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President Donald Trump’s reversal on Russia this week stems from growing impatience with Vladimir Putin and “the reality on the ground,” Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday – even as skeptical allies see the president’s latest position as another in a long line of back-and-forth pronouncements on the war.

Trump’s comments at the U.N. General Assembly and on social media — in which the president said Ukraine can and should win back the land it lost to Russia — came after growing frustration with Russian intrusions in the airspace over NATO nations and as Putin shows no interest in negotiating a peace deal.

“We have engaged in incredibly good faith negotiations with both the Russians and the Ukrainians and I believe the president is growing incredibly impatient with the Russians,” Vance said during an event in North Carolina. “If the Russians refuse to negotiate in good faith, I think it’s going to be very, very bad for their country. That’s what the president made clear. It’s not a shift in position, it’s an acknowledgment of the reality on the ground.”

Vance’s comments come a day after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York. Shortly after the meeting, Trump publicly reversed his position that Russia should keep the land it has won.

The president also said the U.S. will continue to supply weapons to NATO “for NATO to do what they want with them.”

A White House official pointed to Trump emphasizing that it’ll take European support for Ukraine to prevail as a clear signal that he remains hesitant about any new U.S. commitments to the country’s defense. The shifting assessment, as Vance’s comments hinted at, “is about sending Putin a message that will eventually help get him to the table.”

The comments sent hopeful ripples throughout the parts of Washington and allied capitals that support Ukraine. But it also stirred a feeling of deja vu, as NATO nations have seen rhetorical flourishes from Trump before, with the administration’s actions not always following suit.

“It’s great to put that pressure on the Russians — for now — until the administration decides something else” a Brussels-based diplomat said.

A third official, also Brussels-based, worried that Trump’s comments could simply be the president “amplifying the viewpoint of the last person he spoke to,” that does not amount to a significant shift in policy.

Another official from a NATO nation backed up that wariness. “We are moving forward with the plans we’ve made for Ukraine before this. We’ll see what happens.” The official added that the new effort for European nations to buy American weapons for shipment to Ukraine is now in place and “we feel good about that.”

The war in Ukraine entered another phase over the summer, with Ukrainian long-range drone strikes hitting Russian oil refineries sometimes hundreds of miles inside the country’s borders, putting Moscow’s major export – oil and gas – at some risk. The strikes bring the war home to ordinary Russians in the form of gas shortages, and danger to oil industry workers.

At the same time, Russia has been launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities and purely civilian targets, killing people where there is no economic or military benefit to the strike.

Over the past week, Russia also sent 19 drones into Poland, another into Romanian airspace, and Russian fighter planes have violated Estonian airspace. The incursions have led NATO to beef up air patrols along its eastern flank and suggest to some that Putin might be willing to expand the war, or at least is probing NATO air defenses for some future action.

A fourth European official acknowledged the broader unreliability of Trump’s shape-shifting on the war but was encouraged that his comments on Tuesday reflect that “he is starting to wake up to the reality with Putin. That’s taken him a while, but it shows the messages from [other NATO leaders] are getting through.”

It’s been less than seven months since Trump memorably told Zelenskyy in the Oval Office that Ukraine “didn’t have the cards.” In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Zelenskyy looked to harness whatever momentum Trump’s about-face might create, urging democratic allies to unite in an effort to pressure Russia to finally negotiate an end to the war.

“If it takes weapons to do it, if it takes pressure on Russia, then it must be done, and it must be done now. Otherwise, Putin will keep driving the war forward wider and deeper. And we told you before, Ukraine is only the first,” he said.

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NEW YORK — China pledged Wednesday to cut its world-leading levels of climate pollution by up to 10 percent during the next decade — one day after U.S. President Donald Trump urged global leaders to abandon the effort to halt the Earth’s rising temperatures.

The move, announced virtually by Chinese President Xi Jinping, also includes plans for increasing electric vehicles sales and ramping up wind and solar power, which Xi said he aimed to grow six times over 2020 levels.

That projection, while low according to China’s current trajectory, dwarfs the amount of renewable energy produced in the U.S., and seems to contradict Trump’s assertion Tuesday that China doesn’t use the wind turbines being made in its own industrial plants.

Xi said the transition to cleaner energy is the “trend of our time.” In a nod to the U.S., he added, “while some country is acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction.”

“These targets represent China’s best efforts based on the requirements of the Paris Agreement,” Xi said, referring to the 2015 climate pact. “Meeting these targets requires both painstaking efforts by China itself, and a supportive and open international environment.”

Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit new emission-cutting plans every five years that should be stronger than the previous targets. Instead, Trump has moved to exit Paris for a second time.

Xi’s message of rising determination to stem pollution contrasts with Trump’s remarks made a day earlier on the same stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. There, Trump denounced the effort to stem climate change as a “hoax” and a “con job,” and told nations they would lose the global energy race by pursuing wind and solar over fossil fuels.

“If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump told the assembled leaders, while asserting — falsely — that China foists wind turbines on the world while not using them at home.

“Those windmills are so pathetic and so bad,” Trump said Tuesday. “And most of them are built in China and I give China a lot of credit. They build them, but they have very few wind farms. So why is it that they build them and they send them all over the world, but they barely use them?”

In fact, China has installed vast amounts of wind power over the past decade. In just the first five months of this year it added 46 gigawatts of new wind energy, enough to power more than 30 million homes. During the same period, Trump’s government has frozen permits for several wind farms proposed or under construction in the Atlantic, where the U.S. has a small fraction of offshore turbines compared with China.

China’s support for global climate efforts is notable, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “That is a sharp contrast with not only the lack of attention on climate change [globally], but, you know, active backtracking climate policies here in the U.S.”

But China’s pledge falls short of what many nations and scientists say is needed to avoid the dangerous effects of climate change. Last year, the U.S. under then-President Joe Biden had pushed China to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent in order to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.

That makes China’s goal of cutting emissions 7 to 10 percent look modest, though the pledge also said the country would be “striving to do better.” A higher number was unrealistic given the receding pressure from the U.S. under Trump and other countries, said Joanna Lewis, an energy and environment professor at Georgetown University and long-time China watcher.

“Given the time we’re in and the political realities in the U.S., China could put forward a relatively modest target and still be viewed as taking climate change seriously,” Lewis said.

Some green groups were more critical.

“Even for those with tempered expectations, what’s presented today still falls short,” Yao Zhe, global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, said in a statement. “This 2035 target offers little assurance to keep our planet safe, but what’s hopeful is that the actual decarbonization of China’s economy is likely to exceed its target on paper.”

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Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland

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Scotland’s most experienced university principal has called for a review of the funding and shape of higher education, warning against “stumbling from year to year”.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, who retires this month after 16 years as the principal and vice-chancellor of Glasgow University, says universities need a plan which could see major changes in the courses they teach and the research they carry out.

He told the BBC that charging tuition fees to Scottish students is unlikely to secure support at Holyrood so Scotland needs to work out what it wants from higher education and then decide how to pay for it.

His call comes ahead of two crucial reports, due to be published on Friday by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), about the financial position of universities and of further education colleges.

Both studies have been delayed since early this year – and should reflect the latest financial figures up to June.

This comes as analysis seen by the BBC suggests Scottish government finance for universities and further education colleges has been squeezed in real terms in the past six years by about a fifth.

FE colleges say they are having to turn away qualified applicants and that apprenticeship course are over-subscribed, while universities are limiting the number of places they can offer Scottish students.

In recent years, some have subsidised the cost of educating Scottish students by sharply increasing their recruitment of foreign students but those numbers have started to decline.

Are Scotland’s universities in crisis?

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Earlier this year, Dundee University was hit by a severe financial crisis.

A report into the near-collapse of the university said it had continued with increased spending despite a drop in foreign student fee income.

Its principal went before a Scottish Parliament committee and admitted incompetence and senior board members resigned over the mismanagement.

Dundee has so far required a Scottish government bailout of more than £40m.

It is an extreme example but other Scottish universities are also under financial strain.

Edinburgh University is planning cuts of £140m, including job losses.

Its principal, Sir Peter Matheson, has called for a “radical re-wiring” to respond to the funding challenge.

Both institutions and others have seen recent strikes by academic staff to highlight the effect of cuts.

Where do universities get their money from?

Students at Scottish universities with permanent homes in Scotland don’t pay tuition fees.

Instead, the universities get money from the government for a set number of Scottish students each year.

However, they claim that the amount they receive does not cover their costs – and in most cases is not as much as the £9,500 a year that students from the rest of the UK usually pay.

Foreign students in Scotland pay much higher fees – in many cases nearly three times more than UK students.

Most of them come to the UK to do post-graduate Masters degree courses.

