Indholdsfortegnelse for 30 June 2023 i Guardian Weekly

PLUS Andrew Roth The uneasiest of truces in Moscow Page 14 → View from Kyiv Highs and lows for war-weary Ukrainians Page 15 → Yevgeny Prigozhin let rip on his favourite subject: the incompetence and vanity of Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. Seated in front of a Wagner flag and sipping from a mug of tea last Thursday, he called his bitter enemy a scumbag, a craven PR man and oligarch who had never held a weapon in his life. The defence ministry had duped Vladimir Putin into last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin added. The decision had nothing to do with “denazification” or “demilitarisation”, or an imminent Nato attack on Russia – the official reasons for the war; it was all about Shoigu’s wish for a second “hero…

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted insurrection against Vladimir Putin made for popcorn-gobbling viewing as Russia’s generous collection of war criminals challenged one another. But we are not passive observers of this show: each of one of us influences its ultimate outcome. Putin appears weaker than ever – and for a ruler who relies on projecting strength, that’s a bad look. To further dull his fading aura of invincibility, and to ultimately lead to a reversal of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we need to undermine the pillars his strongman myth is based on: colonial conquest, unregulated capitalism and climate abuse. As questions are raised about his ability to rule, Putin will claim that despite the efforts of the nefarious “collective west”, the Russian economy can stabilise because the world needs its fossil fuels;…

Security guards at a Del Monte pineapple farm in Kenya that supplies most British supermarkets have been accused of brutally assaulting and killing people suspected of trespassing on its land. An investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has uncovered claims from villagers of violence by guards at the plantation in the past four years. Guards on the farm are typically armed with wooden clubs called rungus. Their use in security is legal and common in Kenya because of the risk of violent theft, including from young men who regularly go in organised groups to steal pineapples, but the claims suggest the guards’ use of violence has been excessive. The scale of theft has resulted in clashes with guards, who have themselves been injured. The claims…

The hurricane season is under way in the Caribbean, but the tropical storms that batter much of the region miss the island of Trinidad, which is protected by its northern mountain range. It is one of the reasons that the grateful inhabitants – who love their food, their vibrant carnival and beautiful beaches – like to say “God is a Trini”. The birthplace of calypso, steel pan and soca music – a fusion of the African and Indian culture of these descendants of enslaved people and indentured labourers respectively – the tiny nation’s musical influence is global. But as of last month, the murder toll across the twin island state of Trinidad and Tobago was on track to overtake last year’s all-time high. As rates rise, more women are being…

Narendra Modi arrived in Washington DC last Wednesday – the capital of a country he was once prohibited from visiting for almost 10 years – and joined the ranks of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Volodymyr Zelenskiy as one of the few leaders to address a joint session of Congress more than once. Ahead of the visit US officials had been rapturous on US-India relations, praising the “significant defence partnership” and describing it as “a unique connection between the world’s oldest and largest democracies”. Before his departure from India, Modi said: “This special invitation is a reflection of the vigour and vitality of the partnership between our democracies.” Now the world’s most populous country and the world’s fifth largest economy, India’s growing prominence, both economically and geopolitically, makes it a…

Blueberry bubblegum. Lemon pie. Caramel cheesecake. Sickly-sweet concoctions that are just a fraction of the dessert-flavoured nicotine vapes available to buy for not much more than a high-end chocolate bar, in bright packaging often adorned with cartoon illustrations designed to appeal to children. It is a huge red flag that something has gone seriously amiss in the rules governing e-cigarette marketing and sales in the UK. What makes the question of how to regulate vaping more complex than cigarettes or alcohol is that, unlike with the latter two substances – where a collective fall in consumption would be an unambiguously good thing for the nation’s health – public health experts want to encourage smokers to switch from cigarettes to vapes while keeping non-smokers, particularly children and young people, well away…

Richard Ford’s final Frank Bascombe book completes a social history of the boomer generation from midlife to end times In 1986, Richard Ford took an Alice Hoffman novel out into his back yard and shot it. Hoffman had had the temerity to give Ford’s third novel, The Sportswriter, a middling review in the New York Times. Ford at the time believed The Sportswriter to be his masterpiece. It tells the story of Frank Bascombe, once an author of short stories, now, in his late 30s, a sportswriter living a middle-class life in the ordinary town of Haddam, New Jersey. Frank is, when we first meet him, divorced and mourning the death of his nine-year-old son, Ralph. The action of the novel begins in a cemetery, where Frank and his ex-wife…

