Why Putin didn’t mention the war in his New Year’s address
With ‘don’t mention the war!’ the order of the day, it felt as if Vladimir Putin’s message to his people…
Does Putin use body doubles?
It has become something of a fad to try to identify and quantify the body doubles of Vladimir Putin. There are…
Why Ukraine’s attack on the Novocherkassk warship matters
It was not quite in time for Christmas (which Ukraine now celebrates on 25 December, after switching this year from…
Vladimir Putin bores the nation
From time to time, the tsar must listen to the complaints of his subjects. Having dodged this duty last year,…
An election campaign is still dangerous for Putin
It was elaborately staged precisely to try and look unstaged. After a medals ceremony at the Kremlin for Heroes of…
The US Senate is playing into Putin’s hands
The news this week that Republicans in the US Senate had voted together to block a supplemental funding bill that…
Sanctions against Russia haven’t failed
One of Russia’s toxic TV presenters recently cackled that Western sanctions ‘have only helped Russia wean itself off dependence on…
Putin isn’t afraid of Cameron
Considering the obsession Russia has with Britain as the source of all its woes, it is perhaps surprising how David…
Is the West losing interest in Ukraine?
There’s a very different tone coming from Kyiv these days. Speaking to Time magazine, Volodymyr Zelensky had just returned from Washington…
Why the Kremlin will fear Dagestan’s anti-Semitic mob
As the war in Gaza continues to have global repercussions, a mob in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala stormed…
Ukraine’s sabotage tricks are causing concern in Washington
There has never been any doubt that Ukraine was the focus of an intelligence war as much as a physical…
ATACMS missiles alone won’t change the game in Ukraine
America’s ATACMS long-range missiles were a potential ‘game changer’ to the war in Ukraine to some, a potential source of…
Putin has been blindsided by the Israel attack
Inevitably, some have tried to suggest the terrorist invasion of Israel was in some ways orchestrated by Moscow. ‘Russia is…
Why a gangster’s death in Central Asia matters
Such is the globalisation of the modern underworld, that the fate of a gangster you may never have heard of,…
By striking Crimea, Kyiv shows Putin that nowhere is safe
Admiral Viktor Sokolov, commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, appears to be Schrodinger’s admiral, alive according to Moscow, dead according…
The EU needs a coherent strategy on Russian sanctions
This week, the European Union opted to extend sanctions on some 1,800 Russian companies and individuals for another six months,…
Putin’s North Korea summit was pure theatre
If a little tyrant theatre is your goal, then rumbling across the border in an armoured train decked out like…
Why Putin is pointing the finger at Britain
Perfidious Albion is, we are told, at it again. In the course of a wide-ranging and often quite surreal speech…
Prigozhin’s death has exposed Putin’s weakness
So much is still unclear about the fate of Wagner group head Yevgeny Prigozhin, from whether he really did die…
Sanctions are failing to turn Putin’s oligarchs against him
When personal sanctions on Russian oligarchs and officials were imposed by the UK, US and EU after Putin’s invasion, the…
Why the Kremlin sees Britain as the ultimate bogeyman
Perfidious Albion is at it again. The Kremlin’s increasingly unhinged obsession with seeing a British hand behind its various upsets…
Was Putin behind the Electoral Commission hack?
The hacking of the Electoral Commission’s databases highlights the way that in the interconnected modern world, ‘warfare’ can be as…
Will MI6’s Russian recruitment drive work?
Sir Richard Moore, head of the Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – follows the tradition of only giving one public…
Moscow’s Pyrrhic Nato victory
Despite the inevitable and performative expressions of anger, regret and dismay following this week’s Nato summit, Moscow feels it has…
Putin is struggling to solve his Prigozhin problem
It’s satisfying when a jigsaw piece slots into place. Today we heard that Wagner leader Evgeny Prigozhin met Vladimir Putin in the…
