Ukrainian marines on war with Russia – amid concerns over Donald Trump’s return to the White House
The Darth Vader theme tune suddenly bleeps from the underbelly of a Ukrainian drone as a marine attaches a mortar round to it before launching the aircraft against a Russian position.
The Ukrainians say their enemy fears this kind of rotary drone in particular because of the size of the bombs it can drop.
Unmanned aircraft used by both sides have transformed the battlefield in the nearly three years since Russia launched its full-scale war.
But another transformation is also looming as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House.
The president-elect has promised to end the fighting – though without saying how.
Offering a sense of the mood on the ground, several Ukrainian troops told Sky News they were strongly against any kind of brokered deal that gifts land to Moscow.
“I hope the outcome of this war will be just,” said Major Vladyslav Tovstii, 28, commander of the Korsar battalion, 38th Separate Marine Brigade, speaking at a drone command centre in eastern Ukraine where his marines call in and track strikes on Russian targets.
“For me, a just peace is the return of our territory. That’s the only understanding I have; there’s no other way.”
‘A just peace is the return of our territory,’ Major Vladyslav Tovstii said
Battle-hardened despite his young age, Vladyslav has been fighting since before Russia launched its all-out invasion on 24 February 2022.
Standing in front of a wall of screens, showing video feeds from surveillance aircraft and attack drones, the commander gave his view on the possibility of some sort of compromise deal with Vladimir Putin – something that Mr Trump may well attempt to achieve.
“It would mean that justice in the world is not as I see it,” Major Tovstii said.
“A compromise is no longer about justice; it’s about concessions, which means that if you are stronger, you can take what you want.”
His brigade is among the units attempting to stop a grinding Russian advance towards the frontline city of Pokrovsk.
Read more:
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On the ground in Ukraine as three killed in airstrikes
The use of drones is a key way for Ukraine to compensate for a lack of manpower compared to the number of soldiers Russia is sacrificing daily for every inch of captured land.
But Russian forces also operate large numbers of unmanned aircraft, with each side constantly adapting their machines to be able to fly further and carry larger payloads.
Another evolution is in the area of electronic warfare, which is designed to jam the signals of enemy drones and force them out of the sky. Countering this threat is critical.
Sky News was given exclusive access to a makeshift Ukrainian drone factory where engineers and other specialists from the marine brigade adapt aircraft to give them a better chance of defeating Russian jamming efforts and flying deeper into Russian-held territory.
“If you don’t want to sacrifice your men, your soldiers, you better make this fight distant, right?” said a technician at the factory, who went by the name “Cartman” from the cartoon series South Park.
He said the success rate for his unit’s drones is slightly above 50%, but even that level is getting harder to sustain as Russia improves its electronic warfare tactics.
Armed with tools and hunched over drone parts, the team here is working as hard as ever despite growing uncertainty about the future of the war.
“This is such a waste of time, of my time,” said Cartman, who volunteered to join the military last year, giving up a senior job at an international company. He spoke in English.
“While some people are creating technologies to save life and to make life better, we are working on technologies – not just to kill the enemy, but to destroy him completely.
“This is out of (contrary to) common sense, but we have no choice. There’s no way out. We have to win this war.”
Cartman warned Donald Trump ‘you cannot make friends with a shark attacking you’
Asked what his message was for Mr Trump, Cartman said: “You cannot make friends with a shark attacking you. You cannot talk common sense if the animal wants to kill you.
“What negotiation skills will you apply if you have just to fight for your survival?”
Read more from Sky News:
Leaders are now talking peace in Ukraine rather than war
Trump 2.0 brings a reset in European politics and trade
Back with the marine who had The Imperial March from Star Wars bleeping out of his drone, the attack operation is under way.
The serviceman raced with a colleague to an underground shelter after attaching the mortar round to the drone, which is called “Perun”.
It is dangerous to spend too much time outside because Russian eyes are also in the sky.
After the aircraft took off, they tracked its progress on a screen which showed live footage from a video camera also fixed to the machine.
Once over a Russian position close to Pokrovsk – where the heaviest fighting is taking place – the explosive was dropped. The team confirmed a hit.
Oscar, a company commander in charge of this unit, said he had two views on the possibility of a deal that meant Russia held on to some Ukrainian land and the conflict was frozen.
On the one hand, the 22-year-old said it would be good if it meant no more Ukrainians dying.
But on the other hand, speaking in broken English, he said: “If we froze this war, it gives our enemy time for preparing [the] next attack. And this is so bad because we don’t have many people.”
‘We don’t have many people’ left to fight Russia if they regroup, Oscar said
Asked how he felt about the prospect of a frozen war, Oscar said he would be sad “because my many friends dying… I lost… men of my family… For what? For what [were they] dying?”
Additional reporting by Azad Safarov, Ukraine producer
World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Donald Trump its now seen here as turning on France and the rest of Europe in a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community. and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Mr Trump it is now being as turned on, as France, along with the rest of Europe, finds itself in what many would argue is a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
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