World

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Putin’s Azerbaijan apology will have bruised his ego

Has Vladimir Putin been forced to eat humble pie? Earlier today, the Russian president felt compelled to issue an apology – of sorts – after an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan on 25 December, killing 38 of the 67 passengers on board. The plane had been travelling from the Azeri capital Baku to Grozny, in the Russian region of Chechnya, when it was hit by air defence systems, forcing it to crash-land hundreds of miles off course in neighbouring Kazakhstan. Speaking on the phone to the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, Putin called the crash a ‘tragic incident’ and expressed his condolences to the injured and families of the victims.

Francis Pike

How the Black Death helped bring prosperity to Europe

As the media alarms us about an approaching ‘quad-demic’ of diseases this winter (Covid-19, Flu, RSV, Norovirus) it is a timely moment to think about the travails of our mediaeval forebears. Their common scourges were typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis, anthrax, scabies and syphilis – all untreatable at the time. And then there was the plague. The plague tore up the foundations of society and paved the way for dramatic economic, political and social change Arriving at the ports of Venice, Pisa and Marseilles in 1347, shipboard rats carrying the Yersinia Pestis bacterium disbursed the bubonic plague in Europe. Originally it is thought that plague was brought by Genoese ships from their

Vazha Tavberidze

Who is Mikheil Kavelashvili?

‘They say the human body, given time, builds a resistance to pain. But after being tear-gassed six times in 21 nights, I can’t say I’ve started to tolerate it, let alone appreciate it,’ says a colleague who hasn’t missed a single night of the pro-European protests on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue since 28 November. She counts herself lucky; so far, she has avoided the brutal beatings meted out by the masked riot police, nicknamed ‘robocops’. These enforcers have become the Georgian government’s ruthless arm for crushing dissent, their mission seemingly to maim and mangle those who find the prospect of embracing the Kremlin’s Russkiy mir less than appealing and aren’t afraid to say

Friday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russians are feeling the pinch as Putin’s war rumbles on

The Russian Orthodox Church or state calendar doesn’t recognise 25 December as a special day: their Christmas is 7 January by their old calendar and, in any case, it is New Year’s Eve that is the real blow out. As households prepare the usual staples of Salad Olivier, Herring under a Fur Coat (smothered in mayonnaise), tangerines and champagne, it will be impossible for them to ignore a basic fact: everything is getting more expensive. Indeed, while the headline inflation rate is just under 10 per cent, the price of many basic foods have increased dramatically more. One Russian newspaper estimated that the price of a typical New Year’s Eve

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The problem with rugby union

Rugby union has always attracted a certain type, the ‘play hard, party hard’ sort. I remember a former teammate – a prop, perhaps not surprisingly – who could drink a pint of his urine in under ten seconds. An England prop, Colin Smart, once downed a bottle of after shave after a Five Nations match and spent the evening having his stomach pumped in a Paris hospital. That was in the 1980s, the same decade when England’s Dean Richards and Scotland’s John Jeffrey took the Calcutta Cup for a tour of Edinburgh pubs after a match. As one of them later quipped – probably before he was presented with the

Wednesday

Janine di Giovanni

The plight facing Gaza’s Christians

On a steamy August morning in 2019, I went to Sunday mass in Gaza city’s Church of the Holy Family. It’s a simple stone building, built in 1974, and shares a compound with a school attended by 500 children, not all of them Catholic. Today, in war time, it is a refuge for hundreds of displaced Gazans whose homes have been destroyed since the Hamas-Israel war began.  As a Catholic who wrote a book about the Christians of the Middle East, and the danger they face of being eradicated, the mass was emotional for me. I have always been struck by the devotion Middle Eastern Christians, the most ancient of people,

