As winter came to the city of Kyiv, its people waited for the cataclysm. For months the tension had been mounting. They had seen what became of other cities that defied the Mongols, but their governor had refused to surrender, …
The Ukraine crisis started with Suez
Oil prices are surging. Brent crude has broken through the $100 per barrel mark — the highest level since 2014. And this could just be the start of a new oil price shock.
Russia is the world’s second biggest exporter …
Putin’s spiritual destiny
Threatened by an uprising of his treacherous generals, the Christian Emperor Basil II, based in the glorious city of Byzantium, reached out to his enemies, the pagans over in the land of the Rus. Basil II was a clever deal …
Vladimir Putin’s dangerous madness
“He’s lost his fucking mind.” It’s Monday night, and I’m speaking to my friend, the American-Ukrainian author Vladislav Davidzon. We have both just watched Vladimir Putin’s televised speech from the Kremlin, and he — like Putin — is no longer …
We deserve better than these weaklings
Vladimir Putin is many things. To Boris Johnson, he is “irrational”. To Joe Biden, he is “a killer”. To Barack Obama, he is the “bored kid at the back of the classroom”.
I suspect that Putin is all of these …
Why the West fell for Putin’s bluff
“Russia says some troops returning from Ukraine border,” blasts the update from the BBC. My phone buzzes feverishly: WhatsApp and Facebook ping; Twitter DMs light up my screen; Signal messages come in from Ukraine and Russia. It will only get …
How Europe’s hypocrisy enables Putin
Almost a year before Putin closed in on Ukraine, British policymakers saw the whole thing coming. Russia would become “more active around the wider European neighbourhood,” stated the Government’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. Presented …
Has Macron already won?
This year’s French presidential election is no sweeping Austerlitz or close-fought Waterloo. With 60 days to go, the battle has degenerated into a series of brasserie brawls inside the dysfunctional political families of the Left, centre-Right and far-Right. And only …
Putin’s Grand Plan Is Failing
Last month there was a three-hour debate in parliament entitled “Putin’s Grand Strategy.” It began with a passionate speech by Tory backbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin, who spoke about the “admirably precise” focus of the Russian president, while lamenting the lack …
How Britain became Putin’s playground
On Monday, Liz Truss warned Russia’s oligarchs that there will be “nowhere to hide” their dirty money in London. Which is pretty weird when you think about it, since the statement includes the implicit admission that the money is already …
What Ukraine can learn from Israel
Almost eight years ago I watched a Ukrainian teenager lob a can of Mojito Royce Ice into a ditch and had the first stirrings of what the future might hold. It was May 2014, and I had travelled to the …
Putin’s next move
A couple of weeks ago, in a biting sleet wind, I visited the graveyard of the tiny village of Bohoniki in Poland’s far north east, home to Poland’s minuscule Tatar Muslim minority, descendents of the Mongol Golden Horde. On the …
Putin has history on his side
If you set off from Kiev and drive east, heading across the flat fields of central Ukraine, after about four hours you’ll come to a city called Poltava. By post-Soviet standards it’s not such a bad place, with a sleepy, …
How the EU betrayed Ukraine
Cast your mind back to February 2014 — and the dramatic conclusion to the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv. Given the choice between alignment with Brussels or Moscow, there was no doubt as to where the crowd’s sympathies lay.
On the …
How Biden can defeat China
In 1930, John Dos Passos wrote that America is many things: it is a “slice of a continent”, “the world’s greatest river valley”, and “a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts”. “But mostly,” he wrote in The …