Indholdsfortegnelse for 26 August 2022 i Guardian Weekly

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. Then, in Spotlight, Richard Partington and…

Each new claim this week over the attack that killed Darya Dugina seem ed to raise more questions than it answer ed. Dugina, daughter of the far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed in Moscow last Saturday when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving. On Monday, Russia’s FSB security service claimed to have cracked the case, publishing information and a video it said showed a Ukrainian woman from the Azov regiment was responsible for the murder According to the FSB, the assassin managed to enter Russia with her 12-year-old daughter in tow, move around undetected, plant and detonate a professional explosive device, and leave the country. Supposedly, she managed to do all this without being spotted by Russia’s security services until after she had fled, presumably…

Like his cappuccinos, Taniel Vaaderpass, 33, isn’t bitter. His usually profitable company, OA Coffee, one of Estonia’s biggest bean roasting companies, may have posted a loss for the first time last year, and is set to do so again this year, but he remains sanguine as he sits on the terrace of the cafe he also owns on a cobbled street in old town Tallinn, the country’s capital. The central causes of his misfortune are a 240% increase in the price of unroasted coffee beans and a 20% surge in the cost of the gas he uses to roast them. This is the reality of living in Europe’s inflation hotspot. Estonia has an annual inflation rate of 23.2% – the highest in the eurozone, outpacing the average of 8.9%. Vaaderpass…

Twigs clawed at the truck’s wing mirrors as the activists raced through the backlands of the Amazon on a mission that their fallen comrade, Bruno Pereira, had been planning until the day of his murder. “When you lose someone who has an ideal, a cause, it only strengthens that struggle,” said Carlos Travassos, the Indigenous specialist piloting one of five pickup trucks in a convoy sweeping eastwards under the cover of night. Bringing up the rear was a police vehicle carrying commandos whose job was to ensure the men reached their destination alive. Travassos was a friend and colleague of Pereira, the celebrated Brazilian indigenista killed in the Javari Valley with the British journalist Dom Phillips while trying to highlight the threats facing Brazil’s Indigenous peoples. Before the men were…

Look out at the forest of Waita kere and you will see the skeleton of Aunt Agatha above the treeline. The tree – who gained her nickname from generations of schoolchildren – was alive and topped with a proud plume of foliage just a few years ago. Now the trunk stands white as an exposed bone, huge ribbons of bark sloughed off on the ground like recently shed skin. Auckland council’s senior kauri dieback ranger Stuart Leighton walks down an empty track toward her, stepping on to the large, freshly completed wooden deck. It’s kind of unusual, he says, to build a viewing platform for a dead tree. “We wanted to make a point: this isn’t some made-up thing, or something that’s not serious or something on a tiny little…

She knew the price of defying Donald Trump but did it anyway. Liz Cheney, crushed in a primary election in Wyoming, was anointed by supporters and commentators as leader of the Republican resistance to the former US president. But that invited a question: what resistance? Admirers of the three-term congresswoman who lost her House seat to a Trump-backed challenger warn that she could find herself a general without an army. In her concession speech in Jackson, Wyoming, last Tuesday, where she lost to the conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman by 36 points, Cheney pointed out that if she had been willing to parrot Trump’s election lies, she would have remained in Congress. Instead she voted to impeach him and, as vice-chair of the January 6 committee, eviscerated him on primetime TV.…

Our world is on course for a climate cataclysm. Or is it? Not long ago, the global heating battle lines were clear : you either believed it was happening, and that it resulted from the colossal volumes of carbon spewed out by human activities, or you didn’t. As the year on year breakdown of our once stable climate has become more apparent, however, denial has become increasingly irrelevant, and new battle lines are being drawn. While widespread blistering heat, drought and wildfires have kept climate change in the public eye, they have also heightened tensions between those I call climate appeasers, who seek to minimise how bad climate breakdown will be, and others, disparagingly branded doomers (or doomists), who are concerned that it may be catastrophic, perhaps posing an existential…

I was married to a wonderful man for 30 years. We had a great relationship, and shared many interests and a sense of humour. I had been sterilised before we met, so he understood we would never have children In the last six years of our marriage we were no longer having sex, but he assured me it really wasn’t a problem. However, an opportunity arose with a woman he met through work, and they ended up having sex. She became pregnant. He felt he had to do the honourable thing, and left me to live with her and the baby. They had two children. Before long he realised she was mentally unstable, so he moved out. I met a man 16 years younger than me and we have been…

1 RUSSIA/UKRAINE Kyiv braces for attacks after Moscow car bomb killing Ukraine was braced for an intensification of Russian missile attacks to coincide with its independence day this week, in the aftermath of the car bomb killing of the daughter of an ultranationalist Russian ideologue. Ukraine’s military warned that Russia had put five cruise missile-bearing warships and submarines out in the Black Sea and that Moscow was positioning air defence systems in Belarus. Large gatherings were banned in Kyiv for several days this week. Tensions between the two warring countries were at risk of heightening further after the killing of Darya Dugina, daughter of the Russian political commentator Alexander Dugin, on the outskirts of Moscow last Saturday. On Monday, Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s intelligence services of carrying out…

