In Moscow's Shadows 2: Mishustin, Sechin, Institutional vs Personal Power

Reading Barbara Emerson's excellent The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century got me thinking more about the nature of British-Russian relations, which really date back to the 16...

12 Mai 202445min

The case of Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, long known as 'king of the kickback,' but only now arrested and charged, provides a good opportunity to consider how corruption is so central to Putin...

5 Mai 202453min

In the first part, I talk about some of the issues raised by a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Sam Charap and Sergei Radchenko for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia whenever they actually h...

21 Apr 20241h 7min

Why are some individuals, parties, even countries still so willing to believe (or at least affect to believe) Putin's nonsense? As a way of trying to explain it, I turn to the intelligence recruitment...

14 Apr 202458min

Is Putin's Russia becoming a revolutionary state? A recent article on RT by Dmitry Trenin, once one of the doyens of Russian foreign policy analysis, suggests so, but perhaps doesn't go far enough. I ...

7 Apr 202453min

After a sham election and a ghastly terrorist attack (and a pretty ghastly official response), time to talk about something else: sex, drugs and rock & roll. Well, demography, access to pharmaceutica...

31 Mar 202455min

What a week it has been. I give my initial thoughts on the awful terrorist attack on the outskirts of Moscow, and then pivot to some further lessons of the sham presidential elections. It's all joy, a...

24 Mar 202452min

Russia's presidential elections are coming to a close, and while Putin's landslide victory is a foregone conclusion in light of the manipulation of the process (I write about that here), that doesn't ...

17 Mar 202455min