.

Take the past day or two. First, the Israeli military says that five of their soldiers have been injured after being attacked by Hamas fighters who may have emerged from hiding in tunnels.

As has happened after all such incidents previously, Israel responds with a show of might – with an airstrike that, it says, was aimed at a senior Hamas official. In the ensuing fallout, civilians, including two children, are killed.

Israel also announces that it will open the Rafah Crossing, but only to allow people out of Gaza. Egypt says it won’t co-operate unless the crossing allows people to go in both directions. Israel, which suspects Egypt of offering financial support to Hamas, does not agree. Stalemate.

Also in Rafah, Yasser Abu Shabab, leader of a militant group that opposed Hamas and was getting covert backing from Israel, is killed, presumably by Hamas fighters. Exactly how they got into his territory is hard to guess, but his killing suggests that, far from being degraded, Hamas is once again exerting control.

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Rafah crossing to open ‘in coming days’, Israel says

And then there is the return of the remains of the penultimate hostage, Sudthisak Rinthalak, from Gaza to Israel. Only one body now remains to be handed back, that of police officer Ran Gvili, and once that has been returned, then we wonder what will happen next.

In theory, we enter Phase Two, which will see a flood of aid, the disarmament of Hamas, the rebuilding of Gaza and a new governance structure. But the obstacles ahead are monumental, ranging from questions about exactly who is going to take Hamas’s weapons away from them, to how Palestinians are going to feel about Gaza being governed by foreigners.

Sources say that a huge amount of effort has been invested, largely by American diplomats, soldiers, planners and business people, in trying to plan for this future. America has a huge co-ordination centre set up in southern Israel and President Trump believes that peace in the Middle East is his ticket to the Nobel Prize.

But it would be a huge – strike that, impossible – stretch of faith to think that these plans will come into play effortlessly. They won’t. The ambitions outlined in Phase Two are still little more than hopes.

For one thing, half of Gaza is still under Israeli military control and the IDF are not going anywhere. For another, the other half of Gaza is in a state of quasi-anarchy.

The idea of a military supervisory force has been signed off by the United Nations, but has not yet been created. Nor has a set of rules of engagement – imagine if an Egyptian military unit comes across a firefight between Hamas and a different militia – who would they shoot at first? What rules would cover their actions? How do you maintain peace in Gaza?

The questions go on into the distance. And, as long as Hamas regroups, so the concept of it then choosing to voluntarily disarm and largely disband seems harder and harder to believe. If that doesn’t happen, then Israel will not stop worrying about another October 7 attack.

We could go on like this, but the point is clear. The return of the final hostage will bring into play a mass of new questions, none of which appear to have answers. And for the people of Gaza, the anxiety of life will roll on.

The assassination attempt on a former Russian spy was authorised by Vladimir Putin, who is “morally responsible” for the death of a woman poisoned by the nerve agent used in the attack, a public inquiry has found.

The chairman, Lord Hughes, found there were “failings” in the management of Sergei Skripal, 74, who was a member of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, before coming to the UK in 2010 on a prisoner exchange after being convicted of spying for Britain.

But he found the assessment that he wasn’t at “significant risk” of assassination was not “unreasonable” at the time of the attack in Salisbury on 4 March 2018, which could only have been avoided by hiding him with a completely new identity.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, 41, who was also poisoned, were left seriously ill, along with then police officer Nick Bailey, who was sent to search their home, but they all survived.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died on 8 July, just over a week after unwittingly spraying herself with novichok given to her by her partner, Charlie Rowley, 52, in a perfume bottle in nearby Amesbury on 30 June 2018. Mr Rowley was left seriously ill but survived.

In his 174-page report, following last year’s seven-week inquiry, costing more than £8m, former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes said she received “entirely appropriate” medical care but her condition was “unsurvivable” from a very early stage.

The inquiry found GRU officers using the aliases Alexander Petrov, 46, and Ruslan Boshirov, 47, had brought the Nina Ricci bottle containing the novichok to Salisbury after arriving in London from Moscow with a third agent known as Sergey Fedotov to kill Mr Skripal on 2 March.

