Russia

It may sound like a rather arcane development, but a change in the command structure of the Rosgvardiya, Russia’s National Guard, offers some clues about both the state of the country and the Ukraine war – and the Kremlin’s fears for the future. Zolotov has been lobbying for some time for the Rosgvardiya to have its own General Staff. This week, he got it The Rosgvardiya is an internal security force of some 180,000 personnel, ranging from the blue-camouflaged OMON riot police who patrol the streets alongside the regular police, through to the Interior Troops, a virtual parallel army with its own tanks and artillery. (There are also at least

For years, we have heard rumors that Ramzan Kadyrov, dictator of Chechnya, is mortally ill. Unlike the lurid tales about Vladimir Putin, these rumors appear to be true, and the Kremlin is bracing itself for a potential succession crisis at the very worst time. This week, one of the official news agencies even quietly updated their canned obituary of him, just in case. This means Putin may soon face a fearsome dilemma: risk losing Chechnya or lose what momentum he has in Ukraine? Daudov won Ramzan’s favor by literally bringing him the head of rebel Suleyman Elmurzayev, who had claimed responsibility for the murder of his father Kadyrov has had

For the Kremlin, the US’s snatching of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is a humiliation with a silver lining. True, little more than a year after the precipitous fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Russia has been shown to be completely hopeless when it comes to keeping its allies in power. In Caracas, US airborne forces breezed past Russian-supplied S-300 air defense systems, which were part of a $20 billion package of maybe not-so-great Russian military equipment that Moscow sold the Venezuelans. The Kremlin has lost a strategic bridgehead in South America which it could, potentially, have used to disrupt and challenge Washington’s regional hegemony – if Moscow weren’t so committed financially

As Moscow and Washington prepare for talks on the latest version of Donald Trump’s peace plan, leaked recordings of a conversation with US envoy Steve Witkoff have thrown a spotlight on to senior diplomat Yuri Ushakov. It seems he, not Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is the prime mover behind Russia’s negotiating position. The stature of Lavrov, once a legend in the diplomatic community, has steadily diminished since 2014, when he wasn’t even consulted before Vladimir Putin decided to annex Crimea. Every year since then, the now-75-year-old minister has petitioned Putin to be allowed to retire; every year this is denied. Instead, Lavrov remains confined to a role of repeating threadbare talking points

At a time when western commentators are tying themselves in knots trying to parse the ongoing Ukraine peace discussions, the Russian media is suddenly strikingly united in its coverage. There is a common misperception that, like their Soviet forebears, the Russian press simply reproduces some standard party line, day in, day out. In fact, there is often surprising pluralism, with different newspapers having their own interests and angles. However, the Kremlin does impose its will when it comes to especially important or sensitive matters, with editors receiving tyomniki, informal but authoritative guidance from the presidential administration on lines to take and topics to avoid. When the press is speaking in one