I’m crouched in a grassy hollow, chatting to my friend Steve about the ethics of watching a pair of dingy skippers in flagrante, when a visitor arrives out of the blue, distracting us from our moral quandary. Light as blossom, dark as coffee, a minuscule butterfly settles on the strap of Steve’s rucksack, opening dusky brown wings flecked with sky-blue glitter. It is a male small blue, the UK’s tiniest resident butterfly, with a wingspan barely bigger than my thumbnail. Once known as the Bedford blue, its Latin name – Cupido minimus – is surely the most endearing of binomials. When this littlest love closes its wings, it reveals a frosted underside similar to that of a holly blue, with a freckling of black dots almost too minute to discern.…

Across 1 Expense (10) 7 Hair line? (7) 8 Come to fruition (5) 10 Bludgeon (4) 11 Opportunity to do something (8) 13 (Musically) lacking harmony (6) 15 ‘Get Brexit Done’, perhaps (6) 17 Essential – entire (8) 18 Publicise in an exaggerated way (4) 21 Make a great effort (mental or physical) (5) 22 Keep in check (7) 23 Write letters (10) Down 1 Result of adding rennet to milk (5) 2 Expressed (4) 3 What’s left after death? (6) 4 Most of the time (8) 5 Young tree (7) 6 Devote oneself to a particular area (10) 9 Simple and straightforward (2-8) 12 Girl child (8) 14 Busy all the time (2,3,2) 16 Change from the sublime to the ridiculous? (6) 19 Produce (5) 20 Three players (4)…

Though they have avoided open bloodshed, it is hard to imagine Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin will ever be reconciled. The Russian leader has a political motive to deal harshly with his maverick warlord or risk appearing weak, a cardinal sin in Kremlin politics. And the Russian leader has never been known as one to forgive a betrayal. The extraordinary events of last weekend – Prigozhin’s armed mutiny, Putin’s call for “brutal” reprisals, an 11th-hour peace deal – might appear to have resolved themselves. The leader of the Wagner mercenary group halted his mutiny and march on the Russian capital, apparently in exchange for an amnesty and exile in Belarus. On Tuesday, Russian media reported that the FSB had closed its investigation into the events, and that Wagner would hand…

Seven years after the Brexit referendum, the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016, according to a new survey. Both Britons and Europeans are also a lot less likely to think other countries would follow the Brexit example, and Britons are more optimistic about the bloc’s future – to the extent of trusting the European Commission more than their own government. Data from YouGov’s latest Brexit tracker survey found that, excluding those who said they would not vote or did not know, 58.2% of people in Britain would now vote to rejoin. The percentage is only fractionally down on the 60% recorded in February this year – the highest figure since comparable data began in February 2012 – and has…

‘Working during my holidays and weekends became a routine,” said Lee Sang-hyuk as he described the culture of overtime at the large pharmaceutical company he used to work for near Seoul. “I gradually realised that my life and health were deteriorating due to excessive hours. I had no energy, and neglected my personal relationships.” He developed back pain from long hours sitting at his desk, and said he became anxious and lethargic. “During the few times I was able to meet my friends, I couldn’t even enjoy that, as all I could think about was work,” the 35-year-old said. What Lee did next would once have seemed extraordinary for an employee in South Korea’s culture of long working hours: he quit. His story represents a movement taking shape among…

‘Was I worried about her? All the time’ Andrea Bharatt, 20 Andrea’s room in the bright, one-storey house in Arima, Trinidad, is full of her treasures. On one wall, her widowed father, Randolph Bharatt, has hung a large poster that was used at one of the vigils for Andrea and dozens of other missing or murdered young women in Trinidad and Tobago. Andrea was abducted, aged 20, after catching a taxi home from Arima magistrates court where she was a clerk, on 29 January 2021. The driver, Joel Balcon, then 36, had more than 70 outstanding criminal charges against him, from rape to robbery. He had connections to at least one other missing woman, but was out on the streets. Balcon is alleged to have involved two friends in the…

The discovery of wreckage from the Titan submersible last Thursday on the North Atlantic seabed close to the wreck of the Titanic ended a five-day vigil of hope. The chances of rescuing the five occupants of the missing sub always appeared slight, but it was perhaps the unlikeliness of that outcome that increased the appetite to see it realised. In the era of 24-hour news, few events grab the public imagination quite as firmly as a real-time people-in-peril story. And it’s difficult to imagine a more extreme or unpleasant peril than being trapped in the deep sea in a craft the size of a minivan, as the oxygen supply runs out. That was the scenario that the world imagined that the five men – British businessmen Hamish Harding and Shahzada…

