in Kyiv Russia’s invasion forced Ukrainian men of all ages to the frontlines, most with no experience of combat. The Guardian spoke to five soldiers about how life in the army transformed them and their relationships. On the day of the invasion I went home, drank some wine, then the next day took my gun and went to the army offices.
Shortly before the United States descended into civil war and senior administration officials made a forceful case to purchase Greenland for its natural resources, an American ship appeared in Nuuk’s harbour. Its arrival at Greenland’s largest outpost was newsworthy enough to merit a large picture in the local newspaper. The clipping, published in 1861, comes from the pages of the Atuagagdliutt, a Kalaallisut-language weekly that was the first in the world to use colour illustrations. The image of early US interest in Greenland forms part of a newly opened exhibition on 19th-century Arctic exploration at the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher rare book library. Arctic Fever, which draws together lithographs, books, maps and ephemera, offers some uncanny parallels to today’s scramble for the north, showcasing the ambition, hubris and hunger for territory and resources that still drive much interest in the region. “A lot of people see the news and are confused by president Donald Trump’s desires for Greenland. He’d said it in his first term. He voiced it last year,” said Isabelle Gapp, an art historian at the University of Aberdeen, and co-curator of the exhibition. “But people often don’t quite understand just how long a history the US has with Greenland.” The view held by senior officials in the current White House was also held in 1867, when secretary of state William Seward formalized a desire to acquire Greenland and Iceland, citing the two islands’ immense strategic value. Donald Trump has said he would not take Greenland by force, but the White House suggests that it remains keen to control the island. Jeff Landry, the US special envoy to Greenland, called it“one of the world’s most strategically consequential regions” in a recent New York Times op-ed, and called American dominance in the Arctic a “non-negotiable” reality. “It’s lucky for us – in a kind of nasty way – that politics would make this collection so resonant. But I’m hopeful it gives us a chance to think more about just politics,” said the exhibition’s other curator, Mark Cheetham, an art historian at the University of Toronto. “It’s also the place where the themes of environment and migration and resource extraction are so dominant. We’re hoping though to be able to give the public a fuller view of a place that has long been the source of obsessions.” Few regions of the world have captured the public imagination as the Arctic, buoyed in part by accounts of successful expeditions – and the horrors associated with failure. The exhibition’s title comes from the 19th-century US adventurer Walter Wellman, who wrote: “The arctic fever is in our blood, and there is no cure for such patients but to put them on ice.” By focusing their collection during the zenith of exploration in the region, the team at the library are hoping to reshape how people understand the human presence in a vast, culturally and geographically diverse region of the planet. “We tried to push against the narrative that this was a barren, inhospitable wasteland. Wilderness implies a space in which there is kind of nothingness, that one is travelling to a place where no one has been before. But this is obviously untrue when you look at the people who have long lived there,” Gapp said. “But even today, there’s a narrative that is a place where this man overcomes nature. And this idea very much comes from the 19th century.” Grant Hurley, a librarian who helped acquire many of the works, said the collection showed the evolution of how nations slowly changed their views of the north. “For European and American explorers, the Arctic was once thought of as a place to be transited successfully. It was simply a place to pass through,” he said. “Once that was accomplished, it then became a place to colonize and claim as your own territory.” But for Indigenous peoples, the lands and waters were long a place to live, hunt, travel and explore. Threaded through the exhibit is a recognition that they understood how to thrive on the region’s land and waters – and attempted to share that knowledge with outsiders. The British explorer William Parry spent a winter learning from Inuit in the 1820s when his search for the fabled Northwest Passage was foiled by ice. Parry grew enamoured with an Inuk woman called Iligliuk, who displayed a “superiority of understanding for which she was so remarkably distinguished”. Early attempts to have locals sketch maps of the region “did not produce any very satisfactory information”, Parry wrote in his journal. But soon the British began to “appreciate the geographical knowledge which they possessed”. Iligliuk’s ability to translate her knowledge of the land into something sailors could use was both accurate and detailed. Her skills were called “astounding” by the English geographer John Barrow, who was serving as the second secretary of the admiralty. Iligliuk’s maps reflected generations of interaction with the environment. Instead of a compass, she was guided by winds, the movement of ice and the contours of the land. She identified spots where caribou were plentiful and where one could rest, displaying a very different relationship with the region than the one envisioned by European and American explorers. “What strikes me over and over again is how militarized the Arctic has been [since] the first excursions in the 1500s. Parry wanted to find the Northwest Passage. Why? Because it was an economic and military advantage,” Cheetham said. “Iligliuk’s views reflected a wholly different measure of time and space.” While none of his items are present, the curators admit that Sir John Franklin, the famed explorer, is the “ghost” of the exhibition. His 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage ended in disaster, with all 129 crew members succumbing to the hostile elements. From 1847 to 1859, at least 36 expeditions set out in search of Franklin’s lost ships. All ended in failure, but produced both an unprecedented stream of detailed studies of the region. The collection also includes other, more human artefacts from the search, including elaborate playbills printed on silk commemorating the theatrical showcases put on as entertainment during the long winter nights. One such performance, aboard the HMS Assistance in 1851, promised a “grand farcical, tragical, melo-dramatical, serio-comic” play, with a “lady … engaged at an enormous sacrifice, it being her first appearance on any stage” – a nod to the extensive catalogue of costumes brought along for the voyage. It wasn’t until researchers turned to Inuit oral history that they were able to locate the final resting place of the Erebus and the Terror in the past decade. Climate change has battered swaths of the Arctic and will inflict further damage to delicate ecosystems. As permafrost thaws and ice melts, the rush to extract immense resource wealth is only beginning. Nations and Indigenous peoples are bracing once more for a feverish push into the region. “As the focus intensifies once more on the Arctic, it’s important to remember there isn’t one history, there are many histories. People have long moved in all directions, from all places. They have traveled and they have lived there,” Gapp said. “The history of the Arctic is long, rich, varied, and so too is its future. Where we are today is just another brief moment in its history.”
