This week, as the war in Ukraine
took a dramatic turn, we welcomed Sasha Dovzhyk to the Guardian offices. Sasha
is director of Index, a new institution in Lviv devoted to the
documentation of the war. Sasha spoke movingly about Ukrainians’ hopes and
fears after three years of war – including the situation for those living under
the terror of occupation, with daily threats to life and safety from the
Russian authorities.
She was in London for the launch of
a book she helped bring together after its author, the brilliant Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina, was
killed in a Russian missile attack before she was able to complete the
manuscript. Margaret Atwood introduced our extract from this important book, and Charlotte
Higgins’s review is in today’s magazine.
Also this week, Shaun Walker
had an exclusive interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in
Kyiv. In it, the Ukrainian president made it clear that Europe would not have
the means to guarantee his nation’s security if the US were to withdraw defence
support.
Not long after we published
Zelenskyy’s words, new US defence secretary Pete Hegseth was in Brussels
telling his European counterparts they would have to take the lead in defending Ukraine and
that the US would no longer prioritise Europe’s safety. That was just the
entree for an even bigger shift: Donald Trump announcing he’d agreed to begin negotiations with Vladimir Putin to
broker a ceasefire.
It was another seismic geopolitical
moment in the nascent days of the second Trump era. And it was “precisely what Putin had been waiting for”, according to
the experts and insiders our Russian affairs correspondent Pjotr Sauer spoke
to.
Global affairs correspondent Andrew
Roth wrote that Trump “does not care who controls the blood-soaked soils of
east Ukraine, so long as he can access the rare earth minerals that lie beneath” while
Patrick Wintour gauged the scale of Europe’s diplomatic humiliation as
the Munich security conference began.
Shaun Walker and Artem
Mazhulin spoke to those on the ground in Kyiv, where reaction ranged
from feelings of betrayal to grim relief the war may at least be ending.
Columnist and Europe expert Timothy
Garton Ash was left flabbergasted by the dire consequences of Trump’s decision,
writing that his “appeasement of Vladimir Putin makes Neville Chamberlain look
like a principled, courageous realist”.
We’re entering a critical new stage
for Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East as the world reorientates to Trump’s
second presidency. Our live blogs remain essential in keeping up with the
latest developments, while our correspondents and experts are committed to
explaining how these overlapping stories are shaping the world for our readers
and revealing their human impact on the ground.
-Owen Gibson, The Guardian
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