You should always give peace a chance. That US President Donald Trump “thinks out of the box” is already the cliche of the moment.

And he may bring a fresh way of thinking and a new energy to ending Russia’s war in Ukraine where others have failed.

But there are some ominous signs already, bolstering fears Ukraine has been betrayed before the talks have even started.

Mr Trump could not bring himself on Wednesday even to say Ukraine and Russia were equal partners in any future negotiations.

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Asked if they were, he said: “Hmm, that’s an interesting question.”

The Ukrainians, he said, “will have to make peace”.

“Their people are being killed, and I think they should make peace,” he added.

More worryingly, he seems as prepared as ever to trust Vladimir Putin.

He seems happy to take the word of a man who sent agents to Britain to kill with chemical weapons, who lied repeatedly about his plans to invade Ukraine, and who has murdered in cold blood every rival who dared to challenge him.

“He insisted that if it (the conflict) ends, he wants it to end,” Mr Trump said, as if that was all there is to it.

“He does not want to end it and then go back to war in six months.”

In the same way, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938 waving a piece of paper declaring “peace in our time” after winning what he thought were similar assurances from Adolf Hitler.

For Ukrainians, the parallels with 1938 do not end there.

They are being told even before negotiations start that they will have to give up some of their land that has been taken by brutal force.

Ukrainians compare that with Czechoslovakia being forced to hand over the Sudetenland to Hitler. Chamberlain believed that would be enough to appease Hitler. We all know what followed.

They have every reason to be worried.

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There is nothing in what the Russian president has said to make anyone believe giving him a fifth of Ukraine will be enough to appease him either.

In fact, in speeches, he has been emphatically and explicitly clear time and time again. He wants all of Ukraine because he believes it is part of Russia.

And then he wants the security architecture of Europe refashioned.

And Mr Trump seems to be caving into Mr Putin on that as well, giving into one of the key pre-war demands he made in 2021 before invading his neighbour, the reduction of America’s footprint in NATO in Europe that was declared by US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth in Brussels yesterday.

Trump is surrendering much of the leverage he had over the Russians before talks have even begun. This is from a man who declared in his book The Art of the Deal that leverage is everything in negotiations.

“Don’t make deals without it.”

It is curious and inexplicable. Except that Mr Putin has always appeared to have some kind of hold over Mr Trump.

When they last met in Helsinki, the president sided with Mr Putin over his own spies on the question of Russian election interference.

As a spy in east Germany, Mr Putin was trained in KGB techniques of understanding your enemy and deceiving them.

He has used those skills all his career, not least with George W Bush who famously naively said: “I looked into his eyes and I saw a soul. I trusted him.”

If Mr Trump is persuaded to side with Mr Putin over Ukraine, a dictator will have been rewarded for invading his neighbour. Aggression will have prevailed.

A precedent will have been set that has alarming implications for other countries neighbouring Russia and further afield.

In the east, as he ponders how to seize Taiwan by force, China’s Xi Jinping will be learning lessons too.

The outcome of all this may well not be peace in our time. Quite the opposite.

A man has been found guilty of the murder of an 86-year-old woman after DNA which matched his profile was found on her nail clippings.

Una Crown, a retired postmistress, was found dead at her home in the Wisbech area of Cambridgeshire on 13 January 2013.

She had sustained stab wounds to her chest, her throat was cut and her clothes set on fire.

Initially, her death was not considered suspicious by police, which prosecutor John Price described as a “grave error of judgement”.

David Newton, 70, was charged with Mrs Crown’s murder last year but he denied the offence.

On Thursday at Cambridge Crown Court, he appeared open-mouthed as the foreman returned the jury’s guilty verdict.

Newton was found guilty by a majority of 10 jurors to two after deliberating for 29 hours and 13 minutes.

John Payne, the husband of Mrs Crown’s niece, found her in her hallway on 13 January 2013.

He had driven to her address to collect her for Sunday lunch at their house.

Prosecuting, Mr Price told the jury that Mrs Crown was killed the day before and that male DNA matching David Newton’s profile was discovered by scientists in 2023.

The prosecution said the reason why Newton went to Mrs Crown’s home and killed her were “not matters that the prosecution need prove”.

But the trial heard the defendant was on state benefits in 2013 – his only source of regular income – and that he was “spending freely” on 13 January.

The prosecution also said money was missing from Mrs Crown’s handbag.

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Detective Superintendent Iain Moor from Cambridgeshire Police said the force had apologised to Mrs Crown’s family for “mistakes” during the initial investigation in 2013.

Using a DNA testing technique that was not available then, police were able to “cast doubt on David Newton’s claims that he hadn’t seen [Mrs Crown] on the day, or days, before her death”.

“For more than a decade he thought he had gotten away with this most horrendous crime, but today’s result shows you cannot hide forever,” Mr Moor added.

Newton is due to be sentenced at the same court on February 14.

The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is exploring launching private criminal proceedings against NatWest Group over the debanking scandal which resulted in the lender’s former chief losing her job.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Farage has instructed Chris Daw KC of Lincoln House Chambers to examine whether there are grounds for bringing a criminal case against the high street banking giant.

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The move appears to be deliberately timed to coincide with the publication of NatWest’s annual results on Friday morning, which will come just weeks before the government is expected to sell its last-remaining shares in the company, nearly 17 years after its £45.5bn taxpayer bailout.

Mr Farage confirmed to Sky News on Thursday evening that Grosvenor Law, which is acting for him in separate civil proceedings against the bank, had instructed Mr Daw KC to explore a private criminal prosecution, adding: “This is unfinished business.”

Dan Morrison, a partner at Grosvenor Law, said in a separate statement: “Mr Farage is concerned about possible criminal issues arising out of the bank’s conduct.

“We do not wish to provide further details.

“We have therefore decided to instruct leading criminal counsel.”

The debanking furore which claimed the scalp of Dame Alison Rose, NatWest’s former chief executive, in the summer of 2023 centred on whether the bank’s Coutts subsidiary decided to close Mr Farage’s accounts for commercial or political reasons.

NatWest initially claimed the motivation was commercial before Mr Farage obtained internal evidence from the bank suggesting that his politics had been a pivotal factor in the decision.

It sparked a firestorm under the then Conservative government, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the then prime minister and chancellor respectively, indicating to NatWest’s board that they had lost faith in Dame Alison’s ability to lead the bank.

Since then, the City watchdog has instructed banks and other financial firms to do more to ensure that parliamentarians, senior public servants and their families – known as politically exposed persons, or PEPs – are not treated unfairly.

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Mr Farage’s decision to hire Mr Daw KC threatens a fresh escalation against one of Britain’s biggest banks at a time when some argue that he has become the country’s most influential politician.

He led Reform to a handful of seats at last year’s general election, while his party finished in second place in scores of other constituencies.

The Reform leader’s close ties to Donald Trump, inaugurated last month for the second time as US President, have fuelled the sense that he may play an even more crucial role in shaping the identity of Britain’s next government when the country goes to the polls in 2029.

A recent opinion poll for Sky News by YouGov put Reform ahead of both Labour and the Tories for the first time.

Since the summer of 2023, tentative discussions between Mr Farage’s legal representatives and NatWest about a possible settlement have failed to result in any financial agreement.

Mr Farage was expected to seek millions of pounds from the company, alleging that the debanking row had damaged his reputation.

Despite the threat of a fresh legal barrage from Mr Farage, NatWest – now run by Paul Thwaite – is in its most robust financial health for decades.

The government’s stake in the bank is now below 8%, and a full exit is expected during the spring.

A NatWest spokesperson said it did not comment on individual customers.