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Mark Galeotti

After Putin: how nervous should we be?

The brief mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries represented the most serious shock yet to Vladimir Putin’s 23-year reign. No wonder alarmed western governments are considering nightmare scenarios. Yet the outlook may actually be rather more optimistic. When news of the mutiny broke, there were fears of mass defections to the side of

What really happened between Putin and Prigozhin?

In the absence of facts, it’s hard to understand what got into Yevgeny Prigozhin. I spoke to the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky about Prigozhin and Putin and their odd relationship. He says that criminality unites and explains the pair. Prigozhin went to prison for almost ten years, for robbery. The legend is that he opened the

The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army

Allowing a psychopath to form a private army of violent criminals may not, on reflection, have been Vladimir Putin’s greatest idea. But Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutinous Wagner Group is by no means the only private army operating in Russia. Over the past couple of months no fewer than five armies have been fighting on Russian soil.

The march of Europe’s right-wing women

The British Conservative party may be hopelessly behind in the polls, yet all over Europe the right is surging ahead. Everywhere you look, the left is losing – in Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Hungary and now, following an election victory for the New Democracy party on Sunday, Greece. In France, the Rassemblement National (the

The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti

Throw him to the lions! That’s what I thought when I saw the video of a grinning moron desecrating the walls of the Colosseum with the words ‘Ivan + Hayley 23’. He must have been referring to his girlfriend, standing by his side – and the year. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d defaced

Is the glucose monitoring craze really so healthy?

At £300 a go, the Zoe is a reassuringly expensive accessory. It has a recognisable logo and even had a 200,000-strong waiting list at one point. That wouldn’t be so unusual if Zoe was a must-have handbag or jewellery, but it is  a continuous glucose monitor that you stick to your arm. Some charities ask

Notes on...

The disappointing truth about Aperol spritz

I’m in Tuscany, where the piazzas glow orange at dusk, not only from the sunsets but also from the profusion of Aperol spritz. The bright orange drink has exploded in popularity in the past five years. Everyone’s drinking it: young women, middle-aged couples, groups of wrinkly tanned men, all sucking from straws sticking out of