Vladimir Putin’s war will slam the brakes on Europe’s recovery as surging energy prices risk causing the economy to grind to a halt, the EU has warned in a gloomy set of forecasts. The European Commission said that the war in Ukraine “tests EU economic resilience” as households are battered by surging prices. Brussels predicted … Read more
T he Ukrainian president has said bridges with Russia are not yet “destroyed”, leaving the door open for future negotiations. However, he said talks can only take place if Moscow withdraws to its pre-invasion positions, as of February 23, saying he was not elected to lead “a mini-Ukraine of some kind”. Speaking at an event … Read more
Russia’s Victory Day has had an evolving makeover during President Vladimir Putin’s reign. Increasingly militarizing the commemorative holiday, with more advanced military hardware showcased and political twists added, Vladimir Putin and his choreographers have weaponized the memory of the Great Patriotic War. Using the massive wartime sacrifice as a cultural reference point to blame the … Read more
Hitler took 35 days to conquer Poland. It has already taken Vladimir Putin more than twice as long not to conquer Ukraine. Actually, he has done worse: he started trying eight years ago when he annexed Crimea, and still hasn’t managed it. Even Putin’s Belarus puppet, Alexander Lukashenko, publicly noticed this week that the war … Read more
Sir Ben also cautioned that although by a “dint of geography” the war in Ukraine is mostly a land-based campaign, the navies of Nato needed to maintain a deterrent posture to “counter Putin’s actions and dissuade him from doing more”. “We represent a threat,” he added. “The Russians tried effectively to exclude any other any … Read more
Back in February, when Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked assault on Ukraine, I ventured the opinion that the conflict would ultimately prove as damaging to the Russian leader as the Soviet Union’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. With the war now well into its third month, it is clear that Mr Putin’s Ukrainian … Read more
V Ladimir Putin’s forces are losing heavily in Ukraine and he cannot “win the war to achieve a settled outcome,” Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow said on Thursday. Sir Andrew Wood, the UK’s top diplomat in Russia from 1995 to 2000, stressed that Ukrainians would not forget “what he has done and what his forces … Read more
I used to think, in the years before Brexit, that what might conceivably bring the quarrelsome nations of the EU together in genuine unity would be a grave external threat. The most dramatic I could imagine (however unlikely) was a Russian invasion. And then, with luck, might come the fulfillment of the “European ideal” – … Read more
Vladimir Putin’s “nonsense and half-baked” propaganda in Ukraine’s Donbas region after the 2014 invasion failed to convince local residents, a Cambridge academic has found. The Russian president’s government launched a rampant disinformation campaign and fully-fledged propaganda in the eastern Ukrainian region after 2014, in a bid to win the hearts and souls of the largely … Read more
The West has been experiencing a crisis of confidence. Europe’s response to the Russian assault on Ukraine has been fragmented and lackluster. America and its allies continue to bury their heads in the sand over the consequences of China’s rise. This weakness of will on the global stage is matched by a wobbling faith in … Read more