World

I can well understand that joy and relief experienced by the supporters and families of the hostages released yesterday by Vladimir Putin. For I myself owe my life to a Cold War spy swap.  In October 1969, the British government exchanged Peter and Helen Kroger, two senior Soviet career spies nabbed for running a very real espionage ring, for Gerald Brooke, a British student who had served five years in a Russian jail for ‘anti-Soviet agitation’. The exchange was so unequal that Brezhnev’s Politburo agreed to throw in three Soviet citizens who wanted to marry Britons in as a makeweight. One was my mother, Lyudmila Bibikova. Releasing Navalny would have

The Kremlin has released Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former marine Paul Whelan and British-Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza from captivity. This is the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. The three men form part of a group of prisoners released this morning, reportedly numbering as many as 16. In return, the US and its allies will return as many as eight prisoners to Russia. While it is unclear exactly when and where the exchange is taking place, a plane belonging to the elite flight squadron ‘Russia’ was tracked flying from Moscow to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad this morning. The plane was the

The Israelis were busy last night. First, Fouad Shukur, Hezbollah’s top military commander was, in the words of Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant, ‘eliminated’ in Beirut. Shukur was targeted for his role in a rocket attack on the Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 Druze children and teenagers playing football. Hours later, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he was visiting for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. For now, Israel and Hezbollah say they both want to avoid total war It’s a huge blow for Hamas and their Iranian paymasters. Haniyeh was the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy, and is the most senior Hamas

It was meant to be a crushing defeat ending 25 years of socialist rule, and the presidency of a man many see as largely responsible for Venezuela’s economic woes, a humanitarian crisis and rampant corruption. But for many Venezuelans, the only thing crushed following Sunday’s presidential election was hope. Many of those who are desperate for change say they’ll take to the streets A few hours after polls closed – and amid complaints of some observers monitoring the process being thrown out of polling stations or prevented from entering – the country’s National Electoral Council announced Nicolás Maduro as the winner with 51 per cent of the vote; in second