CONSERVATIVES Senior figures warn of dire election losses under Truss Senior Tories have warned that their party will suffer dire electoral consequences under a Liz Truss premiership that fails to address the cost of living crisis, as Labour enjoys a poll bounce suggesting Keir Starmer could be on course for No 10. Amid signs of mounting panic among high-ranking Conservatives about Truss’s economic policies, several former cabinet ministers said the party would suffer devastating losses unless Truss changed tack if she enter ed No 10. After Michael Gove described Truss’s plan to focus on cutting taxes as a “holiday from reality” and announced he was supporting Rishi Sunak, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer gave Labour and its leader a double boost, days after he backed a complete freeze…

There is still widespread disagreement in the west on Vladimir Putin’s motives, six months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is of more than academic interest. If we do not agree why Putin decided to invade Ukraine and what he wants to achieve, we cannot define what would constitute victory or defeat for either of the warring sides and the contours of a possible endgame. At some point, like all wars, the present conflict will end. Geography condemns Ukraine and Russia to live beside each other. They will have to find a modus vivendi. That also applies to Europe and Russia, although it may take decades before the damage is repaired. Why did Putin stake so much on a high-risk enterprise that will at best bring him a tenuous grip…

Rishi Sunak’s supporters are understandably glum, but one thing alone means they have not totally given up hope of defeating Liz Truss in the race to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative party leader and prime minister. “We’re crossing our fingers for a game changing gaffe,” says one Tory MP who is supporting Sunak after initially backing another candidate. With the result of the ballot of Tory members to be announced on 6 September, John Curtice, the polling expert from Strathclyde University, put Sunak’s chances of victory at just 5%, saying Truss was almost sure to win unless she “fouls up in some spectacular fashion” in the final stages of the contest. Many Conservative members have already cast their votes, which cannot be changed before the 2 September deadline. However, that…

If any one man is to blame for gleeful Iranian crowing over the attack on Salman Rushdie, it is the country’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The ayatollah’s bigoted, blinkered outlook has been poisoning the well of Iranian politics and society since he first took power in 1989. Kayhan, a newspaper known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece, praised Rushdie’s assailant, saying “his hands should be showered with kisses”. A jubilant headline declared: “Devil’s neck under the sword”. While Iran denies responsibility for the attack, Khamenei has repeatedly endorsed the late Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering Rushdie’s murder. Khamenei’s harshly anti-western stance, rooted in questionable theology, paranoia and profound personal ignorance of the world, is Tehran’s dominant political brand. No matter, apparently, that it impoverishes and isolates Iranians while endangering their neighbours. After last…

“If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny. That was the tenor of the coverage following the attack on Salman Rushdie. So is it also our take when a comedian uses “extreme racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny” onstage? That’s the question surrounding the cancellation earlier this month of Jerry Sadowitz’s show on the Edinburgh fringe, and – spoiler alert – I, a mere comedy critic, am not certain of the answer. What I do know is that this marks a watershed moment. Many of the earlier cancel culture v comedy furores have involved powerful acts (your Dave Chappelles, Ricky Gervaises and Jimmy Carrs) not being cancelled at all. I’m being silenced, they yell, halfway through their Netflix specials. It’s a different story this time. Here’s a show that…

Coldplay Wembley Stadium, London “You’re never quite sure when you go home how people are going to receive you,” says Chris Martin from Wembley’s stage. It’s the kind of thing hugely successful rock stars say to get a cheer from a home town crowd, but perhaps there is a hint of disquiet in Coldplay’s world. A band that commercially could do no wrong for decades, their sales have slumped. But as any heritage rock act will tell you, shifting gig tickets and selling new albums are entirely different businesses these days. And live they seem utterly assure d. Moreover, they’re inventive in their approach. Handing out LED-equipped wristbands turns the crowd into an immense, twinkling light show and making the audience part of the performance in the process ; the…

How do I keep my food fresher for longer? Helen, Burford, England, UK “You’ve got to start at the very beginning, as they say in The Sound of Music,” says Debora Robertson, author of Notes from a Small Kitchen Island. And that means your shopping list, Helen. “A lot of our problem is buying too much in one go – you set yourself up to fail.” A meal plan might help as well, but you don’t need to be too rigid: “Just jot down a few ideas of what you might cook throughout the week, and be realistic about how much you’re going to need.” Another thing to bear in mind is your fridge and its environment. “I have an independent thermometer, because often fridges aren’t as cold as you…

Cotswolds, England I carry such tension about this morning. Notwithstanding the parched ground, there is enough to eat and the cattle aren’t very motivated to move. They’ve obliged so far, passing through a sequence of fields until they arrived in this meadow about five days ago, but now I am going to require them to come into the handling area. The trailer will be here at 7.30am; I am entirely dependent on their co operation. A long, low whistle and they raise their heads; another and they come. As they file in, I quietly close the gate. Sending steers – young male cattle raised for meat – is inescapably at the core of what we do, but never gets any easier. Following the BSE crisis, there was a ban on…

