May 2022

May 2022 issue

What next for Ukraine? Samuel Moyn argues that Putin's invasion should not be allowed to provoke a new Cold War. Syrian activist Bassma Kodmani tells us what it's like negotiating with Russia. Ukrainians Vitali Vitaliev, Sevgil Musaieva and Andrey Kur...

Past issues

World

How to stop a new Cold War

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t blind us to the fact that Russia is a second-rate power with no path back to the top. We must be wary of those looking to rehabilitate old, failed ideas about the international order

People

Ukrayinska Pravda editor Sevgil Musaieva: ‘I didn’t even have the chance to cry’

Alan Rusbridger

Andrey Kurkov: ‘When the war is over, will the nation stay together?’

Led By Donkeys: ‘We became a guerrilla posting operation’

Cornelia Parker: ‘Work is just a flimsy excuse to meet people’

David McAllister

Illustration by Maria-Ines Gul

Lea Ypi: ‘I have never been a standard liberal’

Regulars

Illustration by Michael Rea

Lyse Doucet: “Journalism doesn’t always change events. But I’ve seen it change minds”

Stephen Collins's cartoon: How to heat your ivory tower

Stephen Collins

The Prospect Grid: May 2022

Letters: May 2022

Columns

The war in Ukraine has exposed the west’s refugee hypocrisy

Image: Steven May / Alamy Live News

Carole Cadwalladr on Andrew Neil’s awakening; Rachel Johnson’s childhood… and London’s ever-active libel lawyers

Carole Cadwalladr

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride

War as a mediated catastrophe

Ethan Zuckerman

The Putin I met as Nato chief was a rational man. I watch his descent into fanaticism with horror

George Robertson

How war shapes language

War is no excuse to stop the fight against climate change

Bryony Worthington

The case for the nuclear deterrent is clearer than ever

John Woodcock & Julian Lewis

Why this decade could make the 1970s look like an economic boom

Essays

Ukraine: Memories of home

Vitali Vitaliev

How to stop a new Cold War

Cricket’s class problem

Shaking Europe to the core: the assembly hall of a regional administration building in Kharkiv, severely damaged by shelling. Image: Thomas Peter / REUTERS

Russia’s unintended effect on Europe

Caroline de Gruyter

Whitehall’s clumsy attempts at strengthening free speech on campus

“Russia does not intervene as a peacemaker”: Bassma Kodmani in Stockholm. Image: TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo

For Vladimir Putin, Syria was a rehearsal for Ukraine

Patrick Marnham

Poetry

Poem: ‘Spring Letter — 25/3/22’

Poem: ‘A Ukraine Sequence’

Damaged entrance of the Kyiv house on 31st March 2022 ZUMA Press Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Poem: ‘When the war ends’

Olha Petrenko-Tseunova & Kapka Kassabova

Arts & Books

Avoiding the big sleep: resurrection by cryopreservation may soon no longer be the stuff of science fiction © Atlaspix / Alamy Stock Photo

Billionaires want to abolish death. But do we really want to live forever?

More than scrimping: Glasgow’s east end in the 1980s. Image: Raymond Depardon / Magnum Photos

Douglas Stuart’s story of love across the sectarian divide

David McAllister

CLR James: The black bohemian

Andrey Kurkov: ‘When the war is over, will the nation stay together?’

Pablo Picasso’s loaded brush

Did BBC Four kills the arts on TV?

The Russian music that would make Putin shiver

Rupert Christiansen

Breaking the silence at the Royal Court

© Nathaniel Noir / Alamy Stock Photo

In praise of the DVD, an art form in itself

Cornelia Parker: ‘Work is just a flimsy excuse to meet people’

David McAllister

Anne Tyler’s French Braid—capturing life’s ordinary heartbreaks

Donne’s strange images of living

Michael Delgado

A journey to Dignitas

Zoe Apostolides

Why parliament needs urgent reform

The dangerous delusions of the new strongmen

Lives

Illustration by Adam Q

Sporting life: Remembering Mum—and Shane

Clerical life: Easter tidings

Long life: “She has had a fall”

Illustration by Adam Q

Mindful life: The complex relationship between anxiety and hope

Rebecca Lawrence

Farming life: Building a barn

Illustration by Adam Q

Displaced life: Leaving home

Jason Thomas-Fournillier

Young life: Not so great Britain

And finally...

Prospect puzzle and crossword—May 2022