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The second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes as America prepares for a crucial election and while funding for a Ukrainian victory remains blocked in a divided Congress.

As our own frontline eyewitness reporting shows, Vladimir Putin has the upper hand.

Western leaders have repeatedly warned that Putin won’t stop at Ukraine given the chance. We are reminded that even on the eve of his invasion two years ago, Putin insisted he would not move into Ukraine.

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘may achieve war goal’

So what might happen in the months and years ahead?

Here are two scenarios. Far-fetched? It depends if the rhetoric is accurate.

Scenario one:

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It’s March 2025 and a few weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s 47th president.

Donald Trump
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Donald Trump

Air Force One has just touched down in Istanbul where Turkey is hosting the ‘Donbas Peace Summit’ where an agreement will be signed by Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy.

At the Topkapi Palace overlooking the Bosporus River, the stage is set for a Trump-brokered ‘peace’ treaty.

The treaty comes three months after Ukraine’s weapon supply ran completely dry following an American refusal to pass funding bills and a breakdown in European unity.

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Latvia: Conscription could help NATO

This Istanbul moment is the delivery of President Trump’s campaign pledge to ‘solve the Ukraine war in a day’.

It had taken longer than a day but Zelenskyy had been cornered through a lack of Western weapons.

Closed-door meetings between Trump administration officials and the Kremlin (the contents of which have not been revealed) sealed the deal: Ukraine agreed to cede the whole of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to an expanded Russian Federation.

Inside the Topkapi Palace, Zelenskyy first took to the stage, stony-faced and wearing a suit rather than his army fatigues for the first time since the Russian invasion three years earlier.

He signed the document and left the room without acknowledging President Trump who was presiding over the moment.

(Pic: Reuters)
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(Pic: Reuters)

Minutes later, separately, a beaming President Putin emerged, signed the document and shook the American president’s hand.

Three years later in the spring of 2028, the Russian army which had been massing on Europe’s eastern flank invaded Latvia and Estonia.

The two European nations fell fast.

NATO, abandoned by Trump’s America a year earlier, was unable to defend them.

By the summer of 2029, Chinese President Xi Jinping launches an air and maritime invasion of Taiwan.

Read more from Sky News:
Who is Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia?
Donald Trump breaks silence on Alexei Navalny’s death

What remains of Russian opposition?

Scenario two:

March 2025. Air Force One landed at Kyiv international airport. Joe Biden, recently re-elected as America’s President, descended the steps of the plane with a rare spring in his careful step.

President Joe Biden speaks about his meeting with Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya and daughter Dasha, in San Francisco, Feb. 22, 2024. The U.S. government is hitting Russia with the largest tranche of financial penalties imposed on Moscow since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. They target roughly 600 people and firms from Russia to China to the United Arab Emirates. The sanctions are timed to the second anniversary of the invasion, and in response to the death of Navalny. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
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(Pic: AP)

On the tarmac, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, in a suit, embraced him. Some observers said they could see tears in his eyes.

A week earlier, Russian President Putin had withdrawn the last of his forces from eastern Ukraine after a bitter winter battle in which an estimated 40,000 soldiers on both sides had been killed.

Putin’s army had been decimated after a massive increase of weapons from Europe and the United States.

The consequence of a war which had lasted three years was the near-total degradation of the Russian military.

It had been compounded by a surprise thaw in US-China relations and Beijing’s subsequent abandonment of Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (not pictured) during the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, Germany February 17, 2024. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/Pool TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
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(Pic: Reuters)

A dramatic shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East also helped to seal Russia’s fate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation and subsequent conviction in the 7 October Inquiry of September 2024 had paved the way for the Israeli-Saudi normalisation deal.

This isolated Iran and dented Tehran’s relations with Moscow.

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Ukraine needs ‘2.5 million shells’

Far-fetched then? Quite possibly. Donald Trump’s first presidency showed that his fickle unpredictability often cancelled out his wild rhetoric.

And a second Biden term is full of profound unknowns. Republican or Democrat, America appears far less engaged than it once was.

In a world of such discombobulating flux, and where global geopolitics is all inextricably linked, don’t rule anything out.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

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In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

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‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
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File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

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Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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