Luigi Mangione to face death penalty if convicted of CEO killing

Federal prosecutors formally announced plans to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson last December outside of a Midtown Manhattan hotel before he allegedly escaped the crime scene by foot, bike, cab and bus to Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he was arrested nearly a week later, marking the end of a six-day manhunt that gripped the nation.

The Ivy League graduate has been federally charged with murder through use of a firearm, two counts of stalking and a firearms offense.

On Thursday, a day before Mangione is due to be arraigned in a Manhattan federal court, government attorneys filed a formal notice that they are planning to seek a death sentence for the murder through use of a firearm charge.

Mangione “presents a future danger because he expressed intent to target an entire industry, and rally political and social opposition to that industry, by engaging in an act of lethal violence,” the government wrote in the Thursday filing.

He also faces 11 state criminal counts in New York, including murder as an act of terrorism, in connection with the December 4 killing; he has pleaded not guilty. In Pennsylvania, he faces forgery and firearms charges. He has not yet made a plea in the state and his attorneys have sought to dismiss the criminal charges he faces in the state.

The formal notice of intent comes weeks after Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced that she directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case.

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America. After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi wrote.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mangione, issued a statement after Bondi’s announcement: “We are prepared to fight these federal charges, brought by a lawless Justice Department, as well as the New York State charges, and the Pennsylvania charges, and anything else they want to pile on Luigi.”

Weeks later, Mangione’s lawyers formally objected to the government’s push for the death penalty. On April 11, his lawyers sought court intervention, accusing the government of having “abandoned” statutory and internal procedures and called the decision to seek the death penalty a “political stunt.”

“The Attorney General again failed to mention that Mr. Mangione has not been indicted nor that he is presumed to be innocent,” the attorneys argued in an April 11 filing. Mangione was indicted on federal charges on April 17.

The Trump administration’s push for the death penalty marks the end of President Biden’s moratorium on federal executions.

Headteacher attacked deputy with wrench due to ‘overwhelming sexual jealousy’

A headteacher who attacked his deputy with a wrench at school due to “overwhelming sexual jealousy” has been jailed for more than two years.

Anthony John Felton, 54, armed himself with the tool and sought out his colleague, Richard Pyke, 51, attacking him from behind.

Mr Pyke fell to the ground and attempted to kick away his attacker, before colleagues at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Comprehensive School in Aberavon, South Wales, heard the disturbance and came to his aid.

CCTV of the incident shown to the court caused people in the public gallery to gasp as Felton landed a blow to the back of Mr Pyke’s head.

Ieuan Rees, for the prosecution, said Felton believed Mr Pyke had slept with another teacher with whom he had recently been in a relationship.

“The evidence of his wife and the admissions he made to her suggested Mr Felton had been in a relationship with another member of staff and had recently discovered he was the father of her child,” he said.

“Furthermore, he believed that Mr Pyke had now begun his own relationship with that lady.”

Judge Paul Thomas KC sentenced Felton at Swansea Crown Court on Friday to two years and four months in jail. Felton was also given a restraining order.

Mr Thomas said an attack by a head on their deputy was “I suspect, entirely without precedent” and was the result of “overwhelming sexual jealousy”.

“That a headmaster of a school should take and use a weapon to try to badly injure their deputy, is I suspect, entirely without precedent,” he said.

“You are more than intelligent enough to realise when you plotted this bizarre attack that the impact and ramifications would be immense and far-reaching.”

The judge said the attack “was in effect an ambush”, with Mr Pyke believing his attacker to be his friend.

While John Hipkin KC, speaking for the defence, said Felton had recently suffered due to the death of his mother and a cancer diagnosis, the judge argued his actions were due to jealousy.

He said: “Ultimately, the trigger for your act of extreme violence was of your own doing, the overwhelming sexual jealousy arising from an adulterous affair and the uncontrollable rage it created in you.”

Following the incident, police said Mr Pyke had been discharged from hospital after suffering minor injuries.

Following Felton’s sentencing, Abul Hussain of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Anthony Felton struck a defenceless man repeatedly to the head with a metal weapon, demonstrating he had an intent to cause his victim really serious harm.

“The level of unprovoked violence, from a professional in the workplace, was shocking.

