Vladimir Putin
The caliphate strikes back
Isis could be on the brink of creating a terrifying new world order
How Putin outwitted the West
His cynical statecraft in Syria has run rings around Britain and America
Portrait of the week
Home In the shadow cabinet chosen by the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the Exchequer went to John McDonnell, a…
Putin and the polygamists
The Kremlin is tying itself in ideological knots as it tries to make new friends in the Muslim world
Watching the next war
Nato’s beefed-up military exercises are impressive – and ominous
The Spectator’s Notes
We in the West all hate Sepp Blatter, so we pay too little attention to the manner in which the…
The empire-builders
For Nato and the EU as much as for Putin, Ukraine is a question not of virtue but of power and land
Putin’s grand strategy
The Russian President has been trying to draw a new Iron Curtain across Europe
Soviet smoke and mirrors
‘We all know there will be no real politics.’ A prominent Russian TV presenter is speaking off the record at…
Crime and cover-up — a very Russian tale
The way to think about Russia, Bill Browder told me in Moscow in 2004, using a comparison he recycles in…
High life
The good news is that a Greek suppository is about to relieve the EU’s economic constipation. The bad is that…
The new Cold War
An official end to the Cold War was declared at a summit between President George H. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev…
Bear market
The West will have to drop sanctions on Russia – or face another global economic crash
World disorder
The old cliché that ‘nothing happens in August’ has again been brutally disproved. From the centenary of the outbreak of…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that President Vladimir Putin of Russia should end his country’s support for…
What to do about Putin
Sanctions won’t help. One thing might
Empire of deceit
Putin’s answer to the destruction of Flight MH17 has been more propaganda. In Russia, at least, it seems to be working
Diary
My trips to meet Russians in Russia these days are a little less controversial than my encounter with them in…
Diary
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Will there be war in Ukraine?
Further Russian military intervention would be a disaster. But Putin might have to do it anyway
Putin’s poison pill
Losing Crimea will be the making of Ukraine. And gaining it might well destroy the Russian president
Putin’s winning hand
Russia is making the West look posturing, weak and divided
Cicero on Putin
Last September Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against a ‘unipolar’ world, saying that the national revival of Russia was in…
Crimean notebook
Vladimir Putin still swears that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, so their mission is to say as little…
A reminder of the UK energy gap as Putin prepares to put another knot in his pipeline
To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon…
