Russia

Days before Nato leaders descend on Vilnius for the alliance’s annual summit next month, things will be afoot just across the border in Belarus. In a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko at his summer residence in Sochi on Friday, Putin revealed that Russia will start deploying nuclear weapons to the country on the weekend of 7 and 8 July.  Putin’s decision to move nuclear weapons into Belarus just three days before the Nato summit begins in Lithuania is almost certainly no coincidence. As the alliance he regularly rages about prepares to sit down to discuss defence and deterrence, the Russian president is metaphorically puffing out his chest to remind

A young woman called Lyudmila walks into a cafe in Odessa, the southern Ukrainian city. Her phone is switched on and the camera set to record mode. She approaches the owner and asks for service in Ukrainian. He declines. He says his Ukrainian language skills are poor. When she insists he makes excuses, then tells her the cafe is closed, and finally asks her to leave. But unbeknownst to the owner, Lyudmila is a member of a small Ukrainian-language vigilante group. The group, who call themselves ‘Getting on your Nerves’, has made it their business to turn this Russophone city, founded in 1796 by Catherine the Great, into a Ukrainian-speaking

Disinformation is on the rise, and Britain’s spies are on the back foot. Our intelligence leaders warn about election meddling, and our enemies are trying to undermine public trust in our national institutions. The United Kingdom needs to use covert means to disrupt anti-British activities at their source. That’s what Harold Macmillan said in the 1950s, shortly before becoming prime minister. Over half a century later, in 2017, the Chief of MI6 made the same point: adversaries should be ‘playing in their half of the pitch not ours.’ And half a decade on from that, here we are again. This week’s intriguing peek into the secretive work of the National

There are ‘global issues that we both have on our plates’, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, mysteriously, when he met with his Turkish counterpart last week. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, standing by Blinken’s side, thought the same. ‘We will focus on areas of partnership in bilateral and regional issues.’ Diplomacy as usual, then. Behind the boring platitudes lies a serious rift between Turkey and the United States. In late December, Syrian and Turkish defence ministers met in Moscow in the first proper meeting between the two governments in a decade. There are plans for another meeting between foreign ministers that could lead to a direct meeting between Turkey’s

Ever since the war in Ukraine started there have been reports about Russians emigrating, either fleeing conscription or simply dismayed at the conflict and Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian turn. Moscow has previously dismissed reports that as many as 700,000 could have fled. But that figure no longer looks so far-fetched in the light of data just released by the FSB saying 9.7 million trips out of the country were made in the third quarter of this year (July to September), almost double the number made between April and June.  This figure was slipped out over the weekend and has so far gone unreported in the English-language press. It’s significant as it covers 21 September,

Putin badly miscalculated. The Russian army terribly underperformed. Kyiv has shown unexpected resilience in the face of what experts thought was far superior Russian firepower. This, we’re told, is the story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and all of it is true. Vladimir Putin’s talk of a ‘dirty bomb’ is evidence of how badly the war is going for him. Russia has been taught a bitter lesson, one that other trigger-happy, self-proclaimed great powers would be wise to heed. But one part has been missed. For all of Russia’s difficulties, it is in a far better shape than Ukraine. Fighting has left Ukraine in ruin. Consider these eye-watering statistics: at