A close and powerful associate of the deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has reportedly been detained during a joint operation by Venezuela’s intelligence agency and the FBI. Alex Saab, a wealthy Colombian-Venezuelan businessman long considered Maduro’s frontman, was removed from his position in Venezuela’s government a fortnight after US forces captured his ally on 3 January. In the early hours of Wednesday, the 54-year-old was reportedly detained by members of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) at a luxury home in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Raúl Gorrín, a billionaire media mogul who owns the Globovisión TV channel, was also reportedly detained at the same address. There was no immediate confirmation of the arrests from Venezuela’s government but a US official claimed Saab had been detained as a result of collaboration between US and Venezuelan authorities. The official said they expected Saab to be extradited to the US in the coming days. However, a lawyer for Saab, Luigi Giuliano, called reports of his client’s detention “fake news” and told Colombia’s El Espectador newspaper that he was “doing fine in Caracas”. A representative for Gorrín told the New York Times that he was free as of Wednesday evening. Intelligence sources told the Colombian radio station Caracol that Saab, who had served as minister for industry and national production under Maduro, was taken into custody at about 2am and was being held at the intelligence service’s detention centre. Saab’s supposed detention was the latest extraordinary twist in the life of the Barranquilla-born businessman who came to be known as one of the most important financial operators of Maduro’s Chavista political movement. In 2019, Saab was indicted in the US for allegedly being part of a corruption racket that saw about $350m of government money transferred out of Venezuela and into accounts he owned or controlled. The following year, Saab was arrested after landing in Cape Verde while flying to Iran and, after a protracted legal battle, extradited to the US in 2021 to be charged with money laundering. He was the subject of sanctions in the UK for plundering resources destined for public programmes designed to feed and house poverty-stricken Venezuelans in order to grow rich. However, in December 2023, Saab – who has denied the charges against him – was controversially released as part of a prisoner swap deal with the Biden administration. He returned to Venezuela and in 2024 Maduro made his ally a minister – a position he was stripped of on 16 January by Maduro’s former number two, the country’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez. Saab’s reported detention was a reminder of how volatile the political situation remains in Venezuela one month after Maduro’s downfall upended the country’s authoritarian political landscape. Trump has claimed that the US is “running” the South American country after January’s special forces raid and has warned that Rodríguez could face a worse fate than Maduro if she fails to do Washington’s bidding. Since taking power, Rodríguez has removed several members of Maduro’s cabinet and security apparatus, including the head of presidential security and the minister of communication and information. However, other key names in the Chavismo movement remain in power, including the feared interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who controls Venezuela’s security forces and paramilitary groups.
It was designed in the 1950s to be the world’s first “drive-through shopping centre”, a futuristic structure with more than than two miles of ramps looping past 300 shops, as well as cinemas, a hotel, a private club, a concert hall and a heliport. But the building was never completed, and under the regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, spaces envisioned as shops were turned into cells, and El Helicoide became Venezuela’s most notorious torture centre for political prisoners. Now, under US pressure, acting president, Delcy Rodríguez – who previously oversaw the prison as Maduro’s vice-president – has announced plans to shut down El Helicoide and turn it into a cultural centre. The giant structure, which looms over central Caracas, will be turned into a “sports, cultural and commercial centre for police families and neighbouring communities”, Rodríguez said on Friday. The move is part of a raft of measures touted by Rodríguez as proof that the government has turned the page since Maduro was captured and renditioned to the US. But activists have criticised the plan as an attempt to rehabilitate a symbol of Venezuela’s collapse – and erase the regime’s long history of repression. “The horrors committed at El Helicoide have already been sufficiently documented and exposed by numerous human rights organisations and by a United Nations mission,” said Martha Tineo, coordinator of the NGO Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón (Justice, Encounter and Forgiveness, or JEP), one of the groups that have for years supported political prisoners and their families. “We welcome the fact that it will be shut down – but not so that it can be turned into some kind of social or recreation centre,” Tineo said. Activists argue the site should instead be turned into a space of memory, along the lines of the former Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Esma) in Buenos Aires, a torture centre under Argentina’s military dictatorship which is now a museum. That would offer “a form of reparation for victims by telling the truth and ensuring that these horrors are not repeated”, Tineo said. Named after its spiralling, brutalist concrete structure, the building was conceived in the 1950s to project an image of modernity fuelled by oil wealth during the military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, but it was abandoned after he was overthrown in 1958. In the 1970s it became a temporary shelter for thousands left homeless by devastating landslides, but the overcrowded structure soon became notorious for drug trafficking and crime. In the 1980s, the families were moved out, and it was used as the headquarters for the domestic intelligence service. Under Chávez, El Helicoide became a detention centre for political prisoners held by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin). Repression