Russia

Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, there has been a great deal of temptation to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West. There is, after all, an urgent need and moral imperative to make the aggressor pay and use Russia’s money for Ukraine’s cause. But the reality is that unless European governments show urgent determination, Russian money is unlikely to be used to support Ukraine in its totality any time soon.  Amid the spat between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump last week, which resulted in the US stopping military aid to Ukraine, the issue of financial support for Kyiv has never been more critical.

While Donald Trump may be threatening Moscow with major new sanctions, as it continues to hammer Ukraine with drones and missiles, the Russians seem unfazed. They assume this is just rhetorical for now – and they are probably right. This week has seen the US progressively cutting off its support for Ukraine, first suspending arms shipments, then pausing intelligence sharing and even access to the satellite imagery used to help target Russian bases and arms depots far from the frontline. The Russian business press has largely ignored Trump’s sanctions threat The Russians, far from resting on their laurels, have responded with an escalated campaign of drone and missile strikes –

Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in 2015, when the foreplay between the two ‘strongmen’ was conducted, like so many great flirtations, at a coy distance. Trump told CBS network he and Putin would ‘probably get along… very well,’ while Putin, to show willing, responded that Trump was ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.’ Trump, eyelids-a- flutter, schmoozed back that

In 2023, I had coffee with the celebrated Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, on Yaroslaviv Val Street in the ancient heart of Kyiv. The modern city is built over the ruins of the rampart built by Yaroslav the Wise, the eleventh-century Grand Prince of Kyiv, to keep out invaders. Now, on the third anniversary of the most recent invasion of Ukraine, Kurkov, whose novels are known for their dark humour, is in a much more sombre mood. Donald Trump’s savage and surreal attacks on president Zelensky have left the country reeling. ‘Of course, Ukrainians are shocked and upset,’ he says. ‘If two weeks ago Russia considered Americans and Poles their main

The Anti-corruption Action Centre, the NGO I chair, is probably one of the loudest watchdogs in Ukraine that is monitoring President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. We expose corruption, advocate for comprehensive rule-of-law reforms, and demand better governance ­– even during war. For over a decade we have built anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine, and endured persecution for simply carrying out our work. We want to strengthen Ukrainian institutions and build a more effective, resilient democracy. It’s unacceptable for any foreign leader (even of the United States) to humiliate our president, decide on behalf of the Ukrainian people that we should hold elections, and spread falsehoods about who started the war.

Three years ago today, Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border in a massive surprise attack. Russian unit commanders and soldiers were told to prepare for a three-day campaign – and indeed by the end of the day parachute units were fighting for control of the vital Hostomel military airport just a few miles from the centre of Kyiv. But over a thousand days later, many of the fundamentals of war and politics have been changed forever.  For one, Europe found its conscience. In the run-up to the full-scale Russian invasion, some European countries – including Britain – were training Ukrainian infantry units in scattered partisan warfare and supplying man-portable anti

We have no idea whether Vladimir Putin is serious about peace negotiations with Ukraine. He may simply be going through the motions while enjoying the spectacle of the West engaging in mutual recrimination and performative outrage, or he may genuinely feel there are grounds for some kind of agreement. More likely, given his track record as a tactician rather than a strategist, he is simply seeing what opportunities emerge. Nonetheless, his choices of format, venue and representatives may give us some sense of his intentions. His lead negotiator at abortive talks in Istanbul in 2022, for example, was Vladimir Medinsky. A former minister of culture, his main claim to fame

In a move likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war, Donald Trump today announced that he had begun talks with Vladimir Putin. Trump has already held a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Putin, he announced in a post on Truth Social, adding that they agreed to ‘have our respective teams start negotiations immediately’. The Biden administration promised repeatedly that no peace deal would be negotiated over the heads of the Ukrainians. But that was always, frankly, a lie. Trump at least has sufficient respect for Ukraine to be honest that the endgame of the war was always going to be decided in Washington, not

The West may like to convince itself that it is, in the words of one American diplomat, ‘strangling the Russian foreign ministry’, but it ought to look south for a rather different perspective. On Tuesday, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was in expansive mood as he announced the formation of a brand-new Department of Partnership with Africa. Recognising that for years Moscow had neglected Africa, Lavrov blamed in part the bankruptcy of the late USSR and Russia in the 1990s, when embassies had to be shut down and sold off. I remember one polyglot diplomat who, while serving in Nigeria, had taken to spending his mornings giving English, French and Russian

In theory, the Kursk salient is one of the most militarily insignificant fronts of Putin’s war on Ukraine. However, war is ultimately all about politics, and the presence of Ukrainian troops on Russian soil is sufficiently problematic for President Vladimir Putin that Kyiv has decided to deploy more troops in a bid to reverse the slow recapture of the occupied territory. Having originally seized some 400 square miles in its lightning attack in August 2024, by last month, steady Russian pressure had shrunk Ukraine’s grasp on territory to some 180 square miles. Although Ukraine still held the town of Sudzha – about the only significant settlement in this area –