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The Soviet spectre haunting Afghanistan

10 July 2021 4:15 pm

As US and British forces pull out of Afghanistan, further victims of the ‘grave of empires’, Russia is experiencing a mix…

Why the far-right flourishes in East Germany

6 June 2021 4:01 pm

A spectre is haunting Germany — the spectre of the AfD. Having come to prominence on a wave of anti-migrant…

A nuclear crisis is closer than you think

22 May 2021 8:02 pm

It has long been widely accepted as orthodoxy that the world was saved from nuclear war during the Cuban Missile…

Spare me the encomiums for John le Carré

2 September 2017 9:00 am

In Absolute Friends, one of John le Carré’s lesser works, the central character explains his rebirth as a left-wing firebrand,…

Enough, comrades, it’s time to give Transnistria a break

Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between…

The crash of the ruble — and what's next for Russia

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Will Putin’s people still love him when the money dries up? He’s about to find out

An anti-Soviet rally in Moscow, February 1991: Gorbachev’s reforms resulted in the rise of his nemesis, Yeltsin

It's not just Putin who misses the Soviet empire. President Bush did, too

12 July 2014 9:00 am

In the latest – and best – of the books on the end of the USSR, Victor Sebestyen finds that the only good thing about the Soviet empire was the manner of its passing

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

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…