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Tuesday briefing: The factors that will shape the future of Scotland

Good morning. The SNP has been in government since 2007, a phenomenal 19-year run, but polling suggests Scottish voters’ trust in its ability to deliver is weakening. In May, Scotland goes to the polls for the seventh Holyrood election since devolution in 1999 – a contest that could significantly realign the nation’s politics. In what some viewed as a desperate attempt to capitalise on the moment, Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, called on Keir Starmer to resign last week, possibly trying to paint himself as his own man, not attached to a deeply unpopular Westminster government that currently polls third in the run up to May’s elections. Meanwhile, Reform UK’s steady polling numbers show them second to the SNP, which they are hoping to turn into a meaningful elected presence at Holyrood for the first time. With so much in the balance, I spoke to our Scotland correspondent, Libby Brooks, about the prospects for the main parties, the challenges they face, and what could still make the difference between now and polling day. First, here are the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Ministers have dropped controversial plans to delay 30 local elections this May after receiving legal advice that doing so might not be lawful. Business | UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems. Social media | Keir Starmer has pledged action on young people’s access to social media in “months, not years”, while saying this did not necessarily mean a complete ban on access for under-16s. Sarah Ferguson | Six companies linked to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, are being wound down in the wake of revelations about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Film | Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95. In depth: ‘Scottish voters don’t seem to think they have many decent options’ So far in the Holyrood election contest, no party is campaigning from a position of obvious strength. The SNP remains ahead despite nearly two decades in government, Labour is struggling to escape anger at Westminster, and Reform is polling strongly but with no clear sign it will be able to translate support into seats. “You can’t help but feel that Scottish voters don’t seem to think they have many decent options at the moment,” Libby says. She suggests the election may be decided less by enthusiasm than by resignation – with voters thinking in terms of which parties they trust most not to make things worse. *** The SNP | Dominance without enthusiasm? After almost two decades in power, the SNP is fighting an election in which it is no longer judged on what it promises to do, but on what voters feel it has already done – or, more aptly, what it has failed to do. And while the SNP’s campaign has focused on Scottish independence, their promises have been undermined by a failure to offer voters a plausible route to a second referendum. Taken together, these challenges should place the party in serious difficulty. And yet somehow, the SNP continues to poll favourably. Libby is not convinced, pointing to the wider indicators suggesting declining confidence in the Scottish government. “You’re looking at polls suggesting they’re going to win comfortably,” she says, “at the same time as trust and satisfaction with public services are steadily diminishing.” John Swinney’s arrival has stabilised the parliamentary party after Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf resigned in quick succession. But enthusiasm on the ground appears thinner than in previous campaigns. “My sense is that only the very hardcore people are going to be out leafleting,” Libby says – a telling detail for a party once defined by its activist energy. *** Labour | Opposition in Scotland, government in London Scottish Labour’s problem is simple to describe and hard to solve. It is an opposition party at Holyrood, but it carries the brand damage of a Westminster government. Libby says that when she is out on doorsteps, the anger is “palpable” – directed at Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, and at decisions around winter fuel payments, the two-child benefit cap and disability benefit cuts. Subsequent U-turns on some of those policies do not appear to have cut through, prompting Sarwar to make his extraordinary cross-border red-on-red attack last week. The fact that no other senior Labour figure joined his call – Starmer’s cabinet instead circled their wagons around the embattled prime minister – has, as our Scotland editor, Severin Carrell, put it in this analysis piece, risked Sarwar looking disloyal and isolated. Where Labour may take comfort is in its organisation. Unlike the SNP, it has money – and a well-honed constituency-by-constituency ground operation. Libby points to the Hamilton byelection as a case study: Reform’s presence felt strong on the ground and frustration with Westminster was obvious, but Labour’s campaigning machine was “really, really well organised”, and it ultimately beat both the SNP and Reform. *** Reform | Making moves in Scotland One early cluster of defections from the Scottish Conservatives to Reform came in the north-east of Scotland – an area with a strong Conservative tradition, farming communities, and Aberdeen as the centre of Scotland’s oil and gas industry. These are not the disaffected faded coastal towns or lapsed Labour voters of the so-called red wall in England. It is, though, the only part of Scotland that voted for Brexit in 2016, and Reform believes it can make gains there, as well as across the post-industrial central belt where they gained their first Scottish electoral success in December, on West Lothian council. Libby also points to focus-group findings suggesting that some voters feel they have been “talked over” by mainstream politicians on issues such as immigration and gender recognition – a sense of grievance Reform is seeking to exploit. Reform