Robert Service

Is Stalin-worship back in Russia?

20 October 2024 5:00 pm

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

7 August 2024 4:30 pm

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

21 January 2024 5:00 pm

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

3 December 2023 4:03 am

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

2 September 2023 5:00 pm

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

9 April 2023 4:35 pm

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

24 February 2023 5:00 pm

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?

27 December 2022 8:00 pm

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

29 May 2022 4:00 pm

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

13 March 2022 8:00 pm

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

10 March 2018 9:00 am

Mischief and mayhem work better for Russia than steady cooperation with the western powers. This at least is what the…