Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” the US president-elect said in a statement.

Trump’s nomination of Rollins marks the completion of his top cabinet picks for his incoming administration.

If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose remit includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2bn in 2024.

The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities.

“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” Trump said in the statement.

In response to her nomination, Rollins wrote on X: “Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. It will be the honor of my life to fight for America’s farmers and our Nation’s agricultural communities. This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, TX — truly the American Dream at its greatest.”

She added: “Who’s ready to make agriculture great again!”

The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning thinktank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. Rollins chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term.

As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel-tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel.

The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas.

Trump has said he again plans to institute sweeping tariffs that are likely to affect the farm sector.

He was considering offering the role to the former US senator Kelly Loeffler, a staunch ally whom he chose to co-chair his inaugural committee, CNN reported on Friday.

In a separate announcement on Saturday, Trump urged Randy Fine, a former gambling industry executive and current Florida state senator, to run in a special election to represent the state’s sixth congressional district in the House of Representatives.

Trump’s endorsement of Fine comes after he named Mike Waltz, Florida’s current sixth congressional district representative, to serve as his national security adviser.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump called Fine “an incredible voice for MAGA”.

“Should he decide to enter this Race, Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, RANDY, RUN!” Trump added.

Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a “betrayal”.

The developing world will receive at least $1.3tn (£1tn) a year in funds to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, by 2035.

But only $300bn of that will come in the form they are most in need of – grants and low-interest loans from the developed world. The rest will have to come from private investors and a range of potential new sources of money, such as possible levies on fossil fuels and frequent flyers, which have yet to be agreed.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “This [summit] has been a disaster for the developing world. It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously. Rich countries have promised to ‘mobilise’ some funds in the future, rather than provide them now. The cheque is in the mail. But lives and livelihoods in vulnerable countries are being lost now.”

Some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries fought hard during two weeks of fraught negotiations at the Cop29 UN summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku for a bigger slice of the money to come directly from developed countries. They also wanted more of the available finance to go to the countries most in need, instead of being shared with bigger emerging economies, such as India.

Two groups of particularly vulnerable nations, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, walked out of one meeting in protest late on Saturday afternoon, but later returned.

The talks were high-stakes from the start, as they opened just days after Donald Trump won re-election as US president. Trump intends to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement when he takes office in January and is likely to be hostile to providing any climate finance to the developing world.

Faced with the prospect of reconvening next year with a Trump White House in place, many countries decided that failure to agree on a new financial settlement in Baku was too much of a risk.

Developed countries insisted they could not offer any more, owing to their own budgetary constraints. “We will shoulder all the risk” if the US fails to contribute to climate finance in future, pointed out one negotiator.

Many developing world countries, including India, Bolivia, Cuba and Nigeria, reacted furiously to the deal.

Green campaigners also slammed the deal. Claudio Angelo, of the Observatorio do Clima in Brazil, said: “Rich countries spent 150 years appropriating the world’s atmospheric space, 33 years loitering on climate action, and three years negotiating [a financial settlement] without putting numbers on the table. Now, with the help of an incompetent Cop presidency and using the forthcoming Trump administration as a threat, they force developing countries to accept a deal that not only doesn’t represent any actual new money but also may increase their debt.”

India raised last-minute objections but failed to prevent it from being gavelled through by the Cop president, Azerbaijan’s environment minister Mukhtar Babayev. The country said it “could not accept” the settlement.

The host country was strongly criticised for its running of the Cop. Oil and gas make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and fossil fuel interests were highly visible at the talks.

Saudi Arabia also played a highly obstructive role, according to many insiders. In one extraordinary development, a Saudi official attempted to alter one key text without full consultation. The petro-state also tried repeatedly to remove references to the “transition away from fossil fuels” which was agreed at last year’s Cop28 summit.

“It was clear from day one that Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries were going to do everything in their power to weaken the landmark Cop28 agreement on fossil fuels. At Cop29 they have deployed obstructionist tactics to dilute action on the energy transition,” said Romain Ioualalen, of the pressure group Oil Change International.

The US and China – the world’s two biggest economies, and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are normally key nations at the annual “conference of the parties” (Cop) under the UN framework convention on climate change. But neither played much of a public role in Baku, allowing other countries to drive the talks. The US delegation is still made up of officials from Joe Biden’s administration, but the looming presidency of Donald Trump cast a pall over their participation.

The deal will mean China will contribute to climate finance for the poor world voluntarily, unlike rich countries which are obliged to provide cash.

Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the US-based World Resources Institute thinktank, said: “Despite major headwinds, negotiators in Baku eked out a deal that at least triples climate finance flowing to developing countries [from a previous longstanding goal of $100bn a year]. The $300bn goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future. The agreement recognises how critical it is for vulnerable countries to have better access to finance that does not burden them with unsustainable debt.”

It is Friday night on a forested military base in western Finland. A group of women dressed in camouflage with matching purple beanie hats are sat in a dark tent discussing how their perspectives have changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“I didn’t think it was a real threat that Russia would attack us,” says Sari, 42, who works in sales and lives in a nearby town. But then, she adds: “They attacked Ukraine. I saw that it is possible that we are next.”

The mother of two, who describes herself as a “realist”, was moved to join this weekend-long “surviving without electricity” course by her patriotic values, but she also wants to be more prepared with practical skills for day-to-day life. She is one of about 75 women taking part.

While a power cut is a situation that could be brought on by a storm – as happened for tens of thousands across Finland last week – they are also skills that could prove crucial in a potential Russian invasion or hybrid attack.

The training course, known as Nasta, is one of 40 put on by the Women’s National Emergency Preparedness Association around Finland. Others include cybersecurity, mental resilience, wilderness skills, snowmobile driving and information influencing. After the invasion of Ukraine, applications for the courses soared. Not only does Finland have a history of war with its neighbour, but they also share a 830-mile land border.

Tytti, 36, has felt so anxious about relations with Finland’s hostile neighbour that she has been avoiding the news. Attending the course, she says, “is my way to confront my fears”.

Both women have been on one-day shooting courses in the last year or so, but do not like handling guns.

In the short term, Hannele, 67, is more afraid of the kind of hybrid warfare Finland is already experiencing, such as cyberwarfare and disinformation, than the prospect of imminent military combat. She is surprised by how many young women have been taking up arms. Still, she is curious to know: “How does it feel to shoot something?”

Until a few hours ago, most of the women, the youngest of whom is 18 and the oldest 70, did not know each other. But on this sub-zero snowy night in Lohtaja, near the town of Kokkola, they have already set up camp under a tall canopy of pines by torchlight, made a wood fire in a burner at the centre of the big military tent and made a plan for where everybody is going to sleep.

Throughout the weekend, the group will learn how to survive in a crisis – including how to build and put out fires, cook outside, deliver first aid, stay warm and build a toilet.

There is a rota for keeping the fire stoked overnight. Some of the group are using a big piece of tarpaulin to fix a leak in the tent.

While there is no official military interaction between the two neighbours, Finnish intelligence services describe Russia as Finland’s greatest national security threat and is in little doubt there is a hybrid war under way.

Last week, the Finnish foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, released a joint statement with her German counterpart expressing her “deep concern” about the suspected sabotage – one of two in the Baltic – of an undersea cable between Finland and Germany.

“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times,” it said. Finland has since launched a joint investigation with Sweden, which, like Finland, has become a Nato member since the invasion of Ukraine.

Helsinki also accuses Russia of using proxies, including asylum seekers, to aggravate its neighbour; there have been suspicious break-ins at water treatment facilities and issues with GPS jamming.

Nasta has been running since 1997. Although its training is non-military, it is part-funded by the Finnish Ministry of Defence and receives substantial support from Finland’s National Defence Training Association. It has a membership of approximately 100,000. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022, interest surged to unprecedented levels.

There were so many people queueing for a place on the courses that the system collapsed, says Suvi Aksela, Nasta’s communications and organisation manager, who compares getting a place on one of the subsidised courses to getting in-demand concert tickets. “Sometimes the courses are full within one minute.”

In the days after the invasion, the phone calls “just kept coming and coming and coming”, she says. The first question was often “what can I do?” And the second was “where can I learn how to shoot?” The third, she adds, was “how I can I find out about my bunker?” A recent inventory by the interior ministry found that Finland has 50,500 bunkers for its population of 5.6 million – part of the legacy of a Soviet Union attempt to invade the country during the second world war.

“The shooting bit kind of surprised me,” says Aksela. “Because we have our military personnel – the soldiers, the professionals – then we have a huge amount of reservists. If I am the one that has to pick up the gun, then we’re in deep trouble.”

The popularity of shooting in Finland has soared in the last two years. Earlier this year, the government announced a plan to open more than 300 new shooting ranges to encourage people to take it up as a hobby to bolster national defence. The number of Finns applying for gun licences has also risen significantly.

Aksela advises callers to start with their at-home contingencies. Finnish households are encouraged to have enough supplies to survive unaided for at least 72 hours – food, water, medicine and access to a battery-powered radio – in case of an emergency.