has installed a new Scottish leader, the multimillionaire financier Malcolm Offord, who was born in Greenock – an attempt to bolster its Scottish credentials while building an operation capable of campaigning at scale. Libby says the party has earmarked £1m for its Scottish election campaign, and has been hiring staff and mailshotting across the country. The unanswered question is whether that investment converts into seats. *** Smaller parties, bigger leverage? The Scottish Greens are a separate party to their counterparts in England and Wales, and Libby says there has been little sign north of the border of a “Zack bounce” following Polanski’s election. They now have co-leaders, Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, two MSPs in their early 30s who were elected in August on a promise of fresh ideas and renewed energy. But the party’s difficulty is that their old positioning has become harder to sustain after a spell in government. The Greens cast themselves as radicals holding the SNP’s feet to the fire on climate when they entered their governing partnership, the Bute House agreement, after the last Holyrood election in 2021. But the SNP ditched key climate commitments, Green members revolted and the agreement collapsed, leaving that relationship less clear, and the compromises of power easier for opponents to attack. The Scottish Conservatives, meanwhile, are fighting both a long-running identity crisis and the growing threat from Reform on their right. Libby describes leader Russell Findlay as “an interesting individual with a great backstory” – a former journalist who was once attacked with acid – but argues he has struggled to persuade voters who he is, beyond a politician reacting to Reform. She also notes that it was Ruth Davidson’s centre-right positioning that took the party to its electoral high point in Scotland, a strategy Findlay has not followed. And without the threat of another referendum, they have also lost their appeal as the “stop independence” party – a position that won them consistent electoral gains in recent years. The Liberal Democrats may be watching the arithmetic as much as the atmosphere. In a proportional system, small gains can matter, and there has been speculation they could increase their number of MSPs. If Scotland ends up with another SNP minority government, their leverage – and the shape of any future deals – could become part of the story. *** Tactical voting and the politics of prevention One of Libby’s most striking observations is on the country’s sophisticated electorate, shaped by decades of referendums, different voting systems and tactical behaviour. She points out that the historical structure of its politics matters because, if Reform is seen as a disruptive force, the incentive to vote tactically increases. Libby points to a recent Norstat poll suggesting majorities of both Labour and SNP supporters would be willing to vote against their usual preference – or even for a party they do not naturally align with on the constitution – if it helped keep Reform out. In other words, the most consequential dynamic in the final weeks may not be what parties are selling, but what voters are trying to stop. May’s election is shaping up as a contest in which almost every party is burdened by something – incumbency; Westminster unpopularity that has clearly developed into infighting; organisational weakness; ideological confusion; or a brand that does not quite fit Scottish politics. Between now and polling day, the question is not only whether any party can make a persuasive affirmative case to the electorate – but whether the result will end up being defined more by fear, fatigue and tactical calculation than by hope. What else we’ve been reading I loved Nadia Khomami’s take on the Wuthering Heights debate – particularly her description of the audience around her when she went to watch on Friday night. Poppy Noor, newsletters team In her weekly column, Nesrine Malik congratulates Keir Starmer on his unique political talent: alienating absolutely everyone. Losing staff left and right, losing votes to the left and right … Nesrine asks: what does a Starmer voter look like any more? Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team Maybelle Morgan’s One change that worked, on how finding a £20 note reframed her negative thinking, is a good lesson to us all. Poppy Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted on Sunday, the latest event in a series of intermittent eruptions that kicked off in 2024. Our video team have some truly awe-inspiring clips here. Charlie Emma Beddington’s piece on benches being a great act of civic kindness surprised me, in the best of ways. Poppy Sport Winter Olympics | After Switzerland’s Loïc Meillard took gold in the men’s skiing slalom on Monday, Norwegian hopeful Atle Lie McGrath processed his grief in a novel way: hiding in the woods. Football | Brentford ended Macclesfield’s fairytale run in the FA Cup, winning 1-0 after an unfortunate own goal from Sam Heathcote in the 70th minute. Tennis | Emma Raducanu lost the final six games to fall to a 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 defeat to ‘lucky loser’ Antonia Ruzic in the opening round at the Dubai Tennis Championships. The front pages “Anger as PM abandons plans to delay May elections” leads the Guardian this morning. “Starmer’s plan to delay elections abandoned” is the splash of the Times, while the Telegraph has “Starmer U-turns on cancelled elections” and the Mail says “Starmer forced to face wrath of voters”. The i paper has “Farage forces elections U-turn – triggering next threat to Starmer leadership” and the FT has “Starmer abandons delay of 30 council elections after Reform legal challenge”. The Mirror leads with “Save our next generation”, and calls for Keir Starmer to crack down on social media giants. “Line of Duty ‘H’ bomb” is top story for the Sun, which reports that the BBC drama’s new series will reopen the hunt for the villain. Today in Focus The rise of the cocaine submarine The Guardian journalists Sam Jones and Tom Phillips chart the rise of the narco-sub after a record seizure in the Atlantic. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Our recurring series on the pets we’ll never forget is a weekly dose of wonder. This week, Clara Mead-Robson uses the column to tell us about Otto: a cocktail sausage fiend, friend to strangers, and, above all, a very, very good boy. “When he wasn’t acting like a loon, he was also utterly sweet and incapable of walking past a stranger without befriending them,” she writes. “Nothing gave me more immediate happiness than opening the front door to see him thundering down the stairs, tail thrashing vigorously and knocking down countless items in his haste to reunite with me.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Madrid museum shuffles its pack charting decades of rapid change in Spain

