World

Friday

Ani Chkhikvadze

How damaging could the Ukraine corruption scandal be for Zelensky?

Andriy Yermak, the cryptic aide who shadowed Volodymyr Zelensky through every phase of the war, resigned Friday after anti-corruption investigators searched his office and house. Yermak was the center of Zelensky’s wartime team – and the consequences of his resignation could be far reaching.  In an evening address, Zelensky thanked Yermak for representing Ukraine’s negotiating position in recent tense talks with the United States, “as it should be” and stressed that it had “always been patriotic,” while urging Ukrainians to ignore rumors around the resignation. He said he would begin consultations on a new chief of staff immediately. With more talks looming, he underlined that, in wartime, every institution must stay focused on defending the state.

yermak corruption

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Fact-checking the Venezuela war hawks 

As the US Navy remains primed for action in the Southern Caribbean, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro prepares for what could be an American attempt to remove him. And as President Trump alternates between calling Maduro on the phone and authorizing air strikes, a bevy of misinformation is being peddled by public figures with an agenda. There are so many claims and counter-claims on the air waves right now that it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction. A sizable chunk of this disinformation is of course being sold by Maduro himself, a man who has learned from his predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chávez, that it’s easier to blame the United States for all of your problems than own up to your own catastrophic policy errors.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Trump team warned over London’s Chinese super-embassy

So much for simple Chinese takeout. In his never-ending search for economic growth, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has finally alighted on the obvious answer: cozying up to the liberal-minded democrats of Tiananmen Square. The Prime Minister is expected to fly to Beijing in the new year, once the long-awaited Chinese super-embassy in the London neighborhood of Tower Hamlets secures planning approval next month. No wonder 2025 is the year of the snake, eh?  But there now seems to be a wrench in the works, ahead of the mooted approval on December 10. For a group of American politicians are up in arms about the possible threat to global financial security.

china embassy

Monday

Mark Galeotti

Russia is willing to keep on fighting in Ukraine

At a time when western commentators are tying themselves in knots trying to parse the ongoing Ukraine peace discussions, the Russian media is suddenly strikingly united in its coverage. There is a common misperception that, like their Soviet forebears, the Russian press simply reproduces some standard party line, day in, day out. In fact, there is often surprising pluralism, with different newspapers having their own interests and angles. However, the Kremlin does impose its will when it comes to especially important or sensitive matters, with editors receiving tyomniki, informal but authoritative guidance from the presidential administration on lines to take and topics to avoid. When the press is speaking in one voice, that voice is Putin’s.

russia

Friday

Ben Clerkin

Zelensky risks coup or civil war

Kyiv When is the price of peace ever fair? War does not determine who is right, only who is left, Bertrand Russell wisely observed. Very often conflicts come down to a numbers game – and on the numbers Ukraine is losing. Despite losing more soldiers, Russia is winning on the battlefield and unlike Ukraine hasn’t even begun mass mobilization.  Donald Trump’s proposed peace deal won’t turn the clock back on Ukraine's borders, or compensate Ukraine for Russian aggression and war crimes, or even punish Putin personally for starting a horrific and needless war that has claimed as many as 500,000 lives. If anything, the deal rewards him.  But Trump hopes his proposal will draw a line in the sand to stop the relentless bloodshed.

volodymyr zelensky

Tuesday

Juan P. Villasmil

China has quietly taken over America’s food supply

For all the talk about artificial intelligence and quantum supremacy, the fate of civilizations still depends on breakfast. ChatGPT can’t grow corn. Empires rise on stomachs as much as on silicon. And America’s food system – long dismissed as safe and self-sufficient – has quietly become a front line in the US-China rivalry. We act as if lunch is inevitable, but Beijing knows that food is power. A new report from the America First Policy Institute should wake us up. Washington long treated agriculture as a post-political space where globalization could do no harm, and was therefore happy to let much of the nation ship its growth to China. As Ambassador Kip Tom and Royce Hood argue, China has thus taken over critical pieces of the US agricultural system and food supply.

