Game on: the Tokyo Olympics

Our correspondent finds Ukraine's capital already accustomed to an eerie war footing. People are getting married and playing music, even as medicine runs out and a new volunteer army braces for fighti...

15 Mars 202224min

To the west, strikes near Poland have rattled NATO partners. But look to the south-east to see what Russia intends for the Ukrainian cities it encircles. Chile’s new president Gabriel Boric is just th...

14 Mars 202223min

We tackle some of the many questions on the war in Ukraine that listeners sent in this week—why no-fly zones are a perilous idea, how weapons are making their way into Ukraine, why mud is a growing ta...

11 Mars 202228min

Perched at Russia’s north-western corner, the country has plenty of history dealing with neighbourly aggression. We speak with Alexander Stubb, a former prime minister, about his views on European sec...

10 Mars 202222min

After failing to take Ukraine’s second city, Russian forces continue to pummel it with air, artillery and missile strikes. We speak again with an increasingly despondent Kharkiv native. Many schoolyar...

9 Mars 202226min

With the propaganda machine at fever pitch, not everyone in Russia agrees on—much less agrees with—what is going on in Ukraine. Dissent is being met with increasing repression. A wave of jihadism is c...

8 Mars 202224min

The West’s co-ordinated financial weaponry is starting to bite, opening a new age of economic conflict; once-unthinkable oil embargoes seem now to be on the table. Taiwan is another democratic country...

7 Mars 202225min

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a refugee crisis in Europe. More than a million people have left; millions more could follow. Turkey’s reasonably stable relationship with Russia may not sur...

4 Mars 202224min