Russia

Is Putin preparing a nuclear strike?

Russia is peddling implausible tales of Ukrainian ‘dirty bombs’. Kyiv and the West are embarked on a campaign to counter this propaganda, and again the talk is of the risk of Moscow using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. And that’s the point. First of all, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu broke months of relative silence – with the West, at least – and called his British, American, French and Turkish counterparts. His main message was to assert, with no evidence in support of his claims, that Kyiv was preparing to use a dirty bomb. This is a conventional munition, around which is packed radioactive materials, which is dispersed when

The US knows the main threat is China

China’s President Xi Jinping opened the CCP’s 20th party congress by doubling down on four key issues: no let up on zero-Covid; no renunciation of force when it comes to Taiwan; a promise to build up China’s military strength; and no tolerance of any opposition to his rule. As he enters his third term, the most important new challenge he has to address are the export controls announced by the US on the eve of the congress that threaten to undercut China’s ability to develop semiconductors and supercomputers. Xi remains defiant: he promised to ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies.’ Yet Xi must be worried that the US

What does Russia really want?

The question of ‘why’ Russia invaded Ukraine has been forgotten amid war’s fog. Greed and malice partially explains it. History, geopolitics and culture reveals more. A country which has more land than anyone else on Earth is not grabbing territory for territory’s sake. Logically, Russia should be giving away land to anyone who might manage it better. But that’s not how Putin thinks. He is pursuing a dogged policy of annexations – first in Georgia, then in the Crimea, and now of four further Ukrainian districts. Logically, Russia’s neighbours have more to fear than Russia has. But that’s not how Putin feels Equally, a country which owns the world’s biggest stockpile of

Portrait of the week: Truss says sorry, Hunt reverses mini-Budget and Kanye West buys Parler

Home Liz Truss said in a BBC interview as Prime Minister that she wanted to ‘say sorry for the mistakes that have been made’. Declaring that she would lead the Conservatives into the next election, she addressed blocs of MPs: the One Nation group one day, the European Research Group the next. She watched Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer whom she had just appointed to replace Kwasi Kwarteng, deliver a statement to the Commons reversing most of the provisions of the ‘fiscal event’ of 23 September. The new Chancellor announced the end of current subsidies for domestic energy bills in April, preferring something that ‘will cost the taxpayer

Mark Galeotti

Tsar Vladimir brings in martial law

Martial law can arrive with a bang: tanks on the streets, Swan Lake on the TV. It can also creep up on a country in the guise of a presidential edict with the title ‘The Decree On Measures taken in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of October 19, 2022 No. 756’. Either way, Vladimir Putin has just moved Russia one step closer to totalitarianism. What is interesting is just how long and half-hearted a process this has been. When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, the sharpest-beaked hawks in his entourage were urging total war, and with

A house-price crash won’t be the only effect of the Kwarteng calamity

Where next for house prices? Clearly, they’re going down as mortgage rates go up – and my forecast in May that they would shed ‘recent froth’ and then stagnate rather than plunge, has been entirely overtaken by events, or at least by Kwasi Kwarteng’s calamitous ‘fiscal event’ last month. Reverberations from the Chancellor’s debut continue apace, with more emergency bond-buying by the Bank of England despite news that the OBR-assessed forecast missing from his September speech will now be unveiled on 31 October instead of on 23 November. But even if the books can be cooked in a way that makes more sense than markets expect, hundreds of mortgage deals

What Elon Musk doesn’t get about peace

The power one person can hold should never be underestimated. They can take people’s lives, as Vladimir Putin does, or save them as Elon Musk did in Ukraine. Two days after Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tagged Musk on Twitter and asked him to help Kyiv with Starlink. The communication centres were one of the first targets for Russian missiles. ‘While you try to colonise Mars, Russia tries to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space, Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!’ tweeted Fedorov. The answer was immediate. Musk tweeted: ‘Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.’ It was stunning

Putin at 70: How The Spectator has covered his life

Vladimir Putin turns 70 today. Since he became Prime Minister of Russia in 1999, some of The Spectator’s greatest contributors have asked the perennial questions: who is Putin, and what does he want? We’ve compiled the following pieces from our fully-digitised archive.  ‘Joking with a nine-year-old boy at a televised awards ceremony by the Russian Geographical Society, President Vladimir Putin said: ‘The Russian borders don’t end anywhere.’’ Portrait of the Week, 1 December 2016 Appointment as Prime Minister  ‘Not surprisingly, given his background, Putin has a lugubrious and somewhat sinister manner. Perhaps more importantly he has never stood for election to anything and his one dabble in democracy, managing the re-election

How should the West respond to Putin’s threats?

Vladimir Putin clearly wants us to worry that he is crazy enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. This fear was intensified this week when images surfaced that some – possibly in error – believed showed a train operated by the secretive nuclear security forces moving towards Ukraine. Despite this, many believe the likelihood of a nuclear attack remains extremely low. Yet it is a plausible enough threat for the West to be considering how it should respond if Putin were to unleash one. Russia has an estimated 1,900 non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs), from artillery shells to warheads for missiles; their yields range from a mere 0.5 to

The deathly malaise that’s crippling Russia

Now is a difficult time to empathise with Russians – which is why we need Maxim Osipov. We need him to bring alive to us what it means to live in Putin’s Russia – how the system finds ways to crush all but a very few. Even more, we need him to remind us of the kaleidoscope of qualities that a country like Russia inevitably contains – the humanity and generosity as well as the stupidity and cruelty. An author of great subtlety, Osipov would no doubt wince at such grandiose claims for his writing. Yet when the world is deciding how to deal with the aftermath of Putin’s (eventual,

Why did North Korea fire a missile over Japan?

