In another week of high-wire diplomacy over the war in Ukraine, our expert team of correspondents and livebloggers reported in depth on developments as Kyiv said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire. Shaun Walker gauged the mood in Kyiv and reported from a press conference with a guarded Volodymyr Zelenskyy; Pjotr Sauer covered developments in a wary Moscow, while diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour looked at how the UK and France brought Zelenskyy back in from the diplomatic cold. As Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office and Zelenskyy’s right-hand man, entered the crunch talks in Jeddah, he set out his nation’s hopes and demands for the talks in our opinion section.
It’s been a dramatic week in the Philippines, when former president Rodrigo Duterte was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”. Rebecca Ratcliffe spoke to the mother of two men killed in the drug war, while Kate Lamb profiled Duterte, the populist president who went down fighting.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are facing mass forced displacements, a surge in airstrikes and a sharp rise in attacks on children and other civilians. Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum reported what a Palestinian-Israeli rights group is calling the “Gazafication” of Palestine’s larger territory. In this short documentary, our Jerusalem correspondent Bethan McKernan, spent time with Itamar Greenberg, an 18-year-old Israeli who has been in and out of military prison for almost a year as a result of his refusal to serve. His relationship with his parents is fascinating.
Shaun Walker secured an interview with Christo Grozev, the investigative reporter described by Alexei Navalny as a “modern-day Sherlock”, who was targeted in the bizarre and unnerving case of the Bulgarian spy ring believed to be working for Russian intelligence. The three members of which were found guilty of espionage in the UK last week in the UK. Dan Sabbagh told the extraordinary story of the spy ring/love triangle on Friday’s Today in Focus podcast. Another great piece about Russia this week was Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant’s essay about his memories of the hedonistic country he knew and loved – and that is now long gone – during the post-Soviet 90s.
Denis Campbell’s exclusive on NHS England’s chief executive resigning last week culminated in Thursday’s news that Labour’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, is taking the radical step of scrapping the body that runs the health service altogether, with 10,000 jobs to go. Denis looked at the consequences of the decision in expert depth. Meanwhile, as planned UK welfare cuts get bigger and closer, concerns have been mounting among people who are disabled and long-term sick, and among Labour MPs who will have to vote on the changes. Columnist Frances Ryan was scathing about the plans, writing that Labour’s move – and language – fuel prejudices about disabled people.
Environment editor Damian Carrington published two powerful stories this week. The first looked at research into how microplastic pollution is significantly cutting food supplies by damaging the ability of plants to photosynthesise. The second revealed that climate whiplash is hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies. There was some welcome good environmental news, too: Matthew Taylor reported that London’s expanded ultra-low emission zone, the subject of much opposition, has led to a dramatic fall in levels of deadly air pollutants across the city.
The usually restrained and polite atmosphere of a classical concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC rang with the sounds of boos and jeers as JD Vance and his wife took their seats for a National Symphony Orchestra concert. Andrew Roth and Charlotte Higgins had the exclusive, complete with video. (They happened to book tickets for the concert months before.) The performing arts centre has been engulfed in chaos since Donald Trump replaced its leader with a loyal apparatchik. In this must-read opinion piece, Sidney Blumenthal explored how sycophancy and loyalty to the president is now Trumpworld’s most valuable currency.
In the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Alfred, we spoke to people in Queensland trying yet again to pick up the pieces of their lives after another extraordinary weather event, while the key US weather and climate agencies that span the Pacific are being gutted.
Guardian cartoonist Ben Jennings has had a great week: from his viral view of the Ukraine negotiations, to Labour’s plans to cut disability benefits rather than tax the wealthy, and Friday’s magnificent take on the Elon Musk-fuelled Tesla backlash. There was more on Musk from southern Africa correspondent Rachel Savage, who reported from a school once attended by the world’s richest man and asked whether his childhood in apartheid South Africa helped frame his political views.
As Manchester United revealed ambitious plans for a 100,000-seat new stadium, and the club’s co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe compared it to the Eiffel Tower, Oliver Wainwright suggested that actually its vast canopy may “conjure thoughts of Zippos travelling circus”. Barney Ronay also took aim at the “sheer density of double-speak, evasion and vagueness” in a round of interviews given by Ratcliffe about the broader state of the club.
Gen-Z baggy or millennial “mom” jeans? I enjoyed Morwenna Ferrier and Emma Loffhagen trading generational denim styles to see if low and baggy beats high-waisted and ankle-exposing. With a fun photoshoot by Linda Nylind.
We had a rare interview with Kazuo Ishiguro in which he talked about what AI means for fiction in a post-truth world. And, speaking of AI and books, Jeanette Winterson wrote a fascinating critique of the literary short story produced by OpenAI’s new creative writing model: “Humans will always want to read what other humans have to say, but like it or not, humans will be living around non-biological entities. Alternative ways of seeing. And perhaps being. We need to understand this as more than tech.”
One more thing …I loved Richard Powers’s newest novel, Playground, which feels extremely relevant and urgent. Set in the US and Makatea, a tiny island in the Pacific, it weaves together the catastrophic warming of the oceans with advances in AI, helping us understand what is rapidly being lost as the climate-compromised future hurtles towards us.