china america food supply
Owen Matthews

Why Europe can’t go it alone on Ukraine

Who will pay for Ukraine’s war effort now the Trump administration has turned off the financial taps? European leaders have expressed themselves ready and willing to take up the burden, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen affirming that “if we continue to believe that Ukraine is our first line of defense, we need to step up our assistance.” Individual countries have come up with generous funding packages – most open-handed of all being Germany, which has recently pledged more than €3 billion in direct funding. But that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what Ukraine says it needs.

zelensky ukraine
Anatoly Grablevsky

How the Ukrainian far right is preventing peace

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, discussion of the Ukrainian far right has been verboten in western media, largely because one of Vladimir Putin’s stated war aims is the “denazification” of Ukraine. Putin’s claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state has been recycled by Russian propagandists and the western party line has consistently been that while the Ukrainian military does have far-right strains, they are marginal and inconsequential. This may have been true in 2022, but things have changed significantly after almost four years of war. Today, far-right figures control some of Ukraine’s strongest military units, and neo-Nazi ideology is displayed openly in the Ukrainian ranks.

azov enemy ukrainian
Jane Stannus

The unbearable wokeness of the Canadian military

“I think the question that needs to be asked is: what kind of military does Canada even want?” Dallas Alexander has been all country-star cool until I ask about his former employer. Now his voice takes on a more earnest tone. We’ve talked about the song the veteran-turned-singer considers his best – “Child of this Land,” a ballad about growing up in the remote Fishing Lake Métis Settlement in northern Alberta – and we’ve discussed which is the fan favorite: same, he says, or maybe the more upbeat “Can’t Blame My Bloodline.” To my mild surprise he doesn’t mention “Adios Amigo.” The song, with its catchy (and ominous) refrain, references the record-breaking sniper shot taken by Alexander’s team in 2017.

Dallas Alexander (Dallas Alexander) canada

Sunday

Patrick Gibbons

Is South Korea bracing for a third Trump-Kim summit?

Donald Trump’s meeting with President Xi was the standout moment of this month’s Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in South Korea. Yet almost as much attention focused on the rumors that Trump’s gaze had turned once again to North Korea. Addressing suggestions he would meet Kim, the President told reporters, "I’d be open 100 percent. I get along very well with Kim Jong-un." A meeting never materialized, but speculation – and tension – has only grown since.  Days after Trump’s departure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived as part of his own tour of Asia. In Seoul, he became the first defence secretary in nearly eight years to visit Panmunjeom, the border village within the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

Ten years ago on Thursday, Islamist terrorists massacred 130 people in a coordinated attack across Paris. It was the heaviest loss of life on French soil since World War Two, and those who perished – as well as the 350 who were wounded – were remembered yesterday in a series of commemorations. Emmanuel Macron visited the six sites where the terrorists struck, among them the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, and the President inaugurated a memorial garden at Place Saint-Gervais, opposite Paris City Hall. According to the Élysée Palace ahead of proceedings, the day would be an opportunity for the nation "to honor the memory of those who lost their lives... and reaffirm its ongoing commitment to the fight against terrorism.

bataclan

Sunday

Lisa Haseldine

Is Germany ready for military service?

It’s finally crunch time for Boris Pistorius’s plan to reintroduce military service in Germany. Following a delay of several months thanks to the country’s snap federal election campaign at the start of the year, the defense minister’s new "Modernization of Military Service" draft law is currently being debated in Berlin. Under Pistorius’s proposals, all 18-year-olds will be asked to complete a questionnaire that will gauge their willingness and ability to carry out military service. For men, the quiz will be compulsory; for "other genders" – including women – it will be optional. Those who declare themselves willing to serve will be invited for a formal assessment for recruitment into the armed forces, while anyone refusing to fill out the questionnaire could face a fine.