The courses are most popular among university educated middle-aged women from the Helsinki area, says Aksela. As well as Russia’s close proximity to Finland, the collective memory of fighting the Soviet Union during the second world war also plays a significant role in informing the seriousness with which the perceived threat from Russia is taken by the Finnish public.

“It’s because of our history. It’s because of, obviously, our location. The neighbour isn’t very friendly, hasn’t been – even before [2022]. So we’re just very aware of the risks. A lot of countries let go of their conscription, Finland never did. So for us it’s common sense,” says Aksela.

The obligation to contribute to national defence is part of the Finnish constitution and all men are required to undertake military service (women can apply but on a voluntary basis).

The Finnish intelligence and security service, Supo, has warned that Russia treats Finland as an unfriendly state and as a target for espionage and “malign influence activities”.

The Supo deputy director, Teemu Turunen, said hybrid war is coming in multiple forms, including via proxies, cyberattacks, threat to critical infrastructure, disinformation and espionage. Russia, he said, is using asylum seekers as “tools for their own purposes” by inadequately guarding the Russian-Finnish border, which is why the eastern border remains closed and has been for most of the last year.

“The modus operandi of Russian intelligence services is more aggressive, it’s a more serious threat and they are using other means,” he said, including a threat to critical infrastructure and sabotage.

He added: “It’s very clear that this is the number one threat to Finnish national security: Russian state actors. And even blurring the lines between using proxy criminal organisations or other types of proxies.”

But, he said, it is important not to assume Russia is behind every potential incident. “It’s important to understand that Russia is not omnipotent. They are trying to exaggerate their capabilities.” Russia has more urgent priorities than Finland, he added, such as its own stability and the war in Ukraine. “So it is not that Russia could do anything, anywhere, anytime. They try to make us fear that, but it’s not the case.”

Asked how the election of Donald Trump affects Finland’s security and preparedness, he warned “the threat from the Russian side is not going away” and that as the US increasingly turns its focus to China, Europe must “step up and improve preparedness”.

Finns, he said, are “quite cool-headed about the threat”, but preparedness is at the heart of that. “Intelligent preparedness as well as societal resilience. It’s all part of the whole-of-society approach that Finland has and we have had for a long time already.”

But at the Nasta course, many have been activated by more recent events.

Walking back to camp from breakfast, the ground white with fresh snow, Aija Kuukkanen tells me she first tried to sign up for a course in spring 2022. “I had seen these kinds of courses previously, I knew they existed, but the final decision was because of this war,” the 58-year-old, who works in a tractor factory, says. “I wanted to get more information and get prepared somehow.”

Merja Majanen, 67, a retired bank manager from Rovaniemi, who has run disinformation courses in her home town, says the fact that hundreds of women have travelled from around Finland to do these courses is proof of the level of anxiety.

She takes comfort from not living close to the Russian border. “If I lived in the eastern parts of Lapland, I would be even more concerned.”

Talks on a new trillion-dollar global deal to tackle the climate crisis dragged on late into Saturday night, as rich and poor countries fought over how much cash was needed, and who should pay.

Rich countries want to offer only about $300bn out of the $1.3tn a year needed from their own coffers, with the rest to come from other sources including potential new taxes and private investors.

Poor countries said this was too ­little, and relying on loans or the private sector would push them further into debt. Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate change envoy, representing the African group of negotiators, said grants and loans at very low interest rates from developed countries should make up $600bn of the money needed. “Anything lower than that will not help the world tackle climate change,” he said.

There was drama throughout an intense Saturday of talks in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, where the two-week Cop29 UN conference was supposed to finish on Friday night. Early in the morning, developed countries including the UK, the US and EU members were pushed into raising their offer from an original $250bn a year tabled on Friday, to $300bn. Poor countries argued for more, and in the early evening two groups representing some of the world’s poorest countries walked out of one key meeting, threatening to collapse the negotiations.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “The moral compass of the world – the most vulnerable countries – have walked out after [the rich] failed to honour the promises they have made on climate finance.”

Ed Miliband, the UK energy secretary, cancelled his flight home and vowed to stay as long as it took to get a deal. “I’ve always said there is a will to get a deal but we need to find a way,” he told the Observer. “It is in our national self interest to work with others and tackle the climate crisis and I will stay as long as there is a chance to get an agreement.”

Saudi Arabia was widely accused of disrupting the talks throughout, and in an extraordinary development attempted to alter one key text without full consultation.

Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, told the Observer: “It has been the fossil fuel interests that want to maintain the status quo. But the vast majority of the world recognise the status quo endangers us all.”