“Too often we see attacks of this nature result in life-changing injuries or fatal consequences, and thankfully, that was not the result in this case.”

Eubank Jr hit with massive fine for missing weight ahead of Benn bout

Chris Eubank Jr has been hit with a £375,000 fine after missing weight for Saturday’s fight with Conor Benn.

On Friday morning, Benn tipped the scales at 156.4lb, comfortably under the 160lb limit, while Eubank Jr was nowhere to be seen in the following hour.

And when he finally took to the scales, he came in at 160.2lb, before a second effort of 160.05lb. While it was a minuscule miss, Eubank Jr will have to pay £375,000 per his contract.

If the 35-year-old exceeds Saturday morning’s final limit of 170lb, he will be struck with a “further penalty”, according to event organisers The Ring.

In the build-up to Saturday’s main event at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Eubank Jr had teased that he might intentionally miss weight and accept a fine – to put his body through less stress, and to give himself an advantage on fight night. However, the miss was so minor that it surely cannot have been intentional.

With Saturday’s fight in London taking place at middleweight, Benn is venturing two divisions above his usual fighting weight of 147lb. He reacted to Eubank Jr’s weight miss in a video on social media, laughing and saying: “Show me the motherf****** money.”

Later, on social media, Eubank Jr wrote, “Pain is temporary, glory is forever,” before Benn hit back: “Christopher who are you trying to fool and get sympathy from, I’m coming UP to your weight, a weight you’ve made your last 3 fights and most of your career! It’s like you’re looking for excuses already? First time you’ve ever missed weight and first time you’ve ever posted a weight cut.”

At the evening’s ceremonial press conference, Benn added, “He should’ve made weight, he’s made this weight his whole career. He’s expecting sympathy but he’s not going to get sympathy from me,” while Eubank Jr had little to say on the matter.

When the pair fight this weekend, the bout will play out two-and-a-half years after they were first due to clash, and more than 30 years after their fathers last fought each other.

In 1990, Eubank Sr stopped Nigel Benn, before the British rivals fought to a draw in 1993. In late 2022, Eubank Jr vs Benn was booked as a unique extension of their fathers’ rivalry, but the contest collapsed on short notice upon the revelation that Benn had returned two adverse drug-test results.

He was then suspended from boxing in Britain until late 2024, though he did compete twice in the US in the meantime. In 2023, the WBC suggested that Benn’s adverse results could have been caused by excessive consumption of eggs. In reference to that suggestion, Eubank Jr slapped Benn in the face with an egg in February – and received a £100,000 fine for doing so.

Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million people at risk in Ethiopia

Food aid for Ethiopia is set to be cut in half in 2025 compared to just last year, with more than 3 million currently facing the loss of life-saving food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

“This is not normal. We have not faced such a drop in our funding in a long time,” WFP Ethiopia spokesperson Claire Nevill told The Independent.

According to Nevill, WFP’s operations in Ethiopia have around thirty key donors, including USAID, who have – unlike in other areas – exempted Ethiopia from its programme of cuts. But aid cuts from other donors mean that Ethiopia is facing a funding gap of $222 million over the next six months.

Unless that new financing is urgently found nutrition support for the 3.6 million people that WFP currently supports in Ethiopia is under threat, said Nevill.

Earlier this week, WFP Ethiopia had announced the suspension of malnutrition treatments for 650,000 malnourished women and children due to funding problems. These treatments are a form of nutritional medicine – in the form of peanut paste or corn-soy porridge – that help bring malnourished people back to health over the course of weeks.

Speaking to The Independent, Nevill said that WFP has managed to source commodities to treat malnutrition, which should be on their way to Ethiopia from Djibouti in the coming days. These should be able to protect WFP’s malnutrition programmes “probably until the summer”, said Nevill.

But those treatments represent only a fraction of WFP’s operations in a country where 10.2 million people are coping with food insecurity. Other programmes include the provision of daily school meals to about 470,000 children, and the delivery of food assistance to populations totalling more than three million people over the first quarter of 2025.

The squeeze in funding means that ration cuts in food assistance are already the norm, with severely food-insecure Ethiopians receiving 80 per cent rations, and refugees receiving 60 per cent rations.