military

Saturday

Ian Williams

China is holding the West to ransom over rare earths

China’s naked weaponization of rare earths brings to mind Mao Zedong’s "four pests" campaign, the old tyrant’s fanatical effort to exterminate all flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows, which turned into a spectacular piece of self-harm. Sparrows were always an odd choice of enemy, but Mao and his communist advisors reckoned each one ate four pounds of grain a year and a million dead sparrows would free up food for 60,000 people. The campaign, launched in 1958, saw the extermination of a billion sparrows, driving them to the brink of extinction. But the sparrows also ate insects, notably locusts, whose population exploded, and the ravenous locusts wreaked far more damage to crops than the sparrows ever did, hastening China’s descent into the deadliest famine in human history.

ian williams china rare earths

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Why is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani's win as "very good news." The general secretary of the center-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as "the youngest mayor in New York history." Mamdani referenced his age during his victory speech in Brooklyn. "The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate," he proclaimed. "I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim.

young

Thursday

Toby Young

Lord Young goes to Washington

I’m writing this from Washington, DC, where I’ve spent the best part of a week talking to politicos and think-tankers about the state of free speech in the mother country. Don’t believe our Prime Minister when he says it’s in rude health, I’ve been telling them. It’s on life support and any pressure that can be brought to bear on His Majesty’s Government to protect it would be hugely appreciated. Once again, it’s time for the new world to come to the rescue of the old. Not that they need much convincing. The view of Britain among Washington’s political class isn’t informed by diplomatic cables or articles in the Economist, but by viral videos on X.

toby young

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Putin thinks time is on his side

Very well then – war. That is the bottom line of Vladimir Putin’s response to Donald Trump’s latest attempts at mediating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In August, Putin rejected the peace deal that Trump lined up in Alaska. Now, the Kremlin has scuttled the White House’s plan for a summit in Budapest by insisting that Russia’s demands for Ukrainian demilitarization and “de-nazification” remain in force. Clearly, the Russian President still believes that he can win the war on the battlefield – and terrorize Ukraine’s civilians. What is Putin’s plan?

putin
venezuela
Daniel McCarthy

Trump is being misled on Venezuela

President Trump is being misled into a regime-change war close to home. Few Americans nowadays find much to celebrate in the Iraq War or the intervention that overthrew Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Regimes were successfully changed both times, but what came after the dictators’ downfall was civil war, regional instability and mass-migration flows that exported many of those nations’ troubles to their neighbors. Now the Trump administration wants to do to Venezuela’s despot, Nicolás Maduro, what George W. Bush did to Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama did to Gaddafi. That will predictably do to the Americas – including the US – what the War on Terror did to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Why would Donald Trump make such a mistake?

erik prince
Paul Wood

The return of Erik Prince

Erik Prince, the American mercenary, wants to sell you a phone. His Unplugged phone is aimed at stopping big tech and big government spying on you. It’s available in the United States, and shortly in the United Kingdom too. He tells me: “It’s been troubling for me to see the crackdown on free expression in the UK.” But the phone is a sideline. His main business remains sending private armies to some of the world’s most dangerous places. The Biden years were lean ones, or at least quiet ones; now that Donald Trump’s back, so is Prince. Most people know Prince as the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military company. In 2014, four of Prince’s soldiers got long prison sentences in the US for opening fire on Iraqi civilians, killing 14.

Tuesday

Nigel Jones

Do black lives still matter?

It was an ethnic massacre so bad that it could be seen from space. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) swept into the besieged city. Pools of blood and piles of bodies were identified. Thousands of people are feared to have died in the appalling violence. Many thousands more have fled for their lives. Others remain trapped in the city. The scenes of slaughter were so blatant that it should have brought marchers out onto the streets in passionate protest. But there wasn’t a peep from the usual suspects. Was this because the killings did not take place in Gaza or the West Bank, but in Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries?

sudan darfur

Monday

James Tidmarsh

Macron has declared war on free speech

Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were “completely wrong” to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement” designed to “maximize advertising revenue,” a system he said is “destroying the foundations of democratic debate.” He accused X of being “dominated by far-right content” and added that the platform was no longer neutral because its owner had “decided to take part in the democratic struggle and in the international reactionary movement.” TikTok, he warned, was no less dangerous.