People carry a body bag away from the wreckage of a crashed private jet near the Russian village of Kuzhenkinoi on Aug. 24, 2023. Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, reportedly died in the crash along with nine other people.
(AP Photo)
The core members of the Wagner Group, who are loyal to the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, will likely seek revenge against Vladimir Putin for his death. Is the Russian leader now living on borrowed time?
Face masks depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin displayed at a souvenir shop in St. Petersburg, Russia. Prigozhin reportedly died in a plane crash on Aug. 23.
(AP Photo, File)
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, reportedly died when a private jet he was said to be on crashed on Aug. 23, 2023, killing all 10 people on board.
Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, photographed on June 24, 2023, in Russia.
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The lesson in the presumed death of the mercenary leader two months after his mutiny against Putin: Don’t make yourself an enemy of Russia’s leader.
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Does New Zealand have more to lose than gain by joining ‘pillar two’ of the AUKUS security pact? The next government will have to decide, with serious implications for the country’s foreign policy.
China’s President Xi Jinping at the 2018 Business Forum meeting during the 10th BRICS summit in South Africa.
Gianluigi Guercia/ AFP
The African continent is an obvious contender for courting by major powers.
BRICS foreign ministers meet in Cape Town, South Africa, in June 2023.
Jaco Marais/Die Burger/Gallo Images via Getty Images
BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – compose 41% of the world population and almost a third of global GDP.
A Russian peacekeeper guards the Lachin corridor.
TOFIK BABAYEV/AFP via Getty Images
The 120,000 residents of the disputed region are being deprived of food and medicines after a crucial link to Armenia was cut off by Azerbaijan.
A Ukrainian flag is displayed in front of a destroyed house in eastern Ukraine in October 2022.
Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images
An analysis of tweets posted by the Ukrainian national government and the Kyiv city government in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shows a national resilience.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, hands out medals to servicemen at a hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region, August 2023.
EPA-EFE/Office of the President of Ukraine
A selection of the best of our coverage of the conflict from the past fortnight.
Kurds and their sujpports demonstrate in Lausanne to protest the 100th anniversary of a treaty which denied them a homeland.
EPA-EFE/Jean-Christophe Bott
While analysts fret over what Iran and Russia are up to in Syria, Kurdish aspirations continue to be overlooked.
Slow but steady: Volodymyr Zelensky receives a briefing on the counter-offensive from officers in Zaporizhzhia.
The Presidential Office of Ukraine via/dpa/Alamy Live News
Updates from various frontline sectors suggest progress for Ukraine’s counter-offensive. But it’s slow progress.
A family member says her last goodbyes to 22-year-old Ukrainian soldier Oleksander Mykhailenko.
Bram Janssen/AP
A new history examines the failure of the Russian polity and Russian society to wean themselves off their colonialist frame of mind.
Demonstrators attend a pro-Ukraine rally in Taiwan in February 2023.
Walid Berrazeg/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Foreign policy experts are divided on whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes it more or less likely that China will launch a similar attack on Taiwan. Here are the arguments on both sides.
Mariusz Burcz/Alamy Stock Photo
Drones are both a destructive battlefield weapon and deliver a psychological boost when used on Russian cities.
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The Security Intelligence Service needs public support and trust to do its work well. Adding a degree of transparency to it’s annual threat assessment should help.
eamesBot/Shutterstock
Some western companies have continued operating in Russia since it invaded Ukraine, while others have left the country altogether.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will host the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.
Government Communication and Information System
It is not mere expansion, but the character of the expansion which will guide the five Brics countries on whether they admit new members.
Russian president Vladimir Putin visits the Kerch bridge linking Russian-occupied Crimea with the Russian mainland, after an attack damaged it.
AP/Alamy
About 100,000 Crimean Tatars died as part of a massive deportation of these people by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin towards the end of the second world war.
On the attack: a Ukrainian tank crew on the front line near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine.
LE PICTORIUM/Alamy Stock Photo
Ukraine’s summer push is now showing signs of real progress, but don’t expect an end to the war anytime soon.
Niger’s Gen Abdourahamane Tchiani declares himself head of state on 28 July 2023.
ORTN-Télé Sahel/AFP via Getty Images
Ethnic politics, the presence of foreign troops and the weaknesses of past responses to coups encouraged Niger’s recent military takeover.