Tuesday

Geoff Hill

South Africa dreams of a black Christmas

It’s 38C outside and I’m in a Johannesburg hypermarket owned by the Pick n Pay chain, one of the biggest in South Africa. Despite the heat, their music system has a woman singing ‘Let it snow!’ and songs themed around winter and chestnuts roasting on the fire. In rural areas, the scotch cart is common, a topless buggy pulled by cattle or donkeys, but few here can describe what ‘a one-horse open sleigh’ might look like. Across Pick n Pay and its major competitor known as Checkers, all the Santa props have a light complexion. Not even a black elf. Real holly would wilt in the sun, though it’s grown

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Let’s hope Donald Trump doesn’t mess it up

There’s been a ‘vibe shift’. After the resounding victory at the recent US election, at long last things are changing, and heading towards some form of hope and sanity. This Christmas, there’s hope for the future on the right.  Is this December 2024 or December 2019? Because the current anticipation for the second Donald Trump term in America is very much reminding me of the similar aura of relief and positivity that followed Boris Johnson’s election win five years ago. And we all know how that turned out.  I can’t help feeling jealous of the Americans, because what are we stuck with? One of the few advantages of getting old

Terry Barnes

Australia’s godless Christmas

As Christmas comes around again, we will discover that Australia is no longer a Christian country. According to the most recent census in 2021, Christianity is not a majority faith here and, of its denominations, none has declined more rapidly than Anglicanism – which has lost more than a third of its declared adherents since the turn of this century. Meanwhile, steadily growing non-Christian faiths are headed by Islam, which claimed over 3 per cent of Australians in 2021. Muslims in Australia now outnumber Jews by more than eight to one. Furthermore, the main Anglican and Catholic denominations are more C and E – Christmas and Easter – than C

Adam LeBor

Giorgio Perlasca’s Christmas in wartime Budapest

Artillery boomed over the Buda hills, the flashes of explosions slicing through the freezing winter dusk. The crack of rifle fire sounded nearby and the air was thick with the acrid stink of cordite. It was 24 December 1944 and Giorgio Perlasca was trying to get to the Spanish Legation villa to celebrate Christmas. The Hungarian soldiers at the checkpoint said it was not possible to proceed. The Russians were advancing and were now just a few hundred yards away. Perlasca explained that he was a Spanish diplomat and asked again to pass through. The soldiers reluctantly agreed. A few minutes later Perlasca was inside the Legation building. Sixty people

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

What’s in a name? Peter Hessler on what English names can reveal about China

34 min listen

Why do so many Chinese people choose such curious English names? You must have come across this phenomenon – whether they are names from a past century, or surnames, nouns or even adjectives used as first names, or words that aren’t real at all. I have a particular interest in this because my English name – Cindy – isn’t exactly in vogue these days. You might think this is a bit of a trivial question, but I think the question of English names goes deeper than just some odd words. I think these names reveal something about the China that gave rise to them. So I was pleased to come

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is this Emmanuel Macron’s last Christmas as president?

Emmanuel Macron will deliver his traditional New Year’s Eve message to France next week, an event that one imagines is testing the skills of his speech writers. What to say after a year of unmitigated disaster? What is there for the French to look forward to 2025 other than more uncertainty, more insecurity and more economic woe? On Friday, the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) announced that France’s public debt has risen again. It now stands at €3.3 trillion (£2.7 trillion) at end of the third quarter of 2024, equating to 113.7 per cent of GDP. There are signs that the pressure is getting to Macron Macron

Sunday

James Tidmarsh

The crisis gripping France’s Le Monde newspaper

Once one of France’s most respected publications, Le Monde is in crisis. Its newsroom is gripped by a climate of fear, where only left-wing and woke views are tolerated, and dissenters whisper their frustrations in the shadows. Once a beacon of intellectual rigour and fearless reporting, an investigation by its rival Le Figaro paints a damning picture of a newspaper strangled by ideological conformity and toxic cancel culture. ‘People are afraid; it’s an omerta,’ admits one anonymous journalist. The glory days of Le Monde are gone, replaced by a paper which appears to be more concerned with parroting the ideological consensus than holding power to account.  Le Figaro’s investigation reveals a newsroom

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU can detect weakness in its dealings with Keir Starmer

Labour’s election promise to respect Brexit and at the same time reset our relations with the EU was easy to make. Keir Starmer must have realised that riding both these horses at the same time might be troublesome, but with an election to win he doubtless hoped for the best.  If so, he has been quickly disabused. Following tentative approaches to Brussels, it is clear that the Prime Minister faces a bleak choice: either come back with not much to show, or agree to a return of Euro-control over large swathes of UK life which the electorate will see for precisely for what it is; in name, if not in

Saturday

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

How the Magdeburg Christmas market attack will change Germany

More than 200 people were injured and at least five lost their lives after a man ploughed a car into crowds at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg last night. Among those who were indiscriminately murdered was a small child. Like many Germans, I felt a deep, burning anger rising in me when I heard about the incident. It immediately brought back sickening memories of the 2016 Christmas market attack in Berlin in which 13 people were killed and dozens injured. My sister worked very closely nearby that day. I remember texting ‘Are you okay?’ with a shaky hand and waiting agonising minutes before her reply finally

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Five dead after German Christmas market attack

Five days before Christmas, Germany has again been plunged into grief. Just after 7 p.m. local time yesterday in the city of Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, a black BMW ploughed through a Christmas market, killing at least five and injuring more than 200. Hundreds of locals were enjoying the festive market at the time, buying gifts and enjoying the festivities with friends and family. A man has been arrested in connection with the attack. For many Germans, yesterday’s attack will bring back painful memories The alleged perpetrator is a 50-year-old psychotherapist originally from Saudi Arabia who had been legally living in Germany since 2006. As of this morning, his motive remained unclear,

Eliot Wilson

Is training troops in Ukraine a risk worth taking?

Defence Secretary John Healey has raised the possibility that British military personnel could be deployed to Ukraine to carry out training missions. On a visit to Kyiv this week, he spoke about a five-point plan for increasing the United Kingdom’s support for its beleaguered ally, one aspect of which would be to ‘make the training a better fit for what the Ukrainians need’. When he was asked whether that could encompass undertaking the mission in Ukraine rather than the UK, he was careful not to rule it out: ‘We will look wherever we can to respond to what the Ukrainians want. They are the ones fighting.’ Unfortunately, it’s not quite

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Le Pen’s success this year is a warning to the Tories

Nigel Farage was in fine fettle when he appeared on GB News on Tuesday evening. He boasted of his weekend in Florida, chewing the fat with Elon Musk, and made some characteristically bullish predictions for the future. A poll this month found that Reform has overtaken Labour for the first time and is now two points behind the Conservative party. ‘Reform has all the momentum in British politics,’ said Zia Yusuf, the Reform chairman, in response to the poll. ‘The British people want real change after years of failure and deception.’ Farage believes Reform’s momentum will reduce the Tories to also-rans come the next general election. Mocking the Conservatives’ belief

Thursday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

UK interest rates held, plus could Musk fund Reform?

10 min listen

The Bank of England has voted to hold interest rates at 4.75%. The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews joins Katy Balls and Freddy Gray to discuss the decision and what this means for the economy.  Also on the podcast they discuss how a potential donation from Elon Musk to Reform UK has rattled politicians across the political spectrum. Could Labour seek to reform political donation rules to limit donations from foreign owned companies? And is this a sensible move, or could those in favour of changing the rules face a charge of hypocrisy? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The remarkable courage of Gisèle Pelicot

Justice was served on Dominique Pelicot today when an Avignon court found him guilty of raping his ex-wife, Gisèle, over a ten year period, and enlisting more than 50 other men to molest her as she slept. From 2011 to 2020, the 72-year-old Pelicot drugged his wife of 38 years and invited men he had met online to rape Gisèle. She had no idea of the abuse that was being inflicted on her, nor why she was suffering from memory loss and blackouts. His depravity came to an end in 2020 when he was arrested for filming under a woman’s skirt in a supermarket. When police examined his phones and laptop,