The host country, Azerbaijan, also came in for fierce criticism. Much of the practical responsibility for running the negotiations falls to the host presidency, such as ensuring that drafts of a possible deal are properly consulted on, and helping countries quickly identify their areas of common ground and disagreement, to craft a coherent package of measures.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, furiously accused the host country – a large oil and gas producer, which is dependent on fossil fuels for 90% of its exports – of favouring countries understood to be Saudi Arabia and its allies. “We will not allow the most vulnerable, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by the few rich fossil- fuel emitters who have the backing, unfortunately, at this moment of the president [of the Cop],” she said.

There was speculation that key aspects of a potential deal, such as reaffirming the “transition away from fossil fuels” that was the main outcome of last year’s Cop28 talks, would have to be postponed to a future meeting. That would infuriate many countries, rich and poor, frustrated by how the annual change of host helps countries that seek to block progress to unpick agreements made in previous years.

“It was clear from day one that Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries were going to do everything in their power to weaken the landmark Cop28 agreement on fossil fuels. At Cop29 they have deployed obstructionist tactics to dilute action on the energy transition,” said Romain Ioulalaen, of the pressure group Oil Change International.

The US and China – the world’s two biggest economies, and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are normally key nations at the annual “conference of the parties” (Cop) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But neither played much of a public role in Baku, allowing other countries to drive the talks. The US delegation is still made up of officials from Joe Biden’s administration, but the looming presidency of Donald Trump cast a pall over their participation.

China is said to be not blocking the potential deal, which would see it contribute to climate finance for the poor world voluntarily, unlike rich countries that are obliged to provide cash.

Some weary observers were still hopeful of a deal as the clock ticked on late into the night in Baku, and a trickle of delegates filed out of the conference centre with cases and bags to catch their flights.

“The deal must deliver a transformative scale of finance that prioritises the urgent needs of communities bearing the brunt of the escalating climate crisis,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “True progress will be measured not by promises on paper, but by tangible support for the most vulnerable, ensuring that justice and equity remain at the heart of climate solutions.”

Additional reporting Dharna Noor and Patrick Greenfield in Baku

The unprecedented firing by Ukrainian forces of British-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles at military targets inside Russia last week means the UK, along with the US, is now viewed by Moscow as a legitimate target for punitive, possibly violent retaliation.

In a significant escalation in response to the missile launches, Vladimir Putin confirmed that, for the first time in the war, Russia had fired an intermediate-range ­ballistic missile, targeting the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Putin also said Russia now believed it had the “right” to attack “military facilities” in countries that supply Kyiv with long-range weapons. Though he did not say so specifically, he clearly meant attacks on the UK and US.

Yet in truth, Britain and its allies have been under constant Russian attack since the war began. Using sabotage, arson, deniable cyber-attacks and aggressive and passive forms of covert “hybrid” and “­cognitive” warfare, Putin has tried to impose a high cost for western support of Ukraine.

This largely silent struggle does not yet amount to a conventional military conflict between Nato and its former Soviet adversary. But in an echo of Cuba in 1962, the “Ukraine missile crisis” – fought on land, air and in the dark-web alleyways and byways of a digitised world – points ominously in that direction.

Concern that Russia’s illegal, full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine would trigger a wider war has preoccupied western politicians and military planners from the start. The US, UK and EU armed and bankrolled Kyiv and placed unprecedented, punitive sanctions on Moscow.

But US president Joe Biden remained cautious. His primary aim was to contain the conflict. So the convenient fiction developed that the west was not fighting Russia but, rather, helping a sovereign Ukraine defend itself. That illusion was never shared by Moscow.

From the outset, Putin portrayed the war as an existential battle against a hostile, expansionist Nato. Russia was already big on ­subversion. But as the conflict unfolded, it initiated and now appears to be accelerating a wide array of covert operations targeting western countries.

Biden’s decision on long-range missiles, and Moscow’s furious vow to hit back, has placed this secret campaign under a public spotlight. Russian retaliation may reach new heights. But in truth, Putin’s shadow war was already well under way.

Last week’s severing of Baltic Sea fibre-optic cables linking Finland to Germany and Sweden to Lithuania – all Nato members – is widely regarded as the latest manifestation of Russian hybrid warfare, and a sign of more to come.

Some suggest the damage was accidental. “Nobody believes that,” snarled Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister.

