COVER STORY This issue: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky is caught between a crumbling U.S. alliance and a hostile Russia. A year is a long time in politics. Long enough in the case of Volodymyr Zelensky, the comedian elected President of Ukraine, to go from the set of his sitcom in Kyiv to the biggest political drama in the world, the one in which an American President may wind up getting impeached. The Democrats have cast Zelensky as the victim of President Donald Trump’s innocence…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

The Disunited Kingdom. In July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave himself and additional title no predecessor had assumed: Minister for the Union. The union in question is not the European one which Johnson is determined to leave. It is simply his own country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The title betrays a deep anxiety…

Fear of mass shootings fuels a thriving bulletproof business. Lori Alhadeff is haunted by the fact that she did not send her 14-year-old daughter to school with a bullet-proof backpack. The mother of three had wanted to buy one but never got around to it. By Feb. 14, 2019, it was too late. Her first child, Alyssa, was fatally shot trying to hide under a classroom table at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 16 others were killed…