On Thin Ice by Charlie Walker review – a Siberian adventure goes off the rails
Moments of beauty and horror punctuate this account of an ill-timed sub-zero camping trip In late February 2022, Charlie Walker set off on a hiking holiday in northern Siberia. In temperatures as low as -50C, he intended to trek a thousand miles north along the frozen surface of the river Lena, then out across the solid Laptev Sea to the port town of Tiksi, before finally flying home to London. “The plan,” he writes, “was simple in concept.” A sub-zero camping trip through a region populated by wolves and bears and scarred by centuries of historical trauma, in a country that was about to invade one of its neighbours: what could possibly go wrong?On Thin Ice is Walker’s third travelogue. Previous excursions have included a 43,000-mile bicycle ride across three continents, a 1,000-mile solo walk through the Gobi desert, and a river trip down the Congo in a leaky canoe. When not performing incredible feats of forward motion, according to his website, he gives talks to business leaders on subjects such as “risk taking” and “the line between courage and recklessness”. Reading his latest, it’s clear he’s familiar with the terrain on both sides of that line. Continue reading...
Ukraine war briefing: Mykhailo Drapatyi takes over as Kyiv’s top commander
Zelenskyy hopes to end debacle over sacking of defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov; Kremlin’s sympathies for Wildberries. What we know on day 1,610Medium and long-range strikes against Russia will continue under Mykhailo Drapatyi, Ukraine’s new top military commander, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday, as he replaced Oleksandr Syrskyi in the job after a huge political row accompanied by street protests. “The operations of the Ukrainian defence forces are ongoing and must continue steadily,” said the Ukrainian president. “Ukraine’s plan for long-range sanctions and our programme of middle-range strikes will be carried out with absolute precision.”Luke Harding writes that news of Drapatyi’s appointment came in a late-night TV address by Zelenskyy. The president offered a “prominent position” to Mykhailo Fedorov – the defence minister he sacked last week in a shock move that brought out protesters who have given a deadline of Friday for Fedorov to be reinstated. Fedorov welcomed Drapatyi’s appointment as a “breath of fresh air” bringing “new hope to the struggle of free people for freedom and justice”.Zelenskyy paid tribute to Syrskyi, crediting him with leading the defence of Kyiv and launching a counter-invasion of Russia’s Kursk province. Drapatyi, his replacement, is well regarded within Ukraine’s army and liked by the public, Harding writes. He is viewed as an ally of Fedorov, a tech-savvy moderniser. A major general, Drapatyi is commander of Ukraine’s joint forces group and has been fighting Russia since its covert attempt in 2014 to take over the eastern Donbas region. He is famed for driving an infantry fighting vehicle over a barricade set up by pro-Russian militants in Mariupol.The Kremlin lamented the Ukrainian attacks on warehouses of Wildberries – an Amazon-like chain that Kyiv says supplies drone parts and other technologies for the Russian war effort. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The situation is indeed difficult because of the losses suffered both by the company itself and by representatives of small and medium-sized businesses.”Russian authorities are taking fuel away from Siberia and giving it to Moscow – Russia’s wealthiest and most populous region, where Vladimir Putin most fears losing the support of the Russian elite. The success of Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries, storage and shipping has caused fuel crises of varying degrees across Russia. Traders told Reuters that to replace lost production, gasoline produced in the Urals and Siberia, as well as imported supplies from Belarus, has been redirected to the Moscow region. One of the traders said the Achinsk refinery in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region has been supplying Moscow with fuel.Civilian injuries and deaths increased by more than a third in Ukraine in the first half of the year, the UN human rights office said. It documented 1,396 deaths and 7,978 injuries in the first six months of 2026, representing a 37% increase from the same period last year and a near doubling versus 2024. Long-range ballistic missiles and drones, and short-range drones and glide bombs drove the escalation.A Russian guided-bomb attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least three people on Tuesday and injured more than a dozen, regional officials said. Two of the dead were in their 60s and the other was 49. Seven floors of a nine-storey apartment block were engulfed by flames after the attack, the regional military administration said. Continue reading...