HAMID MIR Pakistan’s rulers have a problem with censorship Page 47 → Have you heard about the billionaire and multimillionaires who were trapped – and killed – on a submersible after spending up to $250,000 each to view the wreckage of the Titanic? Of course you have. The story was headline news in anglophone countries last week after the vessel, named the Titan, went missing. Enormous resources were deployed to try to recover the passengers. Every tiny development has been exhaustively covered. Millions of people, myself included, were glued to the live blogs and rolling coverage. And millions of people, myself included, are now newly minted experts on the difference between a submersible and a submarine. It’s completely natural to have been glued to the Titan story because, obviously, it…

She wears a black coat, a black headscarf and black boots in compliance with Iran’s Islamic dress code. But her gaze is direct and on her hands are red boxing gloves. This is the modern Iranian woman on the cover of a new photography book, Breathing Space: a woman ostensibly complying with the rules, yet standing defiant and ready to fight. Edited by the curator Anahita Ghabaian, who founded the Silk Road Gallery, Tehran’s first space dedicated to contemporary photography, Breathing Space showcases the work of 23 female Iranian photographers across three generations, offering a female lens through which to see the country at a time when Iranian women’s fight for their rights has come to the attention of the world. Recent protests have highlighted the depth of repression. When…

Those of us too young to remember the aristocratic Malcolm Macarthur’s criminal spree in 1982 may well have learned about it via contemporary Irish literature. A cultivated socialite whose days were devoted to refined leisure and the life of the mind, at the age of 37, Macarthur found himself in deep financial trouble. Frantic at the prospect of having to work for a living, he planned to carry out an armed robbery. To do this, he would need a car and a gun. In the course of procuring these, he murdered – brutally, senselessly – two young people: a nurse named Bridie Gargan and a farmer named Dónal Dunne. When the gardaí arrested Macarthur at the Dublin home of Ireland’s attorney general, Patrick Connolly, where he was hiding out as…

Across 8 Bearing thanks, King George departed to tour Thailand (8) 9 Be no longer in the lead? (5) 10 Support the other side (4) 11 One day in seven I’ll eradicate ragwort, primarily with this? (10) 12 Determined supporter boring Sylvester Stallone (6) 14 Gary isn’t cast in 1960s’ TV series (8) 16 E-lation? (7) 18 Drunk pinches copper and metal (7) 21 A British party is caught after doing a U-turn, sharp (8) 23 Sturgeon’s playing a bugle (6) 24 Everton gutted – thumps in dodgy penalty (10) 26 Leaders of Newcastle usually taunt Sunderland fans (4) 27 Swimmers swim on vacation, including exercise by river (5) 28 Everybody loves a posh royal, one who’s an old predator? (8) Down 1 Local network installed in loft by the…

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1 UKRAINE/RUSSIA Zelenskiy praises military gains amid Moscow turmoil Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday praised his country’s troops for advancing “in all sectors”, after visiting frontline soldiers amid the turmoil in Russia caused by the Wagner uprising. The Ukrainian president’s upbeat remarks followed the brief rebellion of Vladimir Putin’s mercenary force last weekend, led by its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Russian president made a TV address on Monday in which he said that the enemies of Russia “wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, to kill military personnel and civilians, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would split, choke in bloody civil strife”. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the special services were investigating whether western intelligence services were involved in Prigozhin’s rebellion. On Monday Prigozhin…

POLITICS Government ready to block public sector pay boards The government was prepared to block the pay rises that public sector review bodies recommended, the chief secretary to the Treasury, John Glenn, said in a TV interview, as unions threatened to strike over the issue. The Times reported last weekend that ministers were likely to block some of the recommendations, under which teachers, police officers, prison officers and junior doctors would receive pay rises of 6% or more. That report prompted outrage among trade unions, which said such a move would have “profound consequences for future industrial relations”. Several pay review bodies have submitted their reports to the government, recommending that teachers should get a 6.5% increase for 2023-24, while police officers, prison officers and junior doctors should get 6%…

For nearly 24 hours, millions of Ukrainians believed the war with Russia might be nearing its conclusion, the battered country glimpsing the end of Putin’s regime. Then, when Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his advance, the enthusiasm gave way to disappointment and frustration. “I had positive feelings,” said Serhii from Kyiv. “There was hope at first, there was hope for a coup. Hope that it will all be over. Hope that there was going to be a change of power in Russia and a troop withdrawal from Ukraine. Then, suddenly that was it! End of the movie. Nothing happened … I felt so disappointed.” On Saturday morning, after a night of air-raid alarms sounding over at least five regions, Kyiv woke up to yet another missile barrage unleashed by…

