I don’t have any difficulty in believing that the FBI really have discovered a colony of Russian sleeper spies in the United States. Spying is an industry. Most of its activity is pointless, counter-productive and misdirected. Those employed in it have the strongest urge to strengthen and perpetuate their own industry. They are, worldwide, shielded [...]

Putin’s Russia continues to move smartly in the wrong direction. Interesting article in the Guardian here: Russia’s ruling political party is gathering academics to draw up a uniform textbook presenting a party-approved version of Russian history and seeking to downplay the horrors of the Soviet era. “We understand that the school is a unique social [...]

Warm praise to Nikolai Alekseev and the other organisers of today’s Gay Pride mini-march in Moscow. Having been banned for the last five years by Mayor Luzhkov, Putin and Medvedev, and after an appalling catalogue of political violence and persecution, activists managed to hold a ten minute street demo in Moscow today with nobody injured [...]

A Head of State has a symbolic importance for the nation, that transcends the personalityand politics of the individual in office. I am therefore very sorry for the Polish people at the loss of President Kaczynski and the Polish delegation in the air crash at Smolensk. Looking at the list of victims, I knew at [...]

Russia has caused a major crisis throughout much of Europe by radically reducing gas supplies. This was ordered personally by Putin, and is not really about Ukraine’s unpaid gas bill at all. It is about Putin’s desire to force Ukraine back into the Soviet orbit. On the whole, his efforts to regain Russian control over [...]

I have been offline for almost three weeks, and the reason is that I have been deeply depressed. I guess that it is time I came out as a lifelong sufferer from severe bipolar disorder, or manic depression as it was known when I was first diagnosed at Ninewells Hospital Dundee in 1978. I have [...]

Are We Entering A New Cold War? Possibly. Although thankfully less people are now dying in Georgia, in diplomatic terms the crisis is in fact worsening fast. The formal US signing of the agreement to station missiles in Poland was rapidly followed by recognition by the Russian parliament of the independence of South Ossetia and [...]

Unfortunately reaction to the Russia-Georgia conflict in the blogosphere has tended to be both ill-informed and over-simplified. The right have rushed to back Georgia and sections of the left to back Russia. There has, bluntly, been little worth reading. If I can put on my professional diplomat’s hat (having with great reluctance taken off my [...]

I trust it is plain from recent articles that nobody can accuse me of being an apologist for Putin. http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html Indeed I have been accused of being in the pay of US neoconservatives to stoke up anti-russian feeling, which I found rather funny. Just now I rather wish I were in the pay of somebody. [...]

I believe I may have found the way to post the original text of my Recent Mail Russian articles, without taking over the whole weblog: Two months ago, 51 year old Ivan Safronov, defence correspondent of the authoritative Kommersant newspaper in Moscow, came home from work. He had bought a few groceries on the way, [...]

It is worth noting that, just because the UK has requested his extradition, does not make Andrei Lugovoi guilty. Despite Blair’s obsession with rebalancing the legal system against the suspect, accused does not yet equal guilty. Lugovoi made a number of interesting points in his lengthy press conference yesterday. http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=21833 For me, his strongest point [...]