The Reina Sofía’s new rehang opens, quite pointedly, with a painting of a detained man sitting, head bowed and wrists shackled, as he waits for the arbitrary hand of institutional bureaucracy to decide his fate. The picture, Document No …, was painted by Juan Genovés in 1975, the year Francisco Franco died and Spain began its transition to democracy after four decades of dictatorship. Genovés’s faceless, everyman victim of the Franco regime’s control and repression is the natural starting point for the Madrid museum’s exploration of the past 50 years of contemporary art in Spain. Through the 403 selected works, the museum’s curators examine how artists from Spain and beyond have chronicled and reacted to socio-historical changes, from the hedonistic explosion of creativity that followed the dictator’s demise to the Aids epidemic, from second-wave feminism to growing environmental awareness, and from decolonisation to global terrorism. According to Ángeles González-Sinde, the president of the Reina Sofía’s board, the rehang – an exercise museums undertake to re-evaluate and reinvigorate their collections – is much more than a simple rejigging. Almost two-thirds of the works on display in the new Contemporary Art: 1975 to the Present collection, which occupies the museum’s fourth floor, have never been exhibited as part of the permanent collection. “More than an exhibition reorganisation, it’s a critical reinterpretation that seeks to contextualise artistic practices in dialogue with the social, political and cultural processes that have marked these five decades,” she told a press conference on Monday. Alongside works by internationally known artists such as Nan Goldin, Hal Fischer, Peter Hujar, Belkis Ayón and Robert Mapplethorpe are pieces that chart a rapidly changing Spanish society. The exiled Argentinian photographer Carlos Bosch used his camera to document key moments of the Transition – the process by which post-Franco Spain returned to democracy – among them Spain’s first gay pride march in 1977. The artist and queer activist José Pérez Ocaña employed altar installations to appropriate and subvert the popular rituals of Andalucían Catholicism. The collection also features items of jewellery by the designer Chus Burés, who has created pieces for two films by Pedro Almodóvar, perhaps the most famous figure of the wild and wildly creative post-Franco underground scene known as the Movida madrileña. The dark and destructive side of the movida is also apparent in Iván Zulueta’s 1979 arthouse horror film Arrebato (Rapture) and in the photographs of Alberto García-Alix. One of the many poignant works on show is García-Alix’s 1988 image En ausencia de Willy (Willy’s Absence), a black and white shot of a western shirt that belonged to the artist’s brother, who died of an overdose in the heroin epidemic that ravaged Spain in the 1980s. The shirt, which sits alongside a pencil sketch of Willy, serves as a potent reminder of the years when, in García-Alix’s words, “nothing was enough”. The advent of another epidemic is memorialised in several pieces, not least in Hujar’s photographs of mummified bodies in the catacombs of Palermo, which unknowingly foreshadow the physical ravages that Aids would inflict on the artist and so many of his friends decades later. Ajuares (Funerary Offerings), an installation by the artist, teacher and researcher Pepe Miralles, offers another musing on the epidemic by collecting together everyday objects linked to the illness and treatment of his friend Juan Guillermo. The items gathered together in a huge glass cabinet include antiretroviral medication, Prozac, gauzes, syringes, pyjamas and soft toys. Manuel Segade, the director of the Reina Sofía, said the 403 works were intended to create a constant dialogue between the past, the present and the future. “The Reina Sofía’s intention isn’t to create a single, unequivocal, closed narrative, but rather to open it up, to socialise these narratives as a possibility and as a way to consider this work for future presentations, so that the Reina Sofía’s collections are permanently open to revision,” he told reporters. The fundamental aim of the three-year-long reorganisation, Segade added, was to ensure that each and every visitor could “grasp the diversity, quality and discursive potential of contemporary Spanish art and the contributions of our artists to culture in general”. Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said the idea was to reflect on the “turning point” year of 1975 but also on wider questions of society, art and democracy. Given the current state of things, he added, such reflections were as vital today as they were 50 years ago. “Just as this floor begins with Juan Genovés – with the aspirations of Spain at that time, with its social aspirations and the role that contemporary art played in shaping perspectives on the various democratic social achievements of recent years – so I believe we must also be aware of the importance that contemporary art will play in the fight for democracy and in the defence of our fundamental values, the values of the Enlightenment,” Urtasun said.

