World

Monday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why is Zelensky echoing Putin’s rhetoric?

Today is Ukraine’s Day of Unity which necessarily had to be marked with an expression of national pride. However, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to issue a decree ‘On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians’ represented not simply that, but an open political challenge to Moscow, and one which strangely echoed Putin’s rhetoric. The decree begins castigating Russia for oppressing Ukrainians ‘in the lands historically inhabited by them,’ which is defined as the ‘modern Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov regions’ – a large swathe of south-western Russia. From this, it demands the creation not just of ‘an action plan for preserving the national identity of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Will Nikki Haley pull out on Wednesday? 

New Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events. She has a morning meet-and-greet in the city of Franklin and a ‘get out the vote rally’ in Salem this evening.  Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote, her campaign seems strangely lacking in urgency. Yes, she’s spending a fortune on campaign ads. Yes, she’s engaging in slanging matches with Donald Trump, which is a useful fodder for an increasingly desperate media. She’s accused him of being ‘clearly insecure’ and having ‘temper tantrums’ after he mocked her unusual name.  But her campaign just

Nicholas Farrell

Bologna is rebelling against the 30 kph speed limit

Ravenna You’re not supposed to mock the afflicted, I know, but I laughed when I read the news that the left-wing citadel of Bologna has introduced a 30 kph (19 mph) speed limit. Forcing the Italians – a nation of famously crazy drivers who make fabulous sports cars – to drive no faster than cyclists is to deprive them of an essential element of what it means to be Italian. Poor Italians. Is nothing sacred? Not even speed? Probably, thank God, not even globalisation can change the Italian psyche I’ve lived for so many years cheek by jowl with the Italians and their ins and outs that I must confess I

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s protesting farmers have spooked Emmanuel Macron

The farmers of France are mobilising. Their anger will be an early test for Gabriel Attal; the countryside is unknown territory for the new prime minister, a young man raised in the affluent suburbs of Paris, like the majority of Emmanuel Macron’s government.  The first dissent was on Friday in the south-west of France, in and around Toulouse. On the motorway linking the city to the Atlantic coast, the farmers erected a barricade with bales of hay that is still in place three days later. Their largest union, the FNSEA, has warned this is likely to be the first of many such actions. Their president, Arnaud Rousseau told the government: ‘What

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Ron DeSantis’s cursed campaign

Ron DeSantis’ political action committee is called ‘Never Back Down.’ Well, he just did. A week ago, he said of Trump: ‘You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he’ll say you’re wonderful.’ Well, he just endorsed Trump for the presidency in 2024. This morning, DeSantis campaign staff batted away speculation that he would imminently quit, saying ‘with 100 per cent certainty’ that DeSantis would fight on to the South Carolina primary next month and beyond. Hours later, Ron proved them wrong. ‘While this campaign has ended, the mission continues,’ he said in a video. Bowing to the seemingly inevitable, he endorsed Donald Trump

Sean Rayment

Israel can’t win in Gaza anymore

The first and most important principle of war for any military campaign is the selection and maintenance of ‘the aim’. The aim must be clear and unambiguous, so that everyone, from the most senior general to the private soldier, understands what is trying to be achieved. Unfortunately for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the aim of the war in Gaza – the annihilation of Hamas – is neither clear, unambiguous nor achievable. Now the IDF – or more accurately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – is facing the very real risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When Joe Biden, the US president, spoke to Israelis during a brief

Hans-Joachim Voth and Sascha Becker

Did ‘shallow Christianity’ help the Nazis rise to power?

‘Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison,’ C.S. Lewis famously said. In western countries, organised religion has been declining for the last two centuries; Friedrich Nietzsche even declared that ‘God is dead’. Does the decline and fall of religion have political consequences? Can totalitarian ideology grow in the void left by religion? To find the answer, it’s worth looking to 1930s Germany. Did shallow Christianity – a lack of deep-rooted Christian beliefs – make Germans more susceptible to the Nazi party’s message during the years of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power? In the less-than-fertile Christian soils of Germany, there was room

Saturday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Despite three years in prison, Navalny still scares Putin

The March presidential elections in Russia will, of course, be a stage-managed farce, but that doesn’t mean that real politics has been entirely extinguished. It offers a narrow window of opportunity for the opposition to try and connect with the Russian people – so the Kremlin is doing its best to muzzle them. On the third anniversary of his return to Russia on Wednesday, opposition leader Alexei Navalny issued a statement on X (via his lawyers, his only connection with the outside world) intended to bolster his supporters’ morale. He returned from Germany in 2021 following a poisoning attempt that saw government agents lace his underwear with Novichok. Answering the

Terry Barnes

How Australia became obsessed with land acknowledgments

If you attend almost any public meeting or event in Australia these days, you’ll be greeted – some would say confronted – by a mandatory statement before it starts. Even the nation’s parliament now starts the day with this statement, ahead of the centuries-old ritual of reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Known as the Acknowledgment of Country, it is a now all-pervasive ritual of Australian life. Generally, it uses these words: A whole industry has sprung up around Aborigines being hired by event organisers to stage Welcomes to Country We meet here today on the lands of the traditional owners, the (Aboriginal tribe) people, and acknowledge their elders past and present.

