World

Tragically, British lawmakers voted on Friday in favour of a bill legalising medically assisted dying. Despite all the talk of ‘safeguards’ and determination to make it ‘the best bill it can be’, the horses are out of the stable now. Once assisted suicide is enshrined as a moral good for even the tiniest, most carefully screened subset of the population, pro-euthanasia campaigners have won the war. It’s all over but the shouting. There will be more battles to come, of course, as the inevitable attempts to expand the subset of those thought to be ‘better off dead’ moves from terminally ill adults, to suffering adults, to ‘mature minors’, to infants and the

Since March 2020, Syria’s conflict lines have been frozen, as Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United States held together a series of ceasefires and security understandings. That all changed this week, when a broad coalition of armed opposition groups launched a surprise and daring offensive west of Aleppo city. As ‘Operation Deter Aggression’ was launched on Wednesday morning, the goal was to expand opposition control of Aleppo’s western countryside, from where Syrian regime forces had been indiscriminately shelling civilian areas for years. Many would have assumed that goal was ambitious, but within three days, more than 80 villages and towns had been captured. Syrian regime forces and their Iranian proxy

Russians are notorious for an aggressiveness at the negotiating table. In 2017 I met a group of diplomats from eastern Europe who highlighted this. They made the point that western commentary understates, if anything, the Russian habit in official talks to insult and intimidate. Apparently Putinite finger-wagging is the least of it and street-language curses and threats are completely normal. Countries to the east of the river Elbe are still regarded in the Kremlin as Russia’s eternal zone of influence. But Russian politicians also know how to diversify their table manners. They can recognise an opportunity when they see one, and Vladimir Putin expects to deploy gentler manners with Donald

When the history of the twentieth century is written, one of the questions that will puzzle historians is the sanctification of Angela Merkel, whose memoir is published today. Merkel was Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2015, and chosen as the third most powerful person in the world by  Forbes in 2016. When she stepped down as Chancellor in 2021 after 16 years in power, she was described by the BBC as someone who ‘has given her country what it expects from a leader: a voice of calm in a turbulent and shifting world’. In its tribute to Merkel, the Washington Post described her as ‘one of the savviest and most powerful leaders in the world’.