World

Friday

Arash Azizi

Iran and the Yakuza are natural criminal bedfellows

On Thursday, a 60-year-old Japanese crime boss appeared in a New York court to respond to charges that he helped traffic illicit material from Myanmar to Thailand. You might expect this to be a story about the Southeast Asian drug trade – it’s a vibrant business after all. In fact the supposed Yakuza boss, Takeshi Ebisawa, was allegedly caught trying to supply uranium and weapons-grade plutonium to an undercover DEA agent purporting to know a general in Iran. According to the court documents, Ebisawa and his Thai partner, who are being held in a Brooklyn jail, had been able acquire the nuclear material from an ethnic insurgent group in Myanmar. The Islamic

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s elitist politicians have lost touch with the working classes

What links Rishi Sunak to Elly Schlein, the leader of the Italian left, and Raphaël Glucksmann, the great hope of the French Socialist party? America. The British Prime Minister lived in the US for a number of years, first as a student at Stanford University before working for a hedge fund in California. Schlein, born and educated in Switzerland, is the daughter of an American academic who cut her political teeth as a staffer on both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. The 44-year-old Glucksmann, born in the posh part of Paris to a prominent philosopher, has never lived in the States but he’s been a frequent visitor over the years.

Matt McDonald

Liz Truss’s Republican love-in at CPAC

‘Oh, that’s Liz Truss,’ a conservative reporter says as the former British prime minister passes us in the corridor at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). ‘She sucks. What’s she doing here?’ Trying to sell books, apparently. Truss is one of two Brits – alongside mainstay Nigel Farage – addressing CPAC. Her visit forms part of the promotional tour for the US release of her book Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons From The Only Conservative in the Room, which has been handily retitled for US audiences: ‘Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism and the Liberal Establishment.’ Truss’s remarks were full of buzzwords: ‘woke-onomics’, ‘DEI, ESG’, broadsides aimed at the

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Expelling the Russian ambassador would be a mistake

Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke for many people horrified by Alexei Navalny’s death in a Russian prison last week when he suggested that the Russian ambassador to the UK ought to be expelled in response. Labour’s David Lammy and the SNP’s Ian Blackford also advocated this back in 2022. This, however, would be a mistake. It’s a wholly understandable emotional response. At worst Navalny’s was a direct killing, or else slow-motion murder by putting a man whose system is already compromised by near-death thanks to Novichok in an Arctic prison camp and subjecting him to treatment verging on torture. While we may not have much to say to the Russians today, tomorrow

Thursday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Germany’s new anti-Ukraine party is unnerving the establishment

Her party may be less than two months old, but already Sahra Wagenknecht has put a cat amongst the pigeons in Germany. She launched her eponymous party, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) on 8 January this year, a few months after sensationally quitting the left-wing Die Linke party in October over disagreements on the party’s Ukraine and refugee policies, among others. Now, nearly a quarter of Germans now say they could imagine voting for her party at the next general election. According to a survey conducted by the pollsters Allensbach, 24 per cent of Germans say they could vote for the BSW next year. In the former east Germany, Wagenknecht’s popularity is

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Hungary has become China’s useful idiot

This week a security deal was announced that could see Chinese police on the streets of Hungary. Despite this, there was remarkably little fanfare about the agreement – just a few vague details in public statements made days after the deal was signed between the interior ministers of the two countries. Yet is represents another troubling challenge by Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban to both Nato and the EU, of which he remains an increasingly troublesome member. The security pact will involve ‘enhancing cooperation in law enforcement and joint patrols,’ according to the Hungarian statement, while the Chinese version said the two countries would, ‘deepen cooperation in areas including counter-terrorism,

Sasha Lensky

Russians feel bleaker than ever after Alexei Navalny’s death

The news about Alexei Navalny’s death came as a shock to anti-Putin Russians like myself – he’d been a central figure of opposition in Russia for more than 15 years. Yet in other ways, not a surprise at all – for three years he’d been in the claws of a regime with a long-established history of getting rid of its better-known opponents. Navalny himself was realistic about his chances, saying in court he was ‘under the total control of men who adore applying chemical weapons to everything, and no one would bet three kopecks on my life now.’ But still, with Navalny you held onto the irrational hope it might

