Ukraine

  Eastern Ukraine For a moment, the sound of shelling is drowned out by a thumping beat coming from a camouflaged van. ‘Separatysty [Separatists]!’ says the rousing chorus: ‘The day of your death is here!’ We are with a Ukrainian nationalist militia in a village outside Donetsk airport, which is in the hands of pro-Russian rebels, usually referred to by the Ukrainians as terorysty or bandyty. But despite their bravado, the war is not going well for the Ukrainian side. There have been a series of disastrous setbacks, towns and territory lost, whole units put to panicky flight. The shattered village, Piesky, reminds me of Chechnya or Bosnia, the houses’

We are alarmingly close to the most serious confrontation between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War. A proxy war between Moscow and Washington on Europe’s Eastern border now seems more likely than not. The Americans were always sceptical of the Franco-German attempt to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine. Events in the last few days have reinforced that scepticism and I understand from senior British government figures that if pro-Russian forces take the town of Mariupol, Washington will begin to arm the Ukrainian military directly. This will lead to a major escalation in the conflict. Obama is more reluctant to arm the Kiev government than

In the old Death Strip between East and West Berlin, which runs through the centre of the city, there is a graveyard full of German war heroes and a few war criminals too. From the Red Baron to Reinhard Heydrich, the best and worst of the German military are buried here. There’s also a mass grave full of civilians, killed by Allied air raids, and a memorial to the 136 East Berliners who died trying to cross the Berlin Wall — which ran through this cemetery. The Death Strip is still an empty space. Germany has been marking two anniversaries this year — one a celebration, the other a painful

Since the Russian invasion of Crimea last February, many different phrases have been used to describe the tactics of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Some have spoken of a ‘new Cold War’. Others have described him as ‘anti-western’ or ‘anti-American’. But there is another adjective one could also use to describe his behaviour: ‘experimental’. For apart from everything else he has said and done, Putin has, in effect, launched a vast experiment into whether it is possible to extract a large and relatively well-integrated country from the global mainstream, and to reject the rules by which that mainstream runs. In truth, the experiment began long before Crimea. For several years

Has the West found a secret new weapon in its battle with Putin’s expansionist ambitions: reversible gas pipelines? Putin has never made a secret of his willingness to use energy as bludgeon against his neighbours. In 1999, the year before he became Russian leader, he wrote a pamphlet making the case that energy exports provided the means by which his country’s greatness could be restored. Putin’s behaviour over Ukraine has been typical. Over the past 15 years Russia has constructed a network of pipelines which can be used to bypass Ukraine. Starve Ukraine of energy, goes Putin’s thinking, and it might be forced back into Russia’s fold. What he didn’t

The most sobering column you’ll read today is the FT’s Gideon Rachman, no doom monger, warning about the risk of a nuclear war. Rachman is concerned about how quick Vladimir Putin’s Russia now is to rattle the nuclear sabre. Now, as Rachman points out, part of the reason that Russia does this is to make the West think that it might just use these weapons. But the worry is that Putin might miscalculate. For instance, if the Russians did in one of the Nato member Baltic states what it has done in Ukraine, the situation could get out of hand very quickly. What makes this more alarming is the possibility

In the latest Spectator, Liam Halligan takes a sobering look at European markets bearing the brunt of sanctions against Russia. ‘The western economy that’s suffered most, by far, is the largest one in the eurozone. Germany’s manufacturing thoroughbreds have sunk tens of billions of euros into Russian production facilities in recent years. . . . ‘This helps explain why, having grown 0.8 per cent during the first three months of 2014, German GDP shrank 0.2 per cent in the second quarter. The eurozone’s powerhouse is now on the brink of recession. Industrial production dropped 4 per cent in August, the biggest monthly fall since early 2009. Exports were down 5.8