Zoe Strimpel

How Israel is failed by its war of words

Sitting in a room at the Israel Defence Forces’ Hakirya base in Tel Aviv, I listened – along with a room full of delegates, mostly European MPs and members of the House of Lords – to a briefing from an IDF spokesman. He was a British-born reservist recruited back to the front lines of Israel’s communications war, and he did not inspire. He repeated basics about what happened on 7 October, and the horror of those events – something that everyone in that room, all there as pretty major fans of Israel, desirous to see it triumph in its hour of adversity, already appreciated. We wanted new information: dispassionately and

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Nikki Haley says being Trump’s vice president is ‘off the table’

The theory that Donald Trump will pick Nikki Haley as his vice president refuses to die – in spite of the growing evidence that he won’t.  Haley, for one, is adamant that it will not happen. Today, at a meet-and-greet with voters in Mary Ann’s diner in Amherst, New Hampshire, a voter floated the idea. She grimaced and said: ‘I’ve never said that. That’s my opponent saying that… I don’t want to be anyone’s vice president. That’s off the table.’  She could change her mind, of course. Politicians do, and analysts will keep saying that Haley would help Trump appeal to aspirational suburban women and so on. But Trumpworld loathes

Limor Simhony Philpott

The real reason Netanyahu is opposed to a Palestinian state

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Biden administration earlier this week that he objects to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intended audience was his base of supporters – or what little of it he has left. Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, Netanyahu had zig-zagged between rejecting the idea of Palestinian rule over Gaza and showing some level of flexibility about the idea of a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) managing Gaza’s day to day governance, with Israel managing the region’s security. Netanyahu is torn between his dependence on the approval of his right-wing voters and his reliance on American support. The American

Jim Lawley

How Catalan separatists are taking control of immigration

In Spain’s general election last July, the right-wing Partido Popular and the even more right-wing Vox won 170 seats, just short of the 176 they needed to form a government. The support of an MP from Navarre and another from the Canary Islands took them to 172 but that only added to the frustrating sense of ‘so near and yet so far’.   60 per cent of Catalans say there is too much immigration Then Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, stepped in, cobbled together an alliance with six other parties and, with 179 votes, was duly re-elected. Promising that he would lead a stable, transparent and, above all, ‘progressive’ administration,

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Who is persecuting Ukraine’s journalists?

Investigative journalism has often been deadly for the careers of corrupt politicians in Ukraine, with stories leading to resignations and even imprisonment. Now, under the conditions of martial law (including the closure of public data services) and limited opportunities for society to control the actions of the authorities, Ukrainian journalists became the main watchdogs over the government. This week they found out they were being watched, too. Bihus.info, an investigative team exposing corruption among Ukrainian officials, came under attack. A questionable media outlet named People’s Truth released a video showing some Bihus employees (camera operators and social media managers) allegedly ordering and taking drugs at a New Year’s party. The

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Emmanuel Macron secretly hoping for a Trump victory?

The great and the good of this world met in Davos this week to tell each other how wonderful they are. But amid all the bonhomie and back-slapping there loomed the spectre of You-Know-Who.   Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses was his first significant step towards a second term in the White House. His first was bad enough for the Davos set, but the possibility that Trump and his Deplorables might triumph in November is too much for many to bear. Macron believes he’s the top dog among the 27 EU leaders Last week, Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, described Trump as ‘clearly a threat’

Sasha Lensky

Can Europe match Russia’s remarkable rise in weapons production?

‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,’ Donald Trump reportedly told top European officials while he was U.S. president. In the present situation, with a war not seen on this scale since 1945 being fought in geographical (if not yet political) Europe, it’s now imperative for the region to review its reliance on the White House, its assumed ally and source of support since the end of WW2. This time round, it may well have to fall back on its own reserves and stamina – but does it have enough of either? As Mircea Geoanã, Nato deputy

John Jenkins

Missiles alone won’t solve the problem of the Houthis

Eventually then, enough was enough. After months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea, the US and the UK launched retaliatory strikes in Yemen last week. But how did we get here? The Houthis have been a nuisance for at least 30 years, when they emerged as a clan-based opposition movement in the northernmost governorate of Yemen. They had a number of grievances: endemic poverty, government hostility and Saudi-funded attempts to spread Salafism in their Zaidi Shia stronghold. The last Zaidi ruler had been deposed in 1962. The subsequent civil war set the stage for more or less continuous domestic turmoil ever since.

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sergei Lavrov: War has had a ‘positive impact on life in Russia’

Just when you thought Putin’s regime couldn’t sink any lower, it somehow manages to. Like something out of George Orwell’s 1984, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that, actually, the Kremlin’s bloody war in Ukraine had had a ‘positive impact on life inside [Russia]’. Speaking at a foreign ministry press conference, Lavrov said this was because Putin’s ‘special military operation’ had united the country and ‘enabled it to be cleansed of all those who felt no sense of belonging to Russian history or culture’ after thousands moved abroad in opposition to the war. It hardly needs saying that the nearly 20,000 Russians detained for protesting against the war, and the

Jawad Iqbal

The clash between Iran and Pakistan is spiralling out of control

Pakistan’s retaliatory military strike on suspected militant bases in Iran – in response to Iranian attacks in Pakistani territory – can only escalate tensions between the two countries. It will also ring alarm bells elsewhere across an increasingly jittery Middle East but also further afield in India and China. The Chinese have friendly relations with both Pakistan and Iran. India, meanwhile, is always on high alert whenever Pakistan’s military forces flex their muscles. All in all, there is a real danger that more and more countries will be sucked into the volatile and unpredictable vortex of the Middle East conflict. The Pakistani military action follows Iran’s attacks on the Jaish ul-Adl, a