World Archives

Thursday

22 Sep 2022

The truth about Putin’s nuclear threats

Putin has been preparing for this war for a long time. I first began writing about Putin and Nikolai Patrushev’s [head of the Russian security council] doctrine in 2009. It was based on the fact that these two, these scoundrels, thought that they had come up with a way to beat the West using blackmail – audacious, cynical blackmail – by threatening the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This was despite being inferior to the West in every way: economically, in terms or civility or conventional warfare. The scenario they envisaged for war, not only with Ukraine but with the whole of the West, with Nato, was spoken about and analysed repeatedly

Ian Acheson

Northern Ireland’s future isn’t Catholic or Protestant

For the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, Catholics now outnumber Protestants. Census data on national identity and religious from 2021, which was published today, shows that Catholics born into or practising their religion make up 45.7 per cent of the population, with Protestants at 43.5 per cent. In the bleak zero-sum world of Irish confessional demographics, that translates into a headcount victory for those champing at the bit to end British rule there. There’s no denying the figures are momentous. They will be gleefully weaponised by those who have no interest in a truly shared or reconciled future. But the headline numbers don’t reveal everything about the state of

Andrew Tettenborn

Is the EU’s crackdown on Hungary a bluff?

Brussels appeared to be finally getting serious with a rogue member state this week. A couple of days ago it announced that it would use its power – which it obtained last year – to withhold €7.5 billion (approximately £6.4 billion) from Hungary unless Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government cleaned up its act on corruption. The EU, it is fair to say, has a point. Like a number of other eastern European countries, Hungary is not known for the trustworthiness of its officials, or for its scrupulous avoidance of nepotism and favouritism in awarding state contracts. Nevertheless, as is often the case with EU affairs, outward appearances can be misleading. The

Katherine Bayford

Putin’s conscripts won’t fix the Russian army’s big flaw

Vladimir Putin’s decision to call up reservists is a sign of Russia’s desperation. It is also unlikely to do anything to address the real problem facing the country’s military: the woeful way in which its troops are organised. ‘No plan of operations,’ wrote Moltke the Elder in 1871, ‘extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.’ The Russian military struggled from the outset in Ukraine, but particular structural issues within the army itself have exacerbated their woes. Sending more troops to Ukraine risks simply plugging gaps left by poor military structuring. The war in Ukraine has highlighted many weaknesses in the command of Russia’s armed

Wednesday

21 Sep 2022

Paul Wood

Cornered: could Putin go nuclear?

At the start of the war in Ukraine, I was given a recording made by the Ukrainian intelligence services. It was described as an intercepted call from an officer at Russia’s nuclear missile base in Siberia to a relative in Kyiv. The line crackles and a man speaks in Russian: ‘I don’t know what I should do… His [Vladimir Putin’s] finger is hovering over the button. Maybe the commander–in-chief knows he’s got no way out.’ The Russian says his base has been given three hours to put its nuclear weapons ‘into a state of readiness’. And – a terrifying further step – he has been told of orders from President

Lisa Haseldine

‘Staying silent isn’t an option’: meet Putin’s new opposition

Not every critic of Vladimir Putin ends up in jail. It still suits Russia’s President to present his country as a democracy. Elections are occasionally held against opponents whom Putin goes on to defeat, so enemies are often tolerated if they don’t pose a serious threat. Last week, 70 local councillors from across Russia used this remaining freedom to sign a petition calling for his resignation. Their protest started with a letter from councillors in St Petersburg which called for Putin to be indicted on charges of treason and removed from office. A petition followed. I spoke to a few of the signatories and found them surprisingly willing to discuss

Niall Ferguson

Volodymyr Zelensky is a hero of our time

When the Queen died, I was on my way to Kyiv. My mind focused on the war in Ukraine, I found myself uncharacteristically lost for words when I was asked to comment. I took refuge in the complexities of the journey, which involved a delayed flight from Rome to Lublin, a frantic drive to Chelm on the Polish-Ukrainian border, and then an overnight train through western Ukraine. It was a good excuse. The reality was I could think of nothing to say. I couldn’t have done an interview even if I’d been trapped in Broadcasting House. Kyiv was, as NBC’s roving war correspondent Richard Engel had forewarned me, more exuberant

