Russia

The Russian region, disconnected from the motherland and deep in EU territory, is both an asset and a vulnerability for the Kremlin. PAUL KNOTT tells the story of one of the continent’s most intriguing places, where geography and history collide

Dancers perform on the back of a T-72B3 tank at the opening ceremony of the 2021 International Army Games at the Alabino military training ground near Moscow.

JAMES RODGERS was working in Russia in the summer of 1991, when the cracks in the USSR’s system suddenly broke apart.

ARTEMY TROITSKY was on the barricades in August 1991 to prevent the coup from succeeding. He says the freedoms that followed were soon squandered

With the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, Britain's then man in Moscow tells of his ringside seat as the August Coup that preceded the break-up of the Soviet Union played out before an astonished world

The continent's strangest news, including a colony of rabbits winning a court battle against the French military and an alleged fraudster with a gold toilet

Anton Chekhov transformed theatre. But many critics and audiences of his era were not so enamoured by the change, writes CHARLIE CONNELLY

Eighty years ago this week Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, launching the most decisive clash of the Second World War. JONATHAN DIMBLEBY, author of a new book on the campaign, explains what was at stake and the consequences we live with today Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in the early hours of June 22, 1941, was the […]

Vladimir Putin has urged against interference in Russian-British relations after the head of MI6 described the nation as a “declining power” and criticised the Kremlin’s “reckless” behaviour. The Russian president stressed on Friday evening that Richard Moore is “new” to the role as he suggested the spy chief would “revisit his assessments” of Moscow. Moore, […]

Climate change has transformed the Arctic into one of the most politically dangerous regions on the planet. Now, Vladimir Putin is ramping up the rhetoric. If the James Bond franchise is looking for a baddy for its next film, it wouldn’t need to bother auditioning Vladimir Putin. He relishes the part; he plays to the […]

Labour has criticised the Tories for its plans to introduce voter ID – whilst failing to implement any of the recommendations of the Russia report. Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy has challenged the government to focus on preventing foreign interference in elections rather than its existing proposals to make it “so much more difficult” for […]

Sergei Krikalev went into space as a citizen of the USSR. While he was away, his country ceased to exist and he was left stranded in orbit. On its 30th anniversary, MICK O’HARE tells the astonishing story of his flight. On 19 August 1991 Boris Yeltsin, newly elected president of the Russian Soviet Republic, stood […]

The Russian president is currently embroiled in a bewildering array of crises, yet seems impervious to everything his opponents can throw at him. So how should the West respond? It’s one of the TV moments of 2021. Good Morning America, March 17. The host is George Stephanopoulos, former communications director under Bill Clinton and one […]

The Russian president is testing the resolve of the West, but in doing so he reveals his weakness rather than his strength.

When former Financial Times editor LIONEL BARBER was granted an audience at the Kremlin, Russia’s president proclaimed the end of the liberal idea. Was he right?

The same factors that led up to his incursion into Ukraine are in place again, including domestic protests, a struggling economy and a desire for glory. So are the likes of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania next on the Russian leader's list?

Recent unrest in the country reflects the competing forces which have been exerted on it for centuries. Should it look to Moscow or to Europe? Andrew North reports from Tbilisi A narrow street in the centre of Tbilisi lined by distinguishedlooking 19th century houses leads to a brutalist, yellow-brown Soviet-era office block that houses the […]

The news you might have missed from around Europe, selected by Steve Anglesey. A group of hapless would-be thieves were arrested in Nancy, north-east France, after a disastrous attempt to rob a friend’s stash of several thousand euros. Two men, one armed with a hunting rifle, aborted their first raid when a woman they did […]

Alexei Navalny has done his bit, but only the president’s corrupt inner circle have the power to topple him. “I mortally offended him by surviving an attempt on my life that he ordered. That’s driving this thieving little man in his bunker out of his mind. Murder is the only way he knows how to […]

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is descending into the biggest transatlantic diplomatic crisis since the Iraq War. CATHRIN SCHAER explains how we got here

The brave young journalists exposing the high-level corruption and crimes in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Over 3,500 people have been detained during rallies across Russia in protest at high-level corruption and the arrest of opposition activist Alexei Navalny. Navalny was arrested on arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on January 17 as he flew in after […]

Richard Hamilton eschewed the knockabout nature of other purveyors of Pop Art, says Richard Holledge, but his work packed just as much of a punch. Pop! Whaam! Blam. Exclamation marks!!! Technicolour explosions. That’s Pop Art for you. The comic book whizz-bangs of Roy Lichtenstein and a group of post-war artists typified the 1960s for many – […]

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 […]