World

Monday

Maria Botcharova

Wartime love is not for the faint-hearted in Kyiv

People say love develops more quickly in war – because in a world where anything can happen, what is there to lose? Single and in Kyiv for a while, I decide to swallow my distaste for dating apps and start swiping. The first thing I notice is how many men are from Turkey and based a thousand miles away. How would this work? I decide to focus on the local ones and start chatting to a couple of guys. One seems reasonable if a little forward. He suggests meeting pretty quickly, then calls to chat. I don't really know Ukrainian norms but frankly, hearing someone's voice gives me faith that they are real. Dima is a lawyer. We arrange to meet at a metro station at seven the next evening. He has made peach ice cream and is going to bring some. A meeting feels like a good start.

ukraine love
Joshua Treviño

The truth about Mexico’s cartel wars

To understand the latest disturbing spasm of violence in Mexico, it helps to go back six years to an ultra-wealthy colonia called Lomas de Chapultepec, near the heart of Mexico City. Lomas de Chapultepec is protected, partly by a large security apparatus net that has been thrown around it, and partly by the pacto de narco, which protects the high-income neighborhoods in which both cartel leadership and their political partners live, along with their families.

cartel
Mark Galeotti

No, Zelensky: World War Three hasn’t started

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that World War Three has already started. Speaking to the BBC on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion, it’s understandable why he would want to take this line, but he's wrong. What is striking about Putin is the lack of a messianic ideology On an emotional level, Zelensky has seen millions of his citizens flee within and out of his country, its cities and infrastructure shattered and Vladimir Putin's propagandists denounce him variously as a Nazi apologist, drug addict and western puppet. Of course he will frame this in the most apocalyptic of terms. More to the point, Ukraine is now dependent on European aid. It is European money that keeps the government solvent, and arms the troops.

ukraine zelensky
Niko Vorobyov

El Mencho’s death plunges Mexico into chaos

Mayhem has erupted across Mexico after security forces eliminated Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the drug lord widely known as El Mencho, in a gun battle in the town of Tapalpa. El Mencho was the head of one of Mexico's most violent and sadistic organizations, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Henchmen forced passengers out of their cars before setting the vehicles alight, leaving them as burning roadblocks Their reaction was about as solemn and dignified as you’d expect. Henchmen forced passengers out of their cars before setting the vehicles alight, leaving them as burning roadblocks. Scorched sedans and toasted trucks lined the highway to the World Cup stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city that is set to host the tournament this summer.

el mencho

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Donald Trump becoming a globalist?

It was a banner day for Donald Trump. On Thursday, at the Justice Department, a long perpendicular banner with his stern visage was unfurled, proclaiming "Make America Safe Again." And just across from the State Department, Trump convened his shiny new Board of Peace at the former US Institute of Peace, which has a dove-shaped white roof. It was seized in 2025 by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and renamed after Trump. "I had no idea," Trump said. But for all his disclaimers, Trump was not shy about expressing his delight at the new name that adorned the building’s entrance. A bevy of strongmen, including Vietnam’s General Secretary To Lam and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, looked on as Trump proclaimed that he would reshape the Middle East.

bondi
Neal Pollack

Pam Bondi’s not-so-secret mission

On February 11, the arrow on the Trump administration’s “See ’n Say” pointed in the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who spent four extremely contentious hours arguing with congressional Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who questioned her about her handling of the Epstein files. “Your theatrics are ridiculous,” she said, in a case of the pot calling the kettle black, to New York’s Jerry Nadler, who asked her if the Epstein files would lead to prosecutions. Bondi called Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, a “washed-up loser lawyer.

Thursday

Charlie Gammell

Iran cannot afford to call Trump’s bluff

The talks are still alive. Just. Iranian and US diplomats, engaging indirectly through Omani intermediaries, have yet to make any substantive progress toward a framework of understanding that governs further talks – as Kafkaesque as that might sound – but they are talking, and that is the best that the diplomats can hope for right now.  What separates Iran and America is a vast chasm between their respective red lines, and beyond that, the very substance of the talks themselves. The US is not willing to countenance an Iran that enriches uranium, has a ballistic missile program and arms proxies throughout the region.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France can no longer ignore the menace of left-wing violence

Police in France arrested nine people on Tuesday evening in connection with the death of a 23-year-old student in Lyon last Thursday. Most of those in custody are members of the "Young Guard," an extremist splinter group of Antifa. Among them is reportedly a parliamentary assistant to an MP from Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI). For many years Melenchon – along with swathes of France’s left-leaning mainstream media – have turned a blind eye to the activities of the Young Guard They are being questioned about the events that led to the death of Quentin Deranque. Hours earlier Deranque, a nationalist, had been providing security to a feminist group who were protesting about the appearance of Rima Hassan at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon.

Owen Matthews

Is the war in Ukraine any closer to ending?

Is the latest round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks, sponsored by the United States and currently under way in Geneva, likely to hasten the war’s end? Donald Trump seems to believe so. On Friday, President Trump claimed that "Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky will have to hurry. Otherwise, he will miss a great opportunity. He needs to act." Europe, for its part, remains deeply skeptical and is urging Ukraine to fight on. As the EU's Foreign Affairs chief Kaja Kallas told the Munich Security Conference last week, "the greatest threat Russia presents right now is that it gains more at the negotiation table than it has achieved on the battlefield.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Has Jeff Bezos destroyed the Washington Post?

24 min listen

Freddy is joined by Tina Brown, former editor of several publications including Vanity Fair, Tatler, the New Yorker, and the founding editor-and-chief of the Daily Beast. She now writes her own Substack FRESH HELL. They discuss the staff massacre which has unfolded at the Washington Post, why Jeff Bezos is wrong to be led by views over journalism, and how the sordid nature of the Epstein files continues to haunt UK and US news.

Freddy Gray

Is Trump dismantling Venezuela’s socialist state?

24 min listen

Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, joins Freddy to discuss the ongoing situation in Venezuela. Over a month on from the "bold and spectacular raid" and capture of Maduro, Daniel explains the reasons why he has hope in the government of Delcy Rodríguez and the changes that have occurred since – from the increase in the oil price to the release of political prisoners. With only three years left of the Trump presidency, how can he be sure that the interim president isn't just playing for time? We hope our listeners will forgive the abrupt ending to this Americano episode, as The Spectator’s street was briefly evacuated by police in what turned out to be a false alarm!

Freddy Gray

Why do climate activists own super-yachts?

Freddy is joined by Robert Bryce, energy expert and author of Robert Bryce’s Substack, to discuss his latest mini-documentary, YACHT-ZEE$. They talk about the billionaires funding radical climate activist groups, while yachting around the world, and whether they are modern-day robber barons.

Monday

Hamit Coskun

I burnt a Quran. Now I may have to flee Britain

My name is Hamit Coskun and last year I was convicted in a British court of religiously aggravated public order offense. My “crime”? Burning a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. Moments later, I was attacked in full view of the street by a man. I was hospitalized. Then I was arrested and convicted in Westminster Magistrates Court. I managed to get that conviction overturned, with the help of the Free Speech Union and the National Secular Society, but now the Crown Prosecution Service is appealing my acquittal, with the case being heard tomorrow in the High Court. Now I am in discussions with the White House about claiming asylum in America in case the decision goes against me.

Mark Galeotti

Why Russia used poison to kill Navalny

When leading Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny died two years ago, the only real question was not whodunnit, but howdunnit?  His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, quickly blamed poison and said that his partisans had taken tissue samples from his corpse for examination. Yesterday, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands announced that a combined intelligence operation had demonstrated that he was killed with epibatidine, a nerve toxin only found on the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs. The announcement was followed by the inevitable stream of (not always unjustified) skepticism, trollish derision, and official denial.

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas is inching toward another war

Perhaps the biggest talent of humanity is our gift to adapt to challenging circumstances with creativity and ingenuity. It may also be our biggest fault. Just two days after I stood in the central Gaza Strip, touring the area and seeing the Yellow Line for myself, the IDF on Saturday announced another serious breach of the ceasefire. The Yellow Line is a mutually agreed demarcation. Both Israelis and Palestinians are supposed to remain on their respective sides. When I was there last week, officers explained how frequently that boundary is tested. They spoke about sniper fire, explosives planted near positions, and attempts to edge forward under cover. The pattern, they said, is persistent. Israel holds its fire unless a clear threat emerges. Hamas probes.

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine

Rubio offers an olive branch to the Europeans

As Marco Rubio boarded his flight for Munich on Thursday night, he sought to reassure nervous Europeans that they weren’t about to be berated by America. “We’ll be good,” he said. It appears the Secretary of State kept his word when he addressed the Munich security conference this morning. Rubio kicked off his speech by harking back to 1963, the year Munich played host to the first security conference. Back then, he said, “the line between communism and freedom ran through the heart of Germany. Soviet communism was on the march and thousands of years of western civilization hung in the balance.” Triumphing over communism had, however, allowed the West to be seduced by the “dangerous delusion that we entered ‘the end of history’.

Mark Galeotti

Is Putin paving the way for a crackdown?

It may sound like a rather arcane development, but a change in the command structure of the Rosgvardiya, Russia's National Guard, offers some clues about both the state of the country and the Ukraine war – and the Kremlin's fears for the future. Zolotov has been lobbying for some time for the Rosgvardiya to have its own General Staff. This week, he got it The Rosgvardiya is an internal security force of some 180,000 personnel, ranging from the blue-camouflaged OMON riot police who patrol the streets alongside the regular police, through to the Interior Troops, a virtual parallel army with its own tanks and artillery. (There are also at least as many in FGUP Okhrana, its private security firm.

Friday

Freddy Gray

The power of cryptid belief

23 min listen

Freddy speaks to Spectator writer Katherine Dee about the online obsession with cryptids and what it reveals about the modern internet. They discuss how folklore-style storytelling is thriving on platforms like TikTok, why conspiracy culture now resembles collaborative "alternate reality games" and how AI-generated images are blurring the line between what is real, fake and plausible.

Gearóid Ó Riain

Is this Irish man really an ICE victim?

Over the past few days there has been a flurry of stories and official statements about Irish national Seamus Culleton, now detained by ICE for overstaying a visa for almost 20 years while on the run from multiple drugs warrants in Ireland. The clip of him saying his holding area is a “concentration camp” has been heard by millions, and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to turn him into a poster-boy white martyr of ICE. This is a “Look, it can even happen to white Irish” cautionary tale about the authoritarian terrors of America.  But once you actually strip out the rhetoric, the story looks rather different.

Fleur Elizabeth Meston

Will Canada soon be euthanizing babies?

Donald Trump may or may not bomb Iran in the next few days. His cheerleaders will cite the Tehran regime’s brutal executions of Iranian protesters as justification. But if the President is in the mood for humanitarian interventions and stopping barbarism, he might also want to make good on his pledge to annex Canada. Once praised as a paragon of decency and civility, Canada is now turning into a dystopian society in which so-called "healthcare" professionals wield increasingly terrifying power of life and death. When a government grants permission to end a life, where does it stop? Canadian doctors are considering euthanizing newborns under certain circumstances as a form of "healthcare." When Dr.