Some years are more memorable than others: the terror attacks of 2001, the Iraq invasion of 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the birth of the smartphone era in 2007, the financial crisis of 2008, the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011, the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas in 2014. And although we might not have thought so at first, 2016 would turn out to be another “one of those years”!

2015 was the year of the European Migrant Crisis, when makeshift refugee camps in Greek Islands off the coast of Turkey began filling up with families (and young men) fleeing the ongoing Syrian Civil War...

The Euromaidan protests in Kyiv started on 21st November 2013 after President Viktor Yanukovich announced Ukraine’s suspension of an association agreement with the EU, meaning the East European country would instead seek closer ties with Moscow. This was a post-colour revolution...

Barack Obama’s (second) inauguration speech on 21st January 2013 contained this rather hopeful line: “A decade of war is now ending”...

We have to be careful about the terms we use to describe events. As Tim Marshall argued in the Spectator in October 2012, “calling these events the ‘Arab Spring’ automatically frames them as positive”...

On 4th January 2010, the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai. At 828 metres, it was the world’s tallest building...

The phrase “up in the air” perfectly captures the world at the beginning of 2009 (and, arguably, ever since)...

London introduced a comprehensive post-Brexit strategy towards Ukraine and now it has several components...

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” Normally we might be inclined to ignore Steve Jobs’ sales patter but here, on 9th January 2007 unveiling the first-generation Apple iPhone, he was - as they say - on point...

The main geopolitical imperative of Ukraine is to find a way to maintain its social and political resilience together with the territorial integrity of the country...

In the 31st January 1907 edition of Le Matin, under the headline Paris-Pékin Automobile: Un défi prodigieux, there was a really remarkable story which looked set to define what we now think of as the first era of globalisation...

The theory of global free trade is fashionable now, just as it was before the First World War...

Opened in December 2005, the Donghai Bridge — connecting mainland Shanghai with a new deepwater container port on the islands of Yangshan in Hangzhou Bay 32.5km away — was not the world’s longest cross-water bridge...

In Baghdad, the capital city, you will see street merchants selling exactly the same kind of pottery that their ancestors sold at the time of the Arabian Nights..

The United States is planning to return to the Moon, but this time it looks more serious and aggressive than ever...