Friday briefing: How will Trump handle the Ukraine war?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : Zelenskyy's calculation appears to be telling Trump that he can secure his own place in the history books if he supports Ukraine.
49% : "Biden pledges peaceful transition as Putin congratulates Trump" says the Guardian, while the Financial Times runs with: "Biden tells America to lower political heat".
46% : One measure of how rapidly the diplomatic parameters have changed: last night, Vladimir Putin congratulated Trump on his election, called him a "courageous person", and said that Russia is ready to talk.
45% : "Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia," his former adviser Fiona Hill said earlier this year.
42% : Meanwhile, Politico reported in July a source saying that Trump "would be open to something foreclosing Nato expansion" altogether.
42% : "What changes before his inauguration?One of the dangers of floating a deal on the basis of a "frozen conflict" - an armistice that simply maintains the frontline where it is when the deal is signed - is that it incentivises Russia to be as aggressive as possible before Trump takes office in the hope of maximising its gains, Emma said.
42% : Over at the i the focus is on how "Trump could threaten to hold back intelligence from UK", a story citing security sources.
37% : Today's newsletter, with the Guardian's senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison, is about how Trump might try to end the war - and what the consequences will be, in Ukraine and beyond, if he succeeds.
37% : But if Trump believes that he can present an enforced peace deal as a victory regardless of its terms, few in Kyiv believe that he will not pursue it, Emma said.
37% : If Trump enforces a peace deal that leaves open the possibility of a Russian return, "that will make them feel like those deaths were pointless".
36% : "Prone to flattery though Trump plainly is, Zelenskyy's gambit is in competition with the president-elect's less helpful instincts: his admiration for Vladimir Putin, an aversion to using American resources abroad, and what appears to be an intuition that Ukraine's independence is a nonsense.
32% : This is obviously worth taking seriously, and the fact that Trump may be the engine of an end to the war should not discount it.
30% : Trump frequently bemoaned the cost of American military support during the campaign, repeatedly saying that he could end the war in "one day".
30% : The Times zeroes in on the economic impact of Trump 2.0, opting for: "Trump eyes quick start with tariffs and tax cuts".
26% : "What approach should we expect Trump to take?Zelenskyy's flattery of Trump may be the only option available to him, but there are good reasons to think that Trump could be persuaded to abandon his position: he has plenty of form for it.
26% : However Trump presents such an agreement, "it will be broadly perceived as a loss for America", Emma said.
25% : "That can't just be Trump telling them that Putin has told me he's not going to invade again: it's hard to see what it could be other than Nato membership.
15% : In June, Zelenskyy told the Guardian that if Trump imposed a bad peace deal on Ukraine, he would risk being a "loser president".

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.