Why Russia’s church backs Putin’s war

Patriarch Kirill’s support for the bloody and unprovoked invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church underlines how Orthodox leadership have usually been little more than an arm of the authoritarian state.

Putin’s pet fascists

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has tried to justify his invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to ‘denazify’ the nation, but in reality it is Putin who has relied on neo-nazis to help crush democracy in Russia and promote his interests abroad.

Russia slides into the red

While Vladimir Putin cowers in his bunker, increasingly isolated from reality and the rest of the world, the devastation his troops are wreaking on Ukraine is being equaled by the desolation and isolation of his own fiefdom as Western sanctions begin to bite.

Will Putin’s iron grip begin to slip?

Brutal despots such as Vladimir Putin aim to rule for life, no matter how many people they have to kill to stay in power. They can only be removed on the streets or by the elites, so will sanctions encourage the people or the oligarