Russia
Is Russia ready for life after Putin?
When Russians headed to the polls last week, the Duma election results were never in doubt: Putin’s United Russiaparty won…
Russian spies and the return of the Cold War
Last week’s arrest of a security guard employed at the British embassy in Berlin, on suspicion of spying for Russia,…
More diplomacy won’t stop the advance of the Taliban
On 11 August, at Russia’s initiative, an ‘extended troika’ will meet in Doha, Qatar to take stock of the Taliban’s…
Why Russia’s Olympic punishment backfired
The Tokyo Olympics are over and fifth place in the medals table went to the ‘ROC’, the Russian Olympic Committee.…
Springtime for Putin
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a London hospital, dying of polonium poisoning. That photograph from 2006 haunts the memory: the medical…
Ella Pamfilova and the dismantling of Russia’s democracy
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is hardly known for its free and fair elections. But a purge of the field ahead of…
The EU is failing to stand up for eastern Europe
Will the EU stand up for eastern Europe? This question is now being asked by Ukraine following the announcement of…
Why Joe Biden’s Russia-bashing is a tactical mistake
You might not think that Geoff Norcott, the self-proclaimed conservative comedian, has something to contribute to western relations with Russia,…
How Macron was outfoxed by a dead Napoleonic general
Skeletons don’t always lurk in cupboards, some of them hide under dance floors waiting for a particularly rousing party to…
Inside a dictator’s playground
Armed soldiers guard the barbed-wire compound. Helicopters buzz around the parameter, drifting above families on tandem bicycles. Groups of giggling…
The Soviet spectre haunting Afghanistan
As US and British forces pull out of Afghanistan, further victims of the ‘grave of empires’, Russia is experiencing a mix…
The Kremlin’s plan to destabilise the West
On Sunday, Russia releasedits new National Security Strategy. In many ways, it picked up from where the 2015 version left…
Why an EU-Russia summit was always going to fail
When Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel unilaterally proposed a European Union summit with Vladimir Putin, they managed to open deep…
The real reason Putin targeted HMS Defender
When military personnel talk of ‘theatres’ they mean a zone of conflict. Moscow seems to take the term increasingly literally,…
HMS Defender: What’s behind the Navy’s Russian incident?
Assuming that reports are accurate, the world has just witnessed the most serious escalation between the UK and Russia since the…
How Russia lurched from vaccine victory to Covid crisis
Russia made headlines last August when it triumphantly unveiled its pioneering coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V. But now, nearly a year…
Biden and Putin have left Britain out in the cold
It would probably be wrong to say that Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin got on like a house on fire.…
Why the Biden-Putin summit wasn’t a waste of time
The meeting between U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva started cordially enough. A quick handshake, toothy smiles…
Why Russia and China are competing to woo Belarus
Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko has been roundly condemned following the arrest of Roman Protasevich, but he still has one ally. Lukashenko…
Where free speech is a matter of life and death
Last August I wrote a column in The Spectator’s US edition urging Donald Trump to take a leaf out of…
History endlessly repeated
Perhaps the secret to understanding Russian history lies in its grammar: it lacks a pluperfect tense. In Latin, English and…
Bear-baiting
Sanctions against Putin and his allies don’t work
Perfume and politics
This is a curious book, by turns profound and whimsical. Karl Schlögel, a professor of Eastern European history at Frankfurt,…
The Belarus hijacking reveals the West’s complacency
On Sunday evening an act of appalling state kidnapping took place over the skies of Europe. Four alleged KGB officers…
Why Lukashenko keeps getting away with it
The diversion of a Ryanair flight bound for Lithuania from Athens and the arrest of passenger Roman Protasevich – an…
