The young feel much better represented by Labour, but the retired are less sure about the Conservatives — by Zack Grant, Jane Green & Geoffrey Evans, University of Oxford The growing age gap in voting behaviour is one of the most important and striking trends in recent British elections. The old are increasingly Conservative; the young are increasingly Labour. Using newly released British Election Study (BES) data from…

The view that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants to restore territories of the Soviet Union has been a big part of the commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But how much is he in tune with the wishes of the Russian people? Our research suggests that while Russian citizens increasingly identify with the USSR, this is only partially explained by their desire to expand Russia’s borders.

It should have been obvious. Vladimir Putin made clear he was going to do it. He said Ukraine was not a legitimate country. He maintained NATO was a threat. And his invasion plans were leaked, just before it started. But for all the warnings, the months of planning, the stockpiles of weapons and overwhelming superior force, the worst kept secret strategy has not worked out the way the Russian president intended.

There is understandably great interest in the political consequences of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Will sanctions help to shift opinion against Putin and stir Russians into political action to protest the war and help end it? Or will they have the effect of leading Russians to rally round the flag and solidify Putin’s coalition? — By Professor Paul Chaisty, Associate Professor of Russian Government, Department of Politics and International Relations and Professor Stephen Whitefield, fellow in politics.

So, day 11. I still can’t believe that. It’s been tough in Chernihiv and it doesn’t seem to get better. Yesterday, at night, the plane was [shot down] above where we hide. News is shocking and depressive so we try not to discuss it … I’ve lost track of days. It all seems like a very long dream. No one believed the war [would] last more than two or three days. — In one of her daily messages from her bomb shelter in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, a close friend unambiguously described the reality that most Ukrainians are currently facing: that the increasing tensions along the Ukraine-Russia border seen a month ago have turned into a full-blown nightmare.

It is eight years since one of the bloodiest days in what can now be seen as Ukraine’s first ‘Putin war’. As Ukraine reels from Putin’s War 2.0, it is worth remembering that, in November 2013, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Kyiv, Ukraine’s thousand-year old capital city, to protest at the then President Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden decision to abandon plans to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union, blaming Russian pressure. As anti-government protests grew across the country, violence escalated, with security forces killing well over 100 protesters in Kyiv in February 2014.

‘The war has set off a chain of events that could alter the balance of power for good,’ writes Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcestor College. — ‘At the bottom of the Kremlin’s view of world affairs is a traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,’ ran the report of a senior US official reporting back to Washington.

In this moment of crisis, opening the door to Ukraine is one thing the EU can do writes Timothy Garton Ash, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford. — For 77 years since 1945, people have compared this or that European figure to Adolf Hitler. For 77 years, this has been indefensible hyperbole. Even the genocidal war crimes in former Yugoslavia, although comparable in quality to the Nazis’, did not have the same scale or consequences. …

Popular attitudes in Russia and Ukraine show significant differences towards national identities and relations with the outside world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will deepen this divide. — Professors Paul Chaisty and Stephen Whitefield have been analysing and researching political identity and public opinion in Russia and Ukraine over the last 25 years. They write: Wars are often critical junctures in the politics and political cultures of countries. We write as Kyiv is under siege with no clarity…