Russia

It’s not easy to frame sanctions, these days. They occupy that huge, hazy diplomatic no man’s land between sternly-worded but essentially vacuous expressions of concern – grave concern, if you really want to pretend you’re serious – and sending a gunboat. When it comes to trying to make an impression on Vladimir Putin, who has no qualms about causing the West concerns – and has a good few gunboats of his own – this is a doubly-difficult challenge. The latest US sanctions are a case in point, a mix of the cosmetic and the consequential that are more about political signalling than anything else. This is President Biden reassuring the

In 2001, US President George W. Bush stared into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and said he saw his soul. Joe Biden, on the other hand, famously claimed to have told the Russian leader, ‘I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ Now the new incumbent of the Oval Office might have a second chance to check again in the flesh. On Tuesday, Biden held a rare and, by all accounts cordial, telephone call with his counterpart in Moscow to discuss the increasingly tense situation on the border with Ukraine. For months, Kiev’s forces in the Donbass region have clashed with troops loyal to two Russian-backed breakaway

In the last few weeks, Russia has been flaunting its military build-up in and around Ukraine, sending 20,000 extra troops, artillery convoys, and trains heaving with weaponry to Crimea. To avoid this escalating into full-scale war, a more robust and consistent response is needed from the international community, as well as new fora and strategies to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, France and Germany have assumed leading roles in mediating the conflict. They are part of the ‘Normandy Quartet’ and mediators for the Minsk Protocol. But both of these initiatives have floundered and the Franco-German failure to stand up to Russia is

Munich has had enough of the vaccine chaos in Berlin and Brussels. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Bavaria’s minister president Markus Söder stated that he would sign a preliminary purchase agreement for the Russian Sputnik vaccine. The leader of the Bavarian Free State explained that he would pre-order two and a half million doses of Sputnik V in the hope of receiving these by July. Söder, who is a potential candidate to replace Merkel, was keen to stress that this was dependent on regulatory approval by the European Medicines Agency. Under pressure to respond to Bavaria’s initiative, Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn has now told his EU counterparts that

Even with Alexei Navalny imprisoned, Russia’s opposition continues to struggle against Vladimir Putin and his quarter-century of Kremlin rule. This already daunting task has been made harder by the fact that key figures are now imprisoned or in exile: the opposition leader’s principal aides Vladimir Ashrukov and Leonid Volkov have fled to London and Vilnius respectively, while Navalny himself is serving a three-year prison sentence for supposed fraud. Still, his inner circle continues to plan Putin’s downfall from beyond Russia’s border ­— and they now believe they have the support to succeed. The first stage, Volkov tells me, is mass protests. Already Navalny’s movement has led to thousands of people rallying

If we are to believe the gossip, Vladimir Putin draws up death lists the way ordinary people jot down their shopping. And bang on schedule, as Joe Biden makes a point of labelling him a ‘killer,’ not one but two death lists materialise from parts unknown. This weekend the Daily Mirror — not, it has to be said, usually a Kremlinologist’s ‘must-read’ — claimed that Putin is ‘now beside himself with rage’ and is drawing up lists of would-be victims, saying ‘we have long arms. No scum can hide from us.’ The quotes come from an unnamed office of Russia’s much-feared Federal Security Service (FSB), which is apparently planning how

There is an assumption that those fighting tyranny must instead want Western-style democracy, that the arc of history bends towards liberal representative government, allied inevitably to Washington and Brussels. Many former Soviet Union countries saw their politburos overthrown by young middle-class people espousing the desire for this kind of politics — from the Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Orange Revolution and Euromaiden protests in Ukraine (whether or not they eventually received that form of government is a different matter). But there is no logical imperative that connects dissatisfaction towards an autocrat with the kind of government and geopolitical order that will replace him, whether in Eastern Europe or elsewhere. Belarus,

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to approach Russia and its irascible President Vladimir Putin with a new sense of toughness and purpose. Now calling the shots in the White House, President Biden appears to have made good on that promise — at least symbolically. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced several sets of sanctions against Moscow for last summer’s attempted assassination of the Russian activist Alexei Navalny, a plot that involved the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. The sanctions, taken in concert with the European Union’s own measures, included asset freezes and travel bans on seven Russian officials deemed responsible for the poisoning, imprisonment, and prosecution of Navalny.

Ever since its disastrous military defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan last year, Armenia has suffered from a wave of political unrest, with rallies and protests continuing sporadically. The principal demand of the protestors has been the resignation of the incumbent Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, whose agreement to a ceasefire favourable to Azerbaijan following his country’s defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh was viewed as a national betrayal. However, the most serious declaration of opposition to the Prime Minister came on Thursday, when the general staff of the armed forces, Onik Gasparyan, joined in the calls for Pashinyan to resign. Gasparyan was prompted by Pashinyan’s dismissal of his deputy, who had publicly ridiculed

In his fight against Putin, Alexei Navalny needs all the help he can get. The might of the Russian state is pitted against him. Having failed to kill Navalny, the Kremlin has achieved its aim, at least in the short term, of silencing him: by locking him up in prison. Navalny and his supporters have called on the west to assist him. So far, the response has been fairly measly: this week, the EU announced sanctions against a handful of figures in the Russian regime.  This small scale retaliation for the attempted murder of a political opponent won’t bother Putin much. Now, though, Navalny’s attempt to take on Putin has been undermined

It is the first display of political instability in the Caucasus in 2021. Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia on Thursday announced his unexpected resignation. Although his successor has yet to be confirmed, his replacement will be the country’s sixth Prime Minister in eight years. All, including Gakharia, have been members of the same party, Georgian Dream, that has held parliamentary control since 2012. The founder of the party, the formerly reclusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, was the first Georgian Dream Prime Minister. He only held the post for a year, claiming he had achieved his political objectives after twelve months. This was treated with a degree of scepticism that was later