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Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has proved a catastrophic mistake. After Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv last month, Ukrainian troops were on Monday filmed restoring border posts on the Russian frontier, having mostly pushed Moscow’s army back from the second city of Kharkiv. Finland and Sweden are meanwhile due this week to apply to

Ukraine on Monday claimed that its troops had reached the border with Russia near Kharkiv after weeks of successful counterattack that pushed Moscow’s invading forces back from the country’s second-largest city. But officials in Washington and Kyiv stressed that fierce battles between Ukrainian and Russian troops raged south of Kharkiv over the far eastern Donbas

And . . . relax. Vodafone must be feeling mightily relieved. Emirates Telecommunications group, or Etisalat, which is 60 per cent owned by the government of the Gulf state, said this weekend it had amassed a 9.8 per cent shareholding in the UK-headquartered telecoms group. These are much easier people for a chief executive to have on board than

The writer is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and chief economist at Kroll Governments are spending a lot of time and resources trying to mitigate the soaring cost of energy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the war has sown the seeds of an even bigger crisis that is not getting nearly the

Nomura is to launch a new company to help institutional clients diversify into cryptocurrency, decentralised finance and non-fungible tokens, despite a recent run of volatility in the crypto market that has raised fundamental questions over its safety for investors. According to people with knowledge of the company’s plan, Japan’s largest investment bank will combine a

Hello and welcome to Trade Secrets. As this lands in your inbox, the EU and the US will be coming towards the end of their second Trade and Technology Council (TTC) meeting, this one in Saclay, a tech hub on the outskirts of Paris. (Did you know Paris had a tech hub? I didn’t.) The

Brambles, one of Australia’s oldest companies, has entered talks over a potential A$20bn (US$13.8bn) sale of the business as private equity and infrastructure funds target the country’s listed assets. The transport and logistics company said it had held talks with CVC Capital Partners over potentially taking the group private but that the negotiations were preliminary,

‘I got involved with no clue what a blockchain was’ A week is a long time in cryptoland. The $1.3tn cryptocurrency industry was on Thursday hit by one of its toughest challenges when stablecoin Tether — a critical cog in the market — failed to maintain its link with the US dollar. The plunge in

“Have you seen we’re on a bus now?” says Simon Mayo to co-presenter Mark Kermode in the opening episode of Kermode and Mayo’s Take, referring to the posters for their show adorning British public transport. They have every reason to feel discomfited by this. Both have long maintained that advertising a film on the side

“This station,” according to the English announcement that follows the Hindi original, “is New Delhi.” The sleek airport train slows to a gentle stop. When the doors on the left glide open, I swing my navy-blue backpack on to my shoulders. With a large bottle of water and two books inside, it’s heavier than usual

Investment allocations to ethnically diverse managers are still lagging far behind their white counterparts, as racial bias and outdated practices persist in the US fund industry, says John Rogers, founder of $17.8bn fund Ariel Investments. “People are used to thinking of minorities as experts in music or athletics, but not as mutual fund managers or investment

When Elon Musk announced he was putting his $44bn acquisition of Twitter “temporarily on hold” on Friday, it sent a familiar spasm through the stock market. Once again, the Tesla chief executive had used a brief tweet to deliver market-moving news. And once again, his offhand way of dealing with Wall Street provoked questions about

Sanctions on Russia and a Covid lockdown in China have reduced freight volumes in Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest seaport. But one cargo is booming: liquefied natural gas. Importing more LNG is a priority as the EU tries to cut its reliance on gas supplied from Russia, intending to starve Moscow of funds for its war in

There can be no other word for what happened in Finland and Sweden this weekend but “historic”. For decades in Finland’s case and centuries in Sweden’s, the thought of joining a military alliance was all but impossible. Now, in the 81 days since Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, the situation has changed so

Emails from the archive of Rutherford Hall, critical communications strategist From: rutherford@monkwellstrategy Dear Oleg If only you had come to us sooner. At Monkwell, we offered a complete package — the oligarch special — perfectly tailored to your needs. A membership of Quintessentially, dinners with cabinet ministers, a hotline to Carter-Ruck and even a pathway

The first time Valentina De Santis set foot on the premises of Villa Passalacqua, she assumed it would also be her last. It was October 2018: the three-storey, 18th-century villa in the tiny Lake Como town of Moltrasio was being sold at auction, and De Santis and her father – the only bidders to appear in person – had

Northvolt and Norsk Hydro will take their battery recycling joint venture to continental Europe later this year after the Swedish start-up and Norwegian aluminium producer opened their first plant in Norway. Hydrovolt has just started commercial operations for what is Europe’s largest battery recycling plant in the southern Norwegian town of Fredrikstad. The facility can

Efforts to deter migrants from crossing the English Channel through the threat of deportation may not be having the intended effect (Report, May 3), according to the latest figures. Whatever the outcomes of the new nationality and borders bill, we must remind ourselves that we are concerned with human lives and not statistics or political

The study we conducted at Peterson Institute for International Economics showing that reducing tariffs would help ease inflation has struck a nerve among protectionists, illustrated by Oren Cass’s column “Cutting China tariffs will offer no respite from rising prices” (Opinion, May 2). Let us make clear what we are and are not saying. Tariff reduction

Nicky Morgan’s plea (Opinion, April 30) for employment reform in parliament should start by making MPs and ministers employees of the state just as civil servants are, and by applying the same strict ban on having other jobs, accepting gifts from lobbyists, hiring unqualified members of their own families, or claiming expenses unconnected with their