Finnish military personnel raise their country’s flag at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A historian looks at the steps leading up to Finland joining the Western strategic alliance – and what that means for small nations elsewhere.
Welcome to the club: Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg, right, with Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto.
AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert
Finland has gone from neutral to Nato member in 30 years and Sweden could be set to follow.
Maxim Shipenkov/EPA/AAP
More than 5,000 documents were leaked by an anonymous whistleblower.
An unmanned U.S. Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan, on a moon-lit night several years ago. Drone strikes are now a major feature of modern warfare, including in Ukraine and Syria.
(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
As Russia’s war in Ukraine illustrates, the use of lethal automated weapons, or LAWS, can always be justified. Their ability to desensitize their users from the act of killing, however, shouldn’t be.
REUTERS/Toby Melville
A selection of our coverage of the conflict over the past fortnight.
EPA-EFE/Hollie Adams/pool
Friendly fire incidents have always been a feature of war, but the array of different countries’ equipment makes it very challenging for Ukrainian troops in the field.
EPA-EFE/Gavril GrigorovSputnik/Kremlin pool
What started as a short military operation will now take years and years. Changing its tune is all in a day’s work for the Kremlin.
Russian rhetoric about Ukraine echoes language used in the second world war by the Soviets seeking to stem independence movements. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin insisted on Ukraine getting a separate vote to the USSR at the United Nations, even though it wasn’t an independent state.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Putin’s rhetoric over Ukraine has roots in the end of the second world war, attitudes explained by Paul Winterton, a British journalist at the time.
Crimea: as pro-Moscow citizens celebrate nine years of Russian occupation, talk of Kyiv’s plans to retake the peninsula grows louder.
EPA-EFE/stringer
Russia is reportedly preparing massive defences to prevent a lightning offensive to retake the occupied peninsula.
The Moscow meeting between presidents Xi and Putin seems to signal a deepening of their alliance.
Sipa/Alamy
History shows us why China and Russia want to form a strong alliance.
Opening the doors to Russia and China’s perception.
Getty Images
The setting was grand, so too was the plan. But behind the peace plan put forward by China and welcomed by Russia, is the question, what do both nations seek?
EPA-EFE/Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin pool
The International Criminal Court sets a high bar for prosecuting heads of state for crimes committed while they are in power.
Pavel Byrkin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool/AP/AAP
The recent Iran-Saudi Arabia diplomatic truce brokered by Beijing heightens expectations of Xi’s visit. But the Ukraine case is vastly different.
Mikhail Metzel/Kremlin pool/EPA-EFE
Maria Lvova-Belova, wanted by the ICC along with Vladimir Putin, is one of a handful of women to be prosecuted in international criminal law.
An L3 Harris Arabian Fox MAST-13 unmanned surface vessel approaches a ‘target’ during exercises in the Arabian Gulf, March 2023.
Operation 2023 / Alamy Stock Photo
A recent attack by Ukrainian ‘robot ships’ in Crimea shows how effective these unmanned surface vessels can be. Now maritime law needs to keep up with technological developments.
Crime scene? Vladimir Putin visits Mariupol, which Russia captured in May 2022 after the deaths of thousands, including many civilians.
EPA-EFE/Russian presidential press service
The list of crimes for which Putin is considered complicit is long. The question is whether he can be held accountable.
A woman wrapped in the Ukrainian flag shouts through a megaphone during a demonstration in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in March 2022.
(AP Photo/Phil Nijhuis)
The International Criminal Court’s charges against Vladimir Putin are likely to have a minimal impact on him, but it does signal that wartime atrocities have consequences — and the world is watching.
A Reaper drone like the one downed over the Black Sea costs about US$56 million, according to the Pentagon.
EPA-EFE/Airman 1st Class William Rio Rosado
A selection of our coverage of the conflict over the past fortnight.
Thousands of teddy bears with candles on display at a protest in Brussels in February 2023 represented abducted Ukrainian children.
Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga MAG/AFP via Getty Images
The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants for Russians allegedly responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.
A U.S. surveillance drone flies over the USS Coronado in the Pacific Ocean during an April 2021 drill.
U.S. Navy/Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shannon Renfroe
International law states that states have to operate ‘due regard’ for the right of nations to fly drones above international waters. Washington claims Russia violated this standard in incident.