Such scepticism is based on hard experience. Last year, Finland said a damaged underwater natural gas pipeline to Estonia had probably been sabotaged. And an investigation in Nordic countries found evidence that Russia was running spy networks in the Baltic and North Sea, using fishing vessels equipped with underwater surveillance equipment. The aim, it said, was to map pipelines, communications cables and windfarms – vulnerable targets of possible future Russian attacks.

Earlier this month, a Russian ship, the Yantar – supposedly an “oceano­graphic research vessel” – had to be militarily escorted out of the Irish Sea. Its unexplained presence there, and previously off North Sea coasts and in the English Channel, where it was accompanied by the Russian navy, has been linked to the proxi­mity of unprotected seabed inter-connector cables carrying global internet traffic between Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America.

Suspected Russian hybrid warfare actions on land, in Europe and the UK, are multiplying in scope and seriousness. They range from large-scale cyber-attacks, as in Estonia, to the concealing of incendiary devices in parcels aboard aircraft in Germany, Poland and the UK.

Western spy agencies point the finger at the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency (which was responsible for the 2018 Salisbury poisonings). Naturally, all this is denied by the Kremlin.

It gets even more alarming. In the summer, US and German intelligence agencies reportedly foiled a plot to assassinate top European defence industry executives, in an apparent effort to obstruct arms supplies to Kyiv.

Putin’s agents have been blamed for a wide variety of crimes, from assassinations of regime critics on European soil, such as the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Chechen dissident, to arson – for instance, at a warehouse in east London this year – to the intimidation of journalists and civil rights groups, and the frequent harassment and beating of exiled opponents.

National infrastructure, elections, institutions and transport systems are all potential targets of hostile online malefactors, information warfare and fake news, as Britain’s NHS discovered in 2017 and the US in 2016 and 2020 during two presidential elections.

Some operations are random; others are carried out for profit by criminal gangs. But many appear to be Russian state-organised. Such provocations are intended to sow chaos, spread fear and division, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies.

In January, for example, a group called the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn caused significant damage to water utilities in Texas. Biden administration officials warned at the time that disabling cyber-attacks posed a threat to water supplies throughout the US. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water,” state governors were told.

Alerts about Russia’s escalating activities have come thick and fast in recent months. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and newly nominated EU foreign policy chief, spoke earlier this year about what she called Putin’s “shadow war” waged on Europe. “How far do we let them go on our soil?” Kallas asked.

In May, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, accused Moscow of repeated acts of sabotage. In October, Ken McCallum, head of MI5, said the GRU was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”.

Nato’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, added his voice this month. Moscow, he said, was conducting “an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks across our allied territories, interfering directly in our democracies, sabotaging industry and committing violence … the frontline in this war is no longer solely in Ukraine.”

It remains unclear, despite these warnings, how prepared Europe is to acknowledge, first, that it is now under sustained attack from Russia and is involved, de facto, in a limit­less, asymmetrical war; and second, what it is prepared to do about it at a moment when US support for Nato and Ukraine has been thrown into doubt by Donald Trump’s re-election.

When the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France – the so-called Weimar Triangle – plus the UK, Italy and Spain met in Warsaw last week, they tried to provide answers. “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activi­ties against Nato and EU countries are unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” they declared.

But their proposed solution – increased commitment to Europe’s shared security, higher defence spending, more joint capabilities, intelligence pooling, a stronger Nato, a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and a reinforced transatlantic alliance – was more familiar wishlist than convincing plan of action. Putin is unlikely to be deterred.

Far from it, in fact. Last week’s missiles-related escalation in verbal hostilities has highlighted the Russian leader’s flat refusal to rule out any type of retaliation, however extreme.

His mafioso-like menaces again included a threat to resort to nuclear weapons.

Putin’s very public loosening of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which now hypothetically allows Moscow to nuke a non-nuclear-armed state such as Ukraine, was a tired propa­ganda ploy designed to intimidate the west. Putin is evil but he’s not wholly mad. Mutual assured destruction remains a powerful counter-argument to such recklessness.

Putin has other weapons in his box of dirty tricks, including, for example, the seizing of blameless foreign citizens as hostages. This kind of blackmail worked recently when various Russian spies and thugs were released from jail in the west in return for the freeing of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others.

Putin also has another nuclear card up his sleeve. Greenpeace warned last week that Ukraine’s power network is at “heightened risk of catastrophic failure”. Russian airstrikes aimed at electricity sub-stations were imperilling the safety of the country’s three operational nuclear power plants, the group said. If the reactors lost power, they could quickly become unstable.

And then there is the possibility, floated by analysts, that Russia, by way of retaliation for Biden’s missile green light, could increase support for anti-western, non-state actors, such as the Houthis in Yemen. In a way, this would merely be an extension of Putin’s current policy of befriending “outlaw” states such as Iran and North Korea, both of which are actively assisting his Ukraine war effort.

