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Odesa
Mounds of sandbags swaddle blocks of concrete. Soldiers stand in groups of two and three, bored but tense, idling but alert. Checkpoints dominate the streets of central Odesa. “Warning! Mines,” reads a sign in front of an especially fortified …
Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast
“I guess the Russians will be here in a week,” 65-year-old Viktor tells me as he sits on a bench chewing sunflower seeds in the empty streets of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine. “I’ll stay of course — I …
This week on the New World Next Week: Kissinger warns Ukraine must give Russia territory; the monkeypox script unfolds exactly like the coronavirus script; and the digital ID agenda rolls out in country after country after country.
The post Interview …
“In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t about Putin’s attack against Ukraine… It is about democracy, sovereignty — fundamentals like freedom of speech and human rights. It is about Western democracies’ ability to stand up for themselves and the …
Tiraspol, Transnistria
The road is quiet, and the day is hot outside the administrative HQ of the Operational Group of Russian forces in Tiraspol. A few peeling murals of past triumphs can be seen over the wall. A notice promises …
“People say that we are heroes,” says Lieutenant Illya Samoilenko. “But heroism only occurs when planning and organisation fails.” It’s early May and Samoilenko, second-in-command of the Azov Battalion that has spent weeks inside Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant, is …
Lviv, Ukraine
“In the old days, we had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are dying of hunger. In the old days, we fed the world. Now they have taken all we had away from us and …
The arrival of Big Macs, skinny fries and those absurdly-thick shakes in Moscow 32 years ago heralded a moment of hope that the world was entering an era of peace and prosperity after the Cold War. This was at a …
Putin’s aggressive war on Ukraine may have had the unintended consequence of reviving a moribund Nato alliance, but for many liberals, that isn’t enough. Just as the war saved Johnson from seemingly inevitable ejection from Downing Street, so have defenders …
The neoliberal order that triumphed on a global scale in the Nineties and 2000s aspired to the free movement of goods, capital, people, and information throughout the world. Unfettered capitalism would release the global economy from arbitrary constraints, and if …
In Germany, this was a Victory in Europe Day like no other. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin’s entire postwar consensus has crumbled. Previously settled policies and cherished beliefs have dissolved in this new reality: the brutal return of war to …
Kharkiv, Ukraine
“I will not talk to anyone who calls this war a ‘conflict’! Bye!” The angry response surprises me. I’m typing a message on Facebook chat while I dash through a street in Odessa, buying last minute supplies for …
Chișinău, Moldova
There’s a joke in Moldova that the country could defend itself against a Russian invasion for two hours, that being the length of time it would take a tank to drive into the capital Chișinău from the Russian-backed …
Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but …
“The famous Tottenham Hotspur went to Rome to see the Pope” we sometimes sing at the Shed End at Stamford Bridge. I probably shouldn’t tell you how it goes after that. It’s certainly more profane than sacred. Suffice to say …