World

Tensions on the Ukraine border are continuing to increase. Worryingly, Russian state media has gone from mocking Washington’s warnings of an invasion to ramping up the various pretexts that the Kremlin is trying to create for one. The leaders of the two self-proclaimed breakaway republics in the Donbas have been on Russian TV today asking for Russia to recognise them and offer military assistance. Moscow is also claiming that it has killed five Ukraine troops who supposedly crossed into its territory.  The Biden administration remains convinced that an attack on Ukraine is coming in the near future. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, warned this morning that ‘Every indication we

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics draws to a close today, and few will mourn its passing. The spectacle of a totalitarian regime mounting a Games while prosecuting a genocide have rightly drawn denunciations, diplomatic boycotts and precious few television viewers. But this Olympiad was instructive in at least one important respect: to remind the free world how the Chinese Communist Party eventually corrupts everything it touches, for its own ends. To be sure, Xi Jinping’s regime had a willing partner in the International Olympic Committee, whose record of rule-bending is well-known. Its extravagant demands alienated the Norwegian public to such an extent that Oslo withdrew its bid in 2014 to

​In a submission for the hotly contested prize for fatuous belligerence over Ukraine, Ben Wallace, UK secretary of state for defence, has spoken of a ‘whiff of Munich’ regarding negotiations to end the crisis. It may only be a matter of time before he, or some fellow tub-thumper, reaches into the historical locker and pulls out the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 as an even more pertinent parallel. The story writes itself: just as the reckless Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of nuclear war by installing missiles in Cuba but was forced to withdraw thanks to unyielding resolve from President John F. Kennedy, so the

Storm clouds looming over the EU’s ‘rule of law’ dispute turned a shade darker on Wednesday. The European Court of Justice rejected challenges from Hungary and Poland against a controversial budget mechanism linking adherence to democracy and EU funding.  In an indication of the significance of the ruling for the bloc’s future, the verdict was the first ever to be broadcast live from the court. The European Commission will now come under intense pressure to apply the rule of law mechanism and withhold long-term budget funds for Hungary and Poland, along with the pandemic recovery funds it has already refused to hand over to those states. But the escalation of the conflict