Friday 6 February 2026 Sloviansk has spent much of this war living with an uncomfortable paradox: close enough to the fighting to hear it, far enough from the trench line to keep schools, markets and municipal services functioning in a kind of strained normality. That paradox is narrowing. The latest operational reporting and local incident reports describe a city whose “rear area” identity is thinning into something more like a forward logistics hub, repeatedly tested by aer

Thursday 5 February 2026 Winter has always been an adversary in Ukraine. Long before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the country’s engineers planned for frost, snow load, ice accretion on power lines and the slow contraction of metal and concrete under sustained cold. What they did not plan for was a winter in which the weather itself would be weaponised: one in which sub-zero temperatures amplify the destructive effect of missiles, drones and artillery, and in which infrastruc

Thursday 5 February 2026 Russia’s shadow mail system is one of the least visible yet most consequential adaptations to the sanctions regime imposed since 2022. While attention has focused on oil tankers without flags, payment chains routed through third countries and the rebranding of dual-use components, the quiet reconstruction of postal and courier logistics has played a critical enabling role. Sanctions do not merely restrict goods and money; they disrupt the mundane conn

Thursday 5 February 2026 The decision by the United States Department of the Treasury to investigate whether the Swiss National Bank has engaged in currency manipulation reopens an old and uneasy debate about the boundary between legitimate monetary policy and covert economic statecraft. Switzerland, long accustomed to presenting herself as a neutral custodian of financial stability, now finds that neutrality questioned not in the realm of diplomacy or security, but in the fo

Thursday 5 February 2026 Germany’s recurring proposal for a ‘two-speed Europe’ has returned to the centre of continental debate at a moment of acute geopolitical stress. War on Europe’s eastern flank, economic divergence within the eurozone, demographic imbalance, and the persistent challenge of enlargement have combined to revive an idea that has never quite disappeared from Berlin’s strategic imagination. The proposal is simple in outline but complex in consequence: a core

Thursday 5 February 2026 The question of who might succeed Vladimir Putin as President of Russia is not merely an academic exercise for foreign policy specialists. It is central to understanding how the Kremlin may evolve, how the war against Ukraine could unfold in future years and how the post-Putin order might be consolidated internally within the Russian Federation. For more than a quarter of a century Putin has shaped the Russian state around his own personality, instinc