Mark Hollingsworth is the author of ‘Londongrad – From Russia with Cash’. His new book, ‘Agents of Influence – How the KGB Subverted Western Democracies’, will be published by Oneworld this April.
It is 00.40 pm, 26 September 1983. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty commander in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union’s early warning satellites designed to identify American missile attacks, is carefully checking his panels. Suddenly, the alarms roar into loud action. The word ‘Launch’ flashes onto his screen in large red letters. For the next 15 seconds, one of
Wearing a long white scarf, military khaki pants and holding a drum and stick, Vladimir Putin smiles as he watches a shaman – a combination of a psychic and spiritual healer – play an acoustic guitar for a traditional ritual. It is 2007 and the Russian president, his close friend Sergei Shoigu, now head of
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, a former US government official visited Kiev to inquire how he could help to supply humanitarian aid to the people on the front line. He had formed a non-profit agency, raised $2 million and provided over 70 ambulances to help Ukrainian soldiers and citizens. But during his visit he was
At 1.30 p.m. on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident and BBC journalist, approached a bus stop at the south end of Waterloo bridge. As he gazed absent-mindedly across the Thames, office workers jostled him as they streamed past. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain on the back of his right thigh. Turning quickly,
Earlier this year I asked Gretta Fenner, head of a Swiss Foundation that investigates oligarchs and financial crime, about confiscating the assets of wealthy sanctioned Russians and using the proceeds to support the Ukrainian military and rebuild the country. I was surprised by her response. ‘Confiscating assets without proof they are the proceeds of crime
In 1992, Richard Nixon assessed the future of Russia in a remarkably prophetic interview. ‘Russia is at a crossroads’, said the former US President: It is often said the cold war is over and the West has won. But that is only half of the truth. Communism has been defeated but the ideas of freedom
In April this year, a sombre looking Vladimir Putin attended a midnight Orthodox Easter Service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Holding a lit red candle, the Russian President crossed himself several times during the ceremony, known as the Divine Liturgy. When Father Kirill declared ‘Christ has risen’, Putin duly responded with the congregation: ‘Truly
‘Ukrainians fight for their homeland, Russians fight for Putin’s ambitions’, declared the TV presenter on his YouTube channel earlier this year. This was not a Ukrainian propagandist. In fact, the commentator was Russian and talking on ‘TV Rain’, the most popular and effective opposition channel broadcasting into Russia. In TV Rain’s final programme from Moscow
In a historic speech to the US Congress on 12 March 1947, President Truman addressed the menacing spread of Communism and the Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe. Known as the ‘Truman Doctrine’, he portrayed the battle lines for the Cold War as a struggle between autocracy and democracy – something which resonates uncannily today in
On 29 August 1942, as German tanks reached the Volga river near Stalingrad, Josef Stalin consulted his most senior General, Georgy Zhukov about his strategy. Despite his impoverished background, Zhukov was intelligent, demanding and strong-willed. The general persuaded Stalin to delay counter-attacking the Nazis for a week to allow time for supplies and artillery to
Boris Ratnikov, a former KGB officer and retired chief advisor to Russia’s security service, gave a remarkable interview back in 2016. Ratnikov, who died in 2020, claimed his boss had penetrated and read the mind of Madeleine Albright while she was US Secretary of State in the mid-1990s. Ratnikov said his superior officer used a photograph
‘I don’t see a single beneficiary of this crazy war’, wrote the self-made Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov on his Instagram page on 19 April 2022, less than two months after Russia invaded Ukraine. ‘Innocent people and soldiers are dying every day. This is unacceptable’. His 634,000 followers were stunned to read his anti-war declaration: ‘The
When the police raided the home of the former socialist MEP and lawyer Pier Antonio Panzeri and found €500,000 in cash as part of the most serious corruption case in the European Parliament in decades, nobody noticed one of his clients was an oligarch who is the subject of the biggest civil fraud case in British legal
The Queen rarely – if ever – accepts invitations to dinner at private houses, no matter how grand. But in the summer of 2014 the oil and gas rich Gulf state of Qatar became the first ‘official partner’ of Royal Ascot and secured branding rights for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II stakes. The Qataris
On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a select group of oligarchs attended a private meeting with President Putin in the Kremlin’s St. Catherine’s Hall. It was ostensibly to discuss how the government would assist state-owned Russian banks who were about to be sanctioned by the USA, notably Sberbank and VTB Group.
On 28 October 2016, I received an email from a well-connected former senior MI6 officer who asked me if I had any material about properties in London owned by wealthy Russians. I was a natural person to ask because I had written a book about the Russian oligarchs and had become an expert on the
‘Crimea is ours,’ President Putin boasted last May. He was speaking on a documentary viewed by millions of Russians, and it was the culminating moment in the militarisation of Russia. Moscow had attracted criticism for spending unprecedented sums on its armed forces under Putin, despite a weak economy over-dependent on oil. The successful annexation of
