Russia

I’m thoroughly enjoying the playground spat between the USA and Russia. The Americans have banned Russians with dodgy human rights records from visiting the country, but have no such objection to travellers from Iran, Pakistan or Somalia dropping by, no matter how psychopathic they might be. In retaliation, the Russkies have voted to halt their most valuable export to the USA – that of small Russian children, who are used by middle class Americans as mantelpiece ornaments and garden furniture. I assume that adopting a little black child from, say, Malawi, is now considered a little de trop. Whatever, there seems to be a yearning, on both sides, for this

You rarely hear people defending the European Court of Human Rights. It is, according to British mythology, a meddlesome beast populated by dimwit judges of dubious foreign provenance whose rulings are invariably ninnyish, ignorant and intolerable in equal measure. I prefer to think of the court as the last protector of individual rights often threatened by hostile governments. Sometimes that hostile government is our own. The court – and really this cannot be stressed often enough – offers protection from the state. Restraining government’s worst instincts is a noble calling and if our judges cannot or will not do it then praise be that the european justices are not so

A surprisingly large turn-out last night for the launch of the Conservative Friends of Russia, given the recent ‘Pussy Riot’ trial mess. A notable absence from the Kremlin ambassador’s garden was Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the group’s Hon. President. There was also a distinct absence of parliamentarians. Lumbering up to the plate was John Wittingdale, whose proclaimed love of the motherland goes beyond his Russian girlfriend. The Chairman of the Culture Select Committee has been known to be close to the country for years and extolled his love of Russian literature to the two hundred strong crowd. He mentioned the latest Putin controversy and did indeed declare himself a music fan.

So, two years in prison for the members of Pussy Riot as a consequence of their foul and insulting behaviour inside a church. The western world is outraged and takes the severity of the sentence as evidence that Russia is a totalitarian state where everyone does as Putin wants. Thank God we’re not like that over here, huh? We live in a democracy where one is free to lampoon all religious belief without punitive action descending upon us by the state. Which will be news to Andrew Ryan, among others – he was sentenced to 70 days in jail for setting fire to a copy of the Koran. And the two men who received one

One of the happiest things about writing for the Spectator is that there is no editorial line. Indeed the editor is always pleased by an intra-mural rammy. So there’s this: Dennis Sewell’s argument that Pussy Riot, the only all-girl Russian punk band you’re likely to have heard of, have been asking for trouble and deserve some of the trouble they’re receiving is the lamest sort of counter-intuitive, concern-trolling journalism. It helps pay the bills, mind you, so there’s that too. Having typed the obligatory “Of course Putin is ghastly” paragraph (or, as Sewell puts it, the Russian president is “a nasty, unscrupulous weasel” which, perhaps unwittingly, makes Putin seem a

If you enjoy scoring tiny but likely returns on your wagers, then how about putting some money down on Vladimir Putin to win today’s presidential election in Russia? William Hill are currently offering odds of 1/100, if you’re interested. Like John Simpson, writing for this week’s Spectator, they regard this as ‘Russia’s Coronation Day’. A near cert. The rest of Simpson’s article is worth reading, but it’s his conclusion that we’ll pull out here. Putin, he says, will ‘walk it in the first round’ today, but his medium-term future looks far less secure: ‘Russia is changing. It can’t simply be told to shut up any more. Soon — not within