31.1.23 The train taking me from Poland to Ukraine is full. The passengers are almost all women, and I share a compartment with one who’s mostly silent. In the long hours when the train is at a standstill, passport control and customs come around. Then we trade a few sentences. She’s expecting a child and
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to defeat Russia in 2023, as Ukraine marked the solemn anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and a year that forever altered the country and upturned the global order. “A year ago on this day, from this same place around seven in the morning, I addressed you with a brief
US prosecutors have widened their criminal case against Sam Bankman-Fried, adding new charges and detailing a “series of systems and schemes” through which they allege the FTX founder siphoned off billions of dollars from customer deposits. The updated indictment, released on Thursday morning, added charges including securities fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. That
Humza Yousaf launched his bid to be leader of Scotland’s governing Scottish National party in the town of Clydebank, where his Pakistani late grandfather settled in the early 1960s with hopes of a better life but “barely a word of English”. “I don’t think he could have imagined, in his wildest dreams, that his grandson
Joe Biden has nominated former Mastercard chief executive Ajay Banga as World Bank president, picking a Wall Street veteran raised in India to oversee the institution’s biggest mission change in a generation. Banga’s nomination, a week after sitting president David Malpass abruptly resigned, comes as the US and other shareholder nations seek to expand the
Should books be sanitised? And is it even possible to rewrite sections of text while remaining true to the author’s style and intentions? The debate over whether to retrofit historic literature, especially children’s books, for modern readers is not new — but it was reignited this week with The Daily Telegraph’s revelations that several of
From the moment he stepped off a plane in Moscow this week, Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi lauded China’s friendship with Russia. The bilateral relationship was “mature” and “as stable as Mount Tai”, he told Russian president Vladimir Putin, invoking a sacred mountain in China’s eastern Shandong province. Wang’s visit to Moscow concluded a week
This was the warm-up act. The visit of Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, to Moscow this week was designed to set in train a fresh Chinese approach to bilateral ties almost a year after Russia ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Although the headline quotes from Wang’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin played up promises to
Join our webinar for FT subscribers from 1pm-2pm UK/GMT on Thursday February 23. Put your questions to our panel with Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller, Europe editor Ben Hall, and expert guests Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist with 1mn followers on YouTube, Sergey Aleksashenko, former deputy governor of the central bank of Russia, and Andriy
“It’s my second time in Paris,” says Marina Ovsyannikova, sitting in the dingy offices of Reporters Without Borders, the NGO for press freedom. “Yesterday my daughter said, ‘Last time I threw coins into the fountains, but I didn’t expect to come back this way.’” Ovsyannikova was the editor on Russian state TV who burst into
US futures and European stocks advanced on Thursday after suffering recent declines, as investors took heart from the prospect that stronger economic growth would boost corporate earnings. The region-wide Stoxx 600 added 0.2 per cent, while Germany’s Dax rose 0.5 per cent and France’s CAC 40 climbed 0.4 per cent. Traders’ optimism was boosted by
BAE Systems reported its best year for new orders in 2022 as Britain’s biggest defence contractor benefited from a surge in business from long-term programmes and forecast more to come as the war in Ukraine drags on. The FTSE 100 group, which builds everything from Eurofighter Typhoon jets to nuclear submarines and combat vehicles, said
The EU and its allies are investigating a surge in exports to economies in Russia’s vicinity as they seek to prevent companies from evading western sanctions imposed on Moscow. David O’Sullivan, the EU’s newly appointed sanctions envoy, told the Financial Times that big increases in trade with countries in Russia’s neighbourhood raised questions as to
Shares in defence companies have surged in recent months, eclipsing gains for wider stock markets, as investors bet on the promises of increased military spending by western governments to help Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. An MSCI global benchmark for the sector is up almost 30 per cent in dollar terms since the start of
At about 1am on February 24 last year, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, received a troubling phone call. After spending months building up a more than 100,000-strong invasion force on the border with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had given the go-ahead to invade. The decision caught Lavrov completely by surprise. Just days earlier, the Russian president
What is worse than house prices crashing 20 per cent? How about them not crashing 20 per cent? With higher borrowing costs and inflation — and decades of tighter mortgage lending — the UK property market faces the prospect not of falling, but of freezing stiff. And that might be the “worst of all worlds”,
Some of you may be aware that this week marks the beginning of Lent, the festival that many Christians celebrate — or suffer through — in the run-up to Easter. It commemorates the 40 days and nights Jesus spent fasting and being tempted by the devil in the desert. Having been brought up by a
A sanctions-hit Russian warlord who has been accused of human rights abuses around the world was able to pass UK anti-money laundering checks by submitting a utility bill in the name of his 81-year-old mother. Leaked emails seen by the Financial Times show that London-based law firm Discreet Law in 2021 requested identification documents from
The UK’s crisis-hit public services will not recover before the next election and may require significant injections of cash to prevent further decline, according to a sobering annual review by the Institute for Government, a non-partisan think-tank. After almost 13 years of austerity and grave damage to the public sector’s capacity as a result of
An off-duty police officer was shot in Northern Ireland on Wednesday night in what the region’s politicians condemned as a “shameful” attack committed by “terrorists”. “One man, a serving police officer, has been taken to hospital for treatment after being injured in a shooting incident at a sports complex just before 8pm this evening,” the
An off-duty police officer was shot in Northern Ireland on Wednesday night in what politicians condemned as a “shameful” attack committed by “terrorists” and a chilling reminder of the region’s past violence. The attack took place as London and Brussels seek to clinch a deal on Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland that some activists