The cover of the 25 February edition of Guardian Weekly. Illustration: Guardian Design
After months of troop buildups and escalating tensions, Vladimir Putin has made his move by ordering Russian forces over the Ukrainian border into the disputed Donbas region. Amid fears the situation could quickly lead to a calamitous war, attention turned to how Ukraine and the wider world would respond. Julian Borger, Andrew Roth and Shaun Walker lead our coverage of the fast-deteriorating picture (find all our latest coverage here).
The Weekly’s cover story this week focuses on the murky world of Swiss banking, after a massive document leak shed light on the secret accounts held by Credit Suisse on behalf of convicted criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians. Our spotlight coverage offers just a taste of the huge Suisse secrets investigation, with much more on the website.
Mazar-i-Sharif was the most secular and liberal of Afghan cities, but 20 years of corruption and misrule left it ripe for retaking by the Taliban. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad spoke to some of its residents and asked, will anything be different this time?
In Culture, Hadley Freeman meets the indefatigable Margaret Atwood and finds the Canadian author as strident as ever in her views. Then, to coincide with a major new London exhibition about neolithic Britain, Charlotte Higgins travels to the Scottish island of Orkney to explore its beautiful, mysterious standing stones.