intensified under Maduro, and reports documented practices of torture including electric shocks, beatings, suffocation and prolonged bans on family visits. In recent years, El Helicoide and Sebin were under the direct command of Rodríguez. Engineer and activist Angel Godoy, 52, spent nine months in El Helicoide last year. Although he says he was not tortured there, he was unable to contact his family for the first three months. He was arrested in the regime’s crackdown after the opposition organised a nationwide effort to collect voting records and prove that it had won the 2024 election – even though Maduro nevertheless declared himself the victor. His organisation had trained citizens to monitor the electoral process. “They saw this as a major threat and came after us,” said Godoy, who was charged with terrorism, incitement to hatred and to armed action. Three months ago, he was transferred from El Helicoide to Yare prison, which is also notorious for its overcrowding and dire conditions. When he was released on 14 January, after 372 days behind bars, Godoy left behind all his few belongings for his cellmates: sandals, a toothbrush, toiletries and some food. “When the guards shouted my name, my fellow inmates began shouting, ‘Freedom, freedom!’ As I walked out, they told me to fight for them and not to forget them,” Godoy said. Like dozens of others released since the US attack, Godoy was not granted full liberty: although, unlike others, he has not been barred from giving press interviews, he must still report to court every 30 days and is prohibited from leaving the country. Activists estimate that between 600 and 800 political prisoners remain behind bars, even after Rodríguez announced her intention to send an “amnesty” bill to congress. “I think I will only truly be free when each and every one of my fellow prisoners is out of those unjust cells,” Godoy said. While no date has been set for a vote, the bill is expected to pass easily in the national assembly, which is dominated by regime loyalists. A main concern of activists is that, according to the acting president, those convicted of crimes such as homicide will be excluded. Yet among political prisoners are many accused of never-proven allegations of supposed assassination plots against Maduro. JEP’s coordinator, Tineo, also argues that these people must be compensated for being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, and that political prisoners, former detainees – many of whom died in custody – their families and civil society organisations must take part in the discussion of the amnesty bill. A new oil industry law, approved last week, has drawn the same criticism over a lack of transparency and public debate, reinforcing the view among critics that Rodríguez’s administration represents a form of Chavismo 3.0. “Trying to carry on as things were in the past would amount to confirmation that there is no real will for change from the government,” Tineo said.
Good morning. Older readers may remember Peter Mandelson as a man in a sharp suit drifting through New Labour’s 1990s heyday like a Bond villain with a Filofax. An architect of Labour’s modernisation and a lightning rod for right-wing press ire, he has been in the orbit of power for more than three decades. That run has now come to a shuddering halt after the release of the so-called Epstein files by the US Department of Justice, which detail the extent of Mandelson’s contact with the late billionaire financier and convicted child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein. While the Met police investigate Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the disclosures from the files have also raised urgent questions about judgment, access and accountability at the highest levels of public life. For today’s newsletter I take a look at Mandelson’s history and current situation, and speak to investigations correspondent Henry Dyer to unpack why, even in these extreme circumstances, Mandelson cannot simply be removed from the House of Lords. First, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Labour MPs have warned that Keir Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered after a day of fury over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Gaza | Israeli forces have bulldozed part of a Gaza cemetery containing the war graves of dozens of British, Australian and other allied soldiers killed in the first and second world wars. Crime | An 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a student in his 20s was stabbed in Leicester city centre and later died in hospital, Leicestershire police have said. Media | Washington Post editor in chief Matt Murray on Wednesday morning announced internally a “broad strategic reset” that will result in “significant” layoffs across the company. Immigration | Donald Trump’s border tsar said about 700 federal agents would leave Minnesota, a large drop in agents on the ground but still leaving about 2,000 agents there, far above typical levels for the state. In depth: ‘Peers are expected to act on their personal honour, the ‘good chap’ theory’ Henry Dyer is no stranger to Lords behaving badly, having been part of the Guardian team whose investigations into Lord Evans of Watford and Lord Dannatt led to them being suspended from the House of Lords. I wanted to know if a similar fate might befall Lord Mandelson who, despite saying he has effectively retired, will retain his title. “Peers are expected to act on their personal honour, the code of conduct says,” Henry tells me. “That’s never really been properly defined – the whole thing is supposed to work on the ‘good chap’ theory.” But recent publicity very much suggests that Mandelson has not been a ‘good chap’. *** Who is Peter Mandelson – and why does he still matter? Peter Mandelson is one of the most influential political operators of the past 40 years, even though he has spent much of that time just outside the spotlight. A central architect of New Labour, he helped modernise the party’s image in the 1990s, earning him the nickname “the Prince of Darkness” for his command of media messaging. He served in multiple cabinet roles under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, twice resigning amid controversy and twice returning, before reinventing himself as a European Commissioner, lobbyist and political fixer. Elevated