Russia
Putin steps back from the Ukrainian brink
After weeks building up forces in Crimea and close to the Ukrainian border — over 100,000, all told — Moscow…
The rules of Putin’s game
What does Putin want? It’s more straightforward than you might think: usually the answer is ‘what he says’. It’s worth remembering…
Can Biden bring relations with Russia back from the brink?
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a depressing assessment on the state of U.S.-Russia relations earlier this month. While holding…
Two spies, an explosion, and the new Czech rift with Russia
‘Putin is a murderer,’ read the signs carried by protestors outside the Russian Embassy in Prague on Sunday. On Saturday…
Russian count
Putin’s hidden Covid deaths
The Kremlin’s strategy to undermine Britain
The past week has seen the war in Ukraine, which has been simmering for the last seven years, once more…
How the West can respond to Putin’s military build-up
In the last few weeks, Russia has been flaunting its military build-up in and around Ukraine, sending 20,000 extra troops,…
Biden’s backhanded bid to kill Nord Stream 2
Washington, D.C. is universally known as a town divided, a place where compromise and dialogue are often sacrificed at the…
Berlin has been bounced into accepting Sputnik
Munich has had enough of the vaccine chaos in Berlin and Brussels. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Bavaria’s minister…
The EU’s decline is self-inflicted
In 1991, at the height of the first Gulf War, the EU demonstrated to the world its divisions and helplessness,…
What does Belarus’s opposition leader want?
There is an assumption that those fighting tyranny must instead want Western-style democracy, that the arc of history bends towards…
America’s Russian sanctions are futile
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to approach Russia and its irascible President Vladimir Putin with a new…
A defeated Armenia descends into turmoil
Ever since its disastrous military defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan last year, Armenia has suffered from a wave of…
Amnesty International has undermined Navalny’s fight for freedom
In his fight against Putin, Alexei Navalny needs all the help he can get. The might of the Russian state…
The new great game
An international power tussle over vaccines is under way
Navalny vs the emperors
A Roman emperor would consider the tyrant Putin’s treatment of Alexei Navalny’s supporters as foolish but, looking at Russia as…
Why Eastern Europe is looking to Russia and China for vaccines
With Central and Eastern European countries still gripped by Covid-19, the EU’s slow vaccine rollout has offered little solace in…
Will Iron Felix scare Moscow’s protesters?
While in the West, the debate seems to be about which statue to topple next, in Russia it’s rather different.…
Pipe dreams
Russia’s influence on Germany is causing alarm
The sticky truth about Navalny
His courage is exhilarating. Even if you think his cause hopeless, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin-baiter, deserves…
Portrait of the week
Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits…
Alexei Navalny is getting under the Kremlin’s skin
Only half a year ago the opposition leader Alexei Navalny was a non-person on Russian state media, and Putin’s opulent…
Portrait of the week
Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the…
It wasn’t rocket science Jay Elwes
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
Russians are daring to dream of life after Putin
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, demonstrated unfathomable courage in returning home after the Kremlin had poisoned him with Novichok.…
