The announcement of Boris Johnson’s resignation last week, concluding weeks of political turmoil brought about by successive scandals, was met with a sigh of relief by many in the United Kingdom. However, in Central and Eastern Europe, the tone was far more muted. To countries in the region, the British Prime Minister was seen as […]
For a few weeks I’ve been in Kyiv, partly as a visiting fellow at leading Ukrainian thinktank the Transatlantic Dialogue Center. Kyiv is an astonishingly elegant and beautiful city; a premier league European capital. The regular air raid warnings delivered on your phone, as well as by the baleful second world war-style sirens, are largely ignored […]
While the UK was going through its Jubilee jubilation, we Ukrainians have now marked 100 days in our war of existence against Putin’s Russia. The enemy continues to make advances in the east and the south of the country, and spiteful irregular missiles are still hitting Kyiv – including one in the early hours of […]
Last week the EU published it’s €300bn REPowerEU plan, which aims to simultaneously reduce continental carbon emissions and wean Europe off Russian hydrocarbons by 2027. This followed a major escalation of Europe and Russia’s stand-off earlier this month when Moscow shut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, citing disputes over rouble payments. These moves […]
Nothing like a coherent strategy emerged from 20 years of Nato’s war in Afghanistan; at best there were long lists of aspirations with no clear objectives or assessments of the resources needed to achieve them. But, two months after the Russian invasion, it looks very much as if the US and Nato are beginning to […]
As Russia shifts the focus of its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine to the Donbas region, there seems no end in sight to the fighting. Casualties on both sides are mounting. While Ukraine is able to call on its citizens to help defend their homeland from Russian aggression, Moscow’s ability to rally and maintain support […]
Since Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, most of Europe has rallied round the Zelensky government, with a combination of sanctions, military support and help resettling millions of refugees. The response of Germany’s SDP-led government, however, has been at best ambivalent, if not outright obstructive. Few countries have done more to facilitate Putin’s […]
Jeremy Corbyn was a disastrous Labour leader and one reason was his inability to hide his true beliefs. Asked on Times Radio yesterday by John Pienaar whether he admired the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Corbyn refrained from giving the obvious answer. Instead, he proffered the non sequitur that he had ‘never met him’. To the […]
The sight of two British nationals being paraded on Russian state TV marks a new front in the propaganda war the Kremlin has long waged against the West. Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, both of whom were serving in the Ukrainian army when they were captured by Russian forces, appeared on the Rossiya 24 channel […]
A week that began with the purest of horrors in the towns north of Kyiv has ended on a more optimistic note, with Boris Johnson’s surprise appearance in Kyiv for a show of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier this week I wrote that Ukraine needs fewer hashtags and illuminated buildings and more military aid. On reflection, that was probably a bit […]
There have been few spectacles more nauseating in recent years than the self-congratulatory complacency of Western leaders in response to Ukraine. And with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz due in London tomorrow, we are going to witness this again in bucketloads. It is certainly true that the imposition of sanctions – unquestionably the right thing to […]
From media coverage of Northern Ireland, you might get the impression that the province’s people are engaged daily in a ‘conversation’ about its role in a future all-Ireland state. A small but dedicated group of nationalist campaigners has used the aftermath of Brexit to claim that there is overwhelming demand for a ‘border poll’ on […]
A friend of mine who works at a major think-tank in Moscow went recently to a business conference at a remote town in eastern Siberia. When I asked him about the mood among the people he met there concerning the war in Ukraine, he said, ‘People were drinking ‘to our Victory’ and dreaming of capturing […]
Where does one begin? Mass graves, dead bodies strewn across the street, some discovered with gunshot wounds to the head, others with signs of rape and torture. You don’t need many adjectives to convey the horror of what has happened in the towns north of Kyiv; simply listing what the Russian army left behind does […]
Reports have emerged in recent days that Russian troops in Ukraine, stalled in their advance and suffering numerous military setbacks, have sabotaged their own equipment, refused to fight and carry out orders, and even, in one report, run over their own commander. Nato estimates that as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers may have been killed […]
Forty years ago this weekend an embattled Prime Minister was drawn into a foreign conflict that would dramatically change the course of her premiership. For Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands War turned the ‘Iron Lady’ from a somewhat ironic sobriquet to a label that defined her time at Number 10. It’s no exaggeration to say the […]
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