All of which, taken together, begs a huge question, so far unanswered by Britain and its allies – possibly because it has never arisen before. What is to be done when a major world power, a nuclear-armed state, a permanent member of the UN security council, a country sworn to uphold the UN charter, international human rights treaties and the laws of war, goes rogue?

Putin’s violently confrontational, lawless and dangerous behaviour – not only towards Ukraine but to the west and the international order in general – is unprecedented in modern times. How very ironic, how very chastening, therefore, is the thought that only another rogue – Trump – may have a chance of bringing him to heel.

Biden can do nothing now to halt the war. He had his chance in 2021-2022 and blew it. His missiles, landmines and extra cash have probably come too late. And in two months’ time, he will be gone.

On the other hand, Trump’s warped idea of peace – surrendering one quarter of Ukraine’s territory and barring it from Nato and the EU – may look increasingly attractive to European leaders with little idea how to curb both overt and covert Russian aggression or how to win an unwinnable war on their own.

Putin calculates that Europe, ­prospectively abandoned by the US, fears a no-longer-hybrid, only too real, all-out war with Russia more than it does the consequences of betraying Ukraine.

Cynical brute that he is, he will keep on clandestinely pushing, probing, provoking and punishing until someone or something breaks – or Trump bails him out.

A shiny new tractor is pulling a huge orange trailer, while a commentator explains how best to manoeuvre it to tip grain, watched by a group of farmers wrapped up warmly in wellies, coats and bobble hats, some holding spaniels on leads.

Others are checking out the latest models of combine harvesters and crop sprayers, parked on snowy ground at the Midlands Machinery Show, but few seem to be buying, and the changes to inheritance tax for agricultural properties announced in Rachel Reeves’s October budget are never far from anyone’s lips.

On a crisp and sunny November day, the mood at one of the UK’s largest agricultural machinery shows was anything but bright.

A frosty chill has also descended on the network of companies dependent on farm businesses purveying their wares in Newark. Machinery manufacturers and dealers, as well as building companies and suppliers, have a similar refrain: customers stopped calling straight after the chancellor set out the budget measures affecting the agricultural sector.

“The phone got a lot quieter from the second she [Reeves] announced it,” says Jonathan Richardson, sales manager at Browns of Wem, a Shropshire-based company which designs, makes and constructs steel-framed and timber-sectioned buildings. “It’s had the quickest impact we have ever seen.”

Previously, farming businesses qualified for 100% relief on inheritance tax on agricultural and business property. However, budget changes will see the tax imposed on farms worth over £1m, with an effective rate of 20% on assets above that threshold, rather than the normal 40% rate for inheritance tax. Labour has said farms worth £3m could end up being exempt, as married couples can each claim £1m tax-free, in addition to a family home worth up to £1m.

“People tend to ring us in the first instance when they start thinking about [a new building]: those calls have stopped,” Richardson says, on the company’s stand at the Newark show, flanked by photos of farm buildings erected by the firm.

Any belt-tightening and deferral of purchases by farmers would have a big effect on Browns of Wem, which depends on agricultural businesses for at least 90% of its trade. It would also send shockwaves through the network of companies – selling every­thing from tractors to tyres and farm gates to fertiliser – which make up the rural economy.

“We are OK, we have a decent order book, but it is a lot quieter than it was,” says Richardson. “We are hoping this is just a blip and confidence will recover.”

Taking place a day after thousands of farmers and landowners protested against the budget measures on the streets of London, signs propped on one display tractor warn “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” and “Save a farmer, remove Starmer”, underlining the strength of feeling in the farming community.

The Treasury is understood to be assessing the impact of inheritance tax changes, including amending gifting rules for over-80s, which could allow them to pass on their farm to their heirs tax-free without having to live for seven years after making the gift. Officials are also understood to be assessing the impact of budget measures on active small and medium-sized farms compared with smallholdings.

Some of the largest machines on display, such as massive tractors and combine harvesters, are manufactured abroad and shipped to the UK to be sold by networks of dealers.

“We are a dying breed, UK manufacturers,” says Graham Cherry, sitting inside a warm show stand, looking at the agricultural material handling equipment made by his company, Cherry Products, displayed outside in the snow.

Their machinery attachments – including pallet forks, grain lifters and snowploughs – sell for between £2,000 and £8,000. “That’s why we are selling, and those selling £100,000 tractors are struggling,” he says, pointing at a nearby stand.

