Ukraine

It was not quite in time for Christmas (which Ukraine now celebrates on 25 December, after switching this year from the Russian Orthodox Julian calendar), but Kyiv will still be celebrating today’s apparently successful Storm Shadow missile attack on a landing ship in a Crimean port. There are no seasonal ceasefires on either side in this increasingly bitter conflict. The Ropucha-class landing ship Novocherkassk (BDK-46) had already had a rather unhappy war. In March 2022, it was damaged by Ukrainian shelling when docked in Berdyansk in occupied southern Ukraine. Later in the year the Novocherkassk, along with its sister ship, the Tsezar Kunikov, were reportedly immobilised by a lack of

With Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine well into its attritional phase, Western aid to Kyiv seems to be drying up. No clear strategy at all, it seems, has been found for dealing with the Russian leader. Some hope internal divisions at the Kremlin will lead to a collapse, others that an anti-Ceausescu-style uprising – as in Romania in 1989, culminating in the leader’s brutal execution by his people – will miraculously give the coup de grace to the president’s ambitions. Certainly, if Putin were to rule in a genuinely authoritarian manner, either of these things could happen. But up to now he’s been far too wily and flexible for that.

I feel sorry for Volodymyr Zelensky. It’s devastating watching him travelling all around the world, struggling to convince even his closest ally, Washington, to keep helping Ukraine. But that is not his only problem. I bet Zelensky and his speechwriters are tossing and turning in bed at night, wondering what he should say when he addresses Ukrainians over Christmas and New Year. This time last year, he said 2023 would be ‘the year of victory’. Now there are fears that Ukraine could lose. These are dark times for Ukraine. While the West drowns in ‘fatigue’ from a war it is not fighting, Russian forces have taken the initiative along the

The war in Ukraine, which was until 7 October the only foreign news we could think about, is no longer centre stage but is continuing in an increasingly attritional way. And Ukrainian politics continue, inevitably, to be dominated by the war with the result that fundamental freedoms are now a casualty of the conflict. Specifically, there is a bill before the Ukrainian parliament, which has already passed its first reading, that would ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This historically has been located within the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, is notoriously invested in the war, on the Russian side. He is, moreover, close to Vladimir Putin. The bill would

Just days after returning to government as Lord Cameron, the former prime minister and new Foreign Secretary has made his first foreign visit. Unsurprisingly, the destination of this trip was Kyiv, to meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.  The news of Cameron’s visit broke early this morning, although whether it took place this morning or earlier in the week remains unclear thanks to the wartime high security protocols that exist around such visits. In footage posted by Zelensky to X/Twitter, the Ukrainian premier is shown welcoming Cameron and his delegation to Kyiv. Shaking hands, Cameron calls it an ‘enormous honour’ to meet Zelensky. Cameron’s visit to Ukraine will have provided

There’s a very different tone coming from Kyiv these days. Speaking to Time magazine, Volodymyr Zelensky had just returned from Washington after failing to make another impassioned public address on Capitol Hill, and not even managing to get on Oprah. The Ukrainian president sounded angry. The constant struggle to maintain international support seems to be taking its toll. ‘Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,’ he insisted, but added that dragging Ukraine’s allies along with him ‘takes all your power, your energy… It takes so much of everything.’ Meanwhile, in the Economist, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, and another icon of national resilience,

It’s not easy to say this, but Ukraine’s offensive to retake lost territory has fizzled out. Autumnal weather has turned the rolling steppe into a sea of mud. Like last winter, the conflict has entered a renewed phase of static, attritional warfare. It means that any new attempt to break through Russian lines will need to wait until at least April of next year. Ukraine’s failure is easy to explain. First, Russia’s defensive line has proved to be much more impenetrable than anyone expected, with minefields that run nearly a mile deep in places. Second, although the West has donated a number of armoured vehicles, including Leopard 2 main battle

Who is to blame for the shocking pogrom in the Dagestani city of Makhachkala, where a mob of hundreds stormed the local airport in search of Jews on a flight from Tel Aviv? Vladimir Putin has offered a predictable answer: the West. In a meeting with Russia’s security council and law enforcement agencies, president Putin said the actions of the anti-Semitic mob in Dagestan were ‘inspired through social media, including originating from Ukraine, created at the hands of agents of Western intelligence services’.  Putin is trying to present his invasion as an existential fight against encroaching Western influence Putin then went further, suggesting that the US could also be blamed for war in

There has never been any doubt that Ukraine was the focus of an intelligence war as much as a physical one. But the extent of Western assistance, as well as growing concern at some Ukrainian tactics, is only now becoming clear. On Monday, the Washington Post ran a lengthy examination of the level of CIA assistance for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and military intelligence (HUR) that bore all the hallmarks of being facilitated by the US government. It acknowledged that since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Americans has invested ‘tens of millions’ of dollars in training and technical assistance for their Ukrainian counterparts, even building new headquarters

America’s ATACMS long-range missiles were a potential ‘game changer’ to the war in Ukraine to some, a potential source of escalation to others. Now, with no real sense that either has proved true following Zelensky’s confirmation this week they were used for the first time, what does that tell us? The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) undoubtedly offers Kyiv new capabilities. It can deliver a 500-pound warhead or hundreds of cluster bomblets very accurately to a range of up to 190 miles. Unlike the Anglo-French Storm Shadows already in use, the two-ton missile is fired from a tracked HIMARS launcher rather than an aircraft and thus can respond very

Vasyl, a burly, tattooed infantry commander who lost a leg to a Russian mine on the eastern front, sits swinging his remaining leg on the edge of the treatment table in the ‘Unbroken’ rehabilitation clinic in Lviv. He’s been inside the Russian trenches 50 times, he tells me. His stories are reminiscent of the first world war. I ask him what Ukraine needs for victory. Answer: ‘Motivated people.’ His T-shirt proclaims ‘no sacrifice, no victory’. After we shake hands and I wish him luck, he suddenly jumps off the table and starts skipping at amazing speed, his blue skipping rope whizzing around under his one foot, while he looks at

Russia’s latest offensive has exacted a heavy toll on its forces. They have lost 127 tanks, 239 armoured personnel vehicles and 161 artillery systems in the past week, according to Kyiv, with the casualties reaching more than 3,000 military personnel. Vladimir Putin is trying to change the narrative, framing Russian forces’ actions as ‘active defence’ rather than ‘active combat operations’. While Putin tries to temper expectations of major frontline gains, the battle for Avdiivka persists, albeit with waning intensity. ‘I hope that these dirtbags who settled in Avdiivka will be levelled with three-ton bombs in a similar way Israel is levelling Gaza right now’, said Sergey Mardan, a Russian state