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.
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.
Ukrainian refugees settle into their hosted accommodation in Oxfordshire with a cup of tea.
Steve Parsons/PA images
People who hosted Ukrainian refugees were motivated by emotional and cultural factors, not financial incentives.
Mariusz Burcz/Alamy Stock Photo
Drones are both a destructive battlefield weapon and deliver a psychological boost when used on Russian cities.
The town of Sviatohirsk in Ukraine’s Donbas Region. Just a few months ago, it was occupied by Russian forces.
Sipa/Alamy
Russian and Ukrainian communists who in 1919 mapped out the border between Ukraine and Russia took as their starting point the former Russian empire’s provincial boundaries.
Ukraine’s diplomatic efforts have included specific representation to the Arab world.
Ukraine Presidents Office/Alamy Stock Photo
Ukraine was able to advance its plan for peace with an audience including China and other Brics nations.
A Ukrainian soldier on territory recaptured from Russia in July 2023.
EPA-EFE/Oleg Petrasyuk
A selection of the best of our coverage of the conflict from the past fortnight.
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.
The UN secretary general has recently released a New Agenda for Peace, recommending a special session on disarmament.
lev radin/Shutterstock
A lack of political will has impeded any progress on disarmament for nearly four decades.
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.