World

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

‘Navalny is ready to fight and win’: meet the Russian rebel’s chief of staff

Ever since the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested and imprisoned on trumped-up charges in January 2021, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has fought tirelessly to keep its leader in the public eye – and to continue his work exposing the corruption of the regime. Just under 130 million people viewed the FBK’s YouTube video ‘Putin’s Palace’, which detailed the outrageous luxury of a seaside palace built for Russia’s leader and the complex web of offshore schemes that financed it. The documentary Navalny – which details the opposition leader’s investigation into his own near-fatal poisoning by a team of FSB assassins in Tomsk in August 2020 – won the best

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why Democrats want Trump

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of an even more prominent fat man seems a big win for Donald Trump, regardless of how the case is decided. If convicted, Trump is a martyr, managing to portray himself once more as a persecuted Washington outsider, a status that’s quite a feat for a politician to retain after setting up shop in the White House for four years. If found not guilty, Trump is exonerated, a contrived case likely to rely on tentative legal reasoning exposed as an overtly partisan manhunt. After all, in a Quinnipiac poll last week, a plurality of Americans (42 per cent) considered the charges in New York

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

The blurred lines between patriotism and profiteering in Ukraine

What is the right way to commemorate a war when it is still being fought? Many victories, tragedies and acts of defiance have already been depicted in Ukrainian books, films and art. Popular subjects include the liberation of Snake Island, the defence of the Azovstal plant, the horrors of the Bucha massacre, a woman offering sunflower seeds to an occupying Russian soldier so they can grow when he dies, and the sinking of the Moskva warship. However, it doesn’t take much to blur the lines between patriotism and profiteering. Anything with a military logo sells. Military–patriotic themes are being used to flog all sorts of products. War symbols have been

Bernard Cornwell

My invitation to meet King Arthur

I am in Charleston, South Carolina, whither we fly to escape the northern winter, which so far has not been too frigid. Charleston is anything but frigid. Last week we attended a cocktail party and I overheard two elegant ladies who were discussing a gentleman glimpsed across the candlelit courtyard. One remarked on his good looks, whereupon the other replied: ‘I think I was married to him once.’ Pure Charleston. But our dog, Vicky, has been severely disappointed by the winter. The rest of the USA seems to be buried in snow, but on Cape Cod we have seen scarcely three inches, and Victoria adores the snow, believing it to be

Nigel Jones

Russia’s long history of female assassins

The news that a young woman anti-war activist, Darya Trepova, is suspect number one in the bombing assassination of Russian pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky may shock those schooled to believe that political violence is an all-male preserve. But it will come as no surprise to anyone with the sketchiest knowledge of Russian history. For in Russian politics, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, ‘the female of the species is more deadly than the male’. Since the days of the Tsars, women have always been at the forefront of political violence in Russia. The spectacular assassination in 1881 of Tsar Alexander II, known as ‘The Liberator’ for his abolition of serfdom, was organised by a

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s Boomers have a lot to answer for

Paris has banned e-scooters after the people were asked to vote in a referendum. Not many of the capital’s 1.38 million registered citizens bothered to cast their ballot on Sunday, but of the 103,000 who did 90 per cent voted against.   The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo hailed the referendum as a red letter day for ‘participative democracy’ over ‘democracy of public opinion and polls’. The city’s three e-scooter operators – Dott, Lime and Tier – quickly cried foul, citing what they described as ‘very restrictive voting methods’; only 21 voting stations were open, and there was no internet voting. Often derided as the ‘president of the rich’, Macron could

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

By reducing oil production, Opec is only helping Russia

Just when we thought inflationary forces were softening, the price of crude oil has shot up sharply today in response to an announcement by Opec that it will try to reduce production. A barrel of Brent crude, which touched $120 last summer before falling back to $75 last month, reached $85 at one point today. Some analysts expect it to hit $100. Given that the benign forecasts for inflation which shaped Jeremy Hunt’s budget were predicated on a falling oil price, has the case for economic recovery now collapsed? Unfortunately, in spite of the US’s drive towards energy independence in recent years, the world remains depressingly reliant on Opec for

Ian Williams Ian Williams

What would be the real cost of defending Taiwan?

