Six months of war in Ukraine

Hello from London. I’ve had Ukraine on my mind this week — it’s both?the country’s 31 years of independence and six months since Russia’s invasion. A few months ago, when I spoke to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, we talked about the danger of a stalemate in the war. And yet, our piece this week described just that. Across much of the 2,400km front line, both sides are entrenching themselves for the long winter ahead.?It’s a great, if alarming, analysis that I hope you’ll read .

I also recommend our reporter’s dispatch on the mood in Kyiv, where war feels far away for some, but not for others. Correspondent Mehul Srivastava describes meeting?a wounded soldier at an underground techno club . In the Kyiv bars and clubs, he speaks to citizens who now occupy an awkward grey zone between war and peace, determined to party when they can.

My choices this week

1.?What would a second Trump administration mean for the world??Martin Wolf is not optimistic . In his column this week he explains how another Trump term will affect the west’s credibility.

2.?The cheap and deadly drone President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an used to help crush an insurgency in Turkey is now being used by the Ukrainian military to blow up Russian tanks. In the FT Weekend Magazine, we trace the origins of?the budget drone changing global warfare .

3.?Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss gathered her supporters at her official residence last weekend to plan her transition to power.?So what will a Truss cabinet look like? ?Whitehall editor Sebastian Payne introduces the hotly tipped candidates.

4.?“If you think of fossil fuel emissions as putting the world on a slow boil, methane is a blow torch that is cooking us today.” In this fascinating Big Read, we meet the?scientists hunting down sources of harmful methane gas . (Free to read)

5.?A 20-year-old has made $110mn betting on shares of Bed Bath & Beyond. How did he do it? Don’t miss the tale of?the student who won big in the meme stock frenzy .?(Free to read)

6.?Columnist Sarah O’Connor thought the pandemic would make expensive cities such as London a cheaper place to rent.?She now admits she was wrong , and explains why rents keep getting higher.

Thanks for reading,

Roula

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