Just over 50 years ago, as the confrontation between the US and Russia over Soviet plans to base nuclear missiles in Cuba moved ever closer to the kind of catastrophe that threatens world stability and peace, or whatever the current version of that is, US President John F Kennedy ordered that all senior American military commanders read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, the Pulitzer Prize-winning and seminal history of the first months of the First World War.

At least a dozen armed men have seized a police station in a small town in eastern Ukraine as tensions in the country’s Russian-speaking regions intensify.

Ukraine’s prime minister has told leaders in the east of the country he is committed to allowing regions to have more powers.

Ukraine’s prime minister has told leaders in the east of the country that he is committed to allowing regions to have more powers.