Svitlana Morenets

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin declared an end to the deal allowing Ukraine to export its grain to the world. This threatened to send prices surging, with a potentially devastating impact on world hunger. But his bluff was called. Turkey, Ukraine and the UN held talks and continued a deal without Russia – and three

So far this week, 128 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukraine. Half were intercepted by air defences, according to figures from Ukrainian authorities, but all too many of the others hit their target: power stations. This is a new phase in war, an anti-humanitarian campaign to cut supplies of water, electricity and leave the

The power one person can hold should never be underestimated. They can take people’s lives, as Vladimir Putin does, or save them as Elon Musk did in Ukraine. Two days after Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tagged Musk on Twitter and asked him to help Kyiv with Starlink. The communication centres

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky made an offer to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine would drop its ambition to join Nato and would instead stay neutral, he said. It would not align with the West, in exchange for an end to hostilities. It was a sincere offer, and unpopular with Ukrainians. Yet it was significant: Putin had

While most attention has focused on Vladimir Putin’s repetition of nuclear threats in his speech this morning, the takeaway in Ukraine is different: conscription has begun. This is deeply controversial in Russia given the war’s high mortality rate, but after the rout in the Kharkiv region Putin is running out of options. After his speech,

If Putin is losing the ground war in Ukraine and running out of troops, what other options does he have? The obvious fear is that he’d use nuclear weapons or attack Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Last night, the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Mykolaiv oblast, 300 km (200 miles) south from Kyiv, was struck, with

There is extraordinary news from Ukraine this weekend. An offensive in Kharkiv region, bordering Russia on the northwest, has stunned Russia – which had been moving troops south to defend against Ukraine’s Kherson offensive. Kharkiv region has been left only lightly defended by Russia: Moscow had assumed that Ukraine didn’t have the military strength to open

The southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russian forces in the first few days of the war, is one of the places Ukraine would need to liberate if Putin’s army is to be repelled. But what realistic chance is there? Many argued that the Russian occupation is a one-way process: that having taken Crimea,

This morning, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a moratorium on energy prices – so while gas bills are rising all over Europe, Ukraine will remain unaffected. This honours a pledge he made on his election. Freezing energy bills is a standard populist policy in Ukrainian politics (in a country where temperatures can reach -25ºC and the elderly

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation’s secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’. It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are

This afternoon Kyiv and Moscow signed a UN-backed agreement to free up at least 20 million tons of grain from blocked ports. Ukraine said it would not sign a deal with Russia directly, only with Turkey and the UN. As Wolfgang Münchau noted this morning, it marks the first successful mediation between the two sides

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear. At the time of the invasion

Boris Johnson’s support for Ukraine looked like a gimmick for many in Britain. Whenever the PM was in trouble, he called president Zelensky. When things got too much in Westminster, Boris popped up in Kyiv. But for Ukrainians, Boris’s backing of Ukraine is no joke: he is a national hero. He is the most popular