This week our guest is the historian Serhii Plokhy, a professor and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard and the author of a number of books, including his latest, The Russo-Ukrainian War. 

He speaks to Megan Gibson about Putin’s war on Ukraine, the end of the Russian empire and what the new world order could look like.

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Last week British adherents – including several prominent ministers – of a traditionalist political movement with origins in post-Trump US politics attended the National Conservatism conference in London. It is a major influence in America but remains on the fringes of British political thought.

Will Lloyd joins Megan Gibson in London, and Ido Vock in Berlin, to discuss whether National Conservatism could ever catch on in the UK. Then, they discuss attacks by anti-Kremlin militias in the Belgorod region of western Russia, which neighbours Ukraine. They ask: what effect might this raid have on the next phase of the war?

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Will Lloyd on “dark new factions” in the Conservative Party:

Katie Stallard asks: who was behind the drone attack on the Kremlin?

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With international arrest warrants now active against Vladimir Putin, Ido Vock speaks to Philippe Sands, professor at UCL, about his attempts to force a prosecution of the Russian president. They discuss the crime of aggression, whether international tribunals could hear the case against him, and what efforts are being made to encourage more countries to help bring Putin to justice.

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Putin on trial

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The Ukrainian army this week announced gains around Bakhmut, its first substantive advances in about six months. That progress has prompted analysts to ask: has Ukraine’s much-vaunted counter-offensive already begun? Not yet, perhaps. But it is coming.  

Katie Stallard in Washington DC and Ido Vock in Berlin discuss what the next phase of the war could look like. Will Ukraine’s army make rapid progress – as it did in the Kharkiv region last September – or get bogged down in attritional battles, as has been the case at Bakhmut? Katie and Ido also discuss Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s increasingly voluble complaints about the Russian ministry of defence, and whether the cracks in Vladimir Putin’s system are starting to show. 

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Katie Stallard on what to expect from Ukraine’s coming counter-offensive 

Ido Vock asks: has Prigozhin turned on Putin? 

Ido again, on the Wagner Group’s brutal tactics 

Lawrence Freedman on Russia and Ukraine's attempts to control the narrative of the war 

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Fourteen months into Russia’s war against Ukraine, Katie Stallard speaks to Raffaello Pantucci, senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the co-author of Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire, about how the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia has changed. They discuss China’s growing influence, Vladimir Putin’s efforts to court regional leaders, and how the West could play a more significant role.

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The world according to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin

What would it take to make Vladimir Putin feel secure?

Xinjiang: a region of suspicion and subjugation

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Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, oversaw a muted parade in Moscow for Victory Day on 9 May, which celebrates the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany. Where in previous years there have been grand shows of military might, this year there was a single, Second World War-era, tank. Rather than a show of force, the parade showed how a year of war in Ukraine has degraded Russia’s military. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, meanwhile, reinforced his country’s turn towards the West.

Katie Stallard in Washington DC, and Jeremy Cliffe and Ido Vock in Berlin, analyse what the pared-back celebrations in Moscow say about the Kremlin’s relationship with its citizens. Next, they turn to Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces the sternest electoral challenge of his presidency.

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Katie Stallard on Putin under pressure

Jeremy Cliffe asks: has authoritarianism peaked?

Ido Vock on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s relationship with Vladimir Putin

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With a new era of great-power competition taking shape on Earth, Katie Stallard speaks to the journalist and author Tim Marshall about his new book The Future of Geography and the next geopolitical battleground: space. They discuss how the Cold War propelled the space race between the US and the Soviet Union in the last century, and why the US, China and Russia are now engaged in a new contest to reach the moon and exploit its natural resources. Plus: why the existing laws concerning space are inadequate, and whether the satellites of the future will be armed. 

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China’s plan for an anti-satellite cyber-weapon found in leaked CIA documents.

Russia and the new language of war.

The world according to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

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Republicans in the US House of Representatives passed legislation last week that would increase the US debt ceiling only in exchange for significant spending cuts, and the repeal of some of Joe Biden’s key legislative achievements. The president has said he will not negotiate on raising the US’s borrowing limit, but there could be severe consequences if the two parties fail to reach a deal.

Megan Gibson in London, Katie Stallard in Washington DC and Ido Vock in Berlin discuss the global impact a prolonged stalemate could have, and the motivations of both sides. 

Next, they talk about video footage released by Russia that purports to show a drone attack on the Kremlin, analysing who might be behind such an attack and what their motivations might be.

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Ido Vock on Putin’s “forever War”

Lawrence Freedman asks what leaked Pentagon documents reveal about where the war in Ukraine is headed

Adam Tooze on where Biden has gone wrong

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Ido Vock speaks to the American linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s most prominent commentators on international politics since the Vietnam War. A trenchant critic of American foreign policy, Chomsky explains what he thinks the US is getting wrong in Ukraine, the prospects of a conflict over Taiwan, and why Finland and Sweden sought to join Nato.

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Ukraine is not a proxy war

After Iraq: the great unravelling

The dual atrocity of rape in the war on Ukraine

Letter from Kinmen: Taiwan is already under attack

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A three-day ceasefire has allowed some countries to evacuate their citizens from Sudan, where rival military factions have been fighting since 15 April. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader, has long been in a bitter power struggle with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, his former deputy. Now, that struggle has become an open conflict.

Megan Gibson in London, Katie Stallard in Washington DC and Ido Vock in Berlin discuss Sudan’s recent history, the evacuation effort and where local and regional powers stand.

Next they turn to the US, where Ron DeSantis’s presumed bid for the presidency in 2024 appears to be falling apart. The team discuss DeSantis’s fading hopes of beating Donald Trump to the Republican presidential nomination, his stance on abortion rights and why Trump still looms large in American politics.

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Megan Gibson asks whether the UK should have seen the Sudan crisis coming

Katie Stallard on why Ron DeSantis’s campaign is already in trouble

Katie on the coming Republican civil war

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