How Putin ruined Russia

While most of Eastern Europe sloughed off Soviet domination to embrace freedom and prosperity, Russia has collapsed back into a new dark age under the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.

A very Russian revolution

The latest episode of “A Very Russian Revolution” might be over, but Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not. Before we settle in to watch the next show, whenever it is released, we might want to put our popcorn away and stop treating Russia’s war as something that only happens on our TV screens.

Russian law v Russia’s people

Putin’s weaponisation of Russian law to crush political freedom has been accelerated by his disastrous invasion of UIkraine, and though his plan to rebuild the Soviet Union in terms of territory lies in ruins, he is on the way to recreating the repressive excesses of the Soviet-era police-state.

Putin’s thugs begin to turn on him

Vladimir Putin has used Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group to do its dirty work in Ukraine, but is increasingly nervous about the threat such groups pose to the ruling elite.

Putin’s cannon fodder

Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine has cost its army thousands of men, and Putin’s attempts to persuade more recruits to face death in the trenches are falling on deaf ears around the country.

Putin the pariah

The scale of Putin’s miscalculation in invading Ukraine defies rational comprehension. The war has left Russia a pariah state in an increasingly desperate position.

Thug life

Vladimir Putin’s search for scapegoats for his humiliating failure to subdue Ukraine risks sparking a civil war with the brutal mercenary gang he has relied upon to do his dirty work.

Russia’s ‘Victory Day’ rings hollow

President Putin and his Soviet forebears have always used Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany to stoke nationalism and buttress their own regime, but this year’s parade will be scaled back as Russian losses mount in Ukraine and the regime fears public protests against it.

Putin’s police state

Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after the latest 1930s-style “show trial” in Putin’s ever-more Stalinist police state.

Deportees

The International Criminal Court has called Russia’s systematic deportation of Ukrainian children a war crime, and Russia and the Soviet Union have a long and dreadful history of weaponising deportation.

Russia’s forever war

Russia expected to crush, annex and absorb Ukraine in a matter of days, but after a year of dogged struggle, the Kremlin is now changing its tune and warning of a ‘forever war’.

The sorry story of Russia

A new book places Putin is his historical context, noting that Russia has always been an imperialist, expansionist power, determined to conquer as much territory as its brutal, backward, authoritarian culture will allow.