When Poland joined Nato 25 years ago, it did so to solve an existential problem that it had been plagued by for centuries — the perennial threat of invasion by Germany from the west and Russia from the east. By …
The EU is hungry for Serbia’s lithium
It’s unusual for Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and CIA director William Burns all to visit the same small, Eastern European country in the space of weeks — particularly when that same country recently played host to Xi Jinping and is …
Why is a Brit running a Chinese weapons conference?
The city of Xi’an was once famed as the birthplace of the Silk Road, the tortuous trade route along which caravans bore textiles, jade and other luxury products to Persia, Egypt and Europe for more than 1,500 years. Just outside …
The case for a long reset with Russia
As the bold Ukrainian assault into Kursk Oblast enters its third week, the general mood in the West is one of triumph. The offensive, we’re told, vindicates the wisdom of the transatlantic liberal establishment in supporting Kyiv. Suddenly, a Russian …
Eduard Limonov and the death of a bohemian contrarian
A knife-wielding poet, a lover of beautiful women, a political troublemaker, a novelist who predicted his own immortality — Eduard Limonov has long been cast in many roles. To his roster, he can now add the honour of being played …
Why Ukraine is being blamed for Nord Stream
To understand the truth about the Nord Stream pipeline, one needs to master a certain form of “Kremlinology”. Everything about it is designed to obfuscate, every strand shrouded in prevarication and deceit.
From the start, the investigation was a textbook …
Putin is no longer Russia’s saviour
At the start of this month, Kyiv’s exhausted forces seemed at last overwhelmed by their opponents’ superiority in manpower and firepower. But once again, they have defied expectations. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ mass incursion into Russian territory has unfolded at …
How will the Ukraine war end?
How will the war in Ukraine end? In an election overshadowed by a grim climate of international instability, it is remarkable that the only candidate to seriously address this question so far has been Nigel Farage. Laying out Reform’s foreign …
Who will win a post-heroic war?
Neither the West not its enemies are prepared to fightSome 30 years ago, I coined the phrase “post-heroic warfare” to acknowledge a new phenomenon: the very sharp reduction in the tolerance of war casualties. My starting point was President Clinton’s …
The spectre of another Cuban missile crisis
When a four-ship Russian flotilla sailed into the port of Havana on Wednesday, US authorities were quick to downplay the event’s significance. We were reminded that Russia’s deployments were part of routine naval activity and that it’s not uncommon for …
Europe’s fate rests on Georgia
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the foreign policy of Georgia’s ruling party has been nothing short of schizophrenic. For years, Georgian Dream has been flirting with both the European Union and paradoxically with Moscow, Georgia’s age-old enemy which invaded the …
The betrayal of Ukraine’s occupied villages
Ukrainian villages hold a special place in the region’s collective imagination. Nikolai Gogol, one of Russian Empire’s foundational authors, established them as a favourite place of demons, witches and the undead. Today, they remain a haven for magical realism and …
Putin’s ruthless new plan to win
Over his 24 years in charge, Vladimir Putin has filled his cabinets with an array of mostly indistinguishable and eminently replaceable politicians. Some have lasted for just a few months in the upper echelons of the Kremlin machine, but the …
China is not the answer to Nato
The timing of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Belgrade yesterday was far from accidental: exactly 25 years before, Nato forces bombed the city’s Chinese embassy during Operation Allied Force, the two-and-half month campaign against what was then the Federal Republic …
Kandinsky was betrayed by Left and Right
Expressionism, Nikolaus Pevsner snootily pronounced, was “the art of the ugly, an heroic stylisation of the hideous”. Wassily Kandinsky, its most exemplary adherent, was taxed with the charge of producing “art for art’s sake”. There is, admittedly, some truth to …