The war in Ukraine, four years later

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Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, February 24th, and this is your FT News briefing. US tech stocks started the week off on the wrong foot, and German Chancellor Friedrich Meritz heads to China to meet with President Xi Jinping. Plus, we'll take a look at the state of the Ukraine war four years later. They have been remarkably resilient. It is not an understatement to say that this full-scale invasion has been the making of Ukraine as a nation.

Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day. If you think your 2026 is off to a rough start, looking at US tech might make you feel better. The NASDAQ composite fell about one and a tenth percent yesterday. Software stocks like Workday, CrowdStrike, and Datadog took the brunt of it. And private capital firms tied to software were hit too. Ares, KKR, Apollo, and Blackstone all had significant falls.

Investors continue to worry that artificial intelligence will upend the software industry. And yesterday's sell-off came after the CEO of American Asset Manager, Franklin Templeton, told the FT, quote, you really have to question if enterprise software companies can thrive. US stocks initially fell on Monday after President Donald Trump imposed a new fifteen percent tariff. The Supreme Court ruled last week his previous policy was unlawful.

Investors moved into safer assets yesterday. Yields on 10-year treasuries fell as smidge, and gold rallied more than two percent.

German Chancellor Friedrich Meritz is off on a diplomatic visit to Beijing this week. He's set to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and the hope for Germany is that Meritz will establish some sort of balance with its longtime trade partner. I'm joined by Ann Sylvain Chassiny, the FT's Berlin bureau chief. Hi, Ann Sylvain. Hello. So Anne Sylvain, this is the German Chancellor's first visit to China since taking office back in May. What exactly is he hoping to accomplish?

Um well there is a willingness to try and see if we can establish a rapport with Xi Jinping. But Muff's main objective will really be to try and come to some sort of understanding on trade, basically to test Xi Jinping's willingness to play a fairer game on trade. As you know, um China is Germany's biggest trade partner. For more than two decades it was a source of great business opportunities and growth for the German export oriented economy. But the trade balance has completely shifted.

and it's actually an existential threat now to the German industry. Um so Friedrich May's message will really be, do you want to play a fairer game? you're not, you know, trying to contain your overcapacity and your flood of cheap exports into our markets, if you're not containing um some of these unfair competitive practices that you you know, subsidies and so on. then you know, don't be surprised about um protectionist measures coming from Europe.

Yeah, well we're gonna talk a little bit more about those protectionist measures in a little bit, but first I wanna drill down on some parts that you've already hit on. Uh specifically the existential threat to Germany that China plays. What what does that look like? So now um if you look at Chinese exports to Germany, they are booming. And while German exports of goods have actually fallen off, especially like cars. Two thirds of German cars exports to China have gone f in the past three years.

So this is hurting the German industry super hard and you know the context of the German economy is that it is it has been stagnating for the past three to five years. And m this is a really a big problem for Mass. This is why he was elected. So um he's coming to China with a big problem to talk about. Ansylvan, you mentioned a little earlier that if

China doesn't do what Germany wants. Germany will turn to more European protectionist measures. What would those look like? And is that an actual threat that Merz can follow through on? Yeah, so um it's interesting to see how uh Germany and the Maz has shifted on that. It used all it always used to be um, you know, staunch defender of free trade because it has, you know, such a competitive export oriented economy.

And now that his own industry is really struggling in the face of really good and competitive and very cheap goods out of China. The sentiment now has been that maybe the industry should be protected. And uh Mertz has actually been backing some protection measures, trade tariff against

cheap steel imports from China recently. There is legislation in Brussels exploring what we call, you know, made in Europe requirements. So that would hurt that would really hurt Chinese manufacturers and exporters. And Germany is not necessarily completely on board with that idea, even though it's warming up. That's the FT's Berlin bureau chief, Ann Sylvain Chassiny. Thanks, Ann Sylvain. Thank you.

It's been four years to the day since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine, and there's still no clear end in sight. US President Donald Trump is pushing to end it by the summer. Here to give an update on negotiations and how the battlefield is looking is the FT's Europe editor Ben Hall. Hi Ben. Hi. So how much progress has been made in ceasefire negotiations?

Well, in all honesty, it feels a little bit like they've stalled. Um there are repeated meetings with another one due in Geneva later this week. But the progress is halting to say the least. It seems that they are still stuck on the big issues of territorial concessions and security guarantees and Uh although there is apparently some progress being made uh in military conversations about how a ceasefire would actually be enforced and operate.

the big settlement contours uh are still where they were several months ago and they haven't really shifted and neither side really feels under sufficient pressure to make any major concessions. And we don't really see the Trump administration weighing one side or the other to try and bring this to a head.

Ben, you've mentioned a few times the Trump administration and the US. Uh this week also marks an anniversary, uh the one year anniversary of that remarkable exchange in the Oval Office between Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky, US President Donald Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vince. What you're doing is very disr disrespectful to the country, this country. I'm that's back to you. Far more than a lot of people said they should have. Have you said thank you once this entire meeting? Today.

Does it feel to you like Ukraine has gained more support from the US since that moment? I think From the Ukrainian point of view, some of that hostility and antipathy from the US side has Definitely subsided and we didn't see a repeat uh at the Munich Security Conference. And I think from the Ukrainian point of view, they feel a lot less dependent now on the Americans than they did a year ago. Uh the Europeans have stepped up in terms of providing satellite intelligence.

And the Americans are providing no financial support at all now. It's all coming from Europe and other uh G seven countries. At the same time, uh, Ukraine is still able to buy weaponry, much needed weaponry from the US and it would certainly feel uh a loss there if the Americans were to stop it completely. But they've up their own production quite a lot.

I think though the trouble is there's still a huge amount of mistrust in Kiev towards the Trump administration's intentions and a fear that essentially Donald Trump is being played by Vladimir Putin in these talks.

And he might still um betray Ukraine and side with with Russia and put try to put more pressure on Ukraine to swallow an unfavorable deal. And only last week we had Trump essentially suggesting that it was Ukraine that was dragging its feet on talks rather than Vladimir Putin, who's made absolutely no concessions from his maximalist goals whatsoever. Ben, how have the past four years of this war impacted Ukraine as a whole, its people, and its place on the world stage?

Well, I think we have to say it's been terrible for Ukrainians. not just the tens of thousands of men who've perished, uh, at the front lines and civilians obviously in uh Russian attacks, but the fact that the economy is twenty percent smaller than it was before the war. that there are millions of Ukrainians whose lives have been upended, who are exiled out of the country. And I think the amount of trauma, anxiety, and exhaustion amongst the Ukrainian people is really

Terrible. On the other hand, they have been remarkably resilient. It is not an under understatement to say that this. full scale invasion has been the making of Ukraine as a nation, and they have rallied Europe and other Western countries to their side. They are the key to Ukraine's is uh survival essentially, and so far that uh solidarity is holding up, which I think a lot of people were probably would not have expected after four years of full scale war.

That's the FT's Europe editor, Ben Hall. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Our colleague Chris Miller interviewed Vladimir Zelensky yesterday, and Ukraine's president actually said his country and Russia were at the quote beginning of the end of their war. You can read more on that in the show notes. Before we go, the Financial Times brings you leading coverage of geopolitics.

Markets and finance. And we really drill down to the heart of a story. We really tell you why it matters. And now you can get that coverage at a discount. Just go to FT.com/slash briefing sale for a lower priced digital subscription. That's ft.com slash briefing sale. Reefing sale. This has been your daily FT News briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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