Mark Galeotti

Ukraine’s next move: can Putin be outsmarted?

27 May 2023 9:00 am

Ukraine cannot afford to play it safe

Russia’s fake news machine has a fresh target

21 May 2023 3:30 pm

There is a certain perverse cachet in one’s words being wilfully distorted by someone who thinks it gives their argument…

Why has Ukraine admitted that it assassinates people in Russia?

19 May 2023 8:35 pm

After months of flat denials, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence has admitted that Kyiv is carrying out a campaign…

Prigozhin’s ‘treachery’ poses a dangerous challenge to Putin

16 May 2023 5:27 am

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the businessman behind the Wagner mercenary army, likes accusing his political enemies of ‘treason’ for not backing him…

The Black Sea is Nato’s new front line against Russia

14 May 2023 4:00 pm

Earlier this month, an unarmed Polish aircraft monitoring potential human smuggling and illegal fishing on the Black Sea almost ditched…

War in Ukraine rains on Putin’s Victory Day parade

9 May 2023 9:22 pm

It may be having trouble on the battlefield, but the Russian army does know how to stage a parade. Behind…

Putin has made Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin eat his words

8 May 2023 10:43 pm

He huffed, and he puffed, and he damn near blew his own house down. The way Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man…

How ordinary Russians continue to resist Putin

6 May 2023 3:00 pm

Russia is gearing up for its annual festival of state-sponsored militarist kitsch that are the 9 May Victory Day celebrations,…

What’s the truth about the Kremlin drone attack?

4 May 2023 12:57 am

The Russian government has claimed that ‘two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely…

What’s behind Putin’s digital crackdown on draft dodgers?

1 May 2023 7:28 pm

With the break-neck pace with which it tends to respond to measures coming from the Kremlin, this month Russia’s parliament…

Can Zelensky hold back his hawks?

27 April 2023 1:15 am

There is no doubt that the West supports Ukraine’s fight for its sovereignty and survival. There is equally no doubt…

Russia’s spy ships are playing mind games in British waters

20 April 2023 10:16 pm

The news that Russian spy ships appear to be mapping British and other underwater cables and pipelines in the North…

The US intelligence leak and the hypocrisy of the spy world

15 April 2023 2:40 am

So what did everyone learn from the massive trove of more than a hundred top secret US documents a 21-year-old…

Kyiv wants to make it untenable for Russia to hold Crimea

7 April 2023 8:30 pm

Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other…

Who is behind the murder of Putin’s propagandist?

3 April 2023 7:47 pm

Those who live by hate often die by hate, too. Maxim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was one of…

The kidnapping of a journalist and Russia’s descent into thugocracy

31 March 2023 2:35 am

It’s a crude but inescapable fact of history that many states had their origins in better-organised bandit gangs. It’s a…

Nikolai Patrushev, the man dripping poison into Putin’s ear

29 March 2023 4:26 am

If I were to have to pick the figure in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle who scares me the most, it…

Dmitry Medvedev and the weakness of Putin’s Kremlin

24 March 2023 8:02 pm

It’s a long time since Dmitry Medvedev was last considered a potential liberal hope for Russia. Most recently, after all,…

After his trip to Moscow, Xi Jinping still holds all the cards

22 March 2023 10:26 pm

After his arrival in Moscow on Monday, President Xi Jinping said that China is ready, along with Russia, ‘to stand…

Wagner’s founder Evgeny Prigozhin is in a fight for his life

13 March 2023 10:02 pm

As Wagner mercenaries are being deliberately expended by the regular military as cannon-fodder in the battle for Bakhmut, their backer,…

How Russia is dodging sanctions

10 March 2023 11:21 pm

They might not be the quick knock-out blow their champions misleadingly claimed they’d be, but sanctions are having a serious…

Did the Ukrainians bomb the Nord Stream pipeline?

8 March 2023 10:28 pm

There’s an uncomfortable fact about covert operations in the information-saturated modern world. Like personal WhatsApp messages, they always leak –…

Ukraine’s drone war on Russia could backfire

1 March 2023 9:31 pm

Vladimir Putin has sold his Ukrainian war to the Russian people by trying to find the sweet spot between existential…

Why is Zelensky playing deadly mind games with Putin?

28 February 2023 12:05 am

Many have weighed in on how Vladimir Putin’s reign will end. Now it is the turn of Volodymyr Zelensky, asserting…

Has Prigozhin pushed his luck too far with Putin?

25 February 2023 5:00 pm

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the businessman behind Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries, is hardly a man to keep a low profile. He is…