In Moscow's Shadows

“Russia is run by the spooks” is a satisfying line, but it is also a lazy one. Despite talk of a 'Chekistocracy' run by the intelligence and security services, the FSB, SVR and GRU are better understood as competing institutional actors than as a single all-powerful caste pulling every lever in the Kremlin.  In that context, "power" itself is a complex phenomenon, and I outline...

A collection of stories to discuss, but all of which in one way or another come down to endgames: the death of Sergei Ivanov, the "drone siege" of Crimea, the debate over the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons, and a shell-shocked soldier threatening mutiny. How far, to put it fancifully, does what feels like the increasing the emergence of all kinds of false prophets, end is nigh doom...

A 74-year-old port magnate known in the underworld as Antikvar is arrested by an FSB team, hauled into Moscow’s Basmanny Court, and suddenly the ghosts of St Petersburg’s wild 1990s feel very alive. Ilya Traber's career took him from from antiques monopolies to oil terminals, in the murky interface between “authoritative business” and outright organised crime. And much of it thanks to his rel...

Peace gets talked about as if it is a destination we can spot from the front line, but the closer we look, the more it feels like a mirage. Ukraine’s mid-range strikes and tactical gains tempt commentators into declaring a decisive shift, and then into assuming peace is near. Real progress matters, but overconfident stories can set the public up for disappointment and push policymakers towards sho...

Russia still talks about the “Near Abroad” as if the map never changed, but the region is changing anyway. After a quick touch on Zelensky's open letter to Putin and the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, I dive into the relative trajectories of Armenia, currently at the polls, and Belarus, emphatically not. Despite its continued use of this problematic, imperialist term the "Ne...

A Russian drone hits a Romanian apartment block, two civilians are injured, and suddenly a stray weapon becomes a case study in how Putin’s Kremlin handles bad news. Why does the Kremlin’s crisis management default to a belligerent, self-sabotaging sequence that turns a manageable incident into a wider political problem? It comes down to the priorities of an insecure, personalistic authoritarian s...

After Putin's Beijing visit - long on rhetoric, short on results - I look more broadly as Asia: the limits of the "friendship with no limits" with China, heding with India, and the ebbing of hegemony in Central Asia. In short, everyone is a transactional pragmatist, behind the talk of "all-weather partnerships" and "eternal friendships." But then again, isn'...

First, a round up of some current issues: Putin heading to China, two governors out (and two men with Ukraine war connections in), party politics and the jostling for second place, and how the Council of Europe is implicitly encouraging Putin to stay in power until he dies... In the second half, the opening episode of a series of alternative history (the rest will be available to paying Patrons) e...

No tanks, great camera work. Victory Day is supposed to be Russia’s most unshakeable story, the moment when the state proves its strength, its allies, and its confidence on Red Square. Yet watching this year’s parade, I can’t escape the sense that the symbolism is working harder than the reality: fewer troops, no heavy hardware in Moscow, and security concerns hanging over the whole performance. ...

A battlefield setback in Mali sparks a much bigger question: what kind of power is Russia now, and what kind of power can it afford to be? Is it a superpower? No. Is it a great power? It depends what you mean. It certainly is not just the "gas station with nukes" of the cliche.  Putin’s language of “sovereign civilisation” recasts greatness as resistance rather than dominance, especially...

Putin didn’t pick a battlefield hero to run Russia’s Defence Ministry. He picked Andrei Belousov, an economist with a planner’s instincts and a technocrat’s patience. Thats what the Kremlin thinks it needs most right now: a 'Quartermaster-in-Chief,' who wouldn't tangle with Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov, but instead focus in procurement that works, production at scale, drones...

The fastest way to lose your grip on Russia is to reach for the word “war” every time a scary headline lands. The incentives are everywhere: politicians who want public backing for big defence spending, media outlets that live on attention, and all of us who share first and think later.  I look at two particular examples: the current fascination in the British press with the idea that Russia may l...

Power doesn’t just seize territory. It seizes the story. I’m using a selection of 6 excellent new books to follow the narrative battlegrounds where modern Russia tries to control what people see as true, normal, and inevitable, and where society still finds ways to push back even when formal protest is risky, whether in framing Harry Potter, or surviving in the occupied Donbas. The books in questi...