to the House of Lords in 2008, Mandelson remained a behind-the-scenes force within Labour, advising Keir Starmer’s leadership and briefly serving as UK ambassador to Washington in 2025, before the swirl of Epstein-related stories led him to step down. Mandelson was also an exceptional figure in politics for being openly gay, a fact that has shaped how he is treated by the media and the opposition alike. Long before culture wars were part of everyday Westminster talk, his sexuality was weaponised against him. Columnist Matthew Parris “outed” Mandelson in 1998 during an interview for BBC Two’s Newsnight, and Boris Johnson referred to “tank-topped bum boys” in a Telegraph column – an explicitly homophobic attack Mandelson later called an outright slur. What makes him matter now, though, is not just his longevity, but his proximity to power: a figure who was never merely a minister, but a strategist, gatekeeper and power broker. *** What is Mandelson being investigated for? The Metropolitan police are investigating Peter Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office, a common-law offence that applies when a public official is alleged to have acted in their position in a way that seriously abuses the public’s trust. The inquiry was launched after the release of documents from the Epstein files appeared to show Mandelson sharing confidential and potentially market-sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as business secretary during the global financial crisis. Misconduct in public office is a notoriously broad and ill-defined offence, but it carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In practice, prosecutions are rare and typically focus on whether a public official wilfully misused their position without reasonable justification. Other potential lines of inquiry include market abuse, if confidential information was disclosed in a way that could have influenced trading in government bonds or financial markets. Mandelson has denied wrongdoing, saying the documents do not show any misdemeanour on his part. The police investigation is expected to involve interviews, examination of devices and requests for unredacted material from US authorities, with any decision to bring charges ultimately resting with prosecutors. *** What is the Official Secrets Act – and has Mandelson broken it? Breaking the Official Secrets Act is often invoked as shorthand for the gravest imaginable breach of state trust, but in practice the act is a blunt, ageing and rarely used legal tool. While senior politicians have suggested Mandelson’s email exchanges with Epstein may have breached the act, it is far from clear whether the information allegedly shared falls within the narrow categories the act protects. The core of the legislation dates back to 1911, drafted in the shadow of fears about a German invasion and written in the language of war, enemies and spies rather than modern government, markets or email trails. Because of that, prosecutions under the act are exceptionally rare – typically fewer than one a year. Former intelligence officials describe it as “notoriously flaky”, and prosecutors are cautious about using it unless a case is overwhelming. Espionage trials are also politically sensitive – juries have historically proved unpredictable, and failed cases can cause deep embarrassment to the state. Two of the most famous Official Secrets cases – against Clive Ponting over the Falklands, and Katharine Gun over the Iraq war – ended in acquittal. *** Why wasn’t Mandelson ejected from the House of Lords? In theory, the House of Lords does have a disciplinary system, Henry explains. Complaints about peers are investigated by the Lords commissioner for standards, who can deal with minor breaches directly or refer more serious cases to the Conduct Committee, a body made up of peers and independent lay members. It can decide, Henry says, “that a Peer might have to pay some money back, might have to issue an apology, and it can suspend peers.” What it has almost never done is expel a peer outright. While the committee technically has that power, it has never formally removed someone who did not resign first. The closest case was Lord Ahmed in 2020, who stepped down after being told he would be expelled after findings of serious misconduct. He was jailed in 2022 for sexual offences against children. There are also time limits, Henry says. Ordinarily, the Lords will only investigate breaches of its code of conduct committed within the past four years, though the committee can choose to waive that restriction in exceptional circumstances. In Mandelson’s case, Henry points out, alleged conduct dating back to his time as a cabinet minister in 2009 could plausibly have been investigated as behaviour that brought the House into disrepute – had he not already resigned. Crucially, though, resignation from the Lords does not mean the loss of a title. Mandelson has retired under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, but he remains Lord Mandelson for life. That distinction lies at the heart of the current controversy. *** What sanctions might Mandelson ultimately face? With the police now investigating, Henry says any disciplinary process inside parliament would almost certainly be paused. He points to the case of Michelle Mone, who has been under investigation by the Lords commissioner for standards for several years while criminal inquiries continue. Acting before the conclusion of a police investigation risks accusations of pre-judgment. In theory, parliament could legislate to strip Mandelson of his peerage altogether. Life peerages are created under statute, and Henry stresses that what parliament creates by law, it can undo by law. There is even a legislative template: the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, passed during the first world war, removed titles from peers who sided with enemy powers, and included the precise wording needed to strike someone from the roll of peerages. Legally, then, it could be done quickly – even in a single day – if the government chose to make time for it. The obstacle is political rather than procedural. Targeting a single individual risks setting an uncomfortable precedent, raising questions about why one peer is singled out and others are not, and edging towards the historical taboo of parliament and the crown using acts of attainder to punish individuals with bespoke legislation. Henry’s conclusion is blunt: if ministers truly wanted to act, they could. The real issue is whether they are prepared to own the precedent – and whether they want to wait for the outcome of criminal investigations before doing so. What else we’ve been reading Lanre Bakare sets out on a quest to learn to style his daughters’ mixed-race hair. The results are both moving and sweet. Aamna Mohdin, newsletters team The reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti has been heartening, with even the gun lobby questioning the Trump administration’s justification. Abené Clayton contrasts that with the lack of attention given to the death by police of Black gun owner Philando Castile. Toby Moses, head of newsletters Aditya Chakrabortty’s fascinating reporting on the Greens show they have moved beyond an electoral force to become a social movement, with serious implications for the leadership within the Greens and Labour. Aamna Austin Applebee’s story has been a rare ray of light in 2026; our explainer looks at how a 13-year-old boy swam for four hours, through treacherous maritime conditions, then ran 2km to save his family stuck at sea. Toby A growing number of people are choosing to limit the contact they have with their family. Emily Retter tenderly explores the benefits and the negatives of such a decision. Aamna Sport Winter Olympics | Great Britain’s best hopes of a gold medal at the Winter Olympics have suffered a significant blow after skeleton’s governing body banned Team GB’s aerodynamic helmets for being the wrong shape. Rugby union | ITV will screen in-game commercials for the first time during Thursday’s Six Nations Championship opener between France and Ireland at Stade de France. Snooker | The much-loved snooker player and commentator John Virgo has died at the age of 79, World Snooker has announced. The front pages “‘It’s over’ for Starmer, say Labour MPs amid fury over Mandelson” is the Guardian splash. The Times leads on “Starmer fights for future over Mandelson scandal”, the Telegraph has “Rayner turns on Starmer” and the Sun simply says “Revolting”. “Starmer in grave peril as Rayner twists knife” is lead story at the Mail, and the i paper frames news of the day as “Starmer isolated: Labour MPs losing confidence in the Prime Minister”. The FT splashes on “Satellite signals intercepted by Kremlin craft, spy officials say” while the Mirror mourns the death of snooker legend John Virgo with “I can’t imagine a life without my John”. Today in Focus A survivor on the Epstein Files The latest release of the Epstein files has dominated the news this week. Annie Kelly speaks to Lisa Philips, who suffered years of abuse by Epstein in the 2000s and is now one of the many survivors calling for more transparency from the Trump administration. Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad The Welsh county of Carmarthenshire has launched “The Sisterhood,” a new initiative capitalising on the trend of women foregoing traditional prosecco-fuelled getaways for trips centred on wellbeing and acquiring new skills. The goal is to immerse visitors in the local landscape and its seasons, while aiming to embody the Welsh word for sisterhood, chwaeroliaeth, which means “sisters together”. It reflects a Welsh tradition of women gathering, often while performing shared tasks like milking or churning butter. Groups can opt for pre-curated stays, or they can design a bespoke experience. The activities are led by Wild Kin, a collective of local experts including potters, painters, coastal foragers, horse whisperers, walking guides, makers, and massage therapists. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Martin Belam’s Thursday news quiz Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
In their first call since November, Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned US president Donald Trump to be “prudent” about supplying arms to Taiwan, according to a readout of their call provided by China’s foreign ministry. “President Xi emphasised that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” the readout said. “China must safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will never allow Taiwan to be separated. The US must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.” Hours later, the self-ruled island’s president, Lai Ching-te, said ties with the US were “rock solid”. “The Taiwan-US relationship is rock solid, and all cooperation projects will continue uninterrupted,” Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, told reporters during a visit to textile merchants in western Taiwan on Thursday. Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy that China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. Beijing prohibits all countries it has diplomatic relations with – including the US – from having formal ties with Taipei. Still, while the US doesn’t officially recognise Taiwan as a country, it is the island’s strongest informal backer and arms supplier. In December, the US state department announced its largest-ever arms sales package to Taiwan, valued at more than $11.1bn and including missiles, artillery systems and drones. The package is yet to be approved by Congress. China reacted angrily to the proposed arms sales, conducting two days of military drills around the island in late December, for which it dispatched air, navy and missile units. The arms sales are also facing pushback from Taiwan’s opposition KMT party and some of its population, along with a proposed increase of defense spending to 3.3% of Taiwan’s gross domestic product. Taiwan’s opposition-controlled parliament has blocked Lai’s budget plan, including a $40bn special defense budget, proposing instead a much smaller defense spending plan. Late on Wednesday, Trump had said the call with Xi – which covered topics including Taiwan’s future – was “excellent” and “thorough” in a post on Truth Social. The call also covered Russia’s war in Ukraine, “the current situation with Iran” and China buying oil and gas from the US, Trump wrote in the post. He added that he was looking forward to a trip to China in April that will be the first of his current term in office. Trump also said China was considering buying 20m tons of US soya beans in the current season, up from 12m tons in the previous season.