Oliver Basciano

Brace yourself for a coup in Brazil

‘Jail, death or victory.’ These are the three alternatives Brazil’s incumbent leader says await him. It is an unusual rallying call for an election campaign, but this is Jair Bolsonaro, the ‘Trump of the Tropics’, and he may well be right. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 when his initial rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country’s former president, was jailed midway through the campaign on corruption charges. Bolsonaro, a relative unknown, beat the replacement Workers party candidate by a ten percentage point margin. His formula was to focus on anti-corruption and conduct his campaign predominantly via social media. The use of YouTube, Facebook and, most importantly, the gargantuan WhatsApp

Lisa Haseldine

Over 1,300 arrested as protests spring up across Russia

Putin has met the latest stirrings of dissent against his regime with force. More than 1,300 Russians have been arrested this evening at protests against forced mobilisation. While it’s not known how many exactly have taken to the streets, protests on this scale have not been seen in the country since Putin invaded Ukraine seven months ago. Chanting ‘No to war’ and ‘Putin get in the trenches’, crowds including both men and women, young and old, have gathered in open defiance of the Kremlin’s intention to send a further 300,000 reservists into a warzone. According to OVD News – the Russian human rights organisation keeping tally of arrests – at

Brendan O’Neill

Something extraordinary is happening in Iran

The images coming out of Iran are remarkable. Women are ripping off their hijabs and burning them in public. They’re dancing in the streets and shaking their freed hair as onlookers whoop and cheer. These are stunning acts of defiance in a theocratic state in which women are expected to mildly, meekly accept their status as covered-up second-class citizens. Of course these heart-stirring protests are a response to something unimaginably awful: the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa, a beautiful 22-year-old Kurdish woman from the city of Saqqez in Iranian Kurdistan, was arrested by the morality police in Tehran last week for failing to wear her hijab in the ‘appropriate’ way.

Bob Seely MP

How should the West respond to Putin’s nuclear threats?

Can this really be happening? Sadly, the answer is yes. President Putin has just reiterated his threat to use nuclear weapons and announced that Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory will become part of the Russian Federation. Is nuclear weapon use likely or certain? No, not by any means, and we should speak with a sense of proportion and care. Putin wants us to be frightened. But we also need to stop burying our heads in the sand, as we have done with Russia for too long. To minimise the chances of nuclear use – tactical or strategic – we must assume that the threat is real and that at some point, probably

Stephen L. Miller

Joe Biden’s words don’t matter anymore

Do the president’s words matter or not? This should be a very simple question, yet as we’ve seen with Joe Biden, on the rare occasion he gives an interview to someone other than the White House Easter Bunny, nothing is ever so simple. Every Biden sit-down seems to raise more questions than answers. On Sunday, when Biden talked to Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes, it was his first interview in months with someone other than Jay Leno or Jimmy Kimmel. Biden has done fewer interviews than any modern president, and this week it wasn’t hard to see why. When the president was overseas attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II,

Mark Galeotti

Even Putin knows he is losing

Vladimir Putin’s latest escalation over Ukraine not only demonstrates that even he doesn’t think he’s winning the war but what happens when a leader knows he has to do ‘something’ but doesn’t quite know what. Momentum was, after all, no longer on his side. He seems to have hoped that over a hard winter, either Ukraine would lose the will to fight or the West would succumb to ‘Ukraine fatigue’. However, Ukraine’s impressive counter-offensive in the north-east not only confirmed Kyiv’s continued and even growing will and ability to fight but also galvanised Western support. Meanwhile, the West is not alone in feeling the pain. Putin went to Samarkand for

Lisa Haseldine

How seriously should we take Putin’s nuclear threat?

