World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Sitting on the fence is uncomfortable. Faced with a geopolitical fight that is both unthinkably brutal and sprawling in its consequences, Beijing officials are finding that such a posture might also, in the long run, be impossible. When President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he appears to…

The free and open World Wide Web has for years been moving toward becoming a patchwork of information siloes, divided by national borders. That shift towards a so-called splinternet(1)accelerated over the weekend, when Russian officials announced they were limiting access to Facebook products,…

Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates eloquently summed up the state of the world generally and that of Western countries in particular after the Russian attack on Ukraine. “Our holiday from history is over.” The holiday began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet camp in 1989…

Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine seems to be totally unexpected for the Chinese leadership. When the war is over, whoever prevails in the Eastern European theater, China would be the one who loses the most in East Asia. China was one of the most surprised by the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s…

The yellow and blue of Ukraine’s flag, which was banned during the Soviet era, has become a powerful global symbol after Russia’s invasion. It’s been beamed onto landmarks from New York to Sarajevo, splashed across social media, and waved during anti-war protests around the world. It has also…

I have good news and bad news for you. Let’s start with the bad: a concept I call Depressing Math. Check this out: That’s one box for every week of a 90-year life. It often feels like we have countless weeks ahead of us. But actually, it’s just a few thousand — a small-enough number to fit…

The French call it retourner sa veste — to turn one’s coat to fit the changing political times. And with widespread international condemnation of Russia growing as its forces close in on Ukraine’s capital, there is a lot of coat-turning happening across Europe. Traditionally pro-Putin political…

If you had any sense of history and found yourself near the German Bundestag in Berlin on Sunday, you could have heard the sound of an explosion. It wasn’t a physical one, like the blasts of the bombs Russian President Vladimir Putin is lobbing at the brave people of Ukraine. It was instead the…

A South African biotech company has recreated small quantities of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. Its achievement, done in partnership with the World Health Organization, is part of a broader plan to help low- and middle-income countries become less reliant on US and European drug makers, which have…

Every era has a figure who strips away its pleasant illusions about where the world is headed. This is what makes Vladimir Putin the most important person of the still-young 21st century. Over the past week — and over the past generation — Putin has done more than any other person to remind us…

As of the end of last week, markets were in an emphatic “risk-on” phase. After the initial shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the S&P 500 had regained a stunning 6.6% in two days’ trading. I argued that the market was working on the assumption that Vladimir Putin would get what he wanted, and…

Rarely has a German government appeared so steadfastly decided than when it announced its response to the Russian assault on Ukraine. During an emergency session of the German Bundestag on Sunday the tripartite coalition announced a number of punitive measures against Russia, recurring to an almost…