The swish of feet on clay and sand has a soothing, rhythmic feel, as wrestlers at a sumo stable in Tokyo propel themselves across the ring, their bodies low, eyes fixed on an imaginary foe. By the time their morning training ends an hour later, all but one of the rikishi are bathed in sweat, gulping lungfuls of air, their strength waning with every shove. One wrestler has spent most of the session at the side of the dohyo ring, guiding his stablemates with words delivered with economy and purpose. After the group bow to a miniature Shinto shrine on the back wall, they gather around their mentor in a communal expression of gratitude. Four years ago, he went by the name Danylo Yavhusishyn, a teenage refugee from the war in Ukraine who arrived in Japan unable to speak a word of the language, and uncertain of how his separation from his family would work out. Then this month, Yavhusishyn – now known by his fighting name Aonishiki – won his second tournament in a row, and is on course to become the first European to become a yokozuna grand champion – the pinnacle of the ancient Japanese sport. “It’s not good to be too fixated on [promotion] … But I wake up every day wanting to get stronger, to climb another rank higher,” he told international media, including the Guardian, after a morning training session at the Ajigawa stable in the capital’s eastern suburbs this week. “Wanting to become stronger and to attain a higher rank is my motivation. The simple fact is that you can’t progress without a struggle.” Aonishiki, whose sumo name means “blue brocade” in honour of the Ukrainian flag, reached the sport’s second-highest rank of ozeki in record time last year, having made his professional debut only in July 2023. His feat is all the more remarkable given his weight – at 140kg (309lb) he is not particularly heavy by sumo standards. It is his strength, skill and determination that should earn the 21-year-old from Vinnytsia, in central Ukraine, promotion to yokozuna – a feat achieved by just 75 men in the sport’s history – if he wins next month’s tournament in Osaka. ‘I want more people around the world to take an interest’ Aonishiki was preparing to begin his university studies in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February 2022, forcing him to abandon his plans. A career in sumo seemed a natural choice for the teenager, who had taken up judo and freestyle wrestling as a boy, becoming national sumo champion in 2021. In 2019, he finished third at the junior world sumo championships in Osaka, where he befriended the Japanese wrestler Arata Yamanaka, then captain of a university sumo team in western Japan. After Russia invaded, Aonishiki, who had fled to Germany with his parents, reached out to Yamanaka, whose family agreed to host him. It took Aonishiki just nine tournaments to reach the top tier of sumo – an accomplishment that tied him with two other wrestlers for the fastest ascent through all six divisions since 1958, when the sport adopted its current format of six 15-day grand tournaments, or basho, a year. Years after sumo was embroiled in match-fixing and bullying scandals – and disquiet among purists at the dominance of Mongolian rikishi – Aonishiki is part of a crop of wrestlers driving a golden age for the sport, whose roots go back centuries. “People ask me for tickets all the time … I’m excited that sumo is getting a lot of attention, and we as wrestlers have a responsibility to respond,” he says. “I want more people around the world to take an interest in sumo, so we still have work to do.” ‘London was a lot of fun’ Stables are opening their doors to overseas visitors amid Japan’s tourism boom, and tickets for tournaments sell out immediately. The success of last year’s exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall – the first sumo tour to Britain for 34 years – confirmed the sport’s growing global appeal. A similar event will be held in Paris in June. “London was a lot of fun, and it was different from when we do sumo in Japan,” says Aonishiki, his frame wrapped in a blue-and-white yukata robe. “The fans’ reaction was different, and you could feel the excitement, so it’s something I would definitely like to do again. “There’s nothing like sumo – it’s not always the strongest or biggest person who wins, so it doesn’t discriminate in that sense. I’ve heard that sumo is becoming popular overseas, and as a wrestler I’d be delighted if more people got into it.” Aonishiki is more loquacious than many of his peers, although he is reluctant to discuss the war in Ukraine. But his home country, and the friends he left behind – are never far from his mind. He speaks to his parents every day and is aware that his success has made headlines in Ukraine. “My friends and my old sumo coach and everyone else, they’re all watching sumo more than I expected,” he says. “When I win a title or even when I just win a match, they get in touch straight away and it gives me more motivation to work hard.” When he isn’t training and “sleeping a lot”, he visits onsen hot springs and – unsurprisingly perhaps – eats out a lot, with sushi and Korean barbecue among his favourites. “I do miss food from Ukraine, he says. “A lot of Ukrainian dishes contain potatoes, so I like it when we have nikujaga [a Japanese meat and potato stew].” The exhausted junior stablemate resting in the background as Aonishiki speaks would no doubt have agreed with his response when asked what he enjoyed most about morning training. “The moment it ends,” he says.