Chinese tourists shun Japan over lunar new year holiday as rift deepens

Chinese tourists are continuing to shun Japan in large numbers, with the country falling out of the top 10 destinations for those celebrating the lunar new year with a trip abroad. Japan has had a dramatic drop in the number of Chinese visitors since the end of last year as a diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing over the security of Taiwan continues. Chinese tourism to Japan, where a weak currency is helping fuel a tourism boom, almost halved in December compared with the same period in 2025, Japan’s transport ministry said. The trend looks set to continue, months after Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, suggested her country’s self-defence forces could be deployed if China attempted to invade Taiwan. China claims the self-governing democracy as part of its own territory and has vowed to unite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. Takaichi’s remarks led to an angry response in China, where officials urged tourists and students not to travel to Japan. South Korea is expected to become the most popular overseas destination for Chinese travellers during the 40-day travel frenzy, with an estimated 250,000 expected to visit, up 1.5 times from the previous year. Japan will welcome fewer people from China than other countries in the region, including Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Russia, according to media reports. Instead, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan during the lunar new year holidays is expected to fall by up to 60% from the previous year. The dispute over Taiwan has intensified since Takaichi told MPs in November that military involvement was an option if a crisis in the Taiwan Strait posed an “existential” threat to Japan. Her refusal to back down has invited more criticism from China, including its foreign minister, Wang Yi, who this week accused Takaichi of trying to revive Japan’s militarist past. Wang told the Munich Security Conference on Monday: “Japanese people should no longer allow themselves to be manipulated or deceived by those far-right forces, or by those who seek to revive militarism. “All peace-loving countries should send a clear warning to Japan: if it chooses to walk back on this path, it will only be heading toward self-destruction.” In response, Japan protested through diplomatic channels, while the foreign ministry in Tokyo condemned Wang’s claims as “factually incorrect and ungrounded”. “Japan’s efforts to strengthen its defence capabilities are in response to an increasingly severe security environment and are not directed against any specific third country,” the ministry said in a statement. It said there were “countries in the international community that have been rapidly increasing their military capabilities in a non-transparent manner”, but added that “Japan opposes such moves and distances itself from them”. Liu Xiaoming, China’s special representative on Korean peninsula affairs, upped the ante when he said Takaichi’s remarks were proof of Japan’s “unextinguished ambition to invade and colonise Taiwan once again, and the lingering ghost of revived militarism”. In a post on X that referenced Japan’s 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Liu added: “The lessons of history are not far away and must be heeded. If Japan refuses to repent and change its ways, it will inevitably repeat the same tragic mistakes.” Officials in Beijing have repeatedly warned travellers they face threats to their safety in Japan, although there have been no reports of incidents targeting tourists from China. On Sunday, the Chinese consulate general in Osaka again urged Chinese nationals to refrain from travelling to Japan after a fatal stabbing in the city. The incident, in which a teenager was stabbed to death and two others injured in a popular tourist area, did not involve Chinese nationals. Not all people have heeded the official travel advice. A Chinese man told the Kyodo news agency it was important to promote goodwill between ordinary people from both countries. Another, a woman from Shanghai, said she still planned to visit Japan with her parents. “The travel alert is aimed at promoting criticism of Japan,” she told Kyodo. “But my family has not been brainwashed.” With Reuters

‘Economic fighters’: the volunteers helping direct sanctions against Russia

In August 2022, Olena Yurchenko stumbled across a heated discussion on a Russian-language online forum – and made a discovery that would ultimately affect US and European sanctions policy on the Ukraine war. The war had begun six months earlier. Yurchenko, 22, had been forced to leave Ukraine for Latvia after Russian strikes on her home town in the north. She had joined a nascent effort to pressure western companies to move their operations out of Russia. But the “name and blame” tactic only went so far, she said. Her discovery was about computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools, which are used in almost all modern precision manufacturing. Without them, Russia would have to machine-cut key military components – tank hulls and missile casings – by hand. Russia does not make CNC machines, Yurchenko found out. In fact, only a handful of companies in the world do. After over a year of investigation, and many meetings, the EU and the Biden administration put CNC machines on the sanctions list. These sanctions, which led to a 2025 fine against the US manufacturer Haas Automation, have not stopped Russia manufacturing military components. But it has been forced to go to great lengths to obtain the machines, said Yurchenko. “Russians used to buy 70% of the CNC machines from the west. Now they are buying 80% of their CNCs from China. And these CNC machines are of a lower quality, bad precision, like a one-time razor,” she said. Russia also attempts to smuggle CNC machines in through Belarus and central Asia. More than in any previous conflict, civil society groups and a loose band of international volunteers have shaped the course of Europe and