It’s 2026 and China begins its invasion of Taiwan with an intense missile bombardment that in a few hours destroys most of the island’s navy and air force. The Chinese navy begins ferrying its main invasion force of tens of thousands of soldiers and equipment across the Taiwan Strait. But all is not lost. US submarines, bombers, and fighter jets, reinforced by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, rapidly cripple the Chinese fleet. The People’s Liberation Army is defeated, and communist party rule in China destabilised, but victory for the US and its allies comes at an enormous cost. Chinese missiles destroy US bases in Japan and Guam; the US loses dozens of

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Hollywood and China: happily ever after?

32 min listen

Until a few years ago, Hollywood dominated Chinese cinemas. In the People’s Republic, Marvel’s superhero romps were the people’s favourite, with Avengers: Endgame taking in over £510 million at Chinese box offices. Hollywood is desperate to crack the Chinese market – after all, it’s a country with a fifth of the world’s population and a growing middle class. But there’s just one problem – the small issue of the Chinese Communist Party, which tightly controls the films people can see. Since the success of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel films had effectively been blacklisted until earlier this year, with other Hollywood blockbusters failing to break through either. On this episode, we’ll be

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jacinda Ardern’s successor struggles to define a woman

Is Labour’s state of confusion about sex and gender going global? Labour leader Keir Starmer was widely mocked this weekend when he was asked by the Sunday Times to define a woman, and claimed that 99.9 per cent of women don’t have a penis – which if nothing else, rather contradicted his previous assertion that it was wrong to say that only women have a cervix. Now though his gender vacillation appears to be causing problems all the way over in New Zealand for Jacinda Ardern’s successor as Prime Minister, the Labour politician Chris Hipkins. Asked in a press conference how he and his government would define a woman – in

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Who is behind the murder of Putin’s propagandist?

Those who live by hate often die by hate, too. Maxim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was one of the ultra-nationalist social media ‘milbloggers’ who emerged largely off the back of Russia’s war on Ukraine. On Sunday evening, he was addressing a gathering at a cafe in St Petersburg when he was killed by a bomb that also injured another 16 people. Fomin came from Makiivka, in the contested Donetsk region. In 2014, on escaping from prison where he was serving time for a bank robbery, he joined the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion. He would go on to become amongst the more famous ‘milbloggers’, whose Telegram channel had over 560,000 followers.

Fredrik Erixon

Why Sanna Marin lost Finland’s election

A journalist and observer of Finnish politics once said there is one headline that works for every Finnish election: ‘Finland elects new government, nothing will change’. Few prime ministers have survived longer than one term in the Arctic nation. Just as day becomes night and that spring follows on winter, the rhythm of the country’s elections has been to hand victory to the main opposition party – depending on which of them that was outside the last ruling coalition. Finland’s major parties are all centrist and pragmatic, and the difference between the left and the right is hard to detect. Even the populist Finns party feels tidy and well-behaved. With

Sunday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

It’s time for a reckoning with Chinese big tech

It has been a bumpy week for China’s beleaguered technology giants. They are under increasing scrutiny overseas, and the communist party continues to tighten the screws on them at home. In many ways they are also their own worst enemies. The UK has become the latest government to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok from government devices over security concerns. Parliament has also banned the app from its network. This follows similar bans from the European Union and 11 countries, including France, New Zealand, Denmark and the US. Western lawmakers are unconvinced by TikTok’s often cack-handed attempts to distance itself from its Chinese parent, ByteDance, and that company’s obligations to the Chinese

George Magnus

Britain’s new trade deal is about more than GDP

With the announcement this week confirming the UK’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the British government has concluded its most important trade agreement since leaving the EU. It is joining a modern free trade area (FTA) comprising 11 Pacific Rim countries located in the most dynamic part of the world, measured by GDP growth, and accounting for about 11 per cent of world output. Or just over 14 per cent with the UK included. Curiously though, the trade and economic benefits which the UK might derive are likely to be pretty meagre. The real story in the UK’s additional tilt into Asia is potentially

Saturday

Edward Howell

Is North Korea about to test another nuke?

