Tuesday 17 February 2026 In the fourth winter of full-scale war, when many observers had resigned themselves to a frozen front and grinding attrition, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have demonstrated that even in February’s mud and frost manoeuvre is still possible. Recent gains east of Zaporizhzhia — modest in territorial scale but substantial in operational meaning — reveal a pattern not of sweeping breakthrough but of disciplined tactical opportunism. These actions were concen

Tuesday 17 February 2026 On the night of 15 February 2026 Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities detained Herman Galushchenko, the former Minister of Energy who also served briefly as Minister of Justice, as he attempted to cross the state border by train. Galushchenko was removed from the carriage by detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) acting on instructions from the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The arrest occurred in

Tuesday 17 February 2026 Iraq’s current political instability is not a sudden relapse so much as the familiar rhythm of a political system designed to postpone decisive outcomes. Since 2003 Iraq has been governed through a mixture of electoral competition and elite bargaining, in which the decisive contests happen less at the ballot box than afterwards — in the bargaining rooms where blocs assemble majorities, distribute ministries and decide who may govern and who must wait.

Monday 16 February 2026 Hungary goes to the polls on 12 April 2026 with a question that is, in her own way, also being asked in Washington: does an endorsement by Donald Trump confer power, or does it confer complications? President Trump’s open support for Viktor Orbán is unusually explicit even by the standards of twenty-first century ideological diplomacy. In Budapest this week US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Mr Orbán that the President was ‘deeply committed’ to his

Monday 16 February 2026 In countries whose legal systems evolved over centuries of relatively uninterrupted statehood, the role of the lawyer is often presented in abstract, almost sacerdotal terms. He or she advises upon rights, predicts judicial outcomes, interprets statutes and, ideally, guards the rule of law against executive excess. In Ukraine by contrast the lawyer’s function has developed along a more pragmatic and faintly paradoxical path. Here, amidst war, reform, c

Monday 16 February 2026 There is a persistent misunderstanding in European political life that Russian interference is a matter of crude propaganda aimed at the general public — a spray of falsehoods, a thicket of anonymous accounts, a few angry slogans amplified online. That exists, of course, and it matters. But the more corrosive strand is quieter — targeted influence aimed not at voters directly but at the intermediaries who translate public feeling into policy: parties,