Lionel Barber

Ukraine is in dire need – and the West must respond quickly

As the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, the fall of the key eastern city of Avdiivka is one more sign that Vladimir Putin holds the initiative. Ukrainian troops resisted the Russian forces for months, but the threat of encirclement forced Ukraine’s new army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, to retreat. The Russians were firing 10,000 artillery shells a day; the Ukrainians had been able to reply with about 1,500. Such an imbalance made defeat inevitable. There are risks in reading too much into a single military setback, especially in light of Russia’s extraordinary losses (more than 300,000 dead and wounded, elite special forces decimated, more than 2,000 tanks

Douglas Murray

The trouble with defining genocide

Like a number of ‘anti-colonialists’, William Dalrymple lives in colonial splendour on the outskirts of Delhi. The writer often opens the doors of his estate to slavering architectural magazines. A few years ago, one described his pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo ‘and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city’. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are bad at it. Which is it? I only mention Dalrymple because he is one of a large number of people who have lost their senses by going rampaging online about the alleged genocide in Gaza. He recently

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Putin’s British prisoner: Vladimir Kara-Murza is languishing in a Siberian jail

Opposing Vladimir Putin is a lethal business. The world was reminded of this last week after the sudden death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Russian authorities are blaming Navalny’s demise on ‘sudden death syndrome’, but whether it was outright murder or simply the result of three years spent in Russia’s penal system, the responsibility lies squarely with Putin. The danger of standing up to Putin is something the Russian-British journalist and author Vladimir Kara-Murza knows only too well. An active campaigner for Russian democracy, Kara-Murza was an ally of Navalny. He is responsible for convincing the West to sanction Putin-friendly oligarchs. In the early 2010s he worked with

Wednesday

Rory Cormac

Maxim Kuzminov’s death is a message to would-be Russian defectors

Maxim Kuzminov would surely have known that defecting from the Russian military comes with risks. In August last year, the 28-year-old Russian captain seized control of a helicopter and flew it across the border to eastern Ukraine. Doing what Kuzminov did can go two ways. Some make it out alive, and have a secret life abroad – albeit while constantly looking over their shoulders. Others – like Kuzminov, who was shot dead in Spain this week – are not so lucky. Kuzminov isn’t the first soldier to meet a sticky end after turning his back on the Russians. One of the most remarkable defectors in modern history was Abdulrachmann Fatalibey.

Philip Pilkington

Germany’s recession is an omen of Europe’s economic decline

The German economy is set to tip back into a technical recession in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Bundesbank. This means it will continue to shrink in the first three months of this year – after contracting last year and registering as the worst-performing major economy in the world. A technical recession is ‘technical’ in the sense that it follows a pretty arbitrary rule of thumb used by economists to identify when an economy is in decline. It was once useful for indicating serious and shocking problems in an economy, but since western economies entered a period of deep stagnation at the turn of the decade it

Daniel Thorpe

Is Orban’s family policy coming unstuck?

Hungary’s governing Fidesz party is in crisis over an issue it has staked its credibility on: the defence of the traditional family. One of the ministers who pioneered Viktor Orban’s family policy and served as president of Hungary, Katalin Novak, has been forced to resign over a paedophile scandal. Novak resigned on 10 February after a story revealed she had pardoned a man convicted of covering up sexual abuse cases of children at a state orphanage. Judit Varga, the former minister of justice, who signed off the pardon last April, was also forced out. Varga had been due to lead Fidesz’s list in the upcoming European parliament election. Fidesz pro-family