North Korea’s spring has started with a bang. The United States and South Korea have staged their largest joint military exercises in five years, and Pyongyang’s rhetoric is becoming more aggressive. Kim Jong Un has warned that the US and South Korea would ‘plunge into despair’ for holding the drills, as he fired two missiles into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Kim’s regime has already fired more than 20 missiles this year, launching increasingly ambitious and sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles. Earlier this week, North Korean state media proudly claimed that the regime had developed tactical nuclear weapons for the first time. Photographs showed Kim inspecting what looked like miniaturised nuclear warheads that

Amra Sabic-El-Rayess

Putin is copying the propaganda playbook of Serbian war criminals

A year ago, Ukrainian soldiers discovered evidence of the Bucha massacre in which Russian forces slaughtered hundreds of Ukrainians in cold blood. Far from owning up to its crimes, Russia has spent the past 12 months trying to spin the massacre as a Western-inspired conspiracy.  The Kremlin said the allegations are a ‘monstrous forgery’ aimed at denigrating the Russian army. This attempt to whitewash the truth has disturbing parallels with the cover up of atrocities that occurred in my home country, Bosnia, during the 1990s. There are chilling links between today’s war crimes denialism by Russia and the genocide denialism that continues in Bosnia to this day, over the murder of  more than

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Did Brexit save Britain from France’s fate?

Stéphane Rozès, the author of a book entitled ‘Chaos’, was on French radio this week receiving congratulations for being a visionary. The chaos which he described in his book, published last November, is now being played out in France, as hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets. Asked to explain its cause, Rozès explained that it has been building since 1992, the year France signed the Maastricht Treaty, the beginning of the European Union.  Rozès is not alone in this view. One of France’s best known philosophers, the left-wing Michel Onfray, has been saying the same thing for years. ‘France died in 1992, the date of the Maastricht

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

No wonder some Remainers are unhappy about the UK joining the CPTPP

The United Kingdom has become a member of a free trade bloc embracing 500 million consumers. And it isn’t the European Union. No wonder, then, that some Remainers are feeling triggered by Rishi Sunak’s success in steering Britain to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). David Henig, UK director of the European Centre For International Political Economy and a longtime Remainer, griped: ‘It assists particularly those companies with trans-Pacific supply chains…The UK is mostly involved in European supply chains. And that’s why the economic impact is trivial. It could even be negative.’ The FT’s chief feature writer Henry Mance even used an old skit from Father Ted in

Anna Richards

Poland’s burgeoning alliance with Britain is bad for Putin

Poland and the United Kingdom have been allies for years. But, since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, that union is becoming stronger. This week, the UK government announced up to £10 million in funding for a joint UK-Polish partnership to erect two purpose-built villages in Lviv and Poltava to shelter more than 700 of Ukraine’s most vulnerable displaced people. The UK-Polish partnership will also provide £2.6 million for power generators to serve some 450,000 people in schools, hospitals, and community centres in retaken and front-line areas, and up to £2.5 million distributed in partnership with the Red Cross to support those suffering under extreme weather conditions. This strengthening of

Friday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The EU puts Ukraine at the centre of its China policy

If Beijing was in any doubt that its 12-point peace plan for Ukraine has gone down badly in Europe, those doubts can now be put to rest after a punchy speech by Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels yesterday. In perhaps the clearest formulation of the EU’s latest thinking on China so far, von der Leyen put Ukraine front and centre of Europe’s dealings with Beijing, saying that the way China interacts with Russia will be ‘a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward’. As for the peace plan, she accused Beijing’s proposal of being something that would ‘in effect consolidate Russian annexations’. Von der Leyen will be visiting China