Ukraine

According to Moscow, Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has begun, and has begun badly for Kyiv. Of course, we need to treat the Russian account with all necessary scepticism, but the evidence is that the droney, phony war stage of this campaign season is ending and the real fighting is beginning. The unverified Russian claim is that Kyiv launched a ‘large-scale offensive in five sectors of the front in the South Donetsk direction’, which was beaten back at the cost of some 250 Ukrainian casualties and the loss of a full 16 tanks and 24 other armoured vehicles. Even by the Russian account, this attack comprised just six mechanised and two tank

Russia fired more than 576 missiles and drones against Ukraine last month; Kyiv was shelled two days in three. Ukrainian air defence works smoothly, shooting down nearly 90 per cent of missiles – but even a successful intercept can lead to debris, causing death. This happened yesterday, in a case that is causing a national scandal. As the siren sounded over Kyiv, a man, his wife and his daughter headed with their neighbours to their shelter in Desnianskyi district – only to find it locked. The man, known as Yaroslav, ran to find someone to open it up. ‘People knocked and knocked again for a very long time. And no

It doesn’t take long for visitors to Prague to figure out how the locals feel about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Fifteen months since the war started, yellow and blue flags still seem to flutter in almost every city centre street.   The current Czech government – an ideologically varied five-party coalition united by its pro-EU and pro-western outlook – has played its part in supporting Ukraine’s successful war effort. As a proportion of GDP, Czech military aid to Ukraine has been among the most generous in the world. And when I meet Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, who is set to meet UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly this week, he is unequivocal

Something strange is happening to Yevgeny Prigozhin. The chief of Vladimir Putin’s mercenary army in Ukraine has begun withdrawing his forces from Bakhmut, has all but conceded defeat in one of his most bizarre interviews yet, and, to top it off, now the journalist who interviewed him has been fired. ‘We came in boorishly, trampling all over Ukraine’s territory in search of Nazis. And while we searched for Nazis, we fucked up everyone we could,’ Prigozhin told the pro-war political journalist Konstantin Dolgov in an interview on Tuesday. ‘The special military operation was done for the purpose of ‘denazification’…But we ended up legitimising Ukraine. We’ve made Ukraine into a nation

While the world is waiting for Ukraine’s spring offensive, something very different happened this morning: an incursion into Russian territory. The soldiers involved are not from the Ukrainian army, but two legions of exiled Russians (including soldiers who defected from Russian forces) allied with Ukraine but are not part of Kyiv’s official military command. While Ukraine is not claiming responsibility, it’s hardly condemning the raid The ‘Russian Volunteer Corps’ and the ‘Free Russia Legion’, both expat legions based in Ukraine, are moving towards Russian towns in the Belgorod region (north of Kharkiv) and have so far claimed to have ‘liberated’ the village of Kozinka and captured the town hall in

After months of flat denials, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence has admitted that Kyiv is carrying out a campaign of sabotage and assassination inside Russia. But why change the official line now? Even if this is a good cop/bad cop routine, it still risks embarrassing the president, raising questions as to how far he is fully in control of HUR Major General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), has become one of the media stars of this war, not least thanks to an artfully curated public persona that a senior US intelligence official characterised as ‘George Smiley meets Jason Bourne.’ This week he took

Not much happens in Russian families without the say so of the babushka. Russia’s high divorce-rate, and a situation where fathers are often absent and the mother out at work, makes it normal for grandmothers – who often hold the family purse-strings – to raise children themselves. This doesn’t, of course, mean that the younger and older generation see eye to eye: babushka tends not to use the internet or understand modern technology, and might hold conservative opinions radically different from the grandchild’s. Yet there is often a spirit, in the political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann’s words, of ‘hopeless obedience’ to her. Something similar is at play in the way many

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the businessman behind the Wagner mercenary army, likes accusing his political enemies of ‘treason’ for not backing him as much as he’d like. Now, though, he appears to have committed that very crime himself – with the revelation that US intelligence reports suggested he tried to cut a deal with HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence. These reports were part of the trove of classified materials leaked onto the Discord gaming server earlier this year. Taken on their own, they could be regarded as sneaky fakes intended to undermine Prigozhin, yet many other documents within the collection have quietly been acknowledged as real. While it still cannot be taken as

It may be having trouble on the battlefield, but the Russian army does know how to stage a parade. Behind the goose-stepping ranks, massed bands, and rumbling missile launchers, though, was a clear sense of the practical and political costs of the war in Ukraine. Although parades from Crimea in the south to Pskov in the north had been cancelled on reasons of security, there was no way Vladimir Putin could let this one not run – even Covid had not accomplished that. The Senate’s golden dome had been repaired after last week’s drone attack – and anti-drone guns were very much in evidence among the security team – and