Russia

Vladimir Putin knows what he stands for. Do we?

19 April 2014 9:00 am

Possibly because his oratory is no match for his much-displayed pectoral muscles, the speeches of Vladimir Putin are seldom reported…

Don't call him an oligarch - meeting Dmitry Firtash

19 April 2014 9:00 am

A rare interview with billionaire Ukrainian power broker Dmitry Firtash

Portrait of the week

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved…

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Just as every child now thinks he’s going to die of global warming, so those of us who grew up…

Let Putin have Crimea – and it will destroy him

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Losing Crimea will be the making of Ukraine. And gaining it might well destroy the Russian president

Putin is making the West's Cold Warriors look like fools

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Russia is making the West look posturing, weak and divided

Cicero would have agreed with Putin

15 March 2014 9:00 am

Last September Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against a ‘unipolar’ world, saying that the national revival of Russia was in…

Crimean notebook: ‘They’ll have to break all my bones to make me a Russian citizen’

15 March 2014 9:00 am

Vladimir Putin still swears that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, so their mission is to say as little…

Where to open your brothel: an international comparison

8 March 2014 9:00 am

The best places to open a brothel The Commons all-party group on prostitution has called for a Scandinavian-style law where…

Leave Ukraine to the Russians

8 March 2014 9:00 am

‘You can’t always get what you want,’ chorused Mick Jagger, ‘but if you try some time/You just might find/You get…

Any other business: Britain’s chaotic energy policy puts us in Putin’s hands

8 March 2014 9:00 am

To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon…

Europe's 'new world order' is letting Vladimir Putin run riot

8 March 2014 9:00 am

Putin has now broken the post-Cold War consensus for good. But Russia may not enjoy the results

The Edward Snowden scandal viewed from planet Guardian

8 March 2014 9:00 am

Last summer a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor called Edward Snowden leaked a vast trove of secret information on the…

If Ukraine’s protests were a revolution, why wasn’t the Stop the War march?

1 March 2014 9:00 am

It’s ages since I last went on a decent demo and had a bit of a dust-up with the pigs.…

Watching car crash compliations with my grandson

1 March 2014 9:00 am

My boy was downstairs cooking Sunday roast. Earlier, I had been clambering about on a woodpile, stepped awkwardly, and twisted…

Spectator letters: Wind and bias, and the Scots at war

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Caution over wind Sir: While the broadcast media have assailed their audiences with simplistic yet blanket coverage of the floods…

Any other business: The friends of Putin taking home gold from the Sochi Olympics

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter…

Vladimir Putin's new plan for world domination

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Russia is returning as an ideological force in the world – to champion conservative values

Ian Buruma’s notebook: Teenagers discover Montaigne the blogger

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…

Putin: ‘Oi, Europe, you’re a bunch of poofs’

15 February 2014 9:00 am

Sochi 2014 is the least wintry Winter Olympics ever. Yes, there’s a bit of downhill shimmying going on in the…

Why doesn't Stephen Fry boycott the Saudis as well as the Russians? 

15 February 2014 9:00 am

Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in…

'She's the most important Jewish writer since Kafka!'

11 January 2014 9:00 am

Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector

Why doesn't Russia have a Yad Vashem for the gulag?

4 January 2014 9:00 am

Why is there no gulag museum to compare with Yad Vashem?

Secrets of the Kremlin

14 December 2013 9:00 am

A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…

Why do we pounce on Wagner's anti-Semitism, and ignore that of the Russian composers?

9 November 2013 9:00 am

Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music