“Those are cuts to food levels already deemed the minimum possible food assistance for people,” said Nevill.

But even those food supplies look set to dry up if new support is not urgently found. “It looks like by June we might not be able to support the influx of refugees coming into the country,” said Nevill. “We are really badly in the red, and it looks like we won’t be able to maintain our current response.”

WFP is not the only organisation in the country feeling the squeeze, with Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Yodit Zenebe Mekuria, telling The Independent that their programmes are also feeling the squeeze.

“People living through unthinkable circumstances have now been deprived of lifesaving food, water, medical and hygiene support,” said Mekuria. “As programmes are forced to halt and scale back, their suffering will grow exponentially as needs rise.”

Recipients of WFP nutrition support in Ethiopia include 22-year-old Segen and her 14-month-old daughter Kisauet, from Tigray. A subsistence farmer with no formal occupation, Segen described to WFP on a recent fact-finding mission how insufficient food during her pregnancy and subsequent low levels of breast milk had left Kisauet malnourished.

“There was wasn’t enough food while she was inside my womb,” she said. “When she was born, she was 2kg. It was just scary to hold her, she was just tiny.”

The malnutrition treatments that the family has received – which are currently under threat from budget pressures – have been transformative.

“She has changed so much, I didn’t think she would stand up and walk away as a human being at all,” said Segen. “Now I find her running around.”

32-year-old Desta and her 8 month-old daughter Capital also receive food aid rations and malnourishment treatment. They currently reside in a camp for internally-displaced people after losing their homes during the Tigray War, the two-year civil war in the country’s North that ended in 2022.

After the war ended, they were allowed to return home, but found soldiers living in their house, forcing them to remain in the camp, Desta said.

“We are in a very bad situation here. We were good [back in our old home], we had jobs, we had agriculture, but there is no work and no agriculture here,” she said.

“Here we just sit around. If we could get it, we would work,” she continued. “All we have is enough food.”

According to Nevill, the situation facing Ethiopia represents a “perfect storm of overlapping crises”.

Communities are still recovering from a prolonged drought which saw multiple seasonal rain failures across 2020-23, while the story of Desta and Capital attests to how much of the country is continuing to recover from the affects of war.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the country from neighbouring countries, including Sudan, while difficult economic conditions, including high inflation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, remain a problem.

Recent months have also seen several earthquakes internally displace tens of thousands of Ethiopians.

At the same time, crises in territories including Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan have pushed food needs up globally, said Nevill, while many donor countries are now making the political decision to focus their spending more on domestic priorities.

The Horn of Africa is also one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, and is highly susceptible to challenges including prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desertification.

The WFP would like to be investing in more climate resilience programmes to help support communities through the climate crisis, for example in pushing climate-resilient agricultural practices, or in developing novel irrigation schemes.

Around 30 per cent of spending in Ethiopia goes to such programmes, with 70 per cent going towards emergency responses.

“Humanitarian food aid should be a last resort, and we want to shift things even further towards helping people to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate shocks and ultimately build long term food security,” said Nevill. “But any reprioritisation of funding this year is currently looking very unlikely.”

This story is part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project

How online schools can help children form friendships as they learn

When thinking about the best education for your child, it’s naturally not just academic success that comes to mind. A good quality school experience is made up of many parts and one key element is the socialising opportunities that school can provide. Socialisation is crucial for building social skills, growing emotional intelligence and helping children form their own individual identity, as well as giving them an additional incentive to attend a place where they have fun and feel part of a community.

While it might be assumed that the social options are reduced when children attend online school, this is not the case. In fact, there are a number of advantages in terms of the structures, support and diverse social opportunities offered to children who join online schools.

Online schools give students the opportunity to form connections with a much more diverse community of students. The online model allows schools to welcome young people from around the world and this gives pupils a chance to make friends with students from differing backgrounds and cultures. Furthermore, this means they can meet more like-minded individuals and form stronger bonds and more meaningful friendships. This access to such a big and vibrant community also ensures that students can really find ‘their people’ and avoids situations where students are stuck in small circles or forced to engage with classmates that don’t share the same interests or passions.