“To survive, we need profitable farmers in the UK who will invest,” he says. “It has been terrible since the budget: they are all sitting with their head in their hands.”

The company is dependent on British agriculture since exports dried up after Britain left the EU. “Brexit killed it: people don’t want the hassle,” Cherry says.

He adds: “Everyone you speak to is down: worst harvests, wettest harvests, wettest drilling time and now this, another nail in the coffin.”

The son of a farm worker, Cherry founded his business almost 45 years ago near Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds. “Next to Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, before you ask,” he says.

Amid such a difficult outlook, Cherry worries that a prolonged downturn will force him to “make difficult decisions”, which could involve redundancies among his 30 staff.

“For lots of people who make a living off farms and selling machinery to farm businesses, this [the budget] has a direct impact for us and them,” says Michael Grey, a regional sales manager at Farol, a family-owned dealership selling large equipment including tractors made by the US heavy machinery maker John Deere and telehandlers from German manufacturer Kramer.

Farol, based in Oxfordshire, has some of the biggest pieces of kit on display, with correspondingly big prices. One of the newest models of self-propelled crop sprayers would set a farmer back over £370,000, while a mid-size tractor on the stand costs about £170,000.

“Purchase-wise, farmers are trying to work it out,” says Grey’s colleague Tom Hinchley, an area sales manager. “One or two have talked to us about different types of ownership – that could be leasing, so it doesn’t go down as an asset.”

Despite the huge cost involved, some farmers have traditionally upgraded their machinery every three to five years, to take advantage of new technology. Some in the sector feel that could be about to change.

“Less footfall and closed wallets,” says Matthew Derby, describing the mood at the show while discussing the budget measures over a quick lunch with two other Lincolnshire farmers. “The effect on cash flow is obvious.”

For the third-generation food producer, uncertainty over future tax liabilities means his family is evaluating its spending. “With ongoing replacement policy, we would change something every year, but we will now look to push that back until we have more clarity,” he says, in between bites of a burger. “At the point where investment in capital items is adding value and is taxable, that is a big concern.”

One of the few companies to be deluged with requests is Brown and Co, a property and business consultancy. “The phone has not stopped ringing,” says land agent and partner Charlie Bryant. “No one should underestimate the angst that the whole budget has caused in the farming community.”

The government has insisted that most farms will not be affected by the changes, although this has been rejected by the National Farmers Union (NFU). Farming representatives have said the changes will force some family farms to sell up in order to pay their inheritance tax bills. Bryant, who is based in Lincolnshire, carries out 200 stock-taking valuations on farms of differing sizes each year, visiting them to calculate the value of land, machinery and other assets for their annual accounts.

“I have been through my list and I haven’t found one yet who will be under £1m. That is 100% of my annual stock-taking valuation, before you start adding in crops in ground, crops in store, machinery,” he says.

“If the government are trying to aim for a certain section of society, very wealthy people who have bought land for inheritance tax, I think they are wildly off the mark. The knife is going a lot deeper than I’d like to think they envisaged.”

Bryant is worried that inheritance tax changes could be the final straw for some farmers. “Farm economics being particularly poor, it is pretty brutal out there,” he says. “The word distraught has come up an enormous number of times, and we need to be careful of that.”

Britain is facing a future of increasingly catastrophic marine heatwaves that could destroy shellfish colonies and fisheries and have devastating impacts on communities around the coast of the UK.

That is the stark conclusion of a new report by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), based in Southampton, which is pressing for the launch of a targeted research programme as a matter of urgency to investigate how sudden temperature rises in coastal seawater could affect marine habitats and seafood production in the UK.

Across the planet marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as rising fossil fuel emissions force up atmospheric temperatures across the globe, causing the sea to warm.

These events not only disrupt shellfish colonies and fisheries, but also cause the bleaching of coral reefs, the spread of harmful algal blooms, the destruction of seagrass meadows, and mass mortality of fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

“Marine heatwaves have catastrophic impacts and we need to be prepared for them. At present, we are not and that position needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency,” said Dr Zoe Jacobs, the lead author of the NOC report, Marine heatwaves and cold spells in the Northeast Atlantic: what should the UK be prepared for?

“We need to know how these marine heatwaves are going to affect plants and animals that live in the sea and find ways to protect them, as well as the coastal communities that depend on them.”

In early summer 2023 Britain was engulfed in a marine heatwave in which major rises in the temperature of sea water were experienced off the north-east coast of England and off the west of Ireland. For more than two weeks, the sea in these regions was around five degrees above normal temperatures, smashing records for late spring and early summer. The Met Office reported that the North Sea and north Atlantic experienced higher temperatures at the same time, with sea temperatures reaching an all-time high, according to records that date back to 1850.

