Justin Marozzi

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Ian O’Doherty |Juan P. Villasmil |Colin Freeman |Justin Marozzi

Is Ireland a powder keg of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment, ready to explode at any moment? That was certainly the dominant storyline after a night of rioting in Dublin city center in November 2023 that left a trail of destruction along O’Connell Street.

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Michael Evans |Freddy Gray |Kate Andrews |Justin Marozzi

President Emmanuel Macron has raised the nuclear card. He has offered to provide nuclear cover for Europe as fears intensify that President Trump is moving further away from NATO and from America’s historic obligations towards European allies. The idea of France, the fourth largest nuclear weapons power in the world, extending its nuclear deterrence is not new. Macron is just one of many French presidents who have contemplated providing a European dimension to France’s force de frappe.

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Colin Freeman |Freddy Gray |Kate Andrews |Justin Marozzi

Had America and the Soviet Union ever fought the battle of Armageddon, it would have started from beneath a patch of muddy fields a few hours’ drive south of Kyiv. It’s here, in an underground base near the once-closed town of Pervomaisk, that Moscow housed eighty strategic nuclear missiles, all pointed at the US. Today it’s a museum, a dark tourism excursion, with a 120-foot long “Satan” missile on display.

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Justin Marozzi |Jawad Iqbal |Mark Galeotti

Keir Starmer seemed on unusually good form as he arrived in Washington last night. He cracked quite a good joke about the United Kingdom’s new ambassador to the United States, Lord Mandelson. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a charismatic statesman lurking behind the prime minister’s dreary exterior. We shall see. At any rate, assuming no bizarre media blow ups in the coming hours, the odds are that the Trump-Starmer meeting today will prove to be a success.

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Justin Marozzi |Jawad Iqbal |Mark Galeotti |Michael Gove

In 2023, I had coffee with the celebrated Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, on Yaroslaviv Val Street in the ancient heart of Kyiv. The modern city is built over the ruins of the rampart built by Yaroslav the Wise, the eleventh-century Grand Prince of Kyiv, to keep out invaders. Now, on the third anniversary of the most recent invasion of Ukraine, Kurkov, whose novels are known for their dark humor, is in a much more somber mood.