内容摘要：One commenter summed it up by saying: "These days, politics, economy... everything has been frustrating, but Son Heung-min is a breath of fresh air."

One commenter summed it up by saying: "These days, politics, economy... everything has been frustrating, but Son Heung-min is a breath of fresh air."

Big plumes of smoke are visible on a screen that's providing a live feed from Ukrainian drones hovering over the outskirts of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, one of the most intense front lines in Ukraine.A few seconds earlier, Ukrainian artillery strikes Russian positions, places where we'd seen Russian soldiers moving about as they try to advance towards a key road going into Pokrovsk.

At least one Russian soldier is injured, possibly dead after the strike.It's chilling to watch the live footage. It drives home the bloody consequences of the war that Russia started, in which hundreds of thousands have so far been killed, a "never-ending bloodbath" as US President Donald Trump calls it.We are in a rural house converted into a command centre for the 155th mechanised brigade of the Ukrainian army. It's a few miles from front-line artillery positions.

The scale of the devastation that we see on the screens, homes and buildings completely flattened, is far greater than what we saw six months ago.It is evidence of the fierce battle that has been fought over the past several months to defend Pokrovsk, a crucial transport hub in the Donetsk region.

This week, there's cautious optimism, even among sceptical soldiers who have witnessed hopes of a ceasefire being dashed over and over again, as diplomatic efforts from the US, Europe, Turkey and others have pushed Russia and Ukraine to direct talks for the first time in three years.

"I think something should happen since Russia was the first one to push for these talks. I mean since 2022, they have refused to go into any contact," says an officer who wants to be referred to with his call sign "Kozak"."Suddenly, there's a new understanding that we need to prepare, and we can't only rely on Nato and the United States for our defence."

Other rapidly expanding Finnish start-ups in the defence and dual-use sectors include Iceye, which has developed fine-resolution microsatellite-based imaging and data services, and Re-orbit which supplies satellite software.Distance Technologies, a start-up backed by Google creates headset-free immersive technologies. In March it announced a collaboration with Patria, a Finnish legacy defence firm, which will trial the tech on its armoured vehicles.

Finland shares around 1,340 km (830 miles) of its border with Russia, and the Finnish government spent a greater proportion of its budget on defence than many other European countries even before the war in Ukraine."There's a phrase I like to leverage, which is 'the tyranny of geography' - the closer you are to a threat, the more likely you are to perceive it as more apparent and indeed more existential," says Nicholas Nelson, a UK-based defence tech investor and visiting fellow at the University of Oxford.