As global temperature continues to soar, scientists believe it is inevitable that many more of these record-breaking heatwaves will affect water around Britain and Ireland in the near future, with the report by the NOC highlighting three main areas of concern.

One is in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland, one is in the North Sea off northern England and Scotland, and the last is off the coast of south-east England. “These regions are areas where marine heatwaves can coincide with extremely low oxygen concentrations in the water, which makes them especially vulnerable. It’s like a double whammy. They get the extreme heat stress and extremely low oxygen levels at the same time. And that is going to cause serious trouble for any creatures or plants that are living there.”

The problem for researchers and marine conservationists is that the long-term consequences of such jumps in temperature are still unknown, added Jacobs. “There have been stories that there were widespread die-offs of shellfish such as whelks, and disruption to many fisheries during last year’s heatwave, but there is no hard evidence to back up these because we have not carried out any detailed research into the exact effects, and that is a problem.

“Global temperatures are rising and we are going to experience more and more marine heatwaves as a result. These are already having catastrophic impacts in other parts of the world, for instance in waters off Australia and other regions where fisheries have had to be closed and hectares of seagrass have been wiped out. We need to be able to pinpoint our most vulnerable regions and monitor them very closely.”

A key example is provided by seagrass, which form vast meadows around the shores of the UK where they absorb high levels of carbon and provide homes for hundreds of different species of marine creatures. These have been depleted in the past and a major restoration programme is now under way.

“However, we do not know what will happen to that programme if marine heatwaves start to kill off seagrass again,” added Jacobs. “We need to understand how this will happen and investigate now to find out if there are strains that are more resilient than others and concentrate on planting these.

“At the same time, we may need to be prepared to close down fisheries at certain times or impose quotas to protect them as heatwaves start to strike. These are the kinds of actions that have had to be imposed in other parts of the world and we may have to follow suit.”

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels.

It came as the Cop29 summit in Baku, which had been due to finish at 6pm Friday, dragged into Saturday morning. A plenary session had been planned for 10am but did not eventuate.

The developing world reacted with anger to a draft $250bn climate finance target on Friday, dismissing it as a “joke” and far below the amount that is needed to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather. It prompted a diplomatic effort behind the scenes to increase the offer from developed nations.

Multiple sources said the EU and several members of the umbrella group of countries including the UK, US and Australia had indicated they could go to $300bn in exchange for other changes to a draft text released on Friday.

The Guardian understands that the UN secretary general, António Guterres, was ringing round capitals to push for a higher figure. Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand were understood to be among the countries resistant to the $300bn figure late on Friday.

A $300bn offer would still fall well short of what developing countries say is necessary, and would likely draw sharp criticism if included in an updated text expected later on Saturday. But with some ministers booked to leave Baku in the hours ahead, countries face a decision on what they are prepared to accept.

Several ministers from rich nations have argued that a deal may be easier now than next year, when Donald Trump will be US president and right-wing governments could be returned at elections in several countries, including Germany and Canada, and they do not want to make a commitment they cannot meet.

Claudio Angelo, from Observatório do Clima in Brazil, said rich countries had “clearly arrived to ditch their obligations”. “After three years of negotiations the first time we ever saw quantum in the text was yesterday,” he said.

He said $300bn in grant funding was “way, way below” what developing countries needed. “Remember, many of them are already in deep debt,” he said. “To have climate finance as the current text proposes will only entrap those countries more.”

According to the draft text of a deal circulated on Friday, developing countries would receive at least $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, which is in line with the demands most submitted in advance of this two-week conference.

But poor nations wanted much more of that headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. They said the offer of $250bn coming from rich countries, with few safeguards over how much would come without strings attached, was much too little.

The offer from developed countries is supposed to form the inner core of a “layered” finance settlement, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.

These layers would add up to $1.3tn a year, which is the amount that leading economists have calculated is needed in external finance for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis. Many activists have demanded more – figures of $5tn or $7tn a year have been put forward by some groups, based on the historical responsibilities of developed countries for causing the climate crisis.

While climate finance is the major focus at Cop29, other issues also remain unresolved. Azerbaijan, which holds the presidency of the talks, has been criticised for playing down a key commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” in draft texts.

That commitment was made a year ago at the Cop28 talks in Dubai, but some countries want to unpick it. Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of taking it out of drafts at every opportunity, sparking fury from countries that want to explicitly emphasise the need to move away from coal, oil and gas and towards renewable energy.