Europe’s web of alliances has always been almost incomprehensibly tangled. This is one of the reasons we still disagree so vehemently about the causes of the First World War: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand lit a fuse woven from a …
Has Putin sacrificed Armenia?
Yerevan
On a hillside overlooking the capital is Armenia’s last line of defence in the event of war. Squeezed between a junkyard and a Soviet-era apartment block is a dusty assault course littered with rusting cars, discarded water bottles and …
Why is Russia obsessed with slavery?
There’s nothing wrong with being cautious. Since 1709, when Peter the Great routed the troops of Swedish King Charles XII at Poltava, smack-dab in the middle of modern-day Ukraine, Europeans have understood Russia as a military threat. Never has this …
The loneliest Russian in the world
No one in Washington will speak to him. His phone calls go unanswered, and he can’t get meetings. Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, is the most isolated man in the American capital.
When an interview with Antonov containing …
America has won Europe’s war
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders have gone out of their way to condemn Putin and express their solidarity with the victims of the conflict. And yet, one cannot help but suspect that behind closed doors they are raising …
The Russia we have lost
There were a lot of us in Moscow, back then. Silly, millennial Euro-Brits, trying to be journalists, floating through a boozy world of “hackpack” drinks and Russian liberals. We were there on cooked visas — fixed in Kyiv — dreamers …
A Putin puppet government will fail
Southern Ukraine
A week after it launched its attempted blitz across Ukraine, finally the Russian army has taken its first major city: Kherson, a key port city in the south of the country. But the defenders of Kyiv and Kharkiv …
Vladimir Putin’s dangerous madness
“He’s lost his fucking mind.” It’s Monday night, and I’m speaking to my friend, the American-Ukrainian author Vladislav Davidzon. We have both just watched Vladimir Putin’s televised speech from the Kremlin, and he — like Putin — is no longer …
Putin’s Grand Plan Is Failing
Last month there was a three-hour debate in parliament entitled “Putin’s Grand Strategy.” It began with a passionate speech by Tory backbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin, who spoke about the “admirably precise” focus of the Russian president, while lamenting the lack …