BUSINESS

At the budget last week, we made the right choices for Britain, cutting the cost of energy with £150 off bills, protecting the NHS and tackling the scourge of child poverty by removing the two-child limit. We also ensured that the revenue we raised through taxes was done fairly, with everyone contributing but those with … Read more

No one should be satisfied with the unjust peace that Ukraine may be forced to accept. The aggressor would be rewarded with territory and other concessions from the victim it has brutalized. Yet the horrified reaction in Washington to recent peace proposals is troubling in its own right. The Trump administration’s recent 28-point plan, roundly … Read more

Ukraine’s political system is bracing for a “mini-revolution” as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is forced to adapt to life without his closest adviser, chief enforcer and most loyal associate, Andriy Yermak, who resigned on Friday after his apartment was searched as part of a widening anti-corruption probe. Yermak’s resignation could have tremendous consequences for domestic governance, … Read more

Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, asked her officials this week to dig up the number of times Russia had – in its various guises – invaded other states in the 20th and 21st centuries. The answer that came back was 19 states, on 33 occasions. Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, was … Read more

As Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day deadline for a Ukraine peace agreement came and went this week, the Russia expert Mark Galeotti pointed to a telling indicator of how the Kremlin is treating the latest flurry of White House diplomacy. In the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a foreign policy scholar close to Vladimir Putin’s regime bluntly … Read more

Temperatures plummeted this week across the eastern half of Europe, with the Alps dipping as low as -20C and to -8.5°C in the Polish town of Zakopane in the Tatras Mountains. Heavy snow also affected other parts of Poland with 15-20cm (about 6-8in) of snow falling in much of the central swathe of the country … Read more

Europe breathed a deep collective sigh of relief on Monday, as the crisis triggered by Washington’s presentation of a new 28-point plan for ending the war appeared – briefly – to have been stabilised. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke of “substantial progress” after Ukraine-US talks in Geneva. On Monday night, Vladimir Putin … Read more

The revelations that anti-corruption police are searching the property of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, could have huge repercussions for the Ukrainian political scene and possibly for peace negotiations as well. It is hard to overstate the significance of Yermak in the Ukrainian political system. He combines multiple roles for Zelenskyy: most trusted … Read more

When I was growing up, the most German sentence imaginable was: “We’ve lost two world wars and we’re proud of it.” We were so anti-military, we even gave our policemen green uniforms, to make them look more like foresters than soldiers. Now, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wants our army to become the strongest in Europe. … Read more