Vladimir Putin believes victory over Ukraine is inevitable as his missiles pound the country with near impunity and US policy turns in his favour.
Yet, Moscow is also showing signs of strain deep into the fifth year of war, with the Russian leader facing mounting problems at home and on the battlefield.
Russia is failing to make significant gains on the front line, where thousands are dying every month, and the regime is struggling to replace them. Fears that a covert mobilisation is taking place are on the rise.
A quick guide to this year’s Budget
This is a Budget for the working people.
Chancellor John Healey today unveiled the long-anticipated Budget, the first for Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Healey called it a Budget “for the working people” as he announced details.
So what are the key takeaways?
Cheaper energy
- This winter, 20 million households in council tax bands A to D will receive a £100 energy payment paid directly into people’s bank accounts – a £2.6bn scheme.
- Gas standing charges will be removed from next year, and similar reforms will follow for electricity.
- The Chancellor says he will remove some levies on energy bills.
- He also extended a VAT cut on electricity to July 2027, cutting £50 off the annual price cap.
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Savings and pensions
- The tax-free limit on cash ISAs will stay at £20,000, abandoning plans to reduce it to £12,000.
- “To make the investment more accessible, I will work with the sector to create a new starter ISA to reward first-time investors,” Healey said.
A new pension tax allowance will be introduced. “Pensioners with income up to the value of the full new state pension will not pay income tax in this parliament,” Healey said.
Benefits and paternity leave
- A benefits rule that punished unpaid carers for earning too much is being abolished. Now, if they earn any amount above the threshold set by means-testing (£204 a week), they lose the whole carer’s allowance.
- This will be replaced, Healey announced.
- Self-employed dads and same-sex partners will also be eligible for two weeks’ support worth up to £194 a week.
3.9%
The Chancellor announced a rise in the minimum wage by nearly 3.9 per cent, the same rate for workers aged 18 to 20 years old and those aged 21 and over.
The Chancellor promises to reform non-compete clauses in contracts.
- Healey also said he will extend the fuel duty cut until July 2027.
- Workers using their car to get to work can be reimbursed a greater amount by their employers tax-free – the higher mileage rate will increase from 25p to 35p per mile.
The threshold for small business rate relief will increase from £12,000 to £18,000 for retail, hospitality and leisure.
Healey will also raise taxes on the gambling industry to pay for the changes. A £10m alcohol duty relief will be provided for around 2,000 small British brewers and cider makers.
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The two reasons Man Utd have given Carrick shock second chance
Michael Carrick will remain in charge of Manchester United for their weekend trip to Chelsea, despite overseeing the club’s worst start to a top-flight season in 40 years.
Carrick is ‘preparing team to face Chelsea’
The i Paper has been told that despite several alternatives being explored, Carrick was at United’s Carrington base taking training on Tuesday and is “preparing the team to face Chelsea on Saturday”.
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A closer look at the detail
Club sources insisted that “Michael and the players will have the opportunity to turn the situation around”, with everyone focused on “showing our response on the pitch”.
Carrick was expected to be relieved of his duties on Monday, with Eddie Howe the frontrunner to take charge. However, after senior executives held a crisis meeting on Monday, Carrick will get a surprise reprieve.
What happened on Monday?
- With the squad on a day off, Carrick was not expected to be at Carrington, as senior figures were sharpening their axe. Instead, there was no white smoke from the boardroom.
- Rumours circled that United were waiting for the afternoon and the New York Stock Exchange to open before making an announcement, but club sources insisted no news would be coming out of the club.
Why has Carrick got another chance?
- Insiders told The i Paper that chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox could not make a call on sacking Carrick yet until they believe a suitable successor is lined up.
- Dismissing Carrick will cost the club a considerable amount, so they must be certain the next coach is fully interested.
- One source has claimed that there is a feeling the club needs to stop the cycle of sacking managers.
