Russia

Berlin has been long been seen as the European capital most understanding – and indulgent – of Russia. But that’s  changing, says CATHRIN SCHAER. For several years now, German newspapers have been proclaiming the next new low in the German-Russian relationship. There was 2015’s Russian hacker attack on the German parliament that started the decline. Then the assassination […]

Liana Semchuk on whether Alexei Navalny’s reappearance in Russia could galvanise change in the country in the same way as Lenin just over a century ago. Political commentators both inside Russia and around the world are comparing Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow with Vladimir Lenin’s ‘sealed train’ journey from Switzerland to St Petersburg in April 1917. It […]

Colour was always at the core of Wassily Kandinsky’s art. Claudia Pritchard reports on a stunning exhibition which traces his creative journey as he was shifted around Europe by the events of the early 20th century The career path from lawyer to artist is not often taken. Tchaikovsky managed to duck out of jurisprudence and […]

Joe Biden will be an infinitely tougher prospect for Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump. Yet the Russian president still has time on his side, says JOHN KAMPFNER. George W Bush, not a man commonly thought of as soft, said this of Vladimir Putin at their first meeting in 2001: “I looked the man in the […]

A cross-party group of MPs and peers have filed legal proceedings against the government, accusing ministers of failing to protect the UK’s democracy against Russian interference during the EU referendum and subsequent elections. The claimants, backed by a former national security adviser, have accused the prime minister of wanting to “keep us in the dark” […]

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a leading expert on chemical weapons, talks to MATT WITHERS about being on Vladimir Putin’s radar, weaponising Covid and complacency about the threats facing the West. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s autobiography starts like the opening of a high-octane film. It is February 1991, the protagonist, on his first military tour, is in the […]

Anti-Western philosopher Aleksandr Dugin is said to hold sway over Vladimir Putin. But it is not just the Russian president who is in thrall to him

As relations with Russia become ever chillier, PAUL KNOTT unearths a document from the 1940s with advice on dealing with Moscow which seems remarkably relevant today. Vladimir Putin might seem intent on returning us to the Cold War, but fortunately for Western leaders a blueprint already exists for dealing with this situation. Written in 1946, […]

His fundamental decency led him to let the entire Soviet system go, sacrificing his own political future and lifelong beliefs in the process, rather than attempting to preserve them by doing harm

PAUL CONNEW on the ongoing investigations into the Trump administration’s Kremlin links Donald Trump flew home from his controversial, colourful 12-day, five-nation Asian ego trip straight into the darkening shadow of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian Connection criminal probe. The latest twists of that inquiry are heading, predict well-placed sources, towards the possible arrest of […]