Owen Matthews writes about Russia for The Spectator and is the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine.
And so it begins. Welcome to the first episode of the latest season of Putin’s Theatre of Fugazi – the longest-running drama in global geopolitics. The first takeaway from yesterday’s nearly two-hour phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seems, at first glance, a positive one. Putin conceded, in principle, strong support for a
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have very different negotiating styles. Trump lines up his offer in advance, browbeating all the parties on his own side into compliance before slapping his bottom line on the table. Putin, by contrast, is a haggler. He loads his proposals with superstructure intended to be jettisoned in the course of
The main achievement of the US-Ukrainian talks in Jeddah was to produce a ceasefire document that Russia might actually want to sign. A long list of Ukrainian red lines – such as a partial ceasefire in the air and sea only, and security guarantees before any ceasefire was implemented – were swept aside. What’s on
Make no mistake: whatever higher moral authority they may have invoked in their defence, Soviet and Russian spies have never been good or honourable people. Kim Philby, the suave Martini-sipping traitor sent dozens of brave anti-Communist volunteers to their deaths. Konon Molody – alias Gordon Lonsdale, Canadian vending machine salesman and kingpin of the Portland
Will the real Volodymyr Zelensky please stand up? On Sunday, Ukraine’s president defiantly stated that ‘the final deal about ending the war is very, very far … nobody’s even started all those steps yet.’ But just three days later, Zelensky’s office issued a statement saying more or less the opposite. ‘None of us wants an
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Donald Trump announced last night he is suspending military aid to Ukraine until Zelensky is ‘ready for peace’. Following this, the Vice President JD Vance sparked further international outrage in a Fox News interview referring to Britain as ‘some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years’. JD Vance has since
Days after the disastrous White House showdown between Volodymir Zelensky and Donald Trump, Sir Keir Starmer has done an undoubtedly impressive job in quickly rallying western leaders to Kyiv’s cause. The ‘Europe Plus’ partnership suggested by Starmer will be a ‘coalition of the willing’ to protect Ukraine that includes major non-European players such as Canada
Seldom in modern times has the fate of a whole nation been so dependent on a single meeting and on a single relationship. When Volodymyr Zelensky entered the Oval Office on Friday he had one job: to repair a deep and catastrophic rift between him and Donald Trump, who the previous week had called the
US President Donald Trump has announced that Ukraine is ready to sign a deal that gives US investors a share in the country’s mineral riches. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who two days ago vowed not to sign any deal that his countrymen would be paying for ‘for ten generations’ is due in Washington on Friday
Three years ago today, Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border in a massive surprise attack. Russian unit commanders and soldiers were told to prepare for a three-day campaign – and indeed by the end of the day parachute units were fighting for control of the vital Hostomel military airport just a few miles from
Where did it all go wrong between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky? Just a week ago, Zelensky was speaking of his ‘respect’ and ‘friendship’ for Trump and of his hope that the new US administration would ‘stand by Ukraine … to make a just and lasting peace’. Yet in the course of just 24 hours,
Is there any truth to Donald Trump’s extraordinary and, to many, highly offensive comments apparently blaming Volodymir Zelensky for starting the war? Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he was ‘disappointed’ that the Ukrainian leader complained about being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Riyad and claimed that Zelensky ‘could
Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal to put British troops on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine is a principled and politically bold move. But the sad reality is that Britain is in no position to act as Ukraine’s peacekeeper. Starmer is playing with an empty deck and singing from obsolete songbook. Starmer
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Leaders from around the world are gathering at the Munich Security Conference, with the UK represented by Foreign Secretary David Lammy. All attention has turned to Ukraine, given statements this week by President Trump that he had spoken to Putin (and later Zelensky) about ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump’s statements, for example that NATO membership
In a move likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war, Donald Trump today announced that he had begun talks with Vladimir Putin. Trump has already held a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Putin, he announced in a post on Truth Social, adding that they agreed to ‘have our respective
Occasionally a book is published, perhaps twice in a generation, which is so bad but internationally celebrated that one questions everything one has believed about literature. The Wizard of the Kremlin, written in French by the Italian political scientist Giuliano da Empoli, was awarded the French Academy’s Grand Prix de Roman in 2022. It narrowly
The Trump administration’s takedown of federal spending has begun in earnest with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent government agency that has been funding healthcare, pro-democracy and civil society programmes around the world since 1961. ‘We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,’ Elon Musk boasted on
Could Gazprom’s Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines, partially destroyed by saboteurs in September 2022, eventually be reopened? This week, Denmark’s energy agency authorised Nord Stream 2 AG – the Russian-owned company that operates the pipelines – to begin work capping the severed ends of the three destroyed pipelines. That will be the first step to restoring the
The Kremlin’s involvement in Syria’s civil war was always, first and foremost, about posing as a great multi-regional power rather than actually being one. Vladimir Putin’s deployment of a single squadron of warplanes to Hmemim airbase in Syria in 2015 brought a gun to a knife-fight. The Assad regime had been fighting insurgents with poison
Perhaps all political careers must end, inevitably, in failure. But few politicians have had careers as meteoric, as surprising, as consequential or as heroic as that of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. In just five years he has gone from TV comedian to victor of the biggest presidential landslide in his country’s history to inspiring wartime