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Why Neil Young is suing Trump campaign for the second time
The Canadian-American singer has filed a $10m (£7.5m) lawsuit against a fundraising committee that supports Donald Trump, citing “unauthorised” use of his music.
What does Young claim?
Young, 80, alleges that the Trump 47 Committee infringed on his copyright when it used his hit song Rockin’ in the Free World before Trump took to the stage at a rally in Ohio on 12 October.
The lawsuit claims the use of the song amounts to an “unauthorised public performance”, and that Young “has not, and would not, grant the required licence”.
A closer look at the lawsuit
The lawsuit said Rockin’ the Free World is “a blistering anthem that contrasts the hollow promises of American political rhetoric with the harsh realities faced by the poor, homeless and forgotten”.
- Young says that the song is “the opposite of everything that Donald J Trump stands for”.
“We have all been here before,” to quote by Young’s former supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
This is the second time Young has sued Trump over use of the song. The singer filed a lawsuit in 2020, which was later settled.
Young’s lawsuit says Trump’s use of the song again breaks the terms of the prior settlement. The new $10m lawsuit also asks for an injunction against further public performance for political purposes.
The Trump administration has not yet responded to the suit.
The Rolling Stones, REM, Rihanna, Adele, and the estate of Prince have all previously criticised the president for using their music at his campaign events.
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Why Bolsonaro has fled to the US after Brazilian election
Brazilian senator and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has left the country for the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election.
The US State Department is expected to grant him and his family entry visas.
What you need to know
Bolsonaro is yet to concede to the current President and leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The losing right-wing candidate left Brazil amid a probe into alleged money laundering, wrongdoing he has denied. He refused to comply with a supreme court order to surrender his passports.
Bolsonaro is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest as part of his 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.
US via Argentina and Ecuador
Argentina’s migration department said on Wednesday that Bolsonaro and his family had briefly entered the country’s Misiones province on Tuesday night through a road crossing, with valid travel documents
They then boarded a private plane bound for Guayaquil, Ecuador. The current location of Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters was not immediately clear.
Donald Trump and Argentina’s President Javier Milei have been vocal allies of the Bolsonaro family.
Tense relations
- Bolsonaro’s departure threatens to deepen a rift between Brazil and the US – the two most populous nations in the Americas.
- Lula has accused Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaros to put them back in power.
- Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he would approve of Bolsonaro coming to the US.
- The US President on Monday said the Brazilian vote “looked like another rigged election”.
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Like father, like son?
Trump has previously alleged that Jair was a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil.
- The elder Bolsonaro also went to the US after refusing to concede to Lula in 2022, when then US president Joe Biden was in office.
- Lula, speaking in Brasilia, said he had just heard that Flavio had left the country, and called it shameful, saying he should have stayed in Brazil and proved his innocence.
- Bolsonaro had been favored to win Sunday’s presidential election but ended up losing in a shock result.
- Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flavio’s younger brother who lives in the US, said ahead of the vote that an election loss would require a move out of the country.
The election in pictures
Everything we know so far about fatal train crash in Spain
At least 64 people have been killed and 80 injured after two trains collided in Spain this morning, it has been reported.
The trains collided between the towns of Los Yebenes and Urda, in the Toledo province in central Spain. Rail operator, Adif, said the entire line from Madrid to the southern Andalusia region has now been suspended.
What do we know so far?
- The crash involved a high-speed AVE train that had left Madrid bound for Seville and an Iryo train travelling in the opposite direction.
- The Iryo train was reportedly carrying 147 people, while the AVE train was carrying 397.
- The crash comes nine months after Spain’s worst rail disaster in more than a decade.
- In January, two high-speed trains collided near Adamuz in Córdoba, killing more than 40 people.
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[I am] shocked by the serious train accident in Toledo…I remain in constant contact with the Minister of Transport, and with the president of Castilla-La Mancha. My affection, solidarity, and support to all the victims and their families.
Pedro Sánchez
The story in pictures
When will the UK rejoin the Erasmus plus scheme?
