The troop buildups, the belligerent speeches, the excruciatingly staged Kremlin policy meetings … for months, the signs had been there in plain sight. Nonetheless, the order in the early hours of 24 February from Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine came as a lightning bolt, one that would change Europe for years to come.
Six months on, the swift victory Putin seems to have expected from his “special military operation” is a distant memory, the war mired in seemingly intractable deadlock. Eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker reflects on six months of hell for Ukrainians and where the conflict goes from here, while international affairs commentator Philip Short asks whether the world is any closer to understanding Putin’s motives for the invasion in the first place.
On a grim anniversary for Ukraine, Anatoli Stepanov’s haunting image of a mud-splattered tank driver on the Donbas frontline perfectly encapsulates the otherworldly horror of a country turned upside down by six months of armed resistance.
Then, in Spotlight, Richard Partington and Larry Elliott weigh up the economic fallout facing the eurozone’s major states as a painful and potentially icy winter looms.
Krishna Léger is a Michelin-recognised French chef – no great surprise there you might think, until you learn that his culinary journey to the top took him via gang crime, drug smuggling and some of France’s most notorious prisons. Laura Spinney hears the remarkable life story of a man reformed by a passion for cooking.
The Covid lockdown years were challenging ones for the Icelandic singer Björk. In our Culture section, she tells Chal Ravens about returning to Reykjavík and her new album that confronts themes of grief and renewal.
