Katie Stallard

2 weeks 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.

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Conjure up an image of life under authoritarian rule and perhaps you see tanks and martial law troops in the streets. Legions of baton-wielding riot police terrorising the cowed citizenry. A strongman leader – it does, almost always, seem to be a man – presiding over a vast military parade. Political prisoners packed off to the gulag en masse. But this is not how modern authoritarianism works.

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on 12 February 2025 and was updated on 24 April after prosecutors in South Korea indicted former president Moon Jae-in, who led the country from 2017 to 2022. He was indicted on charges of bribery related to his former son-in-law’s position at an airline. Officials allege the son-in-law was hired in exchange for the airline’s CEO leading a state-funded agency.

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Xi Jinping does not want a protracted trade war with the United States. He understands that this will hurt the Chinese economy at a time when the country is already grappling with a property market crisis, slowing growth, and surging youth unemployment.

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Katie Stallard

Efren Morillo was supposed to be dead. He was playing pool with friends in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, in August 2016, when a group of men barged into the house. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but said they were police officers, and they told Morillo and his friends not to run. They ransacked the house looking for drugs, which the men insisted they did not have, then handcuffed them and led them out the back.