Valentyn Polianskyi, 24 – poet, tailor, ex-prisoner After his mother died when he was very young, Valentyn Polianskyi was raised in the Kherson region by his aunt and his grandmother. Now 24, he says he felt a little embarrassed by his love of sewing clothes, believing it was “more for women than men” so after studying tailoring at university he signed a contract with the 36th marine brigade, where he served as a material support sergeant. He met a girl and they fell in love so quickly that within months they were engaged. “We were at the flowers and candy stage,” he says. When the Russian invasion came on 24 February 2022 he was deployed in Mariupol, at the Illich steel plant. The seaport city was battered and besieged; tens of thousands of Ukrainians were killed and 90% of the city was destroyed. On 12 April, as his unit was told by their commander to surrender to avoid being wiped out, Polianskyi learned his girlfriend was pregnant. It was the 48th day of war when he was taken into Russian captivity, and Polianskyi spent the next three years being beaten, starved, tortured and poisoned. “Sometimes, I find it easier not to talk at all. It’s very hard to talk about captivity,” he says. “You get up at 6am and have to stand up until 10pm. So your legs get swollen and lumps of blood form beneath the skin.” After the hours of standing, “you cannot even walk up the one step to the toilets, it is agony. Always there are beatings. “There are men castrated; chemicals forced into people. There are no doctors, so older men, if they have health problems, they die. My friend died of pneumonia – he was 47. “When I came back, I found I had a wife and a two-and-a-half-year-old child. That was hard. Before the invasion we were closer; it was very romantic. Now we are a lot colder and my daughter is struggling to see where I fit into their lives. Sometimes she calls me Daddy but sometimes she calls me Valentyn. “I’m suffering with feelings of aggression. I can’t find anyone I trust to get help, so to cope I stay away from alcohol, I meditate and write my poetry.” Polianskyi now works with an organisation helping other released prisoners, but the formerly gentle tailor is now a steelier man. “I would kill each Russian with my bare hands,” he says calmly. “Even my grandchildren will know they are bastards.” Henadii Udovenko, 53 – builder, father, commander Henadii Udovenko had been working on the renovation of a government official’s apartment when he first heard talk of war. “So I had thought about it and already decided I would enlist. The morning of the invasion, I took the metro to Kyiv’s military registration office,” he says. “What was I thinking? I was thinking I was glad I didn’t take my car because already there were traffic jams of people leaving the city.” Before the war, Udovenko had his own small building company. They did a bit of everything – plumbing, electrics – and he and his wife had two children, a daughter and son, who were doing well in their education. “I was afraid at first. I didn’t know how I would react in a combat zone – I was interested to see if I would be a coward or not. But you come to war stage by stage. “I can’t talk for other men, only me, but I have wanted to challenge myself all my life and I realised in the army that I had the skills to get through it. I have no doubt that the war has made me a stronger person, that it makes many men stronger.” Udovenko, who rose through the ranks and now commands a unit, was wounded in the trenches in 2023. He lost a leg, but chose to return to the fighting as soon as he was able. He shrugs when asked about his decision: “My family needed me less than the men at the front needed me. I couldn’t just leave them. “My wife and I are closer since the invasion, especially since my injury. Young men have it harder – young women think the war is too much, too long. They are so fed up and are arguing with their men, but really there is no choice here. “There are huge misunderstandings between Ukrainian men and women, lots of difficulties in relationships. The invasion has turned ordinary men into warriors, and that seeps into and divides the family. “As soldiers, men function differently,” he says. “You are with this tight group and you know each other completely because you have to open up fast. Everything in war happens so quickly.” Udovenko holds his country dear for its potential: “For 30 years we have lived as an independent country – made some stupid mistakes, yes, but it shouldn’t be all destroyed. Russia is a prison country, with no possibility to have your own thoughts and independence. “I don’t hate Russians; Russia has the same poor people as here, they are not our enemy. My enemy is the people who sit in those trenches every day and shoot and shell us.” Denys Monastyrskyy, 29 – gamer, sniper, weapons trainer “There was no noise. Just the explosion. I felt the pain in my left hand and I could taste metal,” Denys Monastyrskyy says of the day that two of his fingers were sliced off by shrapnel. “Amputation is a thing you live in fear of – you think about what part you’d rather lose. I was a boxer and love sport, so I didn’t want to lose anything. “We have a lot of injured guys, we talk about ‘what does it feel like?’ This felt like an intense burn. It was all very fast. Then the training kicked in and I applied the tourniquet. But I was thinking, ‘how will I tell my mother?’” Monastyrskyy joined the army in 2014, aged 17, just as Russia invaded, and annexed, the Crimean peninsula, starting the Russia-Ukraine war, which has been subsumed and escalated by the 2022 invasion. His father was killed in the fighting and he had thought his own wound in 2017 would end his military career. “My commander called the doctors and told them ‘save his hand’. Otherwise I think they would just have amputated all of it.” The full-scale invasion has drawn Monastyrskyy, and many other veterans, back into uniform. “We knew war was coming. None of us expected that if we went, we would come back. But I was excited: this enemy was our enemy. “They took my fingers; they killed my father; they are on my land. I knew this would be the most important event of my life and for my country. “When I first joined the army, I felt to my very soul that I belonged. We work together, we sleep together. We are a family that’s more than blood.” He has lost 40 friends in the war but says: “Ukrainians never give up.” Monastyrskyy always wanted to be a