‘Putin needed the war to distract people from the fact that they had no future’
By Owen Matthews
The gas war of 2022 has been won only at a serious cost to Europe’s economies
By Owen Matthews
Their vital function is to persuade the audience in their homeland of a different narrative to the Kremlin’s
By Owen Matthews
The illusion of Chinese support was one of the many miscalculations that led Putin down the road to war
By Owen Matthews
The chief power of nukes is in the dread they inspire, not their absolute destructive potential
By Owen Matthews
Modern Russia is not just a security state but a state that has been taken over by its own security services
By Owen Matthews
In his latest address Putin looked as pale and dead-eyed as Nosferatu
By Owen Matthews
They have been armed by the Russian military and ideologically empowered by near-hysterical levels of state propaganda
By Owen Matthews
Russia: Myths and Realities by Rodric Braithwaite and The Shortest History of the Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick reviewed
By Owen Matthews
His weaponizing of gas supplies to Europe is the financial equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest
By Owen Matthews
Ukraine’s grain is cheap, and is therefore usually exported to the world’s poorest countries
By Owen Matthews
A tragically large proportion of the Russian population are actively complicit in their own delusion
By Owen Matthews
He is in a great hurry to patch up the conflict between two of his most important trading partners
By Owen Matthews
His sensible, peace-talking statesman act flipped into something dark and irrational that has worried even his supporters
By Owen Matthews
