In the headlines

The UK terrorism threat level has been raised to “severe”, indicating that attacks are highly likely, after the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north London on Wednesday. Essa Suleiman, 45, has been charged with their attempted murder, while Keir Starmer has promised a “bigger fight” against anti-Semitism. Donald Trump will scrap tariffs on British whisky exports to the US, saving the industry an estimated £3m a week, to mark the end of the King and Queen’s state visit. The US president called Charles “the greatest King” and said the royal couple “got me to do something that nobody else was able to do”. Buckingham Palace said the monarch will be “raising a dram to the President’s thoughtfulness”. A new Banksy statue featuring a man with his face covered by a flag was erected in central London on Tuesday night. The elusive artist, recently outed as Bristolian Robin Gunningham, confirmed it as his work with a video of the statue being installed in Waterloo Place in the dead of night.

Instagram/@Banksy

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Ukrainian soldiers prepping a drone in the Dnipropetrovsk region last year. Florent Vergnes/AFP/Getty

Why Ukraine is holding its own

Strange as it sounds, says David Ignatius in Foreign Policy, visiting Ukraine these days is “uplifting”. The good guys are winning – “or at least holding their own” – and they’re enjoying the help of a “stalwart” Europe, not trying to win back a “retreating US”. At last week’s Kyiv Security Forum, European defence leaders stoutly voiced their solidarity with Ukraine in a war against Russia they now see as a “common fight”. And they’re right to feel emboldened. Ukrainian troops held firm against Russia’s ferocious assault on their front lines last autumn, and its cities have survived a terrible frigid winter despite a Russian blitz on energy infrastructure. Now, spring has arrived: it’s warm again, and the power is still on. In the comparatively upbeat words of Volodymyr Zelensky’s normally taciturn top aide and former intelligence chief Lt Gen Kyrylo Budanov: “We are definitely not losing.”

What appears to be dawning on Europe’s military leaders is that, in confronting the growing threat from Vladimir Putin, they need Kyiv as much as Kyiv needs them. Not merely as a physical buffer, but as the world’s most advanced practitioner of drone warfare – both offensive and defensive. Europe is already getting “buzzed” by Russian drones, and its traditional weapons are no use. Ukraine’s elite Azov Brigade credits drones with 92% of its targeted kills, and just 3% to artillery. And its remarkable pace of military innovation is nurtured by constant interaction between front-line soldiers and agile defence tech firms. The founder of one of these companies spoke at the conference having returned the previous day from the front line, and was going on to his factory to “retool”. European defence firms take two years to solve a problem, he said. “We can do it in a month.”

🇪🇺🚿 One speaker who hit a particular nerve was Major Illia Samoilenko, who lost a hand fighting with the Azov Brigade. Europeans “forgot how to fight”, he said. “Decades of inaction put them in a very disadvantageous position. They should take a cold shower.”

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Art

Sotheby’s

A major collection of masterpieces by some of modern art’s biggest names will be auctioned off next month by Sotheby’s, says Nadia Khomami in The Guardian. It is expected to be the most valuable single-owner sale ever in London, possibly earning more than £150m. The works, collected by Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne, include paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse and Lucien Freud. Highlights include Modigliani’s Homme à la pipe (Le notaire de Nice) which hasn’t been seen for half a century; a society portrait by Klimt that was stolen from its subject by the Nazis; and a Schiele nude, painted when he was just 19. Click on the image to register your interest.

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