Russia

For the fifth time in three months, Moscow has once again been targeted by drones. In what is fast becoming a regular occurrence, the Russian ministry of defence reported that two drones attacked the city in the early hours of this morning. Despite the ministry’s claims to have intercepted and jammed the drones, they were still able to inflict damage on two buildings in the south west of the city. According to the government news agency TASS, one of the drones hit a non-residential building on Komsomolsky Prospekt, a mere two miles from the Kremlin and just over the river from Moscow’s famous Gorky Park. This isn’t the largest drone

As a founding member of the International Criminal Court, South Africa has an obligation to arrest Vladimir Putin should he ever step foot in the country. This posed a problem for Pretoria, given the Russian leader was due to attend a meeting of the Brics trading group in Johannesburg next month. No longer. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Wednesday that Mr Putin would be staying home.  Long-range warheads landing on Jo’burg, Durban and Cape Town would soon have shortened Brics to Bric The International Criminal Court has accused him of war crimes in Crimea, especially over the treatment of children, and has issued a warrant to all member states. Pretoria has been neutral on the war in

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 he is risen’. It was a year after the brutal invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian leader and Father Kirill showed no remorse or compassion for the suffering caused by the war. In fact, Putin and the Kremlin has exploited the support of the Orthodox Church in an attempt to give his actions a spurious

Three weeks after marching on Moscow, the Wagner Group has seemingly been withdrawn from the battlefield in Ukraine, according to the Pentagon. Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder said there was evidence to suggest that the 25,000-strong mercenary group was not ‘participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine’. The Pentagon’s statement follows weeks of rumours and speculation about how successfully Vladimir Putin is dealing with the fallout of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion. Many Kremlin-watchers expected the President to crack down hard on the Wagner leader – and were subsequently puzzled when Prigozhin was allowed to nominally retreat into self-imposed exile in Belarus.  The Kremlin’s reaction to Prigozhin’s mutiny

‘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 before the station was forced to shut down and move abroad, the founder declared: ‘No to war. Putin cannot win the war’. In exile, the channel remained robust. ‘The war has no justification and has to be stopped’, says the editor Tikhon Dzyadko. ‘Russia must withdraw its troops from Ukraine’.  The most effective vehicle of

When corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled in 2014, his private estate at Mezhyhirya turned out to contain an ostrich farm, chandeliers worth thousands and and a two-kilo gold loaf of bread. When Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s St Petersburg estate was raided, investigators found cash, guns – and a bizarre collection of wigs. But what does the eager ‘through the keyhole’ leak of footage from the raid tell us about the state of play in the Putin-Prigozhin grudge match? A giant sledgehammer in one room was inscribed, ‘For use in important negotiations’  Prigozhin himself is still at large. Although we were told the deal was for him to

Just as Moscow was beginning to recover from the shock of Evgeniy Prigozhin’s march on the capital, the city has, once again, been targeted by drones.  In the early hours of this morning, according to the Russian ministry of defence, five drones were intercepted before they reached the capital. Eyewitnesses reported seeing two of the drones flying in the direction of Moscow at a low altitude of approximately 200 metres. They came within touching distance of the city, getting as far as the New Moscow suburb to the south west. According to Russia, four of the drones were shot down. Footage circulating on Russian social media allegedly filmed at the time the

As the dust settles on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny that wasn’t, the consensus is clear: Vladimir Putin has been left weakened and vulnerable. Rebellions like this historically spell the beginning of the end of Russian authoritarian regimes, and observers are watching excitedly for signs of more vultures circling the Kremlin. But Putin’s weakness might, conversely, be the reason he clings on to power – at least for now. That Putin was damaged by the events of last weekend seems obvious: a private businessman with an army of just 10,000 men crosses your border, calls you a liar, takes one of your military bases in Rostov, marches on Moscow and shoots down

When Evgeniy Prigozhin started his armed insurrection, it was clear that he had allies within the ranks of the Russian military. His Wagner Group walked unopposed into Rostov, the HQ of the Russian military in the south and they were almost entirely unmolested as they came within 120 miles of Moscow. Vladimir Putin granted him amnesty, in return for retreat and exile, but a hunt seems to be on for those who might have backed him.  The Moscow Times is reporting the arrest of Sergei Surovikin, a general who until recently led the assault on Ukraine and had been close to Prigozhin. Citing two sources close to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, it always seemed likely that the war would come back to Rostov-on-Don, the city which until then had been my home. Rostov isn’t just close to the border but feels it. Most of my university students were from the Donetsk and Lugansk, refugees from the 2014-2022 war. It’s the military hub of southern Russia, the first major city you come to from the Donbass. It felt like a sitting invitation. It was also somewhere I knew intimately and had been part of my life since my half-Russian daughter’s birth a decade ago. I took to Rostov-on-Don with an outsider’s greed for all four