Lisa Haseldine is The Spectator's online commissioning editor - foreign affairs.
The United States and Britain are at war with Russia. So said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a UN press conference on Saturday. ‘You can call this whatever you want,’ said Lavrov. ‘But they are directly at war with us. We call this a hybrid war but that doesn’t change the reality.’ Lavrov
Germans are increasingly fed up with their hapless chancellor Olaf Scholz and his traffic light coalition. Just a quarter of voters believe the government has any long-term goals for the country, according to research conducted for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy. Seven in ten voters said they associated the coalition with poor
The British are, on the whole, rather rubbish at languages. We all know people who live up to P.G. Wodehouse’s description of the ‘shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French’. As more of the world speaks English, our monolingualism is getting worse. According to the British Council, only one in
For the past week, the arrangements for Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral have been shrouded in secrecy. Now it has been confirmed that the leader of the mercenary Wagner group was buried today in St Petersburg – just under a week after he was killed in a plane crash outside Moscow. According to a statement released by
In the early hours of this morning, Ukraine launched 42 unmanned drones at the annexed territory of Crimea, the Russian ministry of defence has claimed. Announcing on Telegram that the attack had been ‘thwarted’, the Russian MoD said nine of the drones had been shot down, while the remaining 33 were electronically jammed and downed
After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted march on Moscow at the end of June, the Wagner Group leader became a divisive figure in Russia. He was not quite a pariah – on account of his mercenary group’s huge contribution to the war in Ukraine and Putin’s seemingly weak decision to condemn him to barely enforced exile in
From the moment Yevgeny Prigozhin aborted his march on Moscow it was a question of when and how – not whether – he would end up dead. Yesterday we saw a video of him for the first time talking about Wagner promoting Russia’s interests in Africa. Now, two months to the day after that coup
After Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Brics global summit in South Africa, there can be no doubt that the Russian president has set his sights set on wooing the nations of Africa. In an effort to present Russia as a cooperative ally to, and leader of, the Brics bloc (currently made up of Brazil, Russia,
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This week: James Heale reads his politics column on why the Tories should fear the Greens (00:56), Lisa Haseldine outlines some of the changes to Russia’s school curriculum (06:04) and Neil Clark extols the joys of non-league football (13:02). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
Russia’s education system is about to undergo a radical transformation. Next month, when the new academic year begins, classes will be required to teach teenagers how to assemble, handle and clean Kalashnikov rifles, how to use hand grenades and how to administer first aid in combat. This military training for sixth-formers – 16 and over
When it comes to disclosing the true cost of the war in Ukraine for Russia, the Kremlin has rarely, if ever, chosen to be honest. But occasionally, things slip out. Last Wednesday, Mikhail Teplinsky, commander-in-chief of the Russian Airborne Forces, congratulated his troops on the anniversary of the division’s founding. He said how proud he
A drone has hit a tower in Moscow’s financial district – just two days after the building was targeted in another attack. In the early hours of this morning, the 21st floor of the IQ-Quarter building in Moscow City was hit by an unmanned drone, marking the second time in just over 48 hours that Russian governmental offices have been
Hours after Moscow was once again attacked by unmanned drones in the early hours of Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky has declared that the war is turning back on Russia. Speaking in his daily video address, the Ukrainian president stated that ‘Russian aggression had failed on the battlefield’. ‘Ukraine is getting stronger,’ he continued. ‘Gradually, the war
For the fifth time in three months, Moscow has once again been targeted by drones. In what is fast becoming a regular occurrence, the Russian ministry of defence reported that two drones attacked the city in the early hours of this morning. Despite the ministry’s claims to have intercepted and jammed the drones, they were
Nearly four weeks on from his failed coup, Evgeniy Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner group, has finally resurfaced in public. A video published on the social media app Telegram shows the mercenary chief apparently greeting newly–arrived fighters at a military camp in Belarus and praising them for their efforts on the front line in Ukraine. Due to the near-darkness
The Kerch bridge, Russia’s only road link to Crimea, has been targeted once again in what seems to have been a drone attack. The damage appears to be extensive may take weeks, if not months, to repair. The Russian-installed head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstatinov, has blamed the ‘terrorist regime in Kyiv’ for a ‘new
Three weeks after marching on Moscow, the Wagner Group has seemingly been withdrawn from the battlefield in Ukraine, according to the Pentagon. Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder said there was evidence to suggest that the 25,000-strong mercenary group was not ‘participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine’. The Pentagon’s statement
Just as Moscow was beginning to recover from the shock of Evgeniy Prigozhin’s march on the capital, the city has, once again, been targeted by drones. In the early hours of this morning, according to the Russian ministry of defence, five drones were intercepted before they reached the capital. Eyewitnesses reported seeing two of the drones flying
When Evgeniy Prigozhin started his armed insurrection, it was clear that he had allies within the ranks of the Russian military. His Wagner Group walked unopposed into Rostov, the HQ of the Russian military in the south and they were almost entirely unmolested as they came within 120 miles of Moscow. Vladimir Putin granted him
As soon as the Wagner coup started, Ukrainian social media was full of memes of Vladimir Putin saying ‘I don’t need ammo, I need a ride’ – the inverse of Volodymyr Zelensky’s quip when tanks moved towards Kyiv. But is there any truth in it? Did Putin – or his allies – flee Moscow at
