Closing out season one on The Swing, Pendulum`s Yaroslav Baran and Heather Bakken discuss the political year that was: who`s up and who`s down, communications wins and losses, and what actually got done.

The Liberals made the biggest comeback in Canada`s electoral history and the new prime minister rode the momentum through 2025. But electoral results aren't the only things that changed; Canadians stopped saying sorry and unapologetically rallied around the flag.

Prime Minister Carney governed with an executive temperament, launched transformational institutions, reshaped defence spending, and projected steady competence on the world stage. Yet beneath it all is a razor-thin minority Parliament encumbered by legislative paralysis that set in far earlier than expected.

The big question heading into 2026: can decisive leadership survive the grind of minority rule, economic headwinds, and an unforgiving electoral clock?

On this episode of The Swing, we dive into one of the most consequential, and least understood, aspects of the war in Ukraine: Russia’s frozen state assets. Roughly $300B USD were seized by the G7 and EU in 2022 and have been sitting in financial deep-freeze.

The Belgian securities depository, Euroclear, manages 90% of these frozen assets — including Canada’s share. What happens next could decide whether this money is used to help Ukraine, or flows back into Vladimir Putin’s war chest.

Joining Pendulum's Heather Bakken and Yaroslav Baran is Aaron Gasch Burnett, a security analyst at the European Resilience Initiative Centre based in Berlin.

Aaron walks us through the geopolitics, legal battles, European financial mechanisms, and the role Canada can play through double-frozen assets. Yaroslav breaks down the Canadian political timing, the risks, and why this debate may be the most important financial front of the war.

How do you clear a path for peace using a blueprint for capitulation?

In this episode of The Swing, Pendulum's Heather Bakken, Yaroslav Baran and Balkan Devlen (also an internationally renowned geopolitical strategist) dissect the most contentious development in the Ukraine war since the full-scale invasion began: a leaked 28-point so-called “peace plan” reportedly penned in secret by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Kremlin-linked businessman Kirill Dmitriev. Noticeably absent in the drafting of the plan — anyone from sovereign Ukraine.

What does “peace” actually mean in international affairs with a global order struggling to define the difference between ending a war and legitimizing aggression?

Baran and Devlen break down the plan’s territorial concessions, its hollowed-out security guarantees reminiscent of the failed Budapest Memorandum, and the strategic imbalance it would impose by restricting Ukraine’s armed forces while leaving Russia’s untouched.

They also explore why Vladimir Putin might be entertaining talks at all, from mounting infrastructure losses under Ukrainian drone strikes to domestic strains Russians rarely see reported.

One thing they all agree on is the current approach echoes the appeasement logic of the Munich Agreement with an outcome that nobody wants.