The report said it was likely the same bottle Petrov and Boshirov used to apply the military-grade nerve agent to the handle of Mr Skripal’s front door before it was “recklessly discarded”.

“They can have had no regard to the hazard thus created, of the death of, or serious injury to, an uncountable number of innocent people,” it said.

It is “impossible to say” where Mr Rowley found the bottle, but was likely within a few days of it being abandoned on 4 March, meaning there is “clear causative link” with the death of mother-of-three Ms Sturgess.

Lord Hughes said he was sure the three GRU agents “were acting on instructions”, adding: “I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin.

“I therefore conclude that those involved in the assassination attempt (not only Petrov, Boshirov and Fedotov, but also those who sent them, and anyone else giving authorisation or knowing assistance in Russia or elsewhere) were morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess’s death,” he said.

Russian ambassador summonsed

After the publication of the report, the government announced the GRU has been sanctioned in its entirety, and the Russian Ambassador has been summonsed to the Foreign Office to answer for Russia’s ongoing campaign of alleged hostile activity against the UK.

Sir Keir Starmer said the findings “are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives” and that Ms Sturgess’s “needless” death was a tragedy that “will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression”.

“The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is,” the prime minister said.

He said deploying the “highly toxic nerve agent in a busy city centre was an astonishingly reckless act” with an “entirely foreseeable” risk that others beyond the intended target would be killed or injured.

The inquiry heard a total of 87 people presented at A&E.

Lord Hughes said there was a decision taken not to issue advice to the public not to pick anything up which they hadn’t dropped, which was a “reasonable conclusion” at the time, so as not to cause “widespread panic”.

He also said there had been no need for training beyond specialist medics before the “completely unexpected use of a nerve agent in an English city”.

After the initial attack, wider training was “appropriate” and was given but should have been more widely circulated.

In a statement following the publication of his report, Lord Hughes said Ms Sturgess’s death was “needless and arbitrary”, while the circumstances are “clear but quite extraordinary”.

“She was the entirely innocent victim of the cruel and cynical acts of others,” he said.

‘We can have Dawn back now’

Speaking after the report was published, Ms Sturgess’s father, Stanley Sturgess, said: “We can have Dawn back now. She’s been public for seven years. We can finally put her to peace.”

In a statement, her family said they felt “vindicated” by the report, which recognised how Wiltshire police wrongly characterised Ms Sturgess as a drug user.

But they said: “Today’s report has left us with some answers, but also a number of unanswered questions.

“We have always wanted to ensure that what happened to Dawn will not happen to others; that lessons should be learned and that meaningful changes should be made.

“The report contains no recommendations. That is a matter of real concern. There should, there must, be reflection and real change.”

Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Catherine Roper admitted the pain of Ms Sturgess’s family was “compounded by mistakes made” by the force, adding: “For this, I am truly sorry.”

Russia has denied involvement

The Russian Embassy has firmly denied any connection between Russia and the attack on the Skripals.

But the chairman dismissed Russia’s explanation that the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings were the result of a scheme devised by the UK authorities to blame Russia, and the claims of Petrov and Borisov in a television interview that they were sightseeing.

The inquiry chairman said the evidence of a Russian state attack was “overwhelming” and was designed not only as a revenge attack against Mr Skripal, but amounted to a “public statement” that Russia “will act decisively in its own interests”.

Lord Hughes found “some features of the management” of Mr Skripal “could and should have been improved”, including insufficient regular written risk assessments.

But although there was “inevitably” some risk of harm at Russia’s hands, the analysis that it was not likely was “reasonable”, he said.

“There is no sufficient basis for concluding that there ought to have been assessed to be an enhanced risk to him of lethal attack on British soil, such as to call for security measures,” such as living under a new identity or at a secret address, the chairman said.

He added that CCTV cameras, alarms or hidden bugs inside Mr Skripal’s house might have been possible but wouldn’t have prevented the “professionally mounted attack with a nerve agent”.

Sky News has approached the Russian Embassy for comment on the report.