Putin reportedly gathered top oligarchs behind closed doors and asked them to chip in to help fill the budget, with the war in Ukraine sitting unmistakably in the background. The idea seems to have been initiated by Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s gravel-voiced boss and one of the most polarising figures in Putin’s circle. After keeping a low profile since 2022, why is he coming back into the news? Because...

A handful of memes and an online storm can look like nothing, right up until they start steering the news cycle. Efforts to talk up a secessionist Russian-speaking Estonian “Narva People’s Republic” look like a Kremlin disruption operation: manufacturing attention, stoking anxiety, and forcing journalists and officials into a no-win choice between silence and amplification.  Rather more significan...

Or, 'Team Russia and the Undead Ideology Project'  Can you create an ideology that is custom-engineered, poll-driven, focus grouped, workshopped and marketed? The Presidential Administration's Alexander Kharichev is certainly trying, suggesting the Kremlin's concerns about the future. I also discuss Marlene Laruelle's excellent book  Ideology and Meaning-Making under the P...

How does the Iran war look to Russia, at once a potential morass for the USA (and Europe) and a case study, many in policy circles feel, on why not to trust Washington. It's also a laboratory for what one Russian military theorist called "non-contact war," and may help shape Moscow's notions of the future of conflict. Then it’s home to Moscow’s underworld, where a fragile peace...

First, as the USA, Israel and Iran trade drone and missile strikes, how the war  may play out for Russia: my sense is that on balance it will give Moscow more opportunities than headaches.  Then, from bangers to Mish: decoding Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s annual report to the State Duma. Think of a head butler in a grand house: no say in the party upstairs, every burden downstairs. The techn...

A frozen river swallows cannons in 1550; a traffic jam of armour stalls outside Kyiv in 2022. Different centuries, same lesson: wars are won by planning, logistics, and the courage to listen to people who know what they’re doing. Ivan the Terrible took Kazan in 1552, learning crucial lessons of warfare and statecraft that Putin the Not So Great neglected when invading Ukraine in 2022. Spinning off...

In the first half, I look at the latest news about Navalny's death, what a change in the composition of the Russian negotiation team in Geneva may mean, and why looking for a dubious Russian connection in the Epstein case risks missing the real scandal: how powerful people and institutions tolerated what they knew. Then, to answer the larger question—what kind of country is Russia?—I spin off...

A mini-episode that paying Patrons heard as part of their Twelve Days of Shadowy Christmas bonuses. Forget the cliché that Russians accept power without protest, I sit down with author and analyst Anna Arutunyan to unpack a more complicated truth from her book Rebel Russia : Russia’s past is full of uprisings and dissent, yet weak social solidarity keeps those bursts of courage from becoming lasti...

Yes, that's a lame James Bond title wordplay. Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, second in command of Russian military intelligence (technically, GU; colloquially, still GRU) is gunned down in Moscow. Whodunnit, whydunnit, and what will it mean? Of course, I don't know, but I have a stab at these questions. The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr , which provides...

A mini-episode that paying Patrons heard as part of their Twelve Days of Shadowy Christmas bonuses, opening the gates on Vladimir Putin’s personal security. From rooftop snipers and sealed manholes to an armoured Aurus limo and a “ghost train” that slips through the rail network without a schedule, the machinery is vast, expensive, and designed to smother threats before they form. The podcast&apos...

Four stories with counter-intuitive implications: PACE’s new platform for dialogue with “Russian democratic forces” beg the question of whether a handpicked roster, quota politics, and delegates closely tied to Ukrainian advocacy strengthen dialogue with Russians or hand the Kremlin an easy propaganda win.  Does the much-hyped energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine offer little repair time bu...

First, a look at some of the news as this year starts hard and bizarre: trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi (with military intelligence chiefs to the fore), the Greenland crisis and the perils of Trump's Board of Peace for a Russia that we might consider a 'middle power.' Then, once-in-a-generation blizzards in Kamchatka as a test of state capacity and Putin's engagement. With Kadyro...