IT WAS EARLY IN THE EVENING OF 21 FEBRUARY that it became impossible to ignore that Vladimir Putin was planning something truly terrible for Ukraine. Up to that moment, six months ago, many voices were urging calm in the face of increasingly insistent American and British warnings of a full-scale invasion. The French and German governments, Russian officials and even Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested Putin’s troop buildup was a bluff Then Putin appeared on television, chairing a meeting of his security council in the Kremlin. Ordering his courtiers, one by one, to the microphone, Putin played at seeking their counsel, humiliating the few who hesitated to give the answers he wanted. Ostensibly, the issue under discussion was whether Russia should recognise the “independence” of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk…

Six months after Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine, the extent of the damage to the European economy is becoming clear. The red lights of recession are flashing. The eurozone’s big four economies – Germany, France, Italy and Spain – have all had their growth forecasts for 2023 downgraded by the International Monetary Fund, as a combination of the war and higher interest rates put a brake on activity. In the UK, inflation is above 10% for the first time in 40 years as households struggle with rising energy bills. The Bank of England forecasts inflation will peak above 13% in autumn, while the economy will fall into a lengthy recession. While Britain is contending with additional pressures from Brexit, the impact of soaring energy prices, supply chain disruption,…

On his tour of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last week, Li Keqiang, the premier, tried to send some positive energy at a time when many citizens have been complaining of hardship. “China’s opening will continue. The Yellow river and the Yangtze river will not flow backward,” Li said, while visiting Yantian Port, a gateway to Europe and North America, two of China’s biggest markets. Covid rules shut the port last year, delaying deliveries over Christmas. This spring, similar restrictions forced vessels to queue to enter. Since the start of this year, China’s insistence on a zero-Covid policy has caused inconvenience and uncertainty for its people and the struggling economy, prompting grave concerns inside the country about what comes next. “The property sector is ailing, investments are all falling,…

It’s just after sunrise near Jokk mokk, a small town north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, and Gun Aira, a reindeer herder, and her family are gathering the animals for the long trip to the mountains. Following the reindeer’s spring migration through hundreds of kilometres of snow-covered forests, to their calving area close to the Norwegian border, is a centuries-old tradition. But today, the reindeer, capable of one of the longest land migrations on Earth, will travel the 250 km to their calving grounds by road, in the back of a big lorry. Aira, who recalls skiing alongside the reindeer in her youth, says moving them by foot is now impossible, due to a habitat diminished by development. “A lot has changed,” says Aira, from the Sirges Sami community,…

Could a customised supplement plan created specifically for you be the answer to refreshing sleep, easy weight loss and a sunny state of mind? These are just some of the promises offered by the world’s personalised vitamin providers as I flick through their various questionnaires, each hinting at the tantalising possibility of looking healthier, happier and younger, all for the price of a subscription. I settle on one provider, Nourished, which offers a blend of tailored vitamins and 3D printing for a monthly fee of £35.99 ($43.50). Rather than popping a series of pills, it promises to combine all the nutrients you need – based on your answers to questions that range from your exercise regime to how regularly you travel internationally – into a single layered gummy. As a…

A GREAT UPHEAVAL IS COMING. Climate-driven movement of people is adding to a massive migration already under way to the world’s cities. The number of migrants has doubled globally over the past decade, and the issue of what to do about rapidly increasing populations of displaced people will only become greater and more urgent. To survive climate breakdown will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken. The world already sees twice as many days where temperatures exceed 50 C than 30 years ago – this level of heat is deadly for humans, and also hugely problematic for buildings, roads and power stations. It makes an area unliveable. This explosive planetary drama demands a dynamic human response. We need to help people to move…

The inside of Scott Morrison’s head is a peculiar place. In a press conference last week, Australia’s former prime minister defended his extraordinary decision to secretly take on five portfolios in addition to his own for much of his prime ministership. On Planet Morrison, these were the actions of a hero – a man who took his responsibilities so seriously that he was prepared to take on the burden of other portfolios just in case he was needed. Indeed, this is what the public expected of him, he claimed. The public, the media and the opposition held him responsible for “every single thing that was going on, every drop of rain, every strain of the virus, everything that occurred over that period of time”. “At that time, people expected me…

In Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 movie Arrival the US army asks an expert in linguistics to decipher the complex language of the seven-limbed aliens who have landed on Earth. It’s a memorable and moving attempt to portray the immense challenges involved in bridging the gulf of mutual incomprehension between two completely different species. I thought of Arrival while reading Paco Calvo’s remarkable book, the result of “two decades of passionate exploration into a rich and alternate world that exists alongside our own” – the world of plants. The subject of his exploration is startlingly radical: the question of whether plants can be regarded as possessing intelligence. Calvo is a professor of the philosophy of science in the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Murcia, Spain. Although he presents detailed scientific…

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