soldier. “I asked my mum to buy me camo trousers at the market when I was eight. I was always playing war games, preparing myself,” he says. “We are afraid and we become adults too fast, but I don’t feel cheated out of my youth; it was unavoidable,” he says. “War gives you [the] possibility to understand what strength you have – your good sides, your bad sides. For all different ages, war gives you a commonality as men.” But he says it is impossible to think about a future, about finding a wife or having children. “Ukrainians don’t give up, but what does suffer is the relationship between the sexes. A lot of couples are doing very worse now; lots of women left with the children. The days off – you can be 100 or 200 days on the frontline, about 15 days a year leave to see your family. “It is very sad, but war is very sad. War doesn’t knock on your door, it just barges in.” Masi Nayyem, 41 – refugee, lawyer, soldier Masi Nayyem, an Afghan-Ukrainian lawyer, was on a date, busily telling his new girlfriend there would be no war, when he had an alert on his phone. As a reservist – he had served as a paratrooper in Donbas in 2016 – he was being called up. Two days later came the invasion. “On the day of the invasion I went home, drank some wine, then the next day took my gun and went to the army offices. “It’s easy because your friends, and all of civil society, are going to war. I never thought about leaving Ukraine, I love this country and I just thought: it’s time to be a man, now you can show who you are. “I don’t like guns, I don’t like anything about war. But as a man in war you find you trust your comrades more than your girlfriend or your parents. “Once I was on the frontline I asked myself: ‘Am I afraid?’ I thought, if I’m wounded, then please not my legs, I love to walk my dog. [This bargaining] does go through your head: ‘OK, if I’m wounded then take my hands’ – then I think, no, I’m being stupid! No sex without hands. “In the end, I left behind an eye and part of my brain. It was an explosion, a mine. I woke up in hospital and saw my brother there. He told me I’d lost my eye and I said: ‘OK, now I can park my car like a bastard.’” Nayyem was born in the middle of a war, in Afghanistan. When his mother died of an infection 10 days after his birth because the Afghan authorities said the hospital was “only for warriors”, his father fled the country. First to Russia, then, when Nayyem was six, to Ukraine, where they arrived as refugees with $300 and a box of Chinese-made umbrellas to sell. After he was wounded in June 2022, Nayyem was devastated to see racist trolling about him on social media. “But then I realised it was all Russian bots. That was a huge relief, because I believe this war has united Ukrainians, more than we have been in the last 100 years.” Now, as co-founder of the legal aid centre Pryncyp, Nayyem dedicates himself to Ukraine’s hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers, lobbying government for a veterans’ policy. “Civil society needs to hear their problems,” he says. “Relationships suffer because when you go to war you need to be free to be a good warrior. Ukrainian women are understanding, but you can’t explain everything. “You speak with men in one language but when you go home it’s a different language, and you need to find strength to communicate. “It’s a hard thing for veterans to find people who understand. Psychologists are hard to find and it’s harder still to find one you can work with. We don’t have a culture of going to psychologists, taking antidepressants. “It’s like when you are stabbed with a knife and you aren’t supposed to take the knife out. That is now, a silent time; the knife is still in and the bleeding will come later.” Alex Tomkin, 35 – video producer, DJ, soldier Tomkin is open about his terror of being sent to the frontline: “I’m no traitor, but who wants to die?” In the months after the invasion, some of Tomkin’s friends joined the military but he was busy, helping at a civilian food kitchen and running a music club. In June 2022, he left Kyiv to DJ at a three-day party in Odesa, and was sleeping on the bus back when it was stopped by soldiers. “They pulled me off the bus and said ‘you’re in the army now.’” “When I was young I found the whole idea of the military and all that macho bullshit really, really scary, but the army has changed me, given me an internal confidence in myself,” he says. “Before, I constantly doubted myself. In the army you either decide or you break. I learned to stand by my choices and defend my position. “You can’t judge people by looking at them because everyone is in uniform, so you start to understand it’s not about how a guy looks, it’s what’s inside.” His understanding of relationships with the opposite sex has also changed. “With every year of war, stress builds up more and more in men. Women can go outside, live their lives, move freely. Men, on the other hand, are increasingly afraid even to leave their homes. Some people close themselves off completely.” Being apart from women makes him long to be near them – but it also leaves him feeling separated by a gulf of experience. “When you don’t see women for a long time, you start valuing them differently. You want to hear their voice, to feel that feminine presence. It doesn’t even matter who it is, a friend or just someone you know. You simply need that energy. And you start noticing beauty in ways you didn’t before.” He remembers his first time off-duty in the city. “All the girls looked unbelievably beautiful. My cheeks were red – I didn’t know where to look. On my birthday, we went to a restaurant, had some beer, tried to talk to girls. But there was this invisible ice between us and them. “We created it ourselves,” Tomkin says, “because they couldn’t understand what state we were in.” “A friend told me she noticed how much I had changed. She joked that in war men have only one chakra working: survival. And it’s true. After that rotation I didn’t feel desire for intimacy. “My service in Kyiv was brutal: one day on, one day off, almost no sleep. Standing in a vest with a rifle, two hours on post, two hours’ rest, your body and mind are in survival mode. Romance just doesn’t exist in that space. “But distance from women helped me. It cleared my head. I started seeing who was right for me and who wasn’t. Before, I had short relationships all the time. Honestly, I was a demon. Now, I want something real, something for life.”