How to negotiate with Russians
Russians are notorious for an aggressiveness at the negotiating table. In 2017 I met a group of diplomats from eastern…
Is Stalin-worship back in Russia?
As if the Russian political barometer hasn’t fallen low enough, news comes that it has yet to reach the bottom…
Britain’s rioters have acted like Bolsheviks
British riots are not a new phenomenon. They were regular occurrences throughout history and usually the spark that lit the…
We still live in Lenin’s world
Today is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. His Moscow funeral was marked by official communist solemnity, as if a…
Putin’s ‘loyalty cards’ are a new low for his regime
Loyalty cards in the West are used by supermarket chains to influence our shopping habits. They are fortunately absent from…
The Pope is wrong about Russian imperial greatness
Popes may make claims to infallibility but they certainly make mistakes, and Pope Francis is likely to get a dressing…
Putin only has himself to blame for the end of Finlandisation
Joseph Stalin knew better than Vladimir Putin. After world war two, as the Cold War began, the Soviet dictator took…
Putin’s fatal miscalculation over Ukraine
It is a full year since Vladimir Putin started his latest war against Ukraine, and only optimists expect that the…
Could the West have done more to help Russia?
At New Year 1992, the USSR ceased to exist and Russia and the other Soviet republics became independent states. Western…
Why Putin will never truly conquer Ukraine
Vladimir Putin has never been completely clear about his war aims. But he gives clues. He endlessly talks of the…
The fatal miscalculation that led to war in Ukraine
The war against Ukraine – or the ‘special military operation’ as it is compulsorily known in Moscow – has lasted…
Britain must ‘take back control’ from Russia
Mischief and mayhem work better for Russia than steady cooperation with the western powers. This at least is what the…
