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.
Getty Images
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.
Visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima view a large-scale panoramic photograph of the destruction following the 1945 bombing.
Carl Court/Getty Images
The United States and Russia, the two biggest nuclear powers, have no imminent plans for talks on a nuclear deal. That should change, writes a former US diplomat.
Valery Sharifulin/Kremlin Pool/EPA/AAP
Putin has progressively sickened Russian society, creating a toxic culture that celebrates xenophobia, nativism, and violence.
Three 3D views of Bradysaurus baini specimen (FMNH UC 1533). Scale bar equals 50 cm. Published in Van den Brandt et al. 2023
Credit: Fabio Manucci and Marco Romano
Large pareiasaurs are among the earliest huge plant-eating tetrapods to appear in the history of the development of life on Earth.
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.