This is something that Grace, who is now in year 13, has experienced since moving to online school. At her previous school, she was struggling with socialisation and felt that she didn’t really have a self-identity. At an online school, she has found she can be more herself. “A lot of people think that online school is about being alone, but I’ve found that without the physical element, I can express myself better,” Grace explains.  Subsequently, the majority of her closest friends are from her online school and many she has met offline too. “I feel like I’ve met my people,” she says.

Isabella, who is in year 10, has also found that her experience of socialising at an online school has suited her much more than previous bricks and mortar schools. With her father’s job meaning the family moves country every three years, she has always previously struggled forming new friendships at the schools she joins. “I’m always the ‘new’ student, and it’s tough,” she says. After experiences with bullying, she found that online school is an environment she can thrive in. “You don’t have to turn on your camera or use your microphones if you’re not feeling comfortable. I’m not really a ‘social’ person, but I have made some friends here because we have these breakout rooms where we can talk to each other,” she adds.

While young people might not be meeting their fellow students physically every day, online schools put in place extensive measures to ensure that socialising is available for those who want to. This can be seen clearly at King’s InterHigh, the UK’s leading global online school which welcomes children aged 7 to 19 from across the world. Here, students join a warm and welcoming community with a huge range of opportunities for socialising. There’s dozens of clubs and societies for students across all year groups, representing a vast range of interests from chess to technology, sculpture to debate. Throughout the yearly student calendar, there are a number of events, showcases, and competitions of all kinds that provide a chance to socialise in different settings. Some happen internally, like the King’s InterHigh Arts Festival, while others allow students to interact with peers from outside their school when attending events like the International Robotics Competition.

Assemblies bring students together on a weekly basis and give them the chance to celebrate each other’s achievements, hear from their Student Council representatives, and find out what’s coming up at school. Each student is also assigned to one of the school’s eight houses and these smaller, tight-knit communities bring students a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Additionally, inter-house competitions are a fun and friendly way for students to engage and bond.

Although much socialising can come as a result of activities organised by the school, students at King’s InterHigh who are aged over 13 can continue building these relationships in a more informal setting thanks to the in-house, monitored, social media platform. Restricted solely to school students, the platform is safe, secure, and monitored to ensure a positive socialising environment for all those who choose to use it.

Online schools don’t just offer opportunities to socialise online but also offer ample opportunities to cement these connections in offline settings. At King’s InterHigh, there are global meet-ups throughout the year which bring together families allowing both children and parents and guardians to connect in real life. Regular educational school trips, from Geography excursions to science practical exams at other Inspired schools (the group of premium schools of which King’s InterHigh is part of) also allow children to socialise and have fun together in different settings.

Meanwhile, the annual summer camps, themed around a variety of interests and passions, including adventure sports, fashion, football, and tennis, are open to students across all Inspired schools and are held at spectacular Inspired campuses worldwide. Furthermore, the Inspired Global Exchange Programme offers a range of school exchange opportunities, lasting from one week to a full academic year.

Choosing where to educate your children is a big decision for any parent or guardian that involves many factors. However, when it comes to the social benefits, for the right child, online schools offer something truly transformative. To find out more about King’s InterHigh and whether it might be the right learning choice for your family, visit King’s InterHigh

Apple plans major iPhone production shift in response to Trump tariffs

Apple is reportedly preparing to move production of all iPhones bound for US sales from China to India, in a switch designed to evade the worst of the tariffs set by US president Donald Trump.

More than 60 million of the flagship product are sold in the US each year, but with many of the parts either made or the entire phone assembled in China, these are now subject to heavy additional costs upon arrival to the States.

Over the past few years Apple had already started to move a significant amount of production out of China, to both India and Vietnam in particular. The Financial Times has now reported that the company is attempting to double output from India to ensure they avoid the most severe tariffs.

Additional reports suggest the tech company are set to attempt to increase production in India by up to ten per cent this year, from the current level of assembling between 30-40 million iPhones annually – with a view to having total assembly for US-bound iPhones moved by 2026.

More than 75 per cent of iPhones sold around the world are currently produced in China.

Apple reportedly moved around 1.5m phones out of India to the US earlier this month, chartering flights specially to beat the tariff imposition after the 90-day pause was announced on other nations’ tariffs.

