Check in Kyiv: prospects for peace?

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blue. Our correspondent recently joined a police mission to destroy coca labs in the Colombian rainforest, where much of the world's cocaine is produced. We find out whether these dangerous sorties will really bolster the war on drugs. And you might have heard that crime is rife in London, but just because you've been told that doesn't make it true. What does the cold hard data actually show? First up though.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its fourth anniversary, this has been a brutal year. Bitterly cold, with much of the country's heat and electricity supplies knocked out. Shellings and drone attacks have been constant. It was a grödel attack. Our miners, they were going back home from their shift in the mine, and the first drone attacked the bus.

Letsky Povolotsky is from DTEC, an energy company in Ukraine. Eventually the second drone hit the people. So we understand that these drones had the commers. and operators, pilots, had full understanding that these are peaceful people and they hit them intentionally. He said 12 people died in that incident earlier this month, which D-Tech says was caused by a Russian device. A cruel attack on a passenger train killed five.

And just last night yet another onslaught left over a hundred thousand Ukrainians in the dark this morning. In recent weeks, American-led peace talks have led to an agreed prisoner swab. But the war itself drags on. For almost a year now, the talk of ceasefire negotiations, they've hovered around like a ghost. It's hard to believe they're actually happening while Ukraine is being hounded night after night.

Oliver Carroll is our Ukraine correspondent. But lines are appearing that could frame the end of this four-year war. And we're reaching the hour of decisions. Now we said before on this podcast that the time for this would be around March for a variety of reasons. The end of the winter offensive, problems about hardware, mobilization, economy on the Russian side, similar problems in Ukraine. So this could be the moment.

Ollie, there were talks last week which didn't achieve a breakthrough. We've been there many, many times before. What is it at this point that you would say is holding up peace? Well, there wasn't a breakthrough, but I wouldn't say the talks were without some kind of progress. And sources close to the negotiating team in in Ukraine tell me that for the first time the Russians are showing a level of

constructive approach which they haven't seen before. But the unresolved issues, you know, they're essentially the same as they've been for many months now. The first is security guarantees. There's been an agreement between Ukraine and the United States about what the United States calls Article five like security guarantees. It's a little way short of that.

But the question is whether Russia can accept those guarantees. The peace process has been quite unusually structured in the sense that it's not operated as a single track. And so the existence of this security agreement between US and Ukraine doesn't mean Russia accepts it. The second point is territory. Russia has added extra requirements, basically demanding that Ukraine withdraws from the heavily fortified parts of the Donbass it still holds. Ukraine says

any ceasefire should stay with that current line of demarcation. And the compromise currently being discussed is about creating a demilitarized zone sources close to the negotiation teams. They've been saying that what people are trying to do is steer around positions which are indigestible to both societies. And I asked President Zelensky last week whether there were signs of movement. And he said that Putin had begun to show some openness to this idea.

of a demilitarized zone. And there's also the the sense that Zelensky himself has signalled some kind of flexibility, but only on a reciprocal basis. So yeah, we we do have some sense there's there's movement and it might be as soon as March that we have some kind of an outline of a plan, but then there's so many hoops that need to get through, not least constitutional and everything else.

So there are signs of some progress, but no breakthrough on peace talks. What about on the battlefield? What's happening on the ground? It's a mixed picture and I think it requires a little bit of nuance here. Russia is still making creeping battlefield advances at huge costs. In December Ukraine said that it managed to take an a record thirty five thousand killed and wounded Russian soldiers.

Ukraine is far from out of the woods even with these huge killed and wounded figures. And even when you have a very slow moving front line, the broader issue is of strategic resilience. How long can Ukraine sustain this war? Even keeping the front line where it is.

if it's losing its own men. And this winter as well, I mean, the main battle hasn't really been on that front line. It's been on energy infrastructure. Long range drones from Russia which have been ramped up to four hundred a day being manufactured. Just today we had a ballistic attack on Kiev.

Ukraine has made its own missile strikes on Russian targets and certainly life in Belgrade just on the border with Ukraine isn't nice at the moment. But Ukraine, society, its economy, it's taking a much larger hit. And on that much larger hit, four years on, how is this war affecting civilians? People are tired, really tired.

And it's you know, unsurprising that if you look at opinion polls looking for people's response to the idea of a compromise for some kind of pause in fighting. Overall those figures are rising and overall in in Ukraine as much as forty percent are now saying they would be ready for some kind of compromise despite, you know, all the public rhetoric which is all about defiance, resilience and so on.

But those in Russian occupied Ukraine they've almost almost been forgotten about and they're the ones who feel it most. Just last week I travelled to the westernmost border with Belarus. to report on a little known working crossing. It's been working since the first weeks of war. But effectively it's the last humanitarian corridor that people in Russian occupation can use to leave and come back to Ukraine.

And despite the risks of travelling out, it's not just you know, forty, fifty people are crossing each day. and the among the most desperate people I've seen. It was put to me by a intelligence source here that in a Russian occupation It's cruel, but it's really effective. And the sort of pro Ukrainian underground network they were relying on in the early years of war, that's no longer there. Uh it's been filtered out. And that's created new facts on the ground.

And which feed into this whole proposed deal with the discussion. One that would mean Ukraine de facto giving up land and giving up the homelands of hundreds and thousands and millions of people. And for those crossing, that prospect carried significant anguish. What about Ukraine's leadership? There are rumours flying around about elections. The leadership is hedging its bets on many ways.

Specifically on the elections, some of the reporting has been a little bit off kilter. The idea that the Americans are pushing the Ukrainians to have elections by a certain date, or lose the idea of security guarantees. My understanding is that it's a little bit more complicated than that.

But more generally, if we want to talk about the two approaches then Ukraine is making to this war, then certainly plan A is this American led negotiation. And the broad outlines are that if successful, Ukraine would get a chance at peace. at least the pause of the war, that's more likely, and some kind of mini EU membership. On the other hand, Russia would get sanctions relief, and a whole load of new business deals.

Plan B, which is happening at the same time, is fighting on with the strengthened army. So you're seeing moves to reform the defence ministry. But certain in terms of generals and the army and more broadly, Few believe this war is gonna end soon. And I think there's also some doubts among, you know, Ukraine's partners in Europe.

if for them, for Ukraine as well, but mostly for them, if a quick and dirty piece is the best outcome. For some in Europe, I think they believe the best scenario is for Ukraine to fight on as long as possible. to give Europe a chance to arm up. Whether that's necessarily the best strategy for Ukraine itself to take, that's a big question and it's a very delicate balance. So where does this get us to? What are the prospects for peace now?

Actually, for the first time in a long time, you might say quite promising. Certainly for a pause, let's be very clear. maybe as much as fifty fifty, sometime this year, maybe as soon as March. While in theory it's possible, there are multiple hurdles to jump over. And I'm absolutely certain that Russia understands this too. Olli, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure, Rosie. That new thing?

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I'm flying in a Black Hawk helicopter over the western part of the Colombian Amazon. Claire McHugh writes about Latin America. Almost 70% of the world's cocaine. Yeah. There are thousands of small laboratories that are hidden inside the vast expanse of the rainforest. And here trees have been cut down to make way for these fields of lime-green coca. I'm travelling with the Colombian police force, who are on mission to take down the drug labs.

All of us are wearing helmets and bulletproof vests. We're crammed into the helicopter on these tiny camping stools. The anti narcotics commandos are clutching assault rifles as they're ready to descend into the cougar fields. As we land, a dozen of them jump out. I follow, with some trepidation, because the criminal organizations that control these territories often mine the coca fields. It's really hard to walk because the wind from the helicopter blades is so strong.

