Keir Starmer says he is “ready and willing” to send British troops to Ukraine to enforce a peace deal. European leaders will meet in Paris this afternoon to discuss their response to Donald Trump’s bilateral discussions with Vladimir Putin and fears that the US will reduce its defence commitments in Europe. The government says it has already met its pledge to offer an extra two million NHS appointments in its first year. New figures show there were 2.2 million more routine consultations between July and November last year compared to the same period in 2023, though the latter was affected by doctors’ strikes. Conclave and The Brutalist were the big winners at last night’s BAFTA awards, picking up four gongs each. The papal drama took Best Film and Outstanding British Film, while the architecture epic won Best Actor (Adrien Brody) and Best Director (Brady Corbet). Best Actress went to Mikey Madison for her role in the dark comedy Anora.

This isn’t appeasement, it’s common sense

JD Vance’s announcement at last week’s Munich Security Conference that America was going over the heads of the old European allies to negotiate with Vladimir Putin has sparked panic across the continent, says Matthew Parris in The Times. “We should all calm down.” This is not, as the hysterics would have you believe, “appeasement”. It is the “dawning recognition of the obvious”, and it is manageable. European nations will now surely start talking realistically about upping our spending on defence. Far from appeasement, that signals the awakening understanding of the need to “prepare for war if war is to be avoided”.

There is time. We in the free world have a long history of overestimating the Russian economy’s ability to sustain Russia’s foreign ambitions, but the country is in no position to invade a western European or Nato nation. Moscow is desperately inflating its own currency to replace lost armaments; running out of “human cannon fodder” even from the furthest reaches of its overstretched empire; and threatened by falling prices of oil and gas, “its only significant export”. And Putin is not Hitler, he’s just another murderous Russian tyrant. As for the Ukrainians, they hate Russia, but they also understand a deal must come, and that it must involve some loss of territory. The young, tellingly, are “much more likely than their parents to favour a deal”. When all this fuss dies down we’ll remember that unlike, say, China, Russia poses no existential threat to western civilisation. It’s just a bloody nuisance. “The Americans, I think, are right about that.”

🤝🧐 Particularly baffling is the outrage over Trump’s suggestion that Kyiv cannot expect to regain territory lost to Putin. Yes, it might seem a lot to concede before negotiations have begun. But “no serious negotiator” could ever think this issue was up for debate. And the concession may just have been enough “bait” to bring the Russian president to the table.