Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
The ‘Vulkan files’ reveal Putin’s cyberwarfare tactics
The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.
Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations. Its weapons are more advanced than those of Peter the Great’s era: not pikes and halberds, but hacking and disinformation tools.
Luke Harding, Stiliyana Simeonova, Manisha Ganguly and Dan Sabbagh report that the software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. Thousands of pages of secret documents reveal how Vulkan’s engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, train operatives before attacks on national infrastructure, spread disinformation and control sections of the internet.
Putin is preparing Russia for a ‘forever war’ with the west
One evening in late December, as Muscovites strolled along their city’s brightly lit streets in anticipation of end-of-year celebrations, a group of old friends gathered for dinner at the flat of a senior state official.
Some of the guests present, which included members of Russia’s cultural and political elite, toasted a new year in which they expressed hope for peace and a return to normality. As the night went on, a man who needed little introduction stood up for a toast, holding his glass.
“I am guessing you are expecting me to say something,” said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s longtime spokesperson, according to one of the two people who separately recounted the evening to the Guardian on condition of anonymity.
“Things will get much harder. This will take a very, very long time,” Peskov continued. Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth wrote about Putin’s government digging in for a long conflict.
US journalist arrested in Russia
Russia has arrested the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, prompting condemnation from Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, as Moscow was accused of engaging in “hostage taking” by arresting a high-profile journalist who could be used as leverage in a potential prisoner swap.
The arrest amounted to “hostage-taking as a tool of statecraft”, Russia analyst Mark Galeotti wrote on Twitter. “It’s clear that they’ve taken a hostage,” agreed Ivan Pavlov, Russia’s leading defence lawyer in espionage cases, who now lives outside the country. “They’ve chosen a well-known journalist from an authoritative media outlet. The idea is to have an ace up their sleeve for negotiations.” Shaun Walker reported this story.
Belarus agrees to store Russian tactical nuclear weapons
After Vladimir Putin’s announcement this week that Moscow has made a deal to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, Ukraine accused Russia of destabilising Belarus and making its smaller neighbour “a nuclear hostage”.
Like a lot of what Vladimir Putin says about nuclear weapons, his suggestion that Russia would start storing its bombs in Belarus may add up to less than it appears, Julian Borger wrote this week. Putin and the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, have been hinting at some kind of nuclear basing arrangement for some time. Over a year ago, the Belarus leader staged a referendum to change the constitution to allow for that.
What Putin is threatening this time is to take another couple of steps along that road, starting the training of Belarus aircrews in early April to pilot aircraft carrying nuclear bombs, and to finish storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons by 1 July. Nuclear experts are sceptical of such ambitious timelines, and point out that Russia has been working on a nuclear-weapon storage facility in Kaliningrad for at least seven years and it is still not clear whether the bombs have actually arrived there.
Finland’s way into Nato cleared as Turkey votes in favour
Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill to allow Finland to join Nato, clearing the way for Helsinki to join the western defence alliance as war rages in Ukraine. The Turkish parliament was the last among the 30 members of the alliance to ratify Finland’s membership, after Hungary’s legislature approved a similar bill this week.
The president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said this month that Finland had secured Turkey’s blessing after moves to support its promised crackdown on groups seen by Ankara as terrorists, and to free up defence exports.
Finland and Sweden asked to join the transatlantic military alliance last year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the process has been held up by Turkey and Hungary. The parliaments of all Nato members must ratify newcomers.
Ukrainian parents are hiding their children in basements
Ukrainian volunteers who have been evacuating civilians from the frontlines of the war with Russia say some parents have been hiding their children in basements to prevent them from being taken.
While parents have given different reasons, most volunteers have attributed the phenomenon to a combination of poverty and the psychological condition of the families, who have been living under bombing for months. Sasha, a volunteer medic in Bakhmut, described how other civilians would notify him of where children were being hidden.
“We knew [the child] was in this place so we went there and she had not been outside since September,” said Sasha, who shared a video of the labyrinthine basement the child was living in. The children’s hands were grey from lack of sunlight, Isobel Koshiw and Oleksiy Savchenko reported.
Timothy Snyder: the leading interpreter of our dark times
Over the past year, Yale historian Timothy Snyder has been one of the most eloquent interpreters of the war in Ukraine. He writes and speaks frequently about the conflict – including, in mid-March, to the UN security council. He has established a project to document the war, and more controversially, has raised more than $1.2m for an anti-drone defence system. A course on Ukrainian history that he taught at Yale last autumn has had hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and he has become one of the most famous western intellectuals within Ukraine itself.
“He used to be a celebrity in historical circles and among intellectuals,” the Ukrainian rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, his friend, said recently, “but now even ordinary people know a lot about him.” Robert P Baird profiled the author.