I follow the commandos as they stalk through the coca fields towards their target, which is a wooden shack concealed by banana trees. Inside, there's coca leaves soaking in plastic tubs of fuel. And I can see white blocks of coca paste. Now that's the base ingredient for cocaine. It takes less than ten minutes. Then the shack is set alight. And as we fly off, a grey tower of smoke billows into the sky.

Claire, this sounds completely terrifying, but also quite slick. How often do the police make these kind of missions to burn down labs? They are incredibly professional and well equipped. They do this day in, day out. By the time I'd got there that morning in Putumayo, they'd already destroyed a dozen. But the issue is that this laboratory that we visited is one of thousands all across Colombia in very remote areas, sometimes too difficult, too dangerous for the police to get there.

Now, the police say that they've raided more than eighteen thousand of these laboratories in the past three years. But these efforts only knock out production for as long as it takes for the criminal groups to get these expensive chemicals back into the jungle and to continue producing the coca paste.

So it's a huge task. For every laboratory that the police destroy, more laboratories pop up as more coca fields are grown across Colombia. So Claire, we've got coca being grown in these fields. Do the same farmers own the lab? Yes, the farmers who run the cocoa fields often also are the ones inside the labs turning the leaves into the cocoa paste.

But many of these laboratories exist in gang controlled regions. So there's many different ways that the gangs have that territory and often they force the farmers into making the coca paste, these farmers are threatened with assassination or having their own children being recruited into the armed gangs as well. Some of them simply grow cocoa because it's more profitable and they just have no other source of income in the area. At the laboratory I spoke to one farmer named Esperanza.

who was watching with dismay as the police prepared to set Her laboratory alight. She told me that she has three children to look after, she gets no help from the state, and if the police burnt everything down, they would take away the only way of making money that she has. Even though this Colombian government only wants to go after the gangsters

These poor farmers like Esperanza end up being collateral damage in the government's anti drugs strategy. So do these raids actually make a difference? Are they reducing the amount of cocaine emerging from Colombia? So as the government tells it under Gustavo Petro, who's a left wing leader. They say that they are making a difference. They are denting the amount of cocaine that's reaching international markets.

So since he took office in August twenty twenty two and the end of twenty twenty five, the Colombian police claimed to have intercepted two thousand eight hundred and forty tons of cocaine. That's sixty one percent more than the previous right wing government managed over a comparable time period. But the problem is that the size of these seizures actually just reveals the scale of the problem.

Cocaine production in Colombia is at a record high. It hit more than 3,000 tons in 2024. Now that's according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. So despite the police's best efforts, And they are their best efforts, but they are barely making a dent in cocaine production and export.

Now, President Petro blames this problem on the consumers who are mainly in the rich world, who are snorting cocaine with abandon. He says it's Colombians who are paying in blood for the problems of the rest of the world. And presumably there's pressure from the Trump administration as well. Absolutely. Gustavo Petro is under huge pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on cocaine production.

and also the drug traffickers who profit from these illegal economies. Trump and Petro have clashed repeatedly over the past year with sparring on social media. Trump calling Petro without evidence an illegal drug dealer. Columbia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not gonna be doing it very long, let me tell you. Things did a U-turn last week.

Cocaine and drug production still remains a huge issue at the center of relations between Colombia and the United States. So if raids like the one you went on aren't working, what would work, Claire? Now the words of one analyst I spoke to always stay with me. She described all anti drugs policy as treading water. In short, no one has any ideas that will actually fix this problem. Not cocaine seizures at ports, not bombing these laboratories, extraditing criminals to the United States.

The crux of the matter is that as long as cocaine remains illegal and the world's demand for the drug is insatiable, then these jungle laboratories in Colombia will continue to stay in business and they will meet that demand. And in the meantime, people are dying in these drug wars that will not stop. Claire, thank you very much for talking to me. Thank you, Rosie. It's been a pleasure.