It was a new dawn, a new day, and a new North Korean missile test. The land of the morning calm – as South Korea is affectionately-nicknamed – awoke to the launch of the fifth North Korean ballistic missile in ten days. Over the past ten months, the international community has become accustomed to a growing number of North Korean missile launches, of an increasingly diverse range of missiles. Kim Jong-un’s determination for North Korea to become a nuclear state, and be recognised as such is only heightening. Russia and China are now more reticent than ever to side with the West and support sanctions on North Korea Last night’s

A short history of language in Ukraine

After six months of war in Ukraine, most observers agree that the roots of Russian aggression lie in the country’s deep-rooted attitudes to culture and history. In line with Russia’s nationalist traditions, Putin denies any place for a separate Ukrainian identity. The Ukrainians, in contrast, see themselves as a proud nation with their own history, culture, centuries long struggle for independence, and, of course, language. And while Ukrainian has been dismissed as a dialect of Russian in Moscow, it in fact has a long history – and is very much a language in its own right. That independence can be seen in the genesis of the word ‘Ukraine’ itself. In

Will Nato accept Ukraine?

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky made an offer to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine would drop its ambition to join Nato and would instead stay neutral, he said. It would not align with the West, in exchange for an end to hostilities. It was a sincere offer, and unpopular with Ukrainians. Yet it was significant: Putin had cited Ukraine’s Nato ambitions as the main reason for the invasion, saying it showed the West was somehow threatening Russia. But today, that offer ended and Zelensky is seeking the ‘accelerated’ Nato accession granted to Finland and Sweden this year. Will Nato accept? Jens Stoltenberg, Nato Secretary-General, dodged the question when asked today. ‘Our focus

Europe’s descent into deindustrialisation

The rapid economic collapse that Britain is facing is simply an accelerated version of what the whole of Europe is about to go through; unsustainable borrowing to fund the gap between high energy prices and what households can actually afford. With the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, there is now no feasible way back. Europe can no longer physically import Russian gas – prices will remain high until Europe builds more energy capacity, which could take years. What is likely to come of this? High energy prices will render European manufacturing uncompetitive. European manufacturers will be forced to pass through the higher energy costs in the form of higher

War has come home to Russia

Moscow A week of somewhat mixed messages from the Kremlin. One day Vladimir Putin opened Europe’s largest Ferris wheel and presided over citywide celebrations of Moscow’s 875th anniversary, full of calm and good cheer and mentioning the war only in passing. A few days later he appeared on national TV telling the world that he was ‘not bluffing’ about using nuclear weapons and announcing a partial mobilisation. Putin has never fought a contested election in his life, so he’s never been a great one for the common touch. But in his latest address he looked as pale and dead-eyed as Nosferatu. Russians know better than most that the more strenuously

Did Russia sabotage its own pipelines?

It almost seems worthy of the opening scene in a Bond film. Vital Russian gas pipelines running beneath the Baltic Sea close to Denmark and Sweden are the victims of sabotage. The two countries have warned of leaks from both Nord Stream 1 and 2 after seismologists suggested there had been underwater explosions. No one wants to claim credit for the deed – yet. Who is the Blofeld behind this dastardly scheme? Former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, no fan of Russia, sardonically declared on Twitter, ‘Thank you, USA’. That set the conspiracy theorists off. As has a video resurfacing of Joe Biden in February promising America would put an end to

Life among the Russian refuseniks

Yerevan, Armenia It was getting dark outside Yerevan Airport when I arrived, but there were still a dozen flights from Russia yet to land. Groups of young men in their twenties and thirties were milling around the terminal building, stacking suitcases onto trolleys, changing money and working out what to do next. Armenia is one of the few countries they can still fly to since much of the western world closed its skies to Russian planes; it is almost alone in not requiring them to have visas. ‘I’m just here for a holiday,’ one weary traveller carrying four heavy bags insists, ‘everything is fine in Moscow.’ Others are more up front

Was Nato expansion worth the risk?

This is an important and topical book. Mary Sarotte traces the difficult course of Russia’s relations with Europe and the United States during the decade which followed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, a period which saw Russia’s brief dalliance with democracy and Nato’s advance to the frontiers of the old Soviet Union. The story has been told before, but never so fully or so well. In a remarkable historical coup, Sarotte has persuaded the German foreign ministry to open its archives to her, and the Americans to declassify thousands of documents previously closed to researchers. When Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was moved to denounce so much

Martin Vander Weyer

Is this really the moment to scrap bankers’ bonuses?

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng – keen to sharpen the City’s competitive edge, we’re told – wants to remove the legislative cap, imported from Brussels in 2014, that limits bankers’ bonuses to 100 per cent of their base salary, or up to 200 per cent with shareholder approval. That raises interesting questions. Was the cap a good idea in the first place? If not, why wasn’t it binned as soon as we left the EU? Is now the ideal moment to do so? And are bankers still a breed of greedy bastards? The answer to the first question is certainly not. This column called the cap a ‘boneheaded’ measure that would merely

What’s behind Putin’s no-show?

Has Vladimir Putin carried out a cynical stunt, or ducked out of a seismic decision? That’s the debate among Kremlinologists tonight, as the Russian President failed to show up for a planned 8 p.m. address to the Russian people. Faced with catastrophic losses of territory in north-east Ukraine, a weaker Putin has been considering his options. One that has been suggested is fully mobilising the population to fight, and introducing martial law, which the State Duma (parliament) proposed today. Men aged between 18 and 65 would be banned from leaving the country. Today also saw the announcement of referendums on Russian annexation for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, as