Russia

December is usually a busy month for Vladimir Putin, but not this year. In the run-up to Christmas, Russia’s president typically holds his annual press conference. But this time the event has been cancelled. Putin’s annual presidential address to the Russian federal assembly – that was pushed back from the summer – has also been canned. And Putin will also be absent from the traditional New Year’s Eve ice hockey game on Red Square. Putin’s yearly telethon, where ordinary Russians can phone in and have a chat with the president (indefinitely postponed from earlier in the year), too has been axed. Such events in the Kremlin calendar are annual touchstones

Before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there was a narrow but clearly defined space for Russia’s opposition media. The fearlessly anti-Kremlin Novaya Gazeta – whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year – was not only tolerated but funded by a regime-friendly oligarch at the behest of the deputy head of Putin’s presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko. Radio station Ekho Moskvy was owned by Gazprom media but regularly aired scathing criticisms of the regime. And the independent Dozhd TV (‘TV Rain’, motto: The Optimistic Channel) continued to broadcast online from increasingly cramped Moscow offices as advertisers and landlords were pressured to pull their support. Even as the

Fewer than one in 100 defendants in the Russian court system get acquitted. Even in the best of circumstances then, Ilya Yashin’s chances looked poor. As the last of Russia’s high-profile opposition politicians who remains alive and isn’t in prison or in exile, there never was any question as to whether he was going to be convicted. Today, he was predictably found guilty in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, on the deeply-questionable charge of ‘spreading false information about the Russian military’. His crime was to raise the allegations of systematic human rights abuses in the Ukrainian town of Bucha on his YouTube channel in

The EU’s import embargo of Russian oil – which comes into force today – plus a price cap on non-EU seaborne exports is intended to hit Russia without damaging the West. It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. First, there’s the price cap level itself. Originally, the EU had wanted to push for a more comprehensive ban on maritime shipping insurers providing any coverage to vessels carrying Russian oil. But this frightened the US, so what we’re left with is the cap. The final figure, which the EU agreed on at the end of last week, is $60 (£49) per barrel. Russian crude oil sales have

Russia has launched five waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructures since 10 October. These strikes have damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made blackouts a way of life across Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has aptly accused Russia of ‘weaponising winter’ against Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia will not ‘calm down’ as long as it has missiles. Russia’s deployment of a warship capable of carrying Kalibr missiles to the Black Sea suggests that the worst may be yet to come for Ukraine’s war-ravaged cities. Russian propagandists have framed these strikes as retribution for the ‘Donbas