the US’s efforts to support Ukraine. The US and the EU have together announced more than three dozen rounds of sanctions since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, covering thousands of entities from defence conglomerates to plastic manufacturers. Many of the more precise actions have been identified not by officials in Washington or Europe, but by a loose, worldwide coalition of civil society organisations and individual volunteers who have devoted themselves to uncovering exactly what Russia needs to keep sending men and machines to the war. Chief among these are the “economic fighters” of Ukraine: organisations such as ESCU, which has a team of eight analysts, and loosely coordinates with the government’s war effort. But there is a broad coalition of Americans, Europeans and even Russians bound together in a wide-ranging civilian network. Together, they have mapped the materials and supply chains that sustain the war, from Arctic-going barges manufactured in Singapore to chromium mined in Kazakhstan. Their efforts have changed the art of economic warfare, say officials. “We have done 19 sanctions packages so far, two of them under the Danish EU presidency,” said Simon Kjeldsen, the sanctions coordinator for Denmark’s foreign ministry. “Each of the packages have closed some loopholes and targeted Russian circumvention. And they have often done that … [with] a correlation and inspiration from what has been uncovered by Ukrainian civil society organisations.” Civil society groups “have the energy and the investigative wherewithal to really drill down on supply chain dynamics, really niche areas of violations of sanctions, whether it’s energy or banking or export control violations,” said Laura Cooper, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. “They do so with great precision. This is very helpful especially in the context of government offices that are largely overworked, under-resourced and can only follow so many leads at once.” Sanctions have not forced Russia to end its war in Ukraine, nor have they made it change course by bringing its industrial base to ruin. But over time, they have eroded its capacities. The EU’s sanctions envoy said this month that Russia’s efforts were becoming “unsustainable” because of the way sanctions have distorted its economy. “Their effects are not immediate, unfortunately,” said Ilona Khmeleva, the secretary of ESCU. “If we have sanctions today, we’ll see the results next year. The problem is that sanctions are like little cuts. If you have a lot of them, you can stop Russia.” Diesel engines, mechanical lubricants and chromium For an advanced economy with a legacy of manufacturing, Russia has a surprisingly hollowed-out industrial base. That was what Andrew Fink, a former US defence contractor, discovered in 2021 shortly before the start of the full-scale invasion. “I was talking to a Ukrainian friend of mine about other things that the United States could sanction to potentially deter a war,” he said. His friend told him that Russian corvettes – small, missile-carrying-boats in the Black Sea – were built using Chinese copies of German engines. “I thought this was very interesting, that Russia is not even able to make diesel engines.” Yurchenko reached roughly the same conclusion on CNC machines: “In Russia specifically they are critical, because most of the military complex specialists either died or drank themselves into an early grave after the fall of the Soviet Union.” Fink was able to confirm the finding in an old interview, in which a senior Russian engineer defensively explained to journalists why Russia struggled to manufacture engine components. The discovery launched Fink, 36, into a years-long obsession with unpicking Russia’s war economy. In 2023, researching the imports of a Gazprom subsidiary, he found that Russia buys vast quantities of mechanical lubricant additives abroad, mostly from Chinese and Korean manufacturers. These are a class of difficult-to-manufacture chemicals added to petroleum to produce motor oil; there are only a handful of companies in the world that produce them. Without them, Russia would struggle to produce lube for mechanised warfare. Fink brought the tip to the US anti-corruption group DeKleptocracy, which is headed by a former state department Russia expert, Kristofer Harrison, who began a two-year pressure campaign to limit the export of these chemicals to Russia. Harrison told the Guardian the current level of CNC smuggling, for example, “indicates how badly [Russia] needs western technology to keep their economy going”. There have been others. In 2024, ESCU led a successful campaign to convince the EU to interdict chromium exports to Russia. Chromium is a kind of metal used to plate artillery barrels; Russia depends on imports from Kazakhstan and Latin America. In 2022, DeKleptocracy was part of a coalition of civil society groups that pushed the Biden administration to impose sanctions on Arctic-going vessels – barges and ice-class tankers – which are necessary to service and build Arctic LNG 2, the gas terminal that Russia is building roughly 1,000km (620 miles) east of Murmansk. These sanctions arguably slowed the project for years. Russia obtained its first ice-class tanker – capable of transporting the gas through the Arctic waters to the transshipment terminal at Murmansk – last month. Cooper and Kjeldsen, the US and Danish officials, say the coordination between governments and groups such as ESCU and DeKleptocracy, along with tens of others, may outlast the current conflict. “This is a new approach and it’s a way of harnessing the huge public outrage that we saw after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We saw energy and determination, not just from within Ukraine, but from around the world to try to hold Russia to account,” said Cooper. Kjeldsen said Denmark has set up an initiative with the Kyiv School of Economics to focus on economic tools and resilience, which will include a “sanctions hub of excellence”. “ This is the start of something that’s more long running,” he said.

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv’s forces made fastest battlefield gains since 2023, analysis finds

Ukraine recaptured 201 sq km from Russia between Wednesday and Sunday last week, taking advantage of a Starlink shutdown for Russian forces, according to an Agence France-Presse analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). The recaptured area (78 sq miles) is almost equivalent to the Russian gains for the entire month of December and is the most land retaken by Kyiv’s forces in such a short period since a June 2023 counteroffensive. The recaptured land is concentrated mainly to the east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, in an area where Russian troops have made significant progress since mid-2025. “These Ukrainian counterattacks are likely leveraging the recent block on Russian forces’ access to Starlink, which Russian milbloggers (military bloggers) have claimed is causing communications and command and control issues on the battlefield,” said the ISW thinktank. On 5 February, military observers noted disruption of the Starlink antennas used by Moscow on the frontlines, after announcements by Elon Musk of “measures” to end the Kremlin’s use of this technology, the AFP report said. Kyiv claimed that Russian drones were using them in particular to circumvent electronic jamming systems and strike their targets with precision. Ukraine’s anti-corruption police accused an ex-energy minister on Monday of helping launder kickbacks and stashing millions offshore, a day after he was detained while trying to leave the country, in a case that has shaken Kyiv’s wartime government. The arrest of German Galushchenko was the first major development for months in the “Midas” bribery case, which has loomed over Ukraine’s domestic politics since last year and has reached into President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inner circle. In unveiling the accusations against Galushchenko, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency Nabu said it was working with 15 foreign jurisdictions to expand its investigation. Galushchenko has denied any wrongdoing. Donald Trump said he hoped Ukraine reached a deal with Russia “fast” ahead of Tuesday’s trilateral talks in Geneva. “Ukraine better come to the table fast,” the US president said late on Monday. Senior Ukrainian and Russian officials are to meet for the second round of talks brokered by the Trump administration days before the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two-day meeting in Switzerland starting on Tuesday is expected to mirror negotiations held earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, with representatives from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in attendance, reported Luke Harding and Pjotr Sauer. Despite renewed US efforts to revive diplomacy, hopes for any sudden breakthrough remain low, with Russia continuing to press maximalist demands on Ukraine. Authorities in Poland closed then reopened airports in Rzeszow and Lublin because of military aviation operations, officials said on Tuesday. Polish commanders said military aviation operations began in the country’s airspace due to strikes by Russia’s long-range air forces on Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence showed more Russian attacks on energy targets lay ahead and that such strikes made it more difficult to reach an agreement on ending the war. “Intelligence reports show that Russia is preparing further massive strikes against energy infrastructure so it is necessary to ensure that all air defence systems are properly configured,” he said in his nightly video address on Monday. Zelenskyy also said Russian attacks were “constantly evolving” and resorting to a combination of weapons, including drones and missiles, requiring “special defence and support from our partners”. Civilian casualties in Ukraine caused by bombing soared by 26% during 2025, reflecting increased Russian targeting of cities and infrastructure in the country, according a global conflict monitoring group. Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said 2,248 civilians were reported killed and 12,493 injured by explosive violence in Ukraine, according to English-language reports – with the number of casualties for each incident rising significantly, reports Dan Sabbagh. An average of 4.8 civilians were reported killed or injured in each strike, 33% more than in 2024, with the worst attack taking place in Dnipro on 24 June.

‘I just want to stop hearing about it’: a weary South Korea awaits verdict on Yoon insurrection charges

South Korea is awaiting one of the most consequential court rulings in decades this week, with judges due to deliver their verdict on insurrection charges against the former president Yoon Suk Yeol and prosecutors demanding the death penalty. When Yoon stands in courtroom 417 of Seoul central district court on Thursday to hear his fate, which will be broadcast live, he will do so in the same room where the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death three decades ago. The charge is formally the same. Last time, it took almost 17 years and a democratic transition to deliver a verdict. This time, it has taken 14 months. Chun’s death sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment on appeal, and he was eventually pardoned. Under the country’s criminal code, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible sentences: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour. South Korea has not carried out an execution since 1997, so in practice a death sentence would mean permanent exclusion from society with no possibility of parole. But as the ruling approaches, there is a sense of exhaustion and division in South Korea as the months-long saga, in which 27 people have been indicted over the martial law crisis, continues. Dowon Kim, a 32-year-old office worker in Seoul, no longer discusses politics with friends, some of whom still support Yoon. “Society is too exhausted,” he says, “and my energy feels wasted trying to persuade them.” South Korea has now impeached two presidents in under a decade, and Kim says people simply want to move past the cycle: “Those who should be punished should be punished, and we need to move forward.” Song Ji-won, a 24-year-old student in Incheon, west of Seoul, says what happened was a national embarrassment. “I just want to stop hearing about it.” The K-pop light stick protests that once brought millions on to the streets have long subsided. Maga-inspired pro-Yoon rallies have dwindled to the fringes. At a recent gathering where 2,300 registered supporters were expected, about 20 appeared. The political fallout has been devastating for the People Power party, which has been unable to divorce itself from Yoon’s legacy. It polled at just 22% last week, according to Gallup Korea, against 44% for the ruling Democratic party. From martial law to impeachment in 11 days On the night of 3 December 2024, prosecutors allege Yoon declared martial law and attempted to use military force to paralyse the legislature, arrest political opponents and seize control of the national election commission. Yoon said he was rooting out “anti-state forces” and alleged election fraud. Prosecutors allege he had plotted for more than a year, strategically placing loyalists in key military positions. It was the first emergency martial law declaration in the country in 44 years, shattering the assumption that military rule was a relic of South Korea’s authoritarian past. The response to Yoon’s move was swift. Within hours, 190 lawmakers broke through military and police cordons around parliament to pass an emergency resolution lifting martial law. Parliament impeached Yoon within 11 days. The constitutional court removed him from office four months later. Three separate special prosecutors were appointed, and across their investigations more than 120 people have been indicted, from the president himself to cabinet ministers, military commanders and intelligence chiefs. Despite the relative quiet in the build-up to this week’s court ruling, the weight of the moment is not lost on South Koreans. Over the past few weeks, they have watched as the courts established key legal findings through related cases. On 16 January, Yoon received five years for obstructing his own arrest. Days later, the former prime minister Han Duck-soo was given 23 years in a ruling that formally found the events of 3 December constituted insurrection, describing it as a “self-coup” by elected power more dangerous than traditional uprisings. The sentence far exceeded prosecutors’ 15-year demand, signalling judicial willingness to impose severe penalties. On 12 February, the former interior minister Lee Sang-min was jailed for seven years for his role in the insurrection, including relaying Yoon’s orders to cut power and water to media outlets. But Thursday’s verdict rests with a different presiding judge. The insurrection findings in the earlier cases, while significant, do not bind this panel. It will make its own determination on whether 3 December crossed the criminal threshold for insurrection. Sangchin Chun, a professor of sociology at Sogang university, said the final blow to Yoon’s movement may not be the verdict itself but whether people feel their daily lives improving under the president, Lee Jae Myung. “Ending the insurrection seems to have become less a legal matter than an everyday economic one,” he said. Lee, who has focused heavily on bread-and-butter issues such as the cost of living and housing, maintains a solid approval rating of 63%. In Yoon’s last court appearance, he characterised the investigation as a “political conspiracy”, described martial law as having “enlightened” citizens, and offered no apology. At one point, he appeared to laugh as prosecutors demanded the death penalty. Prosecutors have cited a complete lack of remorse as an aggravating factor. Under South Korean sentencing principles, genuine repentance is a formal legal consideration. He faces further legal battles: six additional criminal trials, two of which stem from the martial law crisis, including a treason indictment for allegedly ordering drone incursions into North Korean airspace to provoke a confrontation that could justify military rule. For South Korea, the verdict will mark the culmination of one of the most extensive exercises in democratic accountability against a former head of state in its history, with the court also handing down judgments against seven co-defendants including senior military and police officials implicated in the plot. Many of those watching will have lived through the authoritarian era of the 1980s that the 2024 martial law declaration so starkly echoed. The democratic guardrails they fought to build are being tested. By Thursday afternoon, the country will know whether they have held.

Two British skiers killed in French Alps named

Two British skiers who died in an avalanche in the French Alps have been named as Stuart Leslie and Shaun Overy. The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, skiing off-piste in Val d’Isère in south-east France on Friday when they were swept away by falling snow. A French national who was skiing alone was also killed, while another British skier survived. France’s national weather service had issued a red alert for avalanche risk on Thursday – only the third time such a warning has been given in the 25 years since the system was introduced, according to Le Monde. Leslie, 46, who regularly posted on social media about his skiing adventures, is believed to have been friends with Overy, 51, who ran a plumbing company in Wimbledon. Paying tribute to Leslie on social media, friend Craig Hunter said: “We have lost a true legend – our beautiful Stuart.” “He lived life to the absolute maximum – he packed 10 men’s lives into one. He squeezed everything out of every moment. “When we skied together, he was at his happiest. He always said there was no better feeling in life, skiing fresh powder was pure freedom.” Benoît Bachelet, the Albertville prosecutor, said a manslaughter investigation had been launched. The ski instructor, who was uninjured, tested negative for drugs. This incident follows the death of another British skier in his 50s in an avalanche at the nearby La Plagne resort in January. Thirteen backcountry skiers, climbers and hikers died in the Italian mountains in the first week of February amid unstable snow conditions. A train was derailed by a snow slide in Switzerland on Monday as large areas of the western Alps remained under a high risk of avalanche.

The patience and the poker face: Iran’s wily diplomat set to face the US in nuclear talks

If the US and Iran are to avoid a regional war, both sides need to start to make concessions at talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and also to accommodate one another’s very different bargaining styles. The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces. He has a bachelor’s degree from Iran’s faculty of international relations, a master’s degree in political science from Islamic Azad University and a doctorate in political thought from the University of Kent in the UK. Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff studied law at Hofstra, a university on Long Island near New York, before making his fortune in property development. While Araghchi, much more a consensus figure inside Iranian politics than his famous predecessor Javad Zarif, will have gameplanned the parameters of what Iran can offer in endless consultations across the spectrum of government, including the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Witkoff works to a shifting brief devised by one man. Trump sees diplomacy as a branch of pro-wrestling. The Iranian foreign ministry regards it as a branch of chess, almost an art form. Indeed, for those in the US who claim Iran loves to play for time and spin a negotiation out, Araghchi’s book, The Power of Negotiation, provides some support. “The main principle of bargaining is practice: repetition, repetition, and repetition – combined with steadfastness and persistence. Insisting on positions and repeating demands is a necessity that must be done each time with different rhetoric and reasoning,” he writes. Born into a family of merchants – his grandfather was a carpet trader – he argues Iranian diplomacy reflects the country’s bazaars. “The Iranian negotiation style is generally known in the world as the ‘market style’, which means continuous and tireless bargaining. It requires a lot of time and energy, and he who gets tired and bored quickly will lose.” More theoretically, he argues in the book – written when out of office in 2014 – that when a negotiator enters the room, their true power rests on the level of national cohesion back home and the country’s military strength. If there is not at least a balance of power with your adversary, he argues it is best to decline talks until there is equilibrium, something Iran did after the bombing of its nuclear sites in June last year. Nevertheless, the Iranian tendency to say “Yes, but” can go far. Famously, Araghchi reduced his US counterpart Wendy Sherman to tears of frustration – something he regrets. Araghchi, who has already had six rounds of direct and indirect talks in two phases with Witkoff also discloses how vital it is to remain opaque. “The face of a skilled diplomat is inscrutable, and it is impossible to catch any emotion from it. The ability to control the expression of emotions on the face is not easy and requires continuous work and practice.” Providing your adversary with a graceful way out, he argues, is integral to diplomacy, describing this as providing “the Golden Bridge”, a term he has picked up from China (Araghchi spent four years as ambassador to Japan). This suggests that if Trump ends up accepting a version of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal from which he walked out in 2018, Araghchi will not be triumphalist. “Diplomacy is not a game that you must necessarily win, but a process where you must necessarily understand the other side,” he writes. Married twice, and with five children, Araghchi is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and maintains close relations with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC, unlike his predecessor, Zarif, who criticised the elite forces’ power. “Araghchi is much more technocratic and careful in walking the tightrope necessary to survive,” said Ellie Geranmayeh from the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Zarif was more political and outspoken, and willing to test the boundaries of what was digestible for the regime.” Indeed, some thought Araghchi was put in the nuclear talks with Washington by Iranian conservatives to act as a check and balance on Zarif. Geranmayeh expects the US to make clear demands on diluting, or removing Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but such an irreversible step by Iran would require parallel irreversible steps by the US, such as releasing many of Iran’s large assets frozen abroad. The scope for a compromise on enrichment exists on the basis that the bombing of its nuclear sites makes it impossible to enrich for 3 to 5 years. But this would require the return of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the IAEA, to be able to visit the bombed sites, an issue that was probably at the centre of talks on Monday between Araghchi and Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director general. Outside the nuclear aspects of the deal, Geranmayeh says: “In this Trumpian world, do not expect every agreement to be written down on paper. There could be a series of not verifiable understandings, including a non-aggression pact between Iran and the US and its allies.” Ali Ansari, professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews, said Iran may offer concessions “to keep the discussions going, but Trump is in no rush at present anyway”. Bringing in US oil companies – an economic concession that has been floated – would be a significant change in Iran’s anti-US revolutionary doctrine. Either way, Araghchi knows that whatever the outcome, he faces domestic criticism. Araghchi recalled once meeting with Zarif in the lift of Hassan Rouhani’s residence after the latter’s 2013 presidential election victory. At the time, Zarif had not yet accepted Rouhani’s offer to serve as his foreign minister. Araghchi asked him why. Zarif replied: ‘In the end, we’ll be found wanting, and we will be the victims.”