The Government has confirmed the UK will rejoin the Erasmus plus student exchange scheme from the start of January.
Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer said applications would open next month for young people who will be able to study, train or get work experience in the EU.
What you need to know
- Falconer emphasised to MPs that the opportunities would be open to “educational institutions of all kinds”.
- Work on the UK joining the Erasmus programme was announced as part of former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s post-Brexit reset deal with Brussels in 2025.
- The UK left the scheme under Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in 2020, with the then-prime minister arguing it did not offer value for money.
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What was it replaced by?
- It was replaced by the Turing Scheme, which was ended when the Government announced the new deal over Erasmus plus.
- The Government has previously said it expects more than 100,000 people to be able to benefit.
As well as university-based study exchanges, Erasmus plus allows further education students and apprentices to take up work placements in European firms.
Applications open this November. They are not simply for undergraduate university students. They are for educational institutions of all kinds.
Hamish Falconer
Three-quarters of pilots have fallen asleep in the cockpit
Three in four European pilots have admitted to falling asleep in the cockpit.
A new study
Research commissioned by the European Cockpit Association, asked 7,200 captains and first officers about their tiredness levels while on shift.
A total of 77 per cent of respondents reported having at least one “microsleep” – a brief, unintentional sleep – while operating an aircraft in the four weeks prior to the survey.
The findings
- One in four pilots admitted to five or more microsleeps during the same four-week period, while 7 per cent admitted to having 10 or more.
- Of the pilots working for British airlines, 54 per cent said they had slept between one and four times.
- A further 13 per cent said they had fallen asleep more than five times and 6 per cent admitted to falling asleep more than 10 times.
If we are serious about managing the safety risks related to pilot fatigue, the numbers we see in this report – and the lack of any meaningful improvement over the past three years – are a clear wake-up call for airlines, authorities and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that something must change in the way Europe deals with pilot fatigue
Captain Tanja Harter, president of the European Cockpit Association
Meanwhile, cross-border drone strikes by Ukraine have inflicted deep damage on an energy industry that is the Kremlin’s most vital source of revenue, while expanding to hit commercial nodes in attacks that have brought the war home to more of the Russian population.
As Moscow transitions further to a war economy, the budget for next year demands citizens and businesses give more of their falling incomes to the military as inflation climbs and GDP shrinks.
And with no realistic sign that Moscow is scaling back its war effort, these problems only look set to worsen.
Russian battlefield gains have stalled
Russian forces have made effectively zero progress on a series of failed offensives this year, according to the latest analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington DC.
The think-tank assessed that Russian claims of its territorial gains this year far exceeded reality – which had “made effectively zero net gains in 2026”.
While Russian officials claimed that they had seized 6,500 square kilometres since the start of the year, the ISW put this at closer to 73 square kilometres, and since September the Russians had lost 240 square kilometres – very different picture to Moscow’s claim that it had gained 1,800 square kilometres of land in that time.
Ukraine had decisively defeated Russia’s main offensive that aimed to seize the whole of the Donetsk region by the end of the year, thanks to the success of Ukrainian offensives including Operation Vivaldi, which took back some 277 square kilometres and 16 settlements north of Lyman over the year.
“Ukraine, not Russia, has held the initiative in key sectors of the front line for much of the year”, said the ISW.
The never-ending manpower problem
To add further insult to injury, Russia’s poor battlefield situation has come at the cost of around 40,000 casualties per month, the heaviest losses of the war, according to Ukrainian figures that broadly match those of Western intelligence agencies and independent researchers.
The constant need for replacements has led to aggressive coercion and predatory recruitment practices such as enlisting intoxicated men at police stations and others with health problems. The burden has disproportionately fallen on poorer, rural areas of Russia as Putin seeks to protect the country’s elite.
John Lough, head of foreign policy and Russia specialist at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre think-tank, told The i Paper: “It’s been quite amazing some of the people they have been drafting. These are homeless alcoholics, people with criminal records, people in prisons, and the loss of those lives has been regarded as acceptable.”
