STOCKHOLM — In the Swedish capital this weekend, everyone was talking about the American warship. Moored in the main waterway linking Stockholm with the Baltic Sea, the towering presence of the USS Kearsarge dominated the city center, its 253-meter-long silhouette creating a new militaristic skyline against the early summer sun. A couple of Danish tourists … Read more
F inland is “committed” to NATO membership and will “stick with” the decision in the face of Russian threats, the Finnish ambassador to the UK has said. Speaking to the Standard, Jukka Siukosaari said the invasion of Ukraine had led to a “strong change” in his country’s perception of the military alliance and that it … Read more
Conflict in Ukraine and increasing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to be high on the Thursday when European Union senior representatives and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are scheduled to hold talks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel will be paying their first visits to … Read more
The United States and its NATO allies are intensively preparing for a third world war. Looking back on the First World War, the great powers were said to have “slithered” into the war, but now they are racing open-eyed into disaster. The claim that the Ukraine war is about defending democracy and national independence is … Read more
Kyiv, Ukraine – “A squad of orcs has been repelled.” This is not a quote from JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that refers to the race of evil lord Sauron’s supporters with bad breath and disfigured faces. This is a line from an official report from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry – and part of … Read more
For much of the past three quarters of a century, the US intelligence community had had one job that was more important than all others: assessing the capabilities of the Russian military. In all that time, the most significant deployment of that military is what we have seen during the past month, as part of … Read more
For 77 years, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has kept the use of nuclear weapons at bay. But an desperate Russia, bogged down in a disastrous war of choice in Ukraine,s that status quo. As Russian President Vladimir Putin grows ever more desperate for a battlefield fix, his press secretary this week refused … Read more
Press play to listen to this article Vladimir Putin just upped the ante in the economic war between Russia and the West. By announcing on Wednesday that so-called unfriendly countries — a list including EU countries and the United States — will have to pay for Russian gas imports in rubles, the Russian president is … Read more
As the war in Ukraine highlights the perils of relying on Russian fossil fuels, France has been fast-tracking efforts to wean households off oil-fired heating, insulate their homes better and swap petrol and diesel cars for electric. Climate policy discussions in recent years have focused on phasing out coal – the most carbon-polluting fuel – … Read more
“You ask me how things are going? This is how things are going,” Serhiy messaged in an online chat, before sending a photo of a high-calibre sniper rifle set up in his room in Kyiv, as Ukraine’s capital tries to fight off Russian forces. “My task is to open fire when the enemy crosses next … Read more