This has been an area that has provided a welcome source of funding in recent years but it has fallen away sharply for several reasons, including new UK immigration rules and competition from other countries.

There is no sign of Holyrood ministers or their opponents moving to end ‘free tuition’ for Scottish students, so they need to find other ways of tackling their financial problems.

Do universities get enough money for Scottish students?

The BBC has had access to a new study carried out by David Bell, a professor of economics at Stirling University and expert in public finance.

The study, written for the Royal Society of Edinburgh, details how funding per Scottish university student has fallen over the past five years due to the effect of inflation.

In real terms, the funding shrunk by 22% between 2019-20 and 2023-24, Prof Bell says.

The academic also used publicly available data to show that the fees universities receive fall far short of what they estimate are the costs of educating students.

For instance, in modern languages, the £7,421 annual funding per student is half of what they say is required.

In dentistry, the Scottish government last year paid £19,580 per student.

This is reckoned to be at least £9,000 short of the cost to universities.

The funding for veterinary studies, law, social work, media studies, drama, architecture, planning, anatomy, chemistry, mineral engineering, philosophy and religion would have to be increased by at least 70% to reach the actual cost of educating the average student, Prof Bell says.

Universities also say their research funding, from governments and other sources, fails to cover costs of the overheads they have in facilities.

Are universities relying too much on foreign students?

The number of foreign students at Scottish universities has nearly doubled since 2006-07, when it was 24,200.

The figure reached a peak of 47,700 in 2022-23 before falling back.

Prof Bell’s report details the ways in which the money from overseas students is threatened by changes to immigration requirements.

There are new rules that bar students from bringing their families, as well as a reduction in the time foreign nationals are allowed to work in the UK after graduating.

Some universities are much more exposed than others to volatile foreign student income.

The University of the West of Scotland and Glasgow Caledonian have three quarters of the places on their taught post-grad courses filled by non-UK students.

Older universities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh have many more such students, and more than half of whom are from overseas.

What about Scottish students?

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The number of places for Scottish students doing their first degree is capped in each university, due to constraints in Scottish government funding.

But there is no limit to the number of places that can be taken by students from the rest of the UK.

They pay the same level of annual tuition fees that they would pay in the rest of the UK.

For the new academic year, that is £9,535, a rise of of 3.1%.

Universities across the UK say this amount has not increased by very much for more than a decade and claim that it also falls short of the actual cost of educating students.

Universities such as Edinburgh and St Andrews have almost as many students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland as they do from Scotland, with roughly a third from each.

Glasgow, by contrast, is 66% Scottish and 15% are from the rest of the UK.

For newer universities, with less of a reputation and prestige, income from the rest of the UK students is more limited.

At Glasgow Caledonian and the University of the Highlands and Islands, the Scottish share is more than 95%.

Do graduates still earn more?

One effect of the Scottish government providing tuition fees for students from Scotland is that graduates themselves leave university with much less debt.

The study cites research that indicates the average Scot graduated in 2023 with debt of £15,430, while the figure for the rest of the UK was £44,940.

Prof Bell’s research gives extensive detail on earnings five years after they graduate.

His figures, based on the 2021-22 tax year, vary widely.

They show a computing graduate from St Andrews was earning an average £77,000, three times as much as one from the University of the West of Scotland.

The lowest pay was for a typical graduate in art and design from the University of the Highlands and Islands, on £15,300.

Other high-earning graduates were in medicine, dentistry and economics.

Among lower earners were those with degrees in media, sociology and performing arts.

The report says that the annual earnings of those with qualifications in health-related and STEM subjects tend to exceed the Scottish average, while those with arts qualifications tend to earn less.

What does Scotland need?

Prof Bell points out that funding is mainly allocated to universities based on the previous year’s funds.

He argues that this gives little scope for innovation and change.

Sir Anton Muscatelli also talks about the case for universities becoming more different from each other.

The Glasgow University principal says there will be a need for more of them to share resources and show they are operating efficiently, with mergers being an option.

Looking to next year’s Holyrood election, he says politicians need to acknowledge that the education sector is going to be crucial to the success of the Scottish economy.

He said: “It really is imperative that we don’t stumble from year to year [but] think about how this is going to be shaped or resourced.

“We need a strategic plan as a country, which is why I suspect after 2026, there will need to be a look at the shape and size of the Scottish [university] sector.

“I hope this is done in a rational way. I strongly believe in a publicly-funded sector, I hope that can be achieved, but let’s start with the question: what sector does Scotland need?”