Ukraine

Putin’s war has finally made its way to the Russian home front. A leak from the Kremlin reveals that Russia’s regional governments are being ordered to conduct surveys of and update bomb shelters across the country. Speaking to the independent newspaper the Moscow Times, one Kremlin source said this audit had been going on since at least last spring. Renovating Russia’s bomb shelters is, however, easier said than done. A relic of the Soviet Union, the country’s shelters were decommissioned in the 1990s, with many being leased or sold to the private sector and many more falling into disrepair.  This tangible ‘evidence’ primes Russians to believe the threat of an attack is higher Now, local

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in Britain for a surprise visit. ‘Freedom will win – we know Russia will lose,’ he told a joint session of Parliament in Westminster Hall this afternoon.  This address is the first he has given in Westminster since a video message in March 2022, when the situation for his country was vastly grimmer than it is now. Last year, when he addressed MPs, Zelensky had just rejected a British attempt to evacuate him and his family from Ukraine. He was under threat of assassination; and his country’s capital faced siege and – as Foreign Office officials still insisted – the brand of Russian destruction like that suffered by the

In early October 2021 President Joe Biden, the CIA director William Burns and other top members of the US’s national security team gathered in the Oval Office to hear a disturbing briefing from US military chief General Mark Milley. ‘Extraordinary detailed’ intelligence gathered by western spy agencies suggested that Vladimir Putin might be planning to invade Ukraine. According to briefing notes that Milley shared with the Washington Post, the first and most fundamental problem facing Biden was how to ‘underwrite and enforce the rules-based international order’ against a country with extraordinary nuclear capability ‘without going to World War 3’. Milley offered four possible answers: ‘No. 1: Don’t have a kinetic

Nearly 188,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine eleven months ago, according to the latest estimate by US intelligence. This devastating toll amounts to an average of over 500 Russian dead or wounded soldiers for each of the 341 days Russia has been at war with Ukraine. Russia is also believed to have lost as many as two thirds of its tanks on the battlefield in the past eleven months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Kremlin has yet to acknowledge these figures that were confirmed in a UK cabinet meeting this morning, even to deny them. The last time the Russian Ministry

In the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, seven-year-old Symon was clinging to a chocolate bar and a packet of biscuits he had just been given by an aid worker. With the sound of each new shell landing – and they were coming every few seconds – his small body shook and shivered in sympathetic rhythm. Eventually he buried his head against his mother, Svetlana’s, coat and closed his eyes. ‘We are terrified’, said Svetlana, a 47-year-old who worked as a chemist in a laboratory before the war. ‘Of course we want to leave.’ Using back roads, and in a borrowed helmet and flak jacket, I visited Chasiv Yar this

Ukraine has been shaken by a wave of corruption scandals in recent days. Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, six deputy ministers and five regional governors all left their posts today after a string of controversies left their positions untenable. Some were fired by the President, others left of their own accord – the number may yet grow.  The first scandal broke on Sunday after Vasyl Lozynsky, Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, was accused of receiving a bribe worth £285,000 to procure generators at an inflated price for the government’s war relief efforts. Then Oleksiy Symonenko, a deputy prosecutor general, was caught holidaying in Spain despite Zelensky’s restriction on fighting-age men

It is winter in Ukraine. The ground is frozen and hard. Groups of soldiers on both sides struggle in the cold. The Ukrainians insist they have one advantage over the Russians: their soldiers, unlike mobilised Russian troops, have some effective winter clothing.   Traditionally, armies stop moving in winter. They hunker down. It’s less true in Ukraine, where winter does not mean paralysis for civilian or army life. But in much of the country, the frontline does appear frozen – figuratively and literally. But winter ends quickly, especially in wartime.  Western intelligence agencies believe that a new Russian offensive is in the offing. They say a new attack will begin in either

The videos showed a typical summit: Volodymyr Zelensky next to Ukraine’s flag and Boris Johnson next to the Union Flag. But there’s a difference. Johnson is no longer the prime minister and was visiting Kyiv as a private citizen – yet was greeted and treated like he was still calling the shots. A video of the meeting, with rousingly patriotic music, has been released. ‘I will do whatever I can’ says BoJo: but with what? In what capacity did his summit with Zelensky take place? Some may see this in the context of an attempted Boris Johnson comeback, but in the leading article in this week’s Spectator we make the case

Is Vladimir Putin finally about to announce a second mobilisation wave? Ukraine has been warning for weeks that up to half-a-million more troops could be forced into the army. Jitters are growing in Russia that a call-up might be imminent: rumours are circulating that the Kremlin might shut Russia’s borders and resort to a second round of mobilisation. The Kremlin has denied these reports: but Putin is increasingly getting desperate. He needs to find a way to turn this war around. He also needs to fulfil defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s quota that an army of approximately 1.5 million is needed ‘to guarantee the fulfilment of tasks to ensure Russia’s security’ –

Moscow this morning hailed the ‘liberation’ of Soledar, a strategic point in the battle for control of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday that his mercenaries – who are spearheading the offensive – were in control of the salt-mining town (or what remains of it). It was denied at the time, but the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said it believes Russian forces have taken ‘most, if not all’ of the town. Ukraine insists that the fighting is ongoing and that its soldiers ‘are bravely trying to hold the defence’, but the institute says this probably refers to positions around Soledar and that it now seems

So, one granite-faced general has been replaced by another. The announcement that, after just three months in post, General Sergei Surovikin is being succeeded as overall commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov may sound like appointing a new captain for a hull-breached Titanic. But it is significant in what it says, not just about the war, but Putin’s relationship with his generals. Surovikin becomes one of Gerasimov’s three deputies, in what is being sold not as a demotion but simply a reflection of the need for an ‘increase in the level of leadership’ because of the ‘amplified range of tasks’ and the