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.
Vladimir Putin is trying to repair the damage done by his decision to pull out of the grain deal which had supplied many African countries.
EPA-EFE/Sergei Bobylev/Tass
Vladimir Putin is engaged in a bid to woo support among African leaders, but the summit masks the darker reality of Russian influence-seeking in Africa
Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) shake hands with Chinese Presiden Xi Jinping.
plavi011/Shutterstock
Following deteriorating relations with the West, Russia has shifted focus to Asia, and hold China to help expand its influence.
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The NATO summit in Vilnius has kicked the prospects of Ukraine’s membership into the long grass. Kyiv, however, has other security tricks up its sleeve.
Police officers look at collected fragments of Russian rockets, including cluster rounds, that hit Kharkiv, Ukraine, in December 2022.
(AP Photo/Libkos)
Ideally, Russia would withdraw from Ukraine peacefully. Absent this, cluster munitions represent an effective way for Ukraine to defeat Russia’s invasion.
Many ordinary civilians are helping organise charity and supplies for those people who have crossed into Russia from conflict zones in Ukraine.
Vasilii' Derjugin/Kommersant/Sipa USA
Despite wanting the war to be over, ordinary Russians are rallying to ‘do their bit’ to support their country’s troops at the frontline.
Delegates at the Russia-Africa Economic Forum in Sochi, 2019.
Kremlin Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
African leaders at the second Africa-Russia summit need to speak with one voice.
Seeking divine help? Neither Moscow nor Minsk wants Wagner Group mercenaries stationed in Belarus to get out of control.
EPA-EFE/Alexander Demyanchuk/Sputnik/Kremlin pool
Wagner Group mercenaries in Belarus remain a worrying wild card with possible consequences for the conflict and the wider region.
New best friends? Syrian president Bashar al-Assad greets Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in Damascus, May 2023.
Syrian Presidency via Facebook via AP
Despite initiatives which appear to be normalising Suria’s relations with Arab states, Damascus remains isolated and insecure.
Vasily Deryugin/Kommersant Publishing House/AP
Russia has long been a ‘paramilitarised’ regime, where the state can be challenged and undermined, but is not completely destroyed, by paramilitary or criminal groups.
Fuel tanks burn after a shelling Russian officials said was conducted by Ukrainian forces at a fuel depot in Makiivka in Russian-controlled Donetsk region on July 5, 2023.
(AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov)
Claiming the moral high ground in any war isn’t just about justifying a war effort — it’s also about how a war is fought. Both Ukraine and Russia, sadly, have plenty of civilian blood on their hands.
A Ukrainian soldier prepares to fire a Russian TOS-1A Solntsepyok heavy flame-thrower rocket launcher, captured by a Ukrainian army battalion, towards Russian positions on the frontline near Kreminna, Luhansk region, in July 2023.
(AP Photo/Libkos)
The slow pace of the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia doesn’t suggest military success for Ukraine is impossible.
Traffic was stopped on the bridge, linking Crimea with Russia, on July 17 after a suspected drone attack.
Sipa/Alamy
Crimea has historic symbolism to Russians, so attacks there are considered highly damaging.
Members of the Wagner Group on a tank in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, during the lightning march on Moscow on June 24 2023.
AP/Alamy
Machinations over the march on Moscow are continuing.
Presidents Biden and Zelenskyy take to the stage.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
As Western leaders depart a crucial summit, a NATO scholar parses what went down.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska arrive for a dinner during the Nato summit.
Gints Ivuskans/Shutterstock
An aggressive Soviet strategy in Europe prompted the formation of Nato.
President Joe Biden and other world leaders are together at the 2023 NATO summit in Lithuania on July 11, 2023.
Pauline Peleckis/Getty Images
The NATO summit is a chance for world leaders to hash out difficult topics, like the war in Ukraine – and for the US to show off its leadership, writes a former diplomat.
A flagging alliance? Far from it.
Yves Herman/AFP via Getty Images)
Leaders of the Western military alliance meet in Lithuania with the ongoing war in Ukraine as a backdrop.
A U.S. artillery rocket system fires a missile during annual combat drills between the Philippine Marine Corps and U.S. Marine Corps in the northern Philippines in October 2022 in a region where the United States says it wants to deter China.
(AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Why have U.S. allies refused to grapple with American global violence, despite its horrific consequences and the fact that it clearly affects how the non-western world responds to the country?
What made Yevgeny Prigozhin turn his troops back on the road to Moscow?
Pool Photo/Wagner Group/Alamy Live News
A selection of the best of our coverage of the conflict from the past fortnight.