Flux continu

In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny’s widow tell us why Putin must be defeated, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash

Energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring and millions are being starved of grain. Surely Johnson knew this would happen?

He has weaponised food, energy and refugees, spreading economic and political pain across the continent. Sanctions don’t work, a land for peace deal would be a disaster. Only the military route remains

In Madrid, the organisation showed a great sense of purpose. But beware a divided Europe and a US still tired of paying for the continent’s security

President Zelenskiy and Ukraine want it finished by winter, but Russia still holds the balance of power

Coal plants will be reactivated if Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens a gas cutoff, a government official said. That would trigger the second of a three-stage Germany’s gas emergency plan.

Dear Professor Chomsky, We are a group of Ukrainian academic economists who were grieved by a series of your recent interviews and commentaries on the Russian war on Ukraine. We believe that your public opinion on this matter is counter-productive to bringing an end to the unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the deaths and suffering it has brought into our home country.

The war in Ukraine is laying bare a generational divide over what lessons Germany should draw from its own history of waging bloody conflicts, as some of the country’s leading artists and intellectuals line up in favour of or against supplying Kyiv with weapons in a series of open letters.

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced.

Only the boldest leadership can unite the EU against the delusional tyrant in Moscow. The German chancellor has the chance to provide it

Strong measures by Europe could quickly deprive Russia of oil and gas income worth billions, experts say

Germany is bracing for supplies to be cut by Moscow in retaliation for sanctions or as part of an energy embargo

An analysis of satellite images by The New York Times rebuts claims by Russia that the killing of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, occurred after its soldiers had left the town. When images emerged over the weekend of the bodies of dead civilians lying on the streets of Bucha — some with their hands bound, some with gunshot wounds to the head — Russia’s Ministry of Defense denied responsibility. In a Telegram post on Sunday, the ministry suggested that the bodies had been recently placed on the streets after “all Russian units withdrew completely from Bucha” around March 30.

Russian soldiers who seized the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster drove their armoured vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the "Red Forest", kicking up clouds of radioactive dust, workers at the site said. The two sources said soldiers in the convoy did not use any anti-radiation gear. The second Chernobyl employee said that was "suicidal" for the soldiers because the radioactive dust they inhaled was likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies.

The Ukrainian crisis has revived an old debate: how to effectively sanction a state like Russia? Let’s say it straight away: it is time to imagine a new type of sanction focused on the oligarchs who have prospered thanks to the regime in question. This will require the establishment of an international financial register, which will not be to the liking of western fortunes, whose interests are much more closely linked to those of the Russian and Chinese oligarchs than is sometimes claimed. However, it is at this price that western countries will succeed in winning the political and moral battle against the autocracies and in demonstrating to the world that the resounding speeches on democracy and justice are not simply empty words.

The war in Ukraine and surging oil prices are other factors that could prompt PBOC action when it announces its policy loan rates Tuesday, as the nation aims to achieve a growth target of 5.5% for the year. The Hong Kong and China stocks sold off Monday, led by losses in technology shares, due to risks from Beijing’s close relationship with Russia and regulatory concerns.

A Russian former foreign minister has joined a call for all sides in the Ukrainian war to return to diplomacy and so reduce “the dramatically elevated risk” of a nuclear conflict. The appeal co-authored by Prof Igor Ivanov, now the president of the Russian International Affairs Council, may be a sign that some in the Russian foreign policy establishment believe that pursuing a purely military solution in Ukraine is a strategic mistake.

Minister warns an immediate stop to supplies could hurt Germany’s population more than Putin

The attack on a training base in Ukraine marks Putin’s attempt to take the war to the West and a more brutal phase in the destruction of the country’s independence

The west’s earlier inaction has exacted a heavy price and now attempts to overcompensate are dangerous

There are two likely paths: continued escalation, potentially across the nuclear threshold, or a bitter peace imposed on a defeated Ukraine

At the beginning of nearly every war including the current one in Ukraine, there are those who loudly declare that it will be over shortly and then business-as-usual can resume. They are rarely right. While no one can say for certain what the trajectory of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be, the economic warfare that is going on alongside it is very likely to destroy the current global trading system.

Measures implemented this year could bring down gas imports from Russia by over one-third, with additional temporary options to deepen these cuts to well over half while still lowering emissions.

As head of state-owned oil firm Rosneft, oligarch commands central place in the economy

Russia’s growing isolation has strengthened the ‘siloviki’ who surround the president

If the Russians are ever to withdraw, then a diplomatic agreement on the terms of withdrawal will be necessary. So what should the demands be?

Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between Nato and Moscow even more dangerous. The west’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but Nato’s arrogant, tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.

On Sunday, Vladimir Putin ordered his nuclear deterrent forces to be placed on a “special regime of combat duty”. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has now clarified what this meant: the increased manpower devoted to Russia’s strategic nuclear triad: land-based strategic nuclear rocket forces, sea-based nuclear deterrents in the northern and Pacific fleets and its fleet of long-range strategic bomber aircraft that can carry nuclear weapons.

On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.

The inventor of the Brics acronym says sanctions against Russia have exposed nations’ dependence on the western economic system

Less than a week into the war, it seems increasingly likely that Vladimir Putin is heading towards a historic defeat. He may win all the battles but still lose the war. Putin’s dream of rebuilding the Russian empire has always rested on the lie that Ukraine isn’t a real nation, that Ukrainians aren’t a real people, and that the inhabitants of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv yearn for Moscow’s rule. That’s a complete lie – Ukraine is a nation with more than a thousand years of history, and Kyiv was already a major metropolis when Moscow was not even a village. But the Russian despot has told his lie so many times that he apparently believes it himself.

The frightful noise of gunfire, bombing and children’s screams in the cities of Ukraine reverberates across Europe. The full-scale Russian invasion launched last week is an unprovoked, heinous crime perpetrated against Ukraine’s citizens, their sovereign democratic state and all the free peoples of the world. The 24th of February is a day that will live in infamy. It will not be forgiven. It will surely never be forgotten.

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it, and face the costs. Economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history. Here are eight sobering realities:

Western leaders have spent the past 20 years trying to guess what Vladimir Putin “really wants”. Very often, it’s enough just to read his words, very carefully. Because usually he means exactly what he says. And in the case of his early morning television address announcing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his words and hints about his intentions were truly terrifying.

Why do we always make the same mistake? Oh, that’s only trouble in the Balkans, we say – and then an assassination in Sarajevo sparks the first world war. Oh, Adolf Hitler’s threat to Czechoslovakia is “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing” – and then we find ourselves in the second world war. Oh, Joseph Stalin’s takeover of distant Poland after 1945 is none of our business – and soon enough we have the cold war. Now we have done it again, not waking up until it is too late to the full implications of Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea in 2014. And so, on Thursday 24 February 2022, we stand here again, clothed in nothing but the shreds of our lost illusions.