The Kremlin has taken steps to tackle draft dodging by preventing young men from leaving the country. Economic activity such as buying a property or owning a business has become contingent on draft papers being in order, according to a report citing leaked documents.
Amid persistent rumours of a new mobilisation, Russia has instituted a form of covert, permanent mobilisation, according to the UK defence think-tank Rusi, with year-round conscription and rolling call-ups of reservists.
Russia has also been forced to look abroad for new recruits. A recent report from Amnesty International found Putin’s regime had resorted to “coercion, fraud and deception” to enlist foreign nationals from countries including Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia and South Africa.
Ukraine claims to have captured citizens of 59 countries, including 18 African countries, who were fighting for Russia.
Energy drain
Even as Russia escalates attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid for a fifth winter, its own fuel sector is buckling under a relentless campaign of Ukrainian drone strikes.
Every oil refinery in western Russia has been hit during this campaign, taking out between one-third to half of the country’s refining capacity by different estimates. Just five refineries remain untouched, according to the International Energy Agency.
Officials at Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, have warned the company is at risk of permanent damage if the war continues. The firm operates 12 refineries, accounting for about a third of Russia’s total capacity, and some have been struck repeatedly.
The impact has been felt by the Russian public with spiralling costs and long queues at petrol stations amid widespread shortages. This is in line with Ukraine’s strategy to bring the war home to ordinary Russians, said Daniel Sleat, a Russia analyst at King’s College London.
“I think the urban middle class still feels somewhat protected from mass mobilisation, but not from long-range Ukrainian strikes,” Sleat told The i Paper. “The impact the strikes have had on diesel and gasoline outputs and things like the attacks on the Wildberries factories is a strain.”
A controversial diesel deal with US President Donald Trump bought Putin a PR coup, with sanctioned tankers approaching US ports. But industry analysts have raised doubts over Moscow’s ability to fulfil orders due to the damage inflicted on it, with a general export ban still in place. A new assessment from Standard Chartered found Russia was unlikely to be able to increase its diesel output in the near term.
With no viable way of protecting fuel facilities from Ukrainian drones, the Kremlin has resorted to lowering fuel standards and importing supplies from Turkey, India and Morocco. Ukrainian analysts calculate that these measures are short-term fixes that cannot offset ongoing damage to Russia’s energy sector and wider economy.
Economic decline
New budget proposals sent to Russia’s parliament this month show an ongoing transition to a war economy at the population’s expense.
Spending on defence is projected to grow to 7 per cent of Russian GDP, while ordinary Russians and small businesses face interest rates of 14 per cent and inflation that is approaching 8 per cent – pushing up prices for petrol and household goods.
Citizens have also been hit with numerous tax increases to fund Putin’s war machine including rates of VAT and personal income tax.
This comes amid slashed growth forecasts, an expanding deficit and cuts to investment and infrastructure spending. Welfare, education and healthcare spending is also being reduced to fund the invasion.
Despite the political and economic pressures the Kremlin is facing, Putin thinks victory is close and is promising Russians the end is in sight, said Anna Matveeva of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.
“Putin is signalling to Russians that Ukraine is not going to hold on for very long, that the military campaign has been making good progress and that society just needs to hold on for a few more months,” Matveeva said.
Putin may be counting on assistance from the US and China, she believes, with reports from Russia suggesting a summit with Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping could take place at a conference in China next month, which could be used to cook up a deal to end the war on favourable terms for Russia.
But counting on such a deal – and Ukraine being forced to accept it – could be a bad bet, suggests Lough.
“Putin’s going for the kill, but he’s been notoriously bad at reading Ukraine,” he said. “The key indicator here is the willingness of the Europeans to dig deeper to support Ukraine.”
For Putin, who has shown no desire so far to end his war, the growing pains for the Russian population appear to be a price worth paying.