Lisa Haseldine is The Spectator's online commissioning editor - foreign affairs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Berlin this morning, where at 3pm local time he will speak to Donald Trump and his vice president J.D. Vance over video alongside other European leaders to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine. The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz brokered the meeting following the news that the American
US special envoy Steve Witkoff was back in Moscow today to meet with Vladimir Putin, ahead of Donald Trump’s Friday deadline for Russia to make peace with Ukraine. This was Witkoff’s fifth meeting with Putin this year. Similar to his previous audiences with the Russian president, today’s one-on-one lasted for three hours. While broadly we
Wimbledon is the highlight of the year for tennis fans. But for local residents it’s a fortnight of traffic chaos and misery. As a born-and-bred Wimbledonian, I think I have earned the right to ask this: hasn’t the tennis all got a bit much? If you have lived in Wimbledon for any stretch of time,
Freedom of movement in the EU received another nail in its coffin yesterday after Poland became the latest European country to introduce checks along its shared borders with fellow member states. As of next Monday, Warsaw will start enforcing border controls at crossings shared with Germany and Lithuania. The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said
Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sounding the alarm. The end of the war in Ukraine, whenever it comes, won’t mean the end of Vladimir Putin, he says – nor the Russian threat to the West. Moscow, he says, has never been very good at demobilising restless, traumatised soldiers. ‘There is a 600,000-strong group that took part in
Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz seems serious about his pledge to make the Bundeswehr the ‘strongest conventional army in Europe’. Yet less than a month into his chancellorship, a daunting realisation is dawning on Berlin: without resorting to conscription, there is little prospect of growing the German army or fulfilling Merz’s ambitious promise. Merz’s defence minister Boris Pistorius
During their spat in the Oval Office in February, Donald Trump infamously told his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, ‘You don’t have the cards’ to play against Russia. It now appears that Trump could not have been more wrong if he tried. Yesterday, Ukraine inflicted a stunningly unexpected act of sabotage on Russia, directing a flotilla of
Following years of requests, pleas and false starts, Ukraine has, it appears, definitively been given permission to fire missiles deep into Russian territory. Since the start of Moscow’s invasion in 2022, Kyiv had been banned from attacking military targets on Russian soil with western-made weapons. Now, after three years of war, it appears Ukraine’s allies
Not to be outdone by the celebration of VE Day across Western Europe yesterday, Vladimir Putin this morning staged his own ‘biggest ever’ Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. Over the course of Putin’s rule, the annual celebration of 9 May has gradually morphed from a solemn commemoration of the victory over Nazi Germany to being
Just when he thought he was home and dry, Friedrich Merz has fallen at the final hurdle to become Germany’s next chancellor. At a vote in the Bundestag this morning that many thought would be a formality, the CDU leader fell short of the votes needed to confirm him as the country’s new leader by six ballots,
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has been classified as ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Until now, the party – which came second in federal elections in February – had been considered ‘suspected right-wing extremist’. After this upgrade, in the eyes of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
Overnight, Ukraine and the US finally signed a deal on Ukraine’s mineral reserves. The agreement, signed two months later than planned, sees the two countries set up what they have called the ‘United States-Ukraine Reconstructions Investment Fund’, the aim of which will be to attract ‘global investment’ into Ukraine following the end of the war
US special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Russia this morning to meet with Vladimir Putin, as Donald Trump ploughs ahead with his plan to secure a peace deal in Ukraine by hook or by crook. This is the pair’s fourth meeting in nearly as many months. Putin and Witkoff are expected to discuss Trump’s final
Has the moment arrived when Donald Trump abandons the last iota of his support for Ukraine in the war against Russia? Taking to his social media platform, Truth, the American President appeared to suggest so. Referring to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump wrote, ‘He can have peace, or he can fight for another three
At 4 p.m. UK time today, Russian troops were instructed to temporarily lay down their weapons in Ukraine. The order, issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin to mark the Easter weekend, is nominally in force for 30 hours until midnight on Easter Monday. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that the Ukrainian side will follow
With just under a week to go until the supposed Easter deadline, it appears that Donald Trump is no closer to securing a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The President’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff travelled to St Petersburg yesterday for talks on ‘aspects of a Ukraine settlement’ with Vladimir Putin.
When Vladimir Putin launched his bid to be elected as Russia’s president in 2000, he had already been in the role for a month and a half. His predecessor Boris Yeltsin had stepped down on 31 December 1999, appointing his young prime minister in his place to prevent political opponents from prosecuting him and his
It may be taking him longer than the 24 hours he pledged on the campaign trail, but it appears that US President Donald Trump might be getting somewhere on halting the war between Russia and Ukraine: following a call lasting an hour and a half, he has persuaded Vladimir Putin to agree to a partial
Vladimir Putin is apparently open to a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. But is he really? Just like that, the response that America, Ukraine and its Western allies had been waiting for has arrived. Speaking this afternoon in a joint press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the Russian President commented for the first
Ukraine has agreed to an American proposal for an immediate 30-day truce in the war against Russia. Kyiv’s decision to accept a month-long ceasefire follows nine hours of talks with members of US President Donald Trump’s administration in Saudi Arabia today. Making a statement this evening following the conclusion of the talks, the US Secretary
