Owen Matthews

A document of a mass human experiment that is moving, revolting, violent and extraordinarily pornographic

Dau is the strangest and most unsettling piece of art to come out of Russia in years

2 February 2019 9:00 am

Dau is not so much a film as a document of a mass human experiment. The result is dark, brilliant…

Does Putin intend to go to war with Ukraine?

1 December 2018 9:00 am

On Europe’s eastern borderlands, trouble is brewing. Two headstrong leaders — Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko —…

How Bellingcat outfoxes the world’s spy agencies

20 October 2018 9:00 am

Bellingcat is an independent group of exceptionally gifted Leicester-based internet researchers who use information gleaned from open sources to dig…

Lake Kolyvan in the Altai Republic. Watercolour by Thomas Atkinson

The magnificent Atkinsons: rigours of travel in 19th-century Russia

4 August 2018 9:00 am

Russia has always attracted a certain breed of foreigner: adventurers, drawn to the country’s vastness and emptiness; chancers, seeking fortunes…

The Tsar and his daughters (from left, Maria, Anastasia and Olga) under guard in Siberia a few days before their murder

Why the Romanovs were doomed

7 July 2018 9:00 am

The true tragedy of the last Romanovs was a failure of imagination. Both during his last disastrous months in office…

Putin says he’s making Russia great again. In reality, it’s crumbling

9 June 2018 9:00 am

This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no…

Vladimir Putin’s toxic power

17 March 2018 9:00 am

Vladimir Putin’s spies have a dizzying variety of weapons at their disposal. This week Britain learned of a new one:…

For Putin, the World Cup is not about football but global respect

13 January 2018 9:00 am

Authoritarian regimes love grand international sporting events. There’s something about the mass regimentation, the set-piece spectacle, the old-fashioned idea of…

The Russian summer embassy at Büyükdere on the Upper Bosphorus, built in 1840 for General Nikolai Ignatiev. The Tsar’s envoy is said to haunt it still

A love letter to Turkey’s lost past

2 December 2017 9:00 am

Patricia Daunt’s collection of essays is a fascinating exploration of some of Turkey’s most beautiful and evocative places, from the…

Mykola Bokan’s photograph of his family, including a memorial to ‘Kostya, who died of hunger’, July 1933. Bokan and his son were arrested for documenting the famine — both died in the gulag

The hunger

23 September 2017 9:00 am

In 1933 my aunt Lenina Bibikova was eight years old. She lived in Kharkov, Ukraine. Every morning a polished black…

Ukraine’s last best hope

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Georgia’s former president may be a reckless narcissist, but he could change everything

Putin’s Syria problem

15 April 2017 9:00 am

For Vladimir Putin, Syria has been the gift that kept on giving. His 2015 military intervention propelled Russia back to…

Only obeying orders

14 January 2017 9:00 am

Spare a thought for the poor Gulag guard: the rifleman standing in the freezing wind on the outside of the…

Red faces

7 January 2017 9:00 am

How to celebrate the centenary of the Russian revolutions of 1917? Modern Russians are deeply divided over the legacy of…

Russia’s puritan revolution

29 September 2016 1:00 pm

Last weekend a group of young activists turned out on a Moscow street to protest against western decadence. They were…

Russia’s dumping ground

23 July 2016 9:00 am

Almost as soon as Siberia was first colonised by Cossack conquistadors in the 17th century, it became a place of…

Bear baiting

25 June 2016 4:00 am

Oh those Russians. When they’re not beating up English football fans, they’re cheating at the Olympics. They occupy other countries…

Putin’s winning in Syria – but making a powerful new enemy

20 February 2016 9:00 am

In Syria, the Russian leader is on the verge of his biggest – and riskiest – coup yet

How Putin outwitted the West

10 October 2015 9:00 am

His cynical statecraft in Syria has run rings around Britain and America

Can Putin ban homosexuality and endorse polygamy? Yes he can

8 August 2015 9:00 am

The Kremlin is tying itself in ideological knots as it tries to make new friends in the Muslim world

Panic, profiteering and a mysterious girl in a Mini: notes from Moscow

17 January 2015 9:00 am

 Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…

Letter from Donetsk: peace, with missile attacks

11 October 2014 9:00 am

For what is technically peacetime, there’s a lot of shelling going on round here. Donetsk airport is still held by…

Meet Vladimir Putin's real challengers (they're even worse than he is)

30 August 2014 9:00 am

Cuddly liberals aren’t going to displace Putin: his real challengers are ultra-nationalists like Igor Strelkov

Vladimir Putin’s empire of lies

26 July 2014 9:00 am

Putin’s answer to the destruction of Flight MH17 has been more propaganda. In Russia, at least, it seems to be working

No, Putin didn’t plot to invade Ukraine. But now he might have to

10 May 2014 9:00 am

Further Russian military intervention would be a disaster. But Putin might have to do it anyway