India was initially subject to a reciprocal tariff of 26 per cent, while China’s effective rate rose above 100 per cent before Mr Trump announced mobile phones would be one of the products given a temporary exemption from additional new tariffs.

More than a trillion dollars was wiped off Apple’s share price in the weeks following the initial tariff announcements, though it has recovered around seven per cent across the past week as markets begin to settle.

The company sold more than 230m iPhones in total last year, meaning the US market accounts for more than a quarter of that. Apple are due to report first quarter earnings next week, which will incorporate the very end of the pre-tariff era from the start of this year – though consumer confidence early on in the year may still impact.

“Given that the furore has also knocked consumer confidence around the world, shoppers may still be more cautious about spending big on little devices in the months ahead, whatever AI promises are dangled,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Apple still boasts enviable brand power, but iPhone sales have underwhelmed in the US, due to fewer upgrades than hoped.”

Chaos continues at the Pentagon as Hegseth’s chief of staff leaves

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff left his role on Thursday after spending less than 100 days in the position, the latest shakeup at the Pentagon amid a series of controversies and firings.

Joe Kasper is leaving his role as Hegseth’s chief of staff voluntarily to move into a part-time “special government employee” position, focusing on science, technology and industry, Kasper told the Washington Post.

A senior defense official confirmed to The Independent that Kasper will continue working on projects as a designated special government employee.

His departure arrives as Hegseth’s office faces allegations of mismanagement, disorganization and “total chaos” while the defense secretary is accused of mishandling sensitive information in another Signal group chat.

It’s unclear what exactly led Kasper to leave his role, but Hegseth seemingly maintains a good relationship with him, telling Fox & Friends last week that his chief of staff was “a great guy” and had “done a fantastic job.”

The “special government employee” designation is the same one Elon Musk has accepted as part of President Donald Trump’s administration. It means Kasper can work up to 130 days as a government employee in one year.

Some people familiar with the situation told the New York Times that staffers reportedly complained about Kasper’s unsystematic leadership style, claiming he went on unrelated tangents during meetings and dropped the ball on paperwork.

Hegseth said Kasper was “certainly not fired.”

But the chief of staff’s departure contributes to a larger, unusual shakeup at the Pentagon at the hands of Hegseth.

Last week, a group of senior staffers was fired for allegedly leaking information to the press. Hegseth blamed one of those “disgruntled” staffers for telling reporters about the second Signal group chat with Hegseth, his wife, brother, personal lawyer and others.

A fourth former staff member, John Ullyot, wrote a scathing op-ed for Politico, accusing Hegseth of overseeing a chaotic office and scapegoating the three fired staffers for leaks.

Ullyot described working for Hegseth as a month of “total chaos” under Hegseth’s leadership.

Ukraine has a chance of defying the odds – but it depends on one thing

The latest massive, deadly attack carried out by Russia on civilian targets in Kyiv is a timely reminder that this conflict – and its eventual resolution – is not just about territory and lines on a map.

It cannot be, in other words, some Trump Organisation real estate project writ large. People live in these faraway partitioned oblasts. Making peace is about the fate of millions of Ukrainians, people soon to be left to colonial-style subjugation and reprisal by an enemy that wishes to crush their spirit and their culture. Abandoning them to Russia feels wrong – because it is wrong. It is appeasement – and will work no better now than it did when President Obama and the West allowed President Putin to annex Crimea in 2014.

The Trump peace plan, now leaked, carries with it the unspoken but lethal notion that various tracts of Ukraine can be transferred to Kremlin control with few ill effects for the inhabitants, and that those driven out as their homes were smashed and whole cities flattened can just return in safety or start again elsewhere. It is heartless beyond words.

The Ukrainian people are being treated as if they need not have a say in the matter – and if their democratically elected leader so much as questions Donald Trump’s “deal”, he is mocked, bullied and vilified, while there are invariably only warm words and endless concessions to Russia. The indulgence of the Kremlin by America is as incomprehensible as it is obscene, and the world knows it.

