4 h. ago Ukraine war latest: Putin claims Russia has no intention of attacking anyone after launching daytime strike on Kyiv

Putin also claimed Moscow has never opposed Ukraine's potential membership of the European Union

Events

5 d. ago Dramatic moment Russian fighter jet intercepts US plane flying over Black Sea

The US Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft was intercepted over the Black Sea by a Russian Su-35S multirole fighter as Vladimir Putin's bombs rain down on Ukraine

Events

5 d. ago As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one | Martin Kettle

The Russian soprano says she has condemned the war and has no affinity with this Kremlin. But hosting her still seems unwisePuccini’s Tosca is high on the list of operas I don’t much care if I never see again. So the fact that the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, unquestionably one of our era’s exceptional opera singers, is due to sing Tosca in a new production at Covent Garden next month does not present me with a dilemma. I won’t be there anyway.It might be more difficult, I admit, if Netrebko was singing Verdi, where she is so outstanding. But this column is not about my taste in opera. It is about something of wider moral importance. Netrebko’s London performances pose complex questions but require straightforward answers. First, is it right for a prestigious British institution, the Royal Opera House, to be hiring Netrebko while the Ukraine war continues? The answer could in theory be yes, were she to repeat her opposition to the war, but on the current evidence it is no. Continu...

Politics

6 d. ago There’s an obvious way to challenge Nigel Farage. But Keir Starmer won’t do it | Rafael Behr

Labour’s reluctance to name Brexit as the cause of so many problems hasn’t stopped Reform’s rise. It’s time to try the truthSo begins another chapter in the liberation struggle. Released from bondage to the EU, Britain finds itself subjugated to a more insidious foe. The border that should have been sealed is wide open. The foreign hordes are still coming, but their passage is no longer directed by bureaucrats from Brussels. This time, national emancipation depends on breaking the tyranny of human rights lawyers.That is the plot to Nigel Farage’s Brexit sequel, previewed on Tuesday in an airport hangar in Oxfordshire. The Reform UK leader laid out plans for “mass deportation” of migrants – all who arrive without permission, plus those who are here already and came by illicit channels.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Ukraine's Bucha Butchers revenge bombing: Military intelligence in Ukraine 'kills three Putin soldiers' involved in 'torture, mutilation and rape atrocities' in 2022

Bucha - a quiet commuter town just outside of Kyiv - became a byword for Russian barbarism in 2022, when retreating Kremlin troops left behind mass graves and streets littered with bodies.

Events

1 week ago By sanctioning journalists, the Kremlin admits how much the truth hurts | Rafael Behr

I’ve been accused of ‘anti-Russia narratives’ but Russia has many stories – including resistance against tyrannyThere is a Russian proverb: don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked. I first came across it as the epigraph to The Government Inspector, Gogol’s 1836 masterpiece satirising corruption and hypocrisy in the provinces of the tsar’s empire.The phrase sprang to mind last week when I learned that a 21st-century government inspector is displeased with things I have written about Vladimir Putin and his imperial war against Ukraine – the land of Gogol’s birth. This I know because my name has been added to the “stop list”, a growing roster of undesirable elements – politicians, journalists, charity workers, consultants – banned from entering the Russian federation.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Ukraine strikes key Russian pipeline while Russia bombs city as fighting shows no signs of slowing with Putin accused of setting a 'trap' with peace talk demands

The strike late on Thursday hit the Unecha oil pumping station in Russia's Bryansk region, setting off a huge fire at one of the most critical links in the pipeline.

Events

1 week ago Trump's kitchen meltdown: President wags finger at Putin in Nixon copycat stunt

Donald Trump posted the image after Moscow unleashed one of its heaviest bombardments of Ukraine, in what critics say was a bid to show himself standing firm against Russia’s strongman

Politics

1 week ago Vladimir Putin blitzes Ukraine as Trump and Zelensky talk at White House

The Russian president has not stopped with his bombardment of Ukraine despite the world's focus being on hopes of peace following two major summits in recent days

Politics

2 w. ago Russia pounds Ukraine with largest aerial bombardment in a month hours after Trump

Moscow launched more than 280 drones and missiles at central Ukraine in its latest attack

Politics

2 w. ago Shock new poll reveals why Aussies see Donald Trump as a bigger threat than 'communist dictator' Xi Jinping

A shocking new poll has revealed why Australians are more concerned about Donald Trump than China's military threat.

Events

2 w. ago Trump swallowing Putin’s lies is a bigger threat to Ukraine than bombs | Rafael Behr

In Alaska the Russian leader will claim to want peace, but only on his terms – and play on the president’s desperation to ‘make a deal’ quicklyWars do not have to be won. Total victories loom largest in the popular imagination because those are the stories nations always tell to sustain patriotic feeling. The fuller version of history is written in stalemates.That is worth remembering when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Both leaders have incentives to pretend that Ukraine’s fate can be settled decisively without any Ukrainians at the negotiating table. That doesn’t make it so. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘It’s a robot war’: eastern Ukraine faces onslaught of Russian glide bombs, rockets and kamikaze drones

Putin has escalated strikes on Donetsk region and is likely to demand Ukraine hands it over in talks with TrumpNataliya Petrovna pointed to a crater on the edge of a football field. Around it lay bits of twisted metal. From nearby came loud banging as residents fixed plywood to their damaged five-storey apartment block. Many of its windows were broken. “The last few days have been terrible. We could hear the drones buzzing over us. The one that exploded near the school opposite was a Russian Shahed. Maybe some kind of new type,” she said.Petrovna lives in the eastern garrison city of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk province, about 15 miles from the frontline. The distance is just beyond the range of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, at least for now. But it is easily reachable by other kinds of enemy objects. They include air-dropped glide bombs, Grad rockets and unmanned kamikaze drones – now cruising Ukraine’s skies in overwhelming numbers. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago ‘Zombie grannies’ acting as ‘human bombers’ for Ukraine says Putin's secret service

Russia's FSB counterintelligence service has accused a group of elderly women of being 'human bombs', after the pensioners were allegedly lured by Ukraine's secret services

Politics

3 w. ago Soldiers under bombardment in eastern Ukraine say peace still feels far away

‘We are preparing for a long war. We have no illusions that Russia will stop’

Events

3 w. ago Woman and two men killed in sea mine explosions at beaches in Ukraine 'after bombs washed into shore'

A woman and two men lost their lives when the blasts ripped through the Black Sea resort area of Zatoka at around 11.30am today.

Events

3 w. ago Putin steps up Ukrainian bombing in clearest sign yet he plans to IGNORE Trump's ceasefire deadline

Video footage shows the Kremlin's forces in a fresh strike on a bridge in Kherson, which it has failed to dislodge in six massive aerial attacks, in a hint that Putin may ignore Trump's deadline.

Events

3 w. ago Putin defies US threats in 'cruel' Ukraine bombing hours before 'peace' talks

Russian President defies US sanctions threats by bombing Ukraine just hours before a crucial face-to-face with US President Donald Trump's 'special envoy' in latest sign of contempt

Events

3 w. ago Hiroshima mayor warns world is repeating nuclear mistakes: ‘Please witness the reality’

Kazumi Matsui denounces ‘flagrant disregard’ of lessons from tragedies of history on 80th anniversary of nuclear bombing

Events

3 w. ago We’re being deafened by digital noise. Pause it and you hear the sound of democracy in crisis | Rafael Behr

Politics is struggling to cope with the pace of technological change – and that is affecting every single one of usReturning from holiday, asked where I have been, I want to say “offline”. The more precise answer is France, where the internet is available. But I tried not to use it compulsively because there isn’t much point in getting away from it all if you carry it all with you on a phone and check it every few minutes.At some point in the past decade or so, the condition of vacation came to be defined more by detachment from the digital realm than departure from home. The break begins not in a departure lounge but with the act of logging off, setting the out-of-office email auto-reply, archiving work-related WhatsApp chats, deleting social media apps. Continue reading...

Events