Lisa Haseldine

On the evening of Friday 2 October, Daria Shipilova, an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute, died in a district hospital in the Russian city of Shelekhov. Her place of work, and the rumoured circumstances of her death, have triggered a public health emergency in the region and a slew of questions: did the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, kill Shipilova? Could this metastasise into a plague epidemic in Russia? Should we – abroad – be worried? The Russian authorities have done their best to play down the link between the plague and Shipilova’s death. According to Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, Shipilova had been diagnosed with pneumonia of ‘unknown etiology’ – i.e. of unknown origin.

With parliament back after the summer break, the debate around increasing Britain’s defence spending – so febrile just two months ago – is rearing its head again. On Wednesday, a voice no one knew the country needed chimed into the discussion. Taking to X, the Labour MP Diane Abbott intoned: ‘The imminent threat from Russia is a Nato fiction to justify their complete capitulation to Trump's demands for more military spending. The increase should not go ahead.’ Doing nothing about Diane Abbott risks undermining Burnham’s authority on defence It hardly needs stating that Abbott’s tweet was beyond stupid, not only for its ignorance but also for its naivety.

Andy Burnham arrived in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv this morning, his first trip abroad since entering Downing Street last month. The Prime Minister’s visit has been timed to to coincide with Ukraine’s independence day, marking 35 years since it broke with the Soviet Union. Burnham will later today use the occasion to announce plans to share the blueprints for building the British components of long-range Storm Shadow missiles with Ukraine. Britain has been supplying Storm Shadow missiles – co-produced with France – to Ukraine since 2023, with Kyiv reportedly firing the long-range weapons in Russia for the first time in November 2024. Storm Shadow missiles have a range of nearly 350 miles, theoretically putting Moscow within striking distance of Ukraine.

The moment many European leaders had been awaiting with nervous anticipation arrived yesterday evening when the American Under-Secretary of War, Elbridge Colby, announced that the US would, at long last, be undertaking a review of its military presence on the continent as part of its commitment to Nato. Colby said: ‘This will be a real review, designed to ensure that Nato is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe taking primary responsibility for its conventional defence.’ The US Department of War has been threatening to launch this review for much of this year so far. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth used a meeting of Nato defence ministers in June to confirm that the review would be going ahead imminently.

Andy Burnham has given precious little away on his approach to foreign and defence policy since taking office last week. Today, however, we got a small glimpse of one aspect of what that might look like. This afternoon Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, became the first foreign leader to be hosted by the new prime minister in Britain.  The pair met at Portsmouth naval base to inspect the 200-odd Ukrainian soldiers currently completing maritime exercises there. Burnham afterwards confirmed that the pair had also discussed the question of supplying anti-ballistic missiles to Ukraine ahead of the winter to allow it to better protect its critical infrastructure.

If European leaders had a bingo card of all the fights Donald Trump could pick with them, at this week’s Nato summit in Ankara they would have won a blackout. Starting as he meant to go on, Trump used a joint briefing with Nato chief Mark Rutte this morning to reheat his litany of grievances with fellow members of the alliance. Trump today declared that he was ‘not happy with Nato because of what they did with Greenland’ and their refusal, as he sees it, to help the US with the war in Iran. Greenland, the President said, was a ‘big problem for us’, going on to claim – falsely – that ‘it’s not important for Denmark’.

With just a few weeks until he is expected to step down as prime minister, Keir Starmer chose a drone factory in Berkshire as the location from which to deliver his swansong: the Defence Investment Plan (DIP). Starmer was joined at the venue by Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis – in the job for less than three weeks – and, unexpectedly, Chancellor Rachel Reeves to present the headlines of the DIP, published today after a delay of more than seven months. Reeves confirmed that the Treasury is handing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) £15 billion over the next four years as part of the DIP.

Despite resigning as prime minister and leader of the Labour party on Monday, Keir Starmer is determined to publish the much-delayed defence investment plan (DIP) ahead of the Nato summit in Turkey on 7 July. Speaking at a conference in London yesterday, Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis confirmed that he was ‘working to finalise and publish the DIP before I travel to Ankara with the Prime Minister' in less than a fortnight. The fact that Starmer is still determined to publish the DIP is surprising. Most presumed after his resignation that the defence spending blueprint, along with any other unfinalised policies and projects, would be put on ice, ready for his successor – expected to be the former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham – to review, drop or push through.

As the fallout from Keir Starmer’s defence funding row continues, Britain has been served a timely reminder of the importance of being prepared for a fresh escalation of tensions with Russia. A Russian warship, the Admiral Grigorovich, fired warning shots at an unarmed British civilian yacht in the Channel shortly before lunchtime yesterday. The circumstances around the incident – which took place 20 nautical miles off the Isle of Wight, outside British waters – remain somewhat unclear. The owners of the 40-foot British yacht, Jane and Alan Kelvey, claim they came no closer than 500 metres (0.3 miles) to the 409-foot Admiral Grigorovich. The Russian warship then sounded its horn a number of times before firing its guns, they said.

After a week of government paralysis, it appears something has finally broken the deadlock: John Healey has resigned as Defence Secretary. In a withering letter to Keir Starmer, Healey accused the Prime Minister of being ‘unable’ and the Treasury ‘unwilling to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats’. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP), he said, ‘falls well short’ of what Britain’s defences need. In his letter, Healey revealed that he was first given sight of the final DIP settlement on Monday, which revealed that support would be backloaded and rise to just 2.68 per cent of GDP in 2030. This falls well short of the 3 per cent by 2030 that Healey has been pushing Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to commit to.