Ukraine

A young woman called Lyudmila walks into a cafe in Odessa, the southern Ukrainian city. Her phone is switched on and the camera set to record mode. She approaches the owner and asks for service in Ukrainian. He declines. He says his Ukrainian language skills are poor. When she insists he makes excuses, then tells her the cafe is closed, and finally asks her to leave. But unbeknownst to the owner, Lyudmila is a member of a small Ukrainian-language vigilante group. The group, who call themselves ‘Getting on your Nerves’, has made it their business to turn this Russophone city, founded in 1796 by Catherine the Great, into a Ukrainian-speaking

Supporting Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is now socially and morally beyond the pale in most of the western world. Even being wary of arms deliveries to Ukraine is, in most places, considered wrong. But in the Czech Republic things are being taken a step further, as those who express controversial views of the war are prosecuted under legal restrictions on free speech.  Ambiguous laws are suddenly being used to criminalise the views of a significant portion of the population A young man who attended an anti-government protest in Prague earlier this year wearing a backpack with a ‘Z’ sticker and a jacket with the emblem of the Wagner Group

As Ukraine prepares for an expected offensive in the spring or summer, key weapons from western countries are bolstering the country’s armed forces. Among the war machines that are expected to make a major impact on the battlefield are Leopard Tanks and other armoured vehicles from the West. What isn’t getting many headlines today are drones for Ukraine. This is a major contrast from the early days of the war, when Ukrainian drones were heroes of the war effort. On the Russian side the reliance on Iranian-made kamikaze drones has also appeared to have diminishing returns for Moscow. The Ukraine war now illustrates the limits of a future dominated by drones on the battlefield.  Several years ago,

Lviv, Ukraine At the Lychakiv cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv the bodies keep the score. Within its confines the more than 300,000 graves offer a tangled insight into the labyrinthine history of this eastern European city that even now goes by four different names. There are Polish generals, mathematicians and philosophers; Ukrainian composers, theologians and playwrights; Soviet and Russian aviators, inventors and academics. Most of the city’s Jews – in what was one of Jewry’s most important cities in eastern Europe – are buried in a different graveyard, but there are smattering of their number, as well as German and Czech notables. In some places the black

Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other claimed or occupied Ukrainian territories do, and as such the peninsula’s fate will probably be central to any eventual resolution of the current war. That some Ukrainian sources are now talking about a military reconquest in the summer campaign season and others of diplomatic solutions suggests the possibility of movement. Whatever the official line, there are also many in Kyiv who are uncertain if they really want Crimea To be sure, there is no fundamental shift in Kyiv’s official position, that Crimea – like all the occupied territories – must

It didn’t take long for the Kremlin to exploit the news that Britain will be supplying depleted uranium armour-piercing anti-tank ammo to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Putin said that ‘Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component.’ While on Wednesday, Russia’s Ambassador to the US said that the West had ‘irrevocably decided to bring humanity to a dangerous line, beyond which a nuclear Armageddon is looming ever more distinctly.’  Both remarks are part of a long-standing Russian attempt to suggest that the Ukraine conflict might lead to nuclear escalation. The aim is to disrupt international support for Ukraine.

In my hometown we have three Orthodox churches, two of which are formally aligned with the Moscow patriarchate. They mostly say Russian prayers but, growing up, this was not seen as important. My family would go to both and see them as interchangeable: you’d stand, pray, kiss icons, take communion. Many Ukrainians never gave it much thought. This all changed when Vladimir Putin invaded last year. Only then was it clear just how he had been using the Russian church as a tool of his state: not just in Russia, but in Ukraine too. Previously neutral priests publicly prayed for Putin’s success, telling their parishioners how to help the invading

After his arrival in Moscow on Monday, President Xi Jinping said that China is ready, along with Russia, ‘to stand guard over the world order based on international law’. This statement came closer than ever before to articulating his view that a normative struggle is going on between a western-dominated order, and one more suited to Beijing’s interests. As he departed yesterday, he went further: ‘Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. And we are the ones driving these changes together.’ Having positioned himself as a potential peacemaker, Xi clearly believes the war in Ukraine presents him with a win-win situation ­­­–

Vladimir Putin’s crimes against Ukraine are often facilely compared with those committed by Hitler’s Nazis during World War Two. As Gary Lineker has crassly demonstrated, the unique crimes of National Socialism are the gold standard of evil that careless people reach for all too easily when they wish to comment on, or criticise, a contemporary issue. In one under-reported way, however, Putin is indeed imitating the hideous crimes Nazi Germany carried out in Eastern Europe’s badlands 80 years ago: by abducting Ukraine’s children from their parents and taking them abroad. An arrest warrant has today been issued against Putin by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Among the war

As Wagner mercenaries are being deliberately expended by the regular military as cannon-fodder in the battle for Bakhmut, their backer, Evgeny Prigozhin, is learning a hard lesson in Kremlin politics: it doesn’t matter how useful you were yesterday, what matters is how useful you may be tomorrow. Last year, the Russians were desperately short of soldiers. Ukraine was fully mobilised, but Vladimir Putin was unwilling for political reasons to follow suit, only launching a partial mobilisation in September. His generals simply lacked the soldiers they needed. In politics, as in economics, the laws of supply and demand meant that whoever had soldiers to offer – such as Prigozhin – could

Protests that broke out in Tbilisi against adopting a controversial Russian-style law have turned into a pro-European movement with political demands. The law could have seen media and non-government groups which take funding from abroad classed as ‘foreign agents’. Although the Georgian government has released all arrested protesters and dropped the proposed law, which copied repressive Russian legislation and threatened to ban NGOs and independent media from operating in the country, the opposition is now demanding the resignation of the current Georgian government – along with early elections.  Looking at the EU flags raised by upset Georgians, Ukrainians are comparing the rallies in Tbilisi with the 2014 Maidan revolution in Kyiv.

It has long been suspected that Russia was going to mount a renewed military offensive in Ukraine as spring approached. This fear was realised overnight. From midnight to 7.a.m., Ukraine suffered one of the worst barrages of Russian bombing this year: some 81 missiles were fired at residential buildings and critical infrastructure from air, land and sea, including several hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. Some 34 missiles were intercepted in total, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine was not able to down many, as it does not yet have the Patriot system that can intercept them. The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, said eight Iranian-made drones were also launched; four were

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has some awkward explaining to do to Vladimir Putin after a Russian military plane, being stored in Belarus, was reportedly blown up last weekend by Belarusian rebels.  According to reports, one of the nine working Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft (Awacs) owned by the Russian military was attacked at the Machiulishchy airfield, just under eight miles from the capital Minsk, where it had been kept since early January this year. The aircraft, said to be worth £274 million, was capable of detecting and targeting air defence systems and formed a key part of Russia’s battlefield strategy. A day after what sounded like two