Vladimir Putin has announced the partial mobilisation of the Russian armed forces. In a pre-recorded address delayed from last night, the Russian president declared that all reservists would be called up for service in Ukraine. Nuclear war, he stressed, was not off the table. In tones bordering on the hysterical, Putin declared that Nato leaders had been discussing the possibility and acceptability of using nuclear weapons against Russia: ‘I want to remind those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, we too have various means of destruction at our disposal that are more varied and modern than those owned by Nato countries. If Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened,

Svitlana Morenets

Putin calls up 300,000 reservists

While most attention has focused on Vladimir Putin’s repetition of nuclear threats in his speech this morning, the takeaway in Ukraine is different: conscription has begun. This is deeply controversial in Russia given the war’s high mortality rate, but after the rout in the Kharkiv region Putin is running out of options. After his speech, given at 9 a.m. Moscow time, Russia’s minister of defence Sergei Shoigu announced that 300,000 reservists will be called up. ‘We are now at war not just with Ukraine but with the collective West too’, he said. Putin had referred to this in his speech. ‘The decree on partial mobilisation has been signed. Mobilisation activities

Tuesday

20 Sep 2022

Mark Galeotti

How Russia’s ‘shock jocks’ covered the Queen’s funeral

Modern Russia is a propaganda state, but not in the same way as the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has squeezed out any independent media, but all the same, the coverage of the Queen’s funeral demonstrated how this is a post-modern propaganda state, in which competing ‘narrative entrepreneurs’ try to make their mark and please the boss. As I have written before, the official line on the Queen’s death was strikingly respectful, taking its lead from Vladimir Putin’s own message of condolences. There were some spiteful and critical comments, primarily on social media, but even these were then shouted down in what seems to have been a genuine public outcry. Although

Angus Colwell

What’s behind Putin’s no-show?

Has Vladimir Putin carried out a cynical stunt, or ducked out of a seismic decision? That’s the debate among Kremlinologists tonight, as the Russian President failed to show up for a planned 8 p.m. address to the Russian people. Faced with catastrophic losses of territory in north-east Ukraine, a weaker Putin has been considering his options. One that has been suggested is fully mobilising the population to fight, and introducing martial law, which the State Duma (parliament) proposed today. Men aged between 18 and 65 would be banned from leaving the country. Today also saw the announcement of referendums on Russian annexation for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, as

Lisa Haseldine

Luhansk and Donetsk to hold ‘referendums’ on joining Russia

Authorities in the Russian-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine have announced that both would hold referendums on formally joining the Russian Federation this coming weekend. Although the breakaway states of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republic (LPR and DPR respectively) have been controlled by Putin-loyal separatists, they have technically remained semi-autonomous. Similar announcements about a referendum have been made in the recently-invaded regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia, of course, has welcomed the decision – the Chairman of the State Duma Vycheslav Volodin declared its readiness to provide Luhansk and Donetsk with total support. Putin is due to give an address to the nation on the subject this evening. In the

Cindy Yu

History and belonging: life in a Chinese mega-city

37 min listen

In the last four decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved into cities. Today, two thirds of the country live in urban areas (compared to just one third in 1985), and many of these are hubs with tens of millions of people – mega-cities that many in the West have never heard of before. What does this fast urbanisation do to communities and tradition? On this episode, my guest Austin Williams (an architect turned journalist and academic) explains how these populations were thrown up into ‘vertical living’. ‘If Ayn Rand had created a country, then China would be it’, says Austin. In other words, the family unit matters more

Dalibor Rohac

The EU needs to work with Poland, not push it away

Today, Europe needs nothing more than a strong Polish leadership. Poland already counts among the largest providers of military and financial assistance to Ukraine, and Poles have admirably shouldered the burden of Ukrainian refugees flowing into the country. Diplomatically, however, Warsaw punches well below its weight in the EU. That is a problem in an age when the EU’s natural leader, Germany, has lost its way. Just two days into the exhumations in Izyum, which have exposed yet more alleged war crimes by Russian forces, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz characterised the tone of his phone conversations with Vladimir Putin as ‘friendly’, notwithstanding their ‘very, very different, indeed widely differing views’.