Tuesday 16 June 2026 The office of President of the United States has always imposed extraordinary demands upon its occupant. It requires not only political skill and strategic judgement, but also immense physical stamina, emotional resilience and the capacity to absorb vast quantities of information under conditions of constant pressure. Throughout American history, questions have periodically arisen about whether elderly presidents remain capable of carrying out these respo

Tuesday 16 June 2026 Ukraine is often described as the most heavily mined country in the world. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, vast areas of agricultural land, forests, roads, industrial sites and former front lines have been contaminated with anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, unexploded artillery shells, cluster munition remnants and improvised explosive devices. The challenge confronting Ukraine is not merely military. It is econo

Tuesday 16 June 2026 A recurrent mistake in discussions about artificial intelligence is to assume that regulation is principally a technical problem. It is not. It is a political, economic and legal problem that happens to involve technology. The challenge is not merely how to control algorithms but how to govern the organisations, incentives and power structures that increasingly deploy them. Any serious international regulatory framework for artificial intelligence must th

Tuesday 16 June 2026 One of the enduring dangers of autocratic government is that power gradually disconnects itself from reality. Leaders who remain in office for decades often cease to receive accurate information about the societies they govern, the institutions they command and the world around them. The longer a ruler remains unchallenged, the greater the temptation among subordinates to tell him what he wishes to hear rather than what he needs to know. Modern Russia app

Monday 15 June 2026 One of the most curious political developments of the early twenty-first century has been the emergence of a complex and often uncomfortable relationship between the Russian state and a range of far-right political movements across Europe and North America. The relationship is frequently misunderstood. It is often portrayed either as a vast conspiracy directed from Moscow or as an entirely fabricated phenomenon invented by Russia’s critics. The reality lie

Monday 15 June 2026 For much of the first three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war was often measured by maps. Analysts scrutinised advances and retreats around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Robotyne or Pokrovsk. Yet by mid-2026 another battlefield has become equally significant: the contest over energy infrastructure. Ukraine has increasingly shifted from a strategy of merely defending territory towards one of systematically degrading the economic foundations tha