Mark Galeotti heads the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and is honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of some 30 books on Russia. His latest, Forged in War: a military history of Russia from its beginnings to today, is out now.
For most Russians, the brutal realities of Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ have not really struck home. Ukraine’s attack on the Saki airbase near Novofedorivka in western Crimea on Tuesday begins to change all that, marking a new stage of the war, one with both dangers and opportunities for Kyiv. The Kremlin’s spin doctors tried
Could a general of the SBU, the security service of Ukraine, really have helped Russia take the city of Kherson? Could a colonel have tipped off the Russians as to where the Ukrainians had lain mines north of Crimea? The Ukrainian government certainly appears to believe that fifth columnists within the SBU have been Moscow’s
The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine isn’t a war – there’s a law and a possible maximum sentence (though no one seems to have faced it yet) of 15 years in prison to stop you claiming it is in Russia. Yet Russia does seem to be inching towards a wartime economy, for all Vladimir Putin’s
Apparently, if Vladimir Putin had been a woman, everything would be just tickety-boo. Speaking to German TV, Boris Johnson has said that Putin is the ‘perfect example of toxic masculinity’ and that had he been a women – ‘which he obviously isn’t’, Boris felt the need to clarify – then ‘I really don’t think he would’ve embarked
When General Alexander Dvornikov was made overall commander of Russia’s forces in April, it looked as if the amateurishness and incoordination of the early stage of the Ukraine war might be being addressed. Now, though, Dvornikov is not around, and a new commander may shape a savage new phase of operations. In recent days, the
Vladimir Putin’s regime has a track record in building up public heroes whom it hopes to use, only to find the ungrateful wretches unwilling to play the roles it intends. The most recent is Natalia Poklonskaya, a woman whose trajectory from cartoon heroine to legal adviser has starkly illustrated the way Putin faces criticisms not
Putin has a penchant for history, but only insofar it flatters him and his views. Last year, he gifted the world a 5,000 essay that essentially pre-justified his invasion of Ukraine with amateurish fantasy history, and now he is comparing himself with Tsar Peter the Great. It is not a comparison that fits or flatters.
One might not think that J. R. R. Tolkien has much to do with the bitter war in Ukraine, but one would be wrong. A particular epithet, once used by Ukrainians specifically for the Russian soldiers who have shelled, looted and raped their way into their country has begun to be applied also to the
Suddenly, we are all diagnosticians. Clips of a puffy Putin slurring his words, his hands twitching or clutching a table for grim death, have led to all kinds of speculation about his health. It does seem probable that he is suffering from some ailments, to be sure. However, we need to be careful we do
It has been reported this week that Vladimir Putin is shifting responsibility for covert operations in Ukraine to a different intelligence agency. The Fifth Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB) has now reportedly been usurped by ‘military intelligence’ – still widely known by its old acronym of GRU, but actually called the GU, the
The Russians know how to put on a parade, and Victory Day is the showiest of the shows. It may have been a portent, though, that inclement weather conditions forced the cancellation of the aerial flypast. It quite literally might have rained on Vladimir Putin’s parade. This shouldn’t have happened. Typically, if there is any
In some ways, it’s a headline-writer’s dream: Putin puts his faith in Satan. In reality, it’s actually Putin’s new RS-28 Sarmat (‘Sarmatian’) heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, which has become colloquially known in western circles as the ‘Satan II’. It is intended as a replacement for the R-36M, which in Nato parlance is known as the
Like the Greek titan Cronos devouring his own children, Vladimir Putin seems determined to turn against those he was once closest to – out of fear, anger and hubris. In the process, he is only further weakening his regime. The former deputy head of the infamous Federal Security Service (FSB), colonel general Sergei Beseda, has
Given how the Kremlin is so determined to portray Ukraine as a hotbed of Nazis, it is tragically ironic not only that its own forces seem determined to recreate some of the horrors of the German invasion in the second world war, but also that it is so willing to use its own fascists in
He wanted to see the Baltic States bombarded with toxic waste. He brawled in parliament. He encouraged Vladimir Putin to declare himself tsar. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, one of the most grotesque fixtures in Russian politics for over thirty years, is dead. It is the end of an era – and good riddance. The 75-year-old died in a
You’d think a ruthless autocrat who believes he faces a West that wants to unseat him with people power would make damn sure he keeps his Praetorian Guard on side. You’d think. After all, it has long been one of the Kremlin’s tenets that the West is committed to first isolating and then reshaping Russia
News that Putin’s climate envoy Anatoly Chubais has quit his position and left the country is no great surprise and, to many Russians, not that great a loss. However his departure is still significant as it illustrates a growing haemorrhage of the talents in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Those Russians with the resources and,
Putin, like many other belligerent autocrats, does like his Wunderwaffen, or ‘wonder weapons.’ Now it appears he’s even used one in an act of wasteful overkill in Ukraine: using the hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (Dagger) missile to apparently destroy an arms depot in western Ukraine. The Kinzhal was one of the six ‘magic weapons’ Putin unveiled
Putin, of course, can never be wrong. Hence the desperate struggle, familiar to other personalised authoritarianisms, to find suitable scapegoats, because if the monarch is infallible, then anything that goes badly must be someone else’s fault, whether because they misled the boss or simply failed to follow orders. What is especially alarming is when the
Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned this week that convoys of weapons being sent to Ukraine would be considered legitimate military targets by Russia. It was a deliberately ambiguous and political statement more than anything else, but it is also a useful reminder of the need to think about the potential next phase in
