Tuesday 30 June 2026 Wars are not won merely by capturing territory. They are won by compelling an adversary to abandon the political objectives for which the conflict was begun. Judged by that standard, Russia is losing her war in Ukraine. This conclusion may appear counterintuitive to those who examine only maps. Russian forces continue to occupy substantial areas of Ukrainian territory and, at the time of writing, continue to advance slowly in parts of the Donbas. Casual o

Monday 29 June 2026 On 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo had ignited the First World War, representatives of the victorious Allied powers and defeated Germany gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles to sign one of history’s most consequential peace treaties. Much attention has been devoted to the harsh reparations imposed upon Germany, the creation of the League of Nations and the seeds that th

Monday 29 June 2026 Amongst the many legal inventions that have shaped modern civilisation, few have been as consequential as the limited liability corporation. By allowing organisations to exist as legal persons distinct from their owners, the corporation enabled the accumulation of capital on a scale previously unimaginable. From railways to telecommunications, from pharmaceuticals to aerospace, the corporate form became one of the foundational institutions of modern econom

Monday 29 June 2026 One of the defining characteristics of the war in Ukraine has been the extraordinary speed with which military technology evolves. In previous conflicts, weapons systems might have remained dominant for years or even decades before a countermeasure emerged. In Ukraine, that cycle often lasts only months. Sometimes it lasts only weeks. Nowhere is this more evident than in the struggle between attack drones and the systems designed to stop them. Only a short

Sunday 28 June 2026 The declaration of a state of emergency across occupied Crimea marks more than another administrative measure in a long war. It is a public acknowledgement that a territory Russia once presented as irrevocably secure has become increasingly vulnerable. For over a decade Moscow has portrayed Crimea as the great strategic prize of its confrontation with Ukraine—a permanently integrated region, protected by geography, military power and political determinatio

Sunday 28 June 2026 There was a time when Europeans regarded prolonged heat as a Mediterranean inconvenience rather than a continental reality. Northern Europe was associated with temperate summers, occasional rain and moderate temperatures that made the region one of the world’s most hospitable environments for agriculture, urban living and industrial development. That assumption has been steadily eroded over the past two decades. Each successive summer appears to produce a