Poorer countries struggling with a growing debt crisis were thrown a lifeline at a global finance summit in Paris last week but the plans still fell short of the debt forgiveness programme that some had hoped for. Progress was made on reforms that would help address the climate emergency, as nearly 40 world leaders and the heads of global institutions met for the summit. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for global taxes on shipping, aviation and potentially on wealth in order to fund climate action. “Help us find all the countries which today have no tax on financial transactions and which today have no tax on plane tickets. Help us to mobilise at the International Maritime Organization [meeting to discuss a shipping tax] in July so that there is…

If the heads of some of Britain’s biggest banks were nervous as they entered Downing Street for a crunch meeting on the mortgage crisis last Friday, they were quickly reassured. Jeremy Hunt hosted six executives and one senior regulator after a week of economic bad news, when inflation remain steady at 8.7%, the Bank of England increased the base rate to 5% and the cost of mortgage deals kept going up. But the chancellor was not there to read the riot act. Instead, he wanted to agree a voluntary “mortgage charter”, under which banks would offer borrowers greater flexibility over repayment terms and repossession proceedings. Banks also agreed not to mark down the credit scores of anyone who takes advantage of such flexibility. “We agreed some very important things for…

‘Want to lose weight? Buy smaller plates.” “Mindfulness at work: a superpower to boost productivity.” “Leaving Facebook can make you happier.” That’s what the headlines and Ted Talks would have you believe. But are any of these psychological tricks – or life hacks, as they are often called – actually true? The truth is, we don’t know; and, in a sense, we can’t ever know, because of limitations inherent in the design of the relevant experiments – in just about all experiments in what we might call “lifestyle science”. That, at least, is the implication of a new study by a pair of Stanford psychologists, Nicholas Coles and Michael Frank. We’ll get to their work shortly, but first I’d like to take you to the German city of Mannheim in…

ON 25 FEBRUARY 2022, I woke up after a turbulent night checking news updates about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Amid the shock and bouts of crying and doom-scrolling, a seemingly trivial yet intimately unsettling thought entered my mind. I realised that after years of investigating national cuisines and identities for a book I was working on, I no longer knew how to think or talk about borsch, a beet soup that Ukraine and Russia claimed as their own. I grew up in Soviet Moscow eating borsch – no “t” at the end, that’s a Yiddish addition – at least twice a week; after we emigrated in 1974, it signified for me the complicated, difficult home we had left. Here in New York, where I live, a big pot made by…

I am not a big fan of Imran Khan. I have long criticised Pakistan’s former prime minister, but now it is becoming difficult to do so. There is a de facto ban on referring to him in the media, meaning we are no longer allowed to mention his name or show his picture. Pakistani TV channels are not allowed to interview him or air his statements. This is the result of a series of directives issued by the media regulator. As prime minister, Khan tried to turn Pakistan from a struggling democracy into an autocracy. His successor, Shehbaz Sharif, appears to be following in his footsteps. Once upon a time I was one of Khan’s favourite journalists (despite the fact that I advised him in 1995 not to go into…

Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions, see: THEGUARDIAN.COM/LETTERS-TERMS Editorial Editor: Graham Snowdon Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK To contact the editor directly: editorial.feedback@theguardian.com Corrections Our policy is to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please write to guardian.readers@theguardian.com or the readers’ editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK Johnson’s lack of regard for those who lost loved ones I know I will not be alone in watching how Conservative MPs respond to the report on Boris Johnson’s misleading of parliament (and the British public) during Covid (UK reports, 23 June). My treasured 30-year-old son…

This year’s Glastonbury festival site seemed to be as awash with wild speculation as ever. Sunday’s headliner Elton John would supposedly be performing with special guest Britney Spears. Others were convinced he would bring on Harry Styles. Most lurid of all, there were those who insisted that the show was going to be enlivened by the appearance of a hologram of the late George Michael. Nevertheless, what was supposed to be the weekend’s biggest surprise turned out to be its worst-kept secret. Stories that the mysterious band appearing on Friday afternoon’s Pyramid stage bill as the Churnups were Blur or Pulp died out: everyone seemed to know it was Foo Fighters, playing more or less the same slot at the festival as they did 25 years ago, on their Glastonbury…

I always forget about sides at a barbecue. What should I make? Sarah, Norwich, England, UK Burgers, hotdogs and fish tend to get all the attention at barbecues, but you can’t live on sausages alone. “Buy a load of peas in their shell and get them on the barbecue until they’re nicely charred,” suggests chef Tomos Parry, co-owner of Brat and the soon-to-open Mountain, both in London. “Throw them in a bowl with some olive oil, mint and salt, and eat like edamame.” Anthony Demetre’s Piedmontese peppers are another thrill from the grill. The chef/proprietor of Wild Honey in London says: “Cut them in half, pull out the seeds and pith, then put in half a tomato, a few capers, a little chopped garlic, an anchovy fillet, any herbs you…