Russia
Portrait of the week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons that it did not occur to him that the…
Morale support
Commentators talk much about the morale of the Ukrainian troops and the edge that this has given them over the…
Conflict of opinion
Why Russian support for the war will keep growing
Why Putin’s ‘Satanic’ missile launch matters
In some ways, it’s a headline-writer’s dream: Putin puts his faith in Satan. In reality, it’s actually Putin’s new RS-28…
Is Putin in pain?
Is Vladimir Putin in pain? Until now, there has been plenty of chatter about the wellbeing of his minister of…
Why Russians celebrate monsters
Nobody knows how long people live in Dzerzhinsk – life expectancy statistics for the Russian city, 250 miles east of…
A Ukrainian’s notebook
Palm Sunday in Perugia. Umbrians were scuttling around with twigs and leaves, but I was in town to celebrate another…
Law and orders
St. Petersburg University in Russia is (desperately?) inviting scholars worldwide to a conference in September celebrating Mikhail Speransky. It was…
Russia’s special relationship
Why so many African leaders support Putin
‘Putin still has a lot left to lose’
Niall Ferguson and David Petraeus on Russia’s mistakes, Xi’s plans and the lessons of Iraq
Toxic Patriarch
How Putin weaponised the Russian Orthodox church
Cross to bear
Can Russia ever atone for Putin’s sins?
The next phase of the Ukraine war will be bloody
The war in Ukraine is about to enter an even deadlier stage, one in which both Kyiv and Moscow will…
Russia’s dark path towards the death penalty
In Russia these days, the reintroduction of the death penalty has a grim inevitability about it. There has been a…
Is this the birth of a Nordic Nato?
In the past six weeks, Finland and Sweden’s security policies have changed more than they have over the past six…
Zelensky has snubbed Germany’s President
When Volodymyr Zelensky told the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday that he did not want to see him in Kyiv,…
Is Putin using chemical weapons in Ukraine?
In 1942, as Hitler’s forces swept through the Soviet Union, the Red Army went underground. Outside the city of Kerch…
Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy sector
We are seven weeks into the war and the level of destruction in Ukraine is mounting. Every single day we…
The Russian army is running out of options
So much had been written about the Russian armed forces’ modernisation and improvement over the last decade that that it…
Boris and Scholz parade the new Europe
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe forever. That was the argument that Boris Johnson made on Friday when he…
Portrait of the week
Home Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s business spokesman, said that the government should be preparing for energy rationing, but Grant Shapps, the…
Strangers on a train
Compartment No. 6 is set aboard a long train journey across Russia, a country we don’t hear much of these…
Rewriting history
Historians in Russia have a long and craven record, now going back centuries, of being economical with the truth about…
Europe’s last dictator
The fate of Lukashenko depends on Ukraine
Diary
Strasbourg Europhobes will never have a better argument against European integration than the seat of the European parliament in…