Steerpike Steerpike

Tucker Carlson’s spat with Boris Johnson turns nasty

It’s fair to say today that Boris Johnson and Tucker Carlson don’t like each other much. After the invasion of Ukraine, Boris, the former journalist and Prime Minister, accused Carlson, the journalist often tipped to be a future president of the United States, of ‘intimidating’ Republicans who might otherwise help the West stand up to Russia. He’s called Carlson a ‘tool of the Kremlin.’ Carlson, for his part, has called Johnson a ‘terrified old woman.’ Carlson called Johnson a ‘terrified old woman’ Things have only got nastier. Earlier this month, Boris suggested Carlson’s now infamous interview with Vladimir Putin was straight out of ‘Hitler’s playbook’. Carlson, never one to shrink

Dan Storyev

Navalny gave Russians hope – they must hold on to it

In the wake of the news that Alexei Navalny died in the darkness and bitter cold of Russia’s remote Polar Wolf prison, a chill of despair has become palpable among some thinkers and activists. Some have even gone as far as to claim that any hope for a better Russia died with the opposition leader. But this is wrong: the dream of Navalny’s ‘beautiful Russia of the future’ will only die if the international community and Russian civil society let it. This would be the ultimate betrayal of Navalny’s legacy, which is why now is the time to focus our efforts on keeping that legacy alive.  Western analysts have often thought of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s latest adversary might be his most dangerous yet

It’s been a terrible start to the year for Emmanuel Macron and his new government. Aside from the well-publicised farmers’ protest, there has also been industrial action by teachers, train workers and staff at the Eiffel Tower. Cases of violent crime are at a record high, and the drugs trade is flourishing as never before with an annual turnover of €3 billion (£2.6 billion). Sunday was arguably the worst day of the year so far for the president, who likes to convey an image of a man in complete control. The glum-faced Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, appeared on television to announce that he has revised the Republic’s

Eliot Wilson

How Britain helped Robert Mugabe rise to power

A century ago today, Robert Mugabe was born. The man who would come to rule over Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2017 was a brutal and autocratic tyrant. Mugabe shattered his country’s economy, oversaw vicious human rights abuses and left public services, especially healthcare, in ruins. But while Britain would ultimately see Mugabe as an adversary, it played a key role in his rise to power. Mugabe was, of course, not any western government’s ideal candidate to lead a newly independent African nation. He was a Marxist-Leninist who believed in command economics; in his guerrilla phase in the 1970s, Mugabe had been given unconditional support by the People’s Republic of China.

Tuesday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Why the US is suddenly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

In a surprising move, the United States has put forward a draft for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The draft also opposes Israel’s planned operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. US president Joe Biden has stood firmly by his support for Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of Hamas’s brutal attack on 7 October. America has provided Israel with considerable munitions, as well as sent forces to deter attacks by Iran and the Iranian-backed military organisation Hezbollah. They have also thwarted attacks against Israeli targets and and others by the Houthis in Yemen. The US senate also

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How the West can truly avenge Navalny’s death

With the Kremlin now claiming that it needs to hold on to the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny for another fortnight for ‘tests’, there is little doubt in the West that Vladimir Putin’s regime was either directly or indirectly to blame. Inevitably, the talk is now of punishing it. Junior Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty told the Commons yesterday that the government was considering further measures beyond the immediate diplomatic prospects, and that ‘it would be premature…to comment on the prospect of future sanctions,’ but that he could confirm ‘that we are working at pace and looking at all options in that regard.’ There are cheap and easy ways to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

It’s stalemate in Ukraine but Putin is defeating the West in Africa

In the early hours of Saturday morning, police in Paris shot dead a Sudanese man who had threatened them with a meat cleaver. The motive for his actions has yet to be revealed but the incident happened a day after Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni warned her government that Europe faces a new migrant crisis because of the brutal war in Sudan that has displaced millions of people. Among the 157,00 migrants who arrived in Italy in 2023, 6,000 came from Sudan but Meloni believes that number will increase significantly this year. The repercussions of last summer’s coup d’etat in Niger are also starting to be felt in Europe. One