Lisa Haseldine

Lisa Haseldine

Lisa Haseldine is The Spectator's assistant online editor

Who will Putin blame for the terror attack?

A branch of the Islamic State terror group, Isis-K, has claimed responsibility for last night’s stadium terror attack in Moscow. US officials, who had warned of such an attack two weeks ago have said this sounded credible. But the Kremlin has not accepted the Isis-K claim and says it’s looking at all explanations – even

Putin rejected US warning of terror attack

As Russia comes to terms with what seems to be the largest terrorist attack on its soil in recent times, Vladimir Putin has something difficult to explain. For some time, Western intelligence agencies have been picking up chat about potential strikes in Moscow – and the US took the unusual step of making a public

Putin crowns himself president of Russia again

As expected, following a three day ‘vote’, Vladimir Putin has once again crowned himself president of Russia. As of 9 a.m. Moscow time, according to the central electoral commission, 99.7 per cent of ballot papers had been counted with Putin claiming 87 per cent of the vote – higher than he’s managed in any other

It’s time to declare Putin an illegitimate president

For the next three days, Russians are heading to the polls supposedly to choose the country’s next president. Except we already know, as do most Russians, who the winner will be. It is a foregone conclusion that after this weekend Vladimir Putin will win another six years in power.  But just because the Russian elections are a

Why Germans don’t want to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine

Yet again the question of whether to send arms to Ukraine is plaguing Olaf Scholz’s chancellorship. The issue was once more thrown into sharp focus when Russian intelligence leaked a discussion by Bundeswehr officials on the probability of sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv. A recording of the conversation was splashed across the world by

‘We are not afraid’: Russians gather for Navalny’s funeral

Today is a sad day for Russia. Two weeks after his death in an Arctic penal colony, Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most vociferous opponent, has been buried in Moscow. Thousands of mourners lined the streets in southern Moscow to pay their respects, their sorrow compounded with a sense of anger and defiance that grew as the funeral wore

Will Navalny be given a public funeral?

Nine days after Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison colony, his body was finally handed over to his mother on Saturday for burial. The Russian authorities had been refusing to release his remains to her and his legal team while they claimed to be carrying out a ‘forensic examination’ to determine his cause of

Germany’s new anti-Ukraine party is unnerving the establishment

Her party may be less than two months old, but already Sahra Wagenknecht has put a cat amongst the pigeons in Germany. She launched her eponymous party, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) on 8 January this year, a few months after sensationally quitting the left-wing Die Linke party in October over disagreements on the party’s Ukraine

‘Putin killed my husband’: Navalny’s wife vows to fight on

Three days on from his death, the widow of Alexei Navalny today vowed to continue the work of her husband to bring democracy to Russia and free it from Putin’s grip. Speaking on her husband’s YouTube channel for the first time, Yulia acknowledged that she ‘shouldn’t be sitting here, shouldn’t have had to record this video’

Lisa Haseldine

In Russia, Navalny is already becoming an unperson

Newspapers across Britain and the democratic world are dominated by the news of the death – perhaps murder – of Alexei Navalny. But not so in Russia. Less than 24 hours after the news broke and his supporters started to come out in sympathy, almost all traces of this news has disappeared from the country’s

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison

Just over three years after he was imprisoned in Russia, the Putin critic Alexei Navalny has died. The news was announced by the local administration of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service shortly before 2:30 p.m. Moscow time. In a statement, the prison service said: ‘In correctional colony No. 3 the convict A.A.Navalny fell ill after a

Why has Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden?

Who does Vladimir Putin want to win the US presidential election this autumn? Last night, the Russian president gave an unexpected answer to that question. In an interview on the Russian state TV channel VGTRK, Putin was asked ‘Who is better for us, Biden or Trump?’ The smirk on journalist Pavel Zarubin’s face suggested he

Will Boris Nadezhdin be allowed to run for president against Putin?

Will the anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin be allowed to run against Vladimir Putin for the Russian presidency? That’s the question Russians are wondering this week after the independent candidate submitted the signatures he needed to get onto the ballot for March’s election.  Nadezhdin claimed to have collected 105,000 signatures from across Russia – the maximum

Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray and Cindy Yu

31 min listen

On this episode, Richard Dawkins explains how to convert an atheist like him to a Christian (00:37), Lisa Haseldine says the German army is in a dire state (05:53), Douglas Murray looks at the return of the Trump show (12:44), Cindy Yu reviews a Chinese intelligence officers account of life under the CCP (20:14), and

McMafia: inside the SNP’s secret state

40 min listen

On the podcast: gangsterism or government?  The Covid Inquiry has moved to Scotland and, in his cover story for the magazine, our editor Fraser Nelson looks at the many revelations uncovered by Jamie Dawson KC. Fraser describes how civil servants were enlisted into what he calls an ‘SNP secret state’ and how SNP corruption is

Lisa Haseldine

How can Germany deploy a tank battalion without any tanks?

Last year, Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, made a pledge that would have been unthinkable not long ago: to send a combat brigade to be permanently deployed in Lithuania. The plan was to station almost 5,000 troops an hour away from the Suwalki Corridor, the 40-mile-long border between Poland and Lithuania, flanked by Belarus to