It's a chilly Monday lunchtime and we're here in Whitechapel in London's East End. Sonny Lochran writes about Britain for The Economist. We're standing on the road where the body of Jack the Ripper's first victim was. And according to some people, since then this part of London has only become more dangerous. Yes, and I'll ask you a question. Not really. There's all sorts. Yeah. Very interesting. Doesn't feel like England, does it? They tell you it's a myth.

This place is in London that has a no go in. Oh, you got a knife. Welcome to London, man. Welcome to London. Type London Simulator into TikTok and you will be presented with a series of videos. Most are clips from video games, in which a given character bounds around with a knife, dagger, or sword, dispatching their enemies as quickly and as violently as possible. Such is London's online reputation, a hotbed of violence and, above all, knife crime.

It's an idea that extends far beyond Gen Z's social media feed. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has said that London is in a state of collapse. Rupert Lowe, a populist MP, recently described London as a place that increasingly resembles the third world and is certainly not safe for women. But the data tell a different story.

Violent crime in London has been in decline for years. The annual number of robberies has remained steady since 2010, even as the population grew by around one million people. In 2024, the number of people admitted to hospital for assault by a sharp object was the lowest in 13 years. And with 1.1 murders for every 100,000 people, the lowest since comparable records began, London is safer than Paris or Berlin. New York has around three times as many mergers.

That's not to say that London doesn't have any problems. Bone snatching and shoplifting have both risen sharply over the last few years. It happened to me last year and I thought it would happen to me. You had your phone snapped. Yeah, I literally told everyone it would never happen to me and it did happen to me. So scary. I think I think it's really still safe here. There's a lot of drug stuff here but it's quite safe. I I've never encountered any

Mm-hmm. The perception that London is overrun by violent criminals appears to be based largely on social media exaggeration. Our data team at The Economist scraped all X posts mentioning London and keywords related to violent crime between 2020 and 2025. Last year, the number of such posts was doubled the yearly average between 2020 and 2025. Their popularity has risen as well. In 2025, the average number of likes and retweets per post was almost double that in 2025.

Taken together, this means that social media posts describing London's lawlessness are roughly seven times more popular than they were. But this isn't just down to the algorithm, there's also a political element. Because part of this online slander is about blaming migrants for London's perceived crime. The proportion of London crime posts that also mention Islam, migrants or race has doubled since twenty twenty three.

Posts mentioning Londonistan, a phrase used in right wing circles to lament the supposed Islamification of the capital, have doubled since 2020. I think the media jumping on this. It's like fearmongering a lot of the time. You know, there's truth, of course there's crime anywhere. I don't think it's necessarily spiked in recent months or years enough to warrant some of the headlines that You know, we're currently seeing. This area's fine, like there's no issues with this area.

I'll just say it's'cause people think that since there's a lot of for example there's a lot of Bengalis here, they probably think that uh it's basically a a mini Bangladesh but it's not actually. There's more cultures here like s uh blacks, Somalis. Everyone's welcome I'd say. There's also a monetization aspect. Serial Doom posting pays and inflammatory content gets the most clicks.

X now pays contributors for the engagement their posts generate, which has led to a rise in disingenuous accounts posting inflammatory content for profit. Given the volume, it's no surprise that these posts are changing how people see London. A recent UGOF poll found that 61% of Brits now see London as unsafe, up from 39% in 2014. This rises to 85% among reform voters. Least convinced are Londoners themselves, less than a fifth of whom say their local area is unsafe.

As is often the case, the best medicine against online hysteria is the real world. So if you're worried about London's lawlessness, maybe head for a legally stroll along the Thames. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. See you back here tomorrow. new thing The Drop by GNC, bringing you all the newness that matters, hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the trends and dialed into what's next.

Whether you're crushing it at the gym, leveling up your game, or thriving every day. The Drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness land first. Nonstop innovation and Fresh Finds Daily. Explore what's new and what's next on The Drop by GNC. G and C