There is a quote often attributed to the leader of the Russian Revolution Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which goes. ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.’ Following that logic, 2022 feels as though it lasted a century – as the UK contended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, political instability at […]
Across Europe, a rather under-reported trend has been gathering pace: parliament after parliament have been declaring the Russian Federation a ‘terrorist state’. It started in August when the Latvian Parliament passed a resolution, swiftly followed by Estonia in October and, by the start of this month the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had joined […]
The Russian military – under instruction from Vladimir Putin – is rewriting the rules of siege warfare for the 21st century. The classic definition of a siege is: ‘The process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the […]
While in Westminster eyes are fixed on the new government, financial instability, and a migrant crisis in Kent, the world is not exactly standing still. In Ukraine, as Ukrainians close in on Kherson, Iranian-manufactured drones deployed by Russia are wreaking havoc on the civilian population. In the EU, the relationship between France and Germany has […]
Speculation regarding how secure Vladimir Putin’s position is surfaces every few years, but has intensified since the invasion of Ukraine, particularly in light of Russia’s military failures in recent months. Many of these speculative debates discuss either who will take the leadership position or what sort of regime – and led by who – will […]
Volodymyr Zelensky became a a global icon almost overnight following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. The force of his leadership and defiance in the face of overwhelming Russian force offered hope in his country’s darkest hour. For our guest this week, Zelensky’s heroic defiance came as no great surprise. Iuliia […]
Many Ukrainians are facing the prospect of a winter of power outages after about 30% of the country’s power stations were knocked out in just over a week. The deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, has warned that the country needs to be prepared for ‘a hard winter’. It has been reported that […]
In the summer, I wrote that Vladimir Putin would inevitably violate Russia and Ukraine’s grain agreement. Unfortunately, he immediately proved me right, launching missile attacks on Odesa literally hours after signing the agreement. Behaviour this brazen might look strange to the civilised world, but it’s quite normal for the dictator in the Kremlin. Although our […]
It doesn’t take living in the UK long for one to get used to the reality that the news cycle in Britain churns with brutal rapidity. For much of the last six months, that speediness has sometimes distracted me from the war back home, with only daily messages from my brother bring me back to […]
Boris Johnson was Ukraine’s strongest and most unwavering supporter in the face of Putin’s invasion. President Zelenksyy was right to decribe him as a ‘hero’ who offered us ‘special’ levels of support. It was Johnson who used the UK’s leading role in Nato and the international community to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s […]
What next for Ukraine? The preoccupation of the media, and in many parts of the political world, seems to be the threat that the Russians might go for the nuclear option – whether tactically or strategically. Vladimir Putin has egged on this interpretation with his latest statement that Russia will use ‘all means at our […]
Birmingham bid the Commonwealth Games farewell in style on Monday night. The closing ceremony told the story of the city’s Commonwealth links, including the contribution of the Windrush generation onwards to rebuilding the industrial heart of post-war England. The core theme was West Midlands pride in its many musical contributions. The nostalgic sugar rush of Dexys […]
José María Aznar, the shrewdest and most effective of modern Spanish statesmen, once privately told Fidel Castro that his regime had survived the collapse of Communism in 1989 for only one reason: the US blockade. American sanctions, Aznar suggested, had allowed the comandante to blame his people’s squalor, not on socialism, but on the yanqui siege. […]
I doubt many will disagree that this is not a Golden Age of politicians. The Prime Minister has been forced from office over his behaviour, the campaign to replace him has been far from inspirational, and the opposition is led by a man who was not inaccurately described by the outgoing PM as ‘Captain Crasharoony […]
While most of us in the West are pretty unequivocal about Vladimir Putin’s brutal campaign against Ukraine, in Russia itself a sophisticated infrastructure of deceit conditions the public to see and believe in a very different conflict. Few people are better placed to understand how this war came about than our guest this week, Dr […]
From injured civilians, to fleeing refugees and traumatised children, images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have hit our TV screens with full force. The West has come together with great unity in facing arguably its greatest military crisis since the Second World War. This has clearly wrong-footed Putin, and the invasion has not gone […]
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