What we see in the mass bombings of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and, on Palm Sunday, Sumy, is proof, as if any were needed, that Vladimir Putin is not interested in peace. He has a total disregard for international humanitarian law and nothing but malign intentions towards Ukraine. More specifically, it shows that President Putin holds the American proposal for a ceasefire in utter contempt. As Volodymyr Zelensky points out, it is now some 44 days since Ukraine agreed to Donald Trump’s call for a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes. And for each of those 44 days, the Russians have been continuing to take the lives of innocents.

It is not, as President Trump claims, President Zelensky who is responsible for these “killing fields”, but the man who he clearly counts as a friend and ally: President Putin. And it is not just sorrow and righteous anger that Mr Zelensky feels as he tries to defend his people, but surely bewilderment and betrayal as the US has changed sides so dramatically. Those are feelings shared by Ukraine’s more faithful allies across the world.

There are, in other words, no consequences for Russia if it continues to commit war crimes, kidnap children, allows its troops to rape, maim, murder and plunder their way through occupied lands, and advances further into sovereign Ukrainian territory. President Trump says he’s “not happy” about the latest bombings, and that they are “unnecessary”, as if mildly chastising a badly behaved guest at Mar-a-Lago.

That is not going to be taken seriously by Putin, because the Trump plan continues to reward Putin for his aggression. The plan will effectively draw a new border along the eventual armistice line, so President Putin has every incentive to push on.

And, apart from one outburst about being “angry” and “pissed off”, Mr Trump has allowed Putin to drag the process out almost indefinitely. Now, the Trump administration says that it will walk away if the Russians and Ukrainians don’t agree to the plan – but that would suit Putin equally well.

He calculates that without American military and intelligence support, Ukraine will quickly collapse – and instead of having to settle for the one-fifth of Ukraine that Mr Trump is offering, he will win far more on the battlefield. That is why there is no ceasefire. Putin has everything to gain by wasting time.

When Mr Zelensky raises legitimate questions about the peace plan, he is threatened and abused – but the reality is that the ceasefire and the Trump peace deal would have been signed long ago had President Putin not been inventing new excuses for delay and inserting unworkable preconditions into the process. “Ceasefire first, then talks” was the Trump plan – yet he has somehow allowed Putin to reverse the order.

The terrifying question that has been emerging for some time is now crystallising. If the US does finally abandon Ukraine and give Russia a free hand, can the Europe-led “coalition of the willing” fill the void and save the Ukrainian people? It is, in effect, the choice that faces President Zelensky: to accept the deeply flawed Trump plan, which guarantees virtually nothing about the future of his people (especially those under occupation), or to try to fight on against the odds, and with the risk that all will be lost.

It is certainly easy to be pessimistic. Ukraine would struggle without US military supplies and financial support, and Elon Musk said that Ukraine’s resistance would collapse if the Starlink satellite system controlled by him was shut off. When US assistance was “paused” briefly earlier in the year, the front line was turned into a turkey shoot for the delighted Russians. If Mr Trump pursued his strategic alliance with Russia, lifted sanctions and boosted trade, that would transform Russia’s highly stressed economy – and the Kremlin’s war machine with it.

Yet, as he pointed out to Mr Trump and the vice-president JD Vance in his most famous visit to the Oval Office, Mr Zelensky and Ukraine have been written off before and survived far longer than the few days or weeks they were previously given. Ukraine’s own military-industrial base and expertise in modern drone warfare has also been transformed – and would be useful indeed for the future security of what remains of “the West”.

Europe, with loyal allies such as Canada and Japan, has enormous industrial, technological and financial resources at its disposal – and there is no reason in principle why it cannot bolster Ukrainian resistance. Of course, Mr Trump could regard such actions as unfriendly to the United States, but given the way his trade wars have weakened the superpower, he might not want to start a cold war with his remaining nominal allies.

The success of the “coalition of the willing” depends on how willing the coalition proves to be. If Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, ad hoc leaders of this ad hoc alliance, manage to inspire their allies half as much as Mr Zelensky has, then Ukraine still has a chance of defying the odds.

It might not win Crimea back in the near future, but it would mean that President Putin would be forced to negotiate a more satisfactory and sustainable peace, after which Ukraine can build its defences and deepen its newly strengthened partnerships, at least until the Trump-Putin era passes.