Katie Stallard

5 days ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Thirty-six hours after the US bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s military announced that it had begun its retaliation, targeting the Al Udaid air base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the region, with “destructive and forceful missiles”. US and UK citizens were told to shelter in place as Qatar closed its air space. Air raid sirens sounded in the capital of neighbouring Bahrain.

6 days ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

One minute after midnight on 21 June, a small group of US B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading west across the Pacific. They were picked up shortly afterwards by flight tracking accounts on social media, prompting breaking news alerts that multiple American bombers capable of carrying the type of heavy ordinance that would be needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites were airborne as journalists frantically traced their trajectory. In fact, this was a decoy.

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Jesus was waiting in a long line for ice cream ahead of Donald Trump’s big military parade. The Washington monument towered above, gleaming white against an increasingly ominous sky as a slow-moving thunderstorm closed in. To his right, seemingly endless rows of Portaloos stretched towards the black mesh fence that marked the edge of the security perimeter, ready for a vast crowd of spectators that failed to materialise.

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Back in February, with Ukraine’s overstretched military struggling to hold the line and the Russian onslaught grinding into its fourth year, Donald Trump berated Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, telling him that he didn’t “have any cards”. The clear implication was that the Ukrainian president should accept he could not win the war and push for a peace deal on any available terms.

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

The most important thing to know about the minerals deal between the US and Ukraine is that it has been signed. For all the bluster emanating from Washington late on 30 April, where US treasury secretary Scott Bessent hailed the agreement as a “historic economic partnership,” it is unlikely that American companies will now be flooding into Ukraine to exploit the mineral wealth of a country that is under relentless aerial bombardment from Russia.