The coldest night

Recently: Three million pages of new Epstein documents. Tech billionaires, Wall Street titans, Trump’s Commerce Secretary—writing casually about “harems” and “trouble,” years after Epstein’s conviction. They knew his record. It was public. Why did they stick around?

Today: Last week, Russia agreed to suspend strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid—at Trump’s personal request. Five days later, on the coldest night of winter, it launched one of the most punishing attacks of the war.

+ For members: Why is Saudi Arabia investing so heavily in football? Kristian Coates Ulrichsen’s new book, Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer.

& New music from Groove Armada ...

Minus twenty

Moscow launched one of the largest strikes of the war overnight into Tuesday—approximately 450 drones and 70 missiles targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius. The assault hit thermal power plants in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa; Kharkiv’s mayor said 820 high-rise buildings lost heat. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, called it the worst attack of the year. Five days earlier, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had agreed to pause strikes on the energy grid for a week—a “personal request” from U.S. President Donald Trump, framed as a confidence-building measure ahead of trilateral talks resuming tomorrow in Abu Dhabi.

The strike landed hours before those talks, on the coldest night of winter, while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was crossing into Ukrainian territory. Rutte addressed the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, and warned lawmakers against accepting “another Budapest Memorandum or another Minsk”—references to the 1994 security guarantees Ukraine traded for its nuclear arsenal and the 2015 ceasefire that collapsed into renewed war. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of exploiting the American proposal “not to support diplomacy, but to stockpile missiles and wait for the coldest days of the year.”

Putin showed he could stop—then chose to un-stop, precisely when the gesture of remaining stopped would have mattered most. He granted Trump’s request, held for five days, then struck on the eve of talks, with Rutte crossing the border. Either the pause was never more than preparation time, or something in those five days changed Moscow’s mind. The difference matters—for what any agreement’s worth.

Meanwhile

• The deal that isn’t quite yet. On Monday, Trump announced that India would stop buying Russian oil and slash tariffs to zero in exchange for the U.S. reducing its tariffs from 50 percent to 18 percent. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi confirmed the tariff cut—but said nothing about Russian oil, zero tariffs, or the US$500 billion in American purchases Trump claimed. India imports roughly 1.2 million barrels of Russian crude daily. The announcement came a week after New Delhi signed its landmark European Union trade deal. … See “’The mother of all deals’.”
• Grok’s reckoning. French prosecutors raided the media-tech company X’s Paris offices on Tuesday, summoning Elon Musk for questioning in April. The probe—opened in January 2025—now covers alleged complicity in distributing child sexual abuse imagery, sexually explicit deepfakes, and Holocaust denial generated by X’s Grok chatbot. Musk dismissed it as “political theater.” The raid came a day after SpaceX acquired xAI in a US$1.25 trillion deal—the largest merger ever—as Grok faces parallel investigations in the EU, the United Kingdom, and California. 
• Against the current. Australia’s Reserve Bank raised its benchmark rate to 3.85 percent on Tuesday—its first hike since November 2023. The bank cut rates three times last year as inflation fell; now inflation is back up, and the board voted unanimously to reverse one of those cuts. Australia is the first major central bank to shift from lowering rates to raising them since the pandemic.
• Stripped to steel. On Sunday, Trump announced that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close on July 4 for two years of renovations that could leave the building’s steel “fully exposed”—a US$200 million project he says is “fully financed.” The president chairs the venue’s board after ousting its leadership and adding his name to the building (now the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts); performers have been canceling since. The closure follows Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing in October, his renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself in December, and a recent announcement of his intentions to build a triumphal arch across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
• The network claims another. London’s Metropolitan Police opened a criminal investigation into Peter Mandelson, the U.K.’s former ambassador to the United States, on Tuesday over allegations he passed market-sensitive government documents to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson resigned from the House of Lords the same day. The investigation follows last week’s release of files from the U.S. Department of Justice showing the two exchanged dozens of messages. Mandelson has said his and Epstein’s relationship was “entirely appropriate.” … See “The nature of the network.”

For members

Bread and circuses 

Why is Saudi Arabia investing so heavily in football? Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer.

“For me, it’s not the end of my career to come to South Africa,” Cristiano Ronaldo mistakenly said in 2022, when the football club Al-Nassr unveiled him in Riyadh in front of a “Visit Saudi” banner. “I want to give a different vision of this country and football. This is why I took this opportunity.” 

Saudi Arabia has invested very flashily in sports, not least football. Saudi clubs have snapped up star players, giving them truly enormous wages, even by footballing standards—Al-Hilal gave the Brazilian striker Neymar Jr. a contract worth some US$300 million. But they’re not just buying players, they’re buying entire clubs. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has acquired Newcastle United, one of the most venerable clubs in England. And they’re hosting major competitions. A few weeks ago, Barcelona beat Real Madrid in the Supercopa de España, held not in any Spanish town but in Jeddah. Saudi will host the 2034 World Cup and the 2027 Asian Cup.

Why is Saudi Arabia investing so heavily in football?

New music

‘Do It Right’

Some deep house from the British duo Groove Armada, who’ve been making club music since their hard swerve toward it on their 2001 album, Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub). This one takes a while to build—but boy, does it.