Mary Dejevsky is a writer, broadcaster, and former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington.
If you’ve managed to avoid the dimly-lit pictures of people’s back gardens, count yourself lucky. Yes: snow has arrived in the capital. The Foreign Secretary made a point of thanking London-based diplomats for showing up to his speech in Westminster yesterday – or, as he put it, ‘battling through’ two or three inches of snow
As if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not already presented quite enough dilemmas for other countries, suddenly there is another one. How sympathetic a reception should Russian men trying to avoid call-up in their home country be granted abroad, and specifically in the UK? This quandary has arisen following Vladimir Putin’s announcement of what he
Over the six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the ambitions of President Zelensky and his compatriots have only grown. From an early readiness to engage in talks – first in Belarus and then in Istanbul – Kyiv has progressed to an insistence that Ukraine can win, and from there to a definition of victory that includes not
Forget fund-raising concerts donating spare clothes and offering your spare room to a refugee family. There’s a better way of showing your sympathy for Ukrainians: you can now sponsor weapons, and arm it with your very own message. For up to £2,500, Brits can send a personalised message to the crowdfunding site Sign My Rocket,
The theme of the week has to be ‘coming home’: first the women’s football trophy, and now one-time Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, who says he will share his time between the two sides of the Atlantic. He had recently hinted at a return, describing himself as ‘at heart, European’. Some might question this as a
Launching her campaign for party leader and prime minister, Liz Truss said something that barely registered amid the big tax-cutting promises, but made me prick up my ears in a very positive way. She talked about trying to make sure that parents and other carers were not penalised by taking time out of paid work.
Much has been made of the decision to place the Metropolitan Police in what is often referred to as special measures, where it joins five other forces from England and Wales. The many ways in which the Met has fallen short have also been amply aired, from the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving
Boris Johnson has been accused of shamelessly using the war in Ukraine for his own political ends. The timing of his contacts with president Volodymyr Zelensky suggests there is plenty of evidence to support this claim. At the end of last week, within hours of his ethics adviser’s resignation, Johnson ducked out of a planned meeting with Northern
Of all the setbacks for the Conservatives in London, the loss of Westminster Council was probably the least expected and the most emblematic. To be sure, as in much of the capital, the Conservative vote had been declining, but the prospect that control would actually change this year seemed unlikely. But it did, and as
National symbols are usually proudly emblazoned for all to see. That’s the point of them. One, though, seems rather to have crept up on us in recent weeks, being flashed almost like a secret tattoo and then quickly covered up again. It is the letter ‘Z’ that Russians have started using to denote national solidarity and support
Russia is now as closed off to the world as the Soviet Union was before Mikhail Gorbachev made his first tentative steps towards glasnost more than 40 years ago. Pretty much all the progress that post-Soviet Russia had made towards becoming a ‘normal’ country has been reversed within the space of two weeks. Vladimir Putin’s presumed legacy –
We’re just ten days into Russia’s assault on Ukraine and the western world has painted itself in Ukraine’s colours. Cities and towns have hung out Ukrainian flags and lit their public buildings in blue and gold. The BBC has changed the pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev to Kyiv. Tesco is driving the supermarkets’
One of the reasons why I judged — wrongly — that Vladimir Putin would not order an all-out invasion of Ukraine was the likelihood of a protracted war. But another was the possibility of popular protest in Russia, which could have potentially destabilising effects on the Kremlin. After sporadic protests in the hours immediately after the
35 min listen
In this week’s episode: What does Putin really want for Russia? For this week’s cover story, Niall Ferguson writes about how Putin seems to be trying to recreate the Russia of the Past, while this week’s diary by Timothy Garton Ash says the West has misunderstood his intentions, Niall and Timothy join the podcast along
Ukraine, as is periodically observed, means borderland. Geography will forever influence its destiny as an independent state. With tensions between East and West again rising, however, Kiev might well conclude that Ukraine is more accurately translated as ‘on the margins’. Foreign leaders and ministers have, to be sure, been punctilious in making courtesy visits to
Western warnings of an ‘imminent’ Russian invasion of Ukraine have grown more insistent in recent weeks with different voices, from the media to politicians, needlessly stoking the fires of war with their aggressive and inaccurate rhetoric. Time and again, Putin’s words have been twisted or misconstrued in a way that fits and reinforces western preconceptions
If anyone produces a ‘history in 100 objects’ for the first half of the 21st century, one of those objects could well be a German helmet from the consignment of 5,000 dispatched to Ukraine, as the Russians seemed about to invade. The donation was noteworthy because it was met not with gratitude but with ridicule,
Russian troops have now arrived in Kazakhstan in a desperate bid to halt the tide of violence that has swept the country. Their arrival is a last resort for the country’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as he fights to maintain his grip on power. But he isn’t the only leader who is eager to quell this unrest:
Julian Assange is facing extradition after the high court ruled there is no legal impediment to him facing espionage charges in the United States. The decision would seem to justify the fears that the WikiLeaks founder and his supporters have long harboured: that the UK has essentially served as a holding pen until such time as a
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In this week’s episode: Are migrants the new munitions? In our cover story this week, our political editor James Forsyth looks at the growing troubles in Eastern Europe and how this small part of the world stage could end up splintering the scaffolding of global peace. He is joined on the podcast by Mary Dejevsky,
