Putin

Moscow Russia’s REN TV, which published the first image of a person who planted a bomb on a train in St Petersburg’s metro, reported that the security services are not ruling out the possibility that his clothes and beard may have been a disguise used to fool the authorities. But since racial profiling is practised as a matter of course in Russia, it would seem peculiar for a would-be terrorist to dress up in an Islamic disguise, especially considering that there are even more police than usual out on the streets and in the metros of major Russian cities after the recent anti-corruption protests. Out in the Moscow snow, I heard old

Ten people have been killed and dozens injured in an explosion on the St Petersburg metro. The blast happened onboard a train travelling between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations in the city centre. Russian news agency Interfax said that at least 50 people were hurt. There are reports that the device which exploded was a nail bomb left in a briefcase on the train. The country’s president Vladimir Putin, who was in St Petersburg at the time of the blasts, expressed his condolences for those caught up in the incident. Putin described the explosions as a ‘possible terrorist attack’. He said: ‘I have already spoken to the head of our special services, they are working

Last week’s events in London raised a recurrent dilemma for journalists, including me. It is a huge story when a terrorist kills four people then is shot down in Palace Yard, Westminster. Yet dare we say how fortunate we are that since 9/11 Muslim terrorists have proved incapable of mounting an attack remotely as lethal as that on the Twin Towers? An intelligence officer told me recently that he worries far more about Russia than about Muslim suicidalists, and this must be the rational assessment. The public needs awakening to the menace posed by Vladimir Putin’s adventurism. Meanwhile, Khalid Masood’s dreadful deed reflects the flailings of a death cult. These

 Washington DC   Roger Stone — political consultant, agent provocateur, friend and confidant of Donald Trump — arrives for lunch with a bodyguard in tow. ‘I’ve had way too many death threats,’ he explains. He says he’s recovering from poisoning by polonium, a radioactive substance used to kill the Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London. Litvinenko, he says, had ‘a much larger dose, probably done by British intelligence’. But the British government named the Russian agents responsible, I reply. ‘What was the proof?’ he asks. ‘It’s all mirrors. You know that.’ Stone blames his ‘poisoning’ on ‘the deep state’, a term that in Trumpworld means the intelligence community. Trump has

How does Vladimir Putin think about the world? It becomes dangerously important to know. I still have not seen a revealing speech by or discussion with him. I have found out a bit more, however, about the two-hour private interview conducted with him by several young Etonians last summer. One reason they got into the room, it seems, is that Mr Putin wanted to know about Eton and why it produced 19 prime ministers. The boys explained that one of the school’s great advantages was its societies — Political, Literary, Cheese etc. — largely organised by them, not by masters. They said these brought them into contact with a wide range

It’s been said a lot that, for all the supposed closeness between Russia and the new US administration, the Trump-Putin axis could soon turn into dangerous enmity. Strange friendships make fast feuds. And if Trump is a proper nationalist, if he is the thin-skinned narcissist that everybody says he is, he will react strongly against the widely held idea that he is some orange Kremlin patsy. What then should we make of the departure of Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser? Flynn has resigned amid allegations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence as to the nature of some telephone calls in December with the Russian ambassador to the US.

After 167 days without a press conference, Donald Trump’s performance in Trump Tower didn’t disappoint. He abused journalists, denounced a string of media organisations and compared his own intelligence services with those of Nazi Germany. Some of us wondered whether the latest scandal – allegations that Russian intelligence operatives had gathered compromising material or Kompromat on the President-elect  – would force Trump to tread carefully, or even cancel his scheduled appointment with the assembled press corps at Trump Tower. Of course that’s not his style. He was in full combat mode as he answered questions about what he gets up to in Moscow hotel rooms, lambasting the media that published the

Few 20th-century historians doubted that the 1917 Russian revolution was one of the most influential events of their time, indeed of all time. As the centenary commemoration approaches, however, it seems remarkable how far and how fast the ideology that inspired Lenin and millions of his worldwide followers has receded in significance. Many are the imperfections of capitalism, but almost nobody outside Jeremy Corbyn’s office any longer supposes that communism, least of all the old Soviet brand, offers a credible alternative. This would amaze our grandparents’ generation on both sides of the struggle. The novels of C.P. Snow are indifferent fiction but intriguing middle-class social history. During the interwar era,

They say a picture is worth a thousands words. The one of an off-duty police officer standing triumphantly over the body of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey in Ankara, says so much more. On what was due to be an ordinary evening in the Turkish capital, Andrei Karlov attended a photo exhibition to make a few remarks at the opening of a collection entitled ‘Russia as seen by Turks’. They turned out to be his last. As he addressed the small crowd, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The 62 year-old was, as you’d expect of a man of his status, flanked by men in suits. Little did anyone expect that

The Electoral College will cast their votes for president of the United States tomorrow without any last-minute intel on alleged Russian cyber-meddling, according to a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A group of electors had called for a briefing before the December 19 vote, though it’s unclear what they’d hoped to discover that everyone didn’t already know on November 8. President Obama acknowledged as much on Friday in a year-end press conference. ‘The truth of the matter is, is that everybody had the information. It was out there,’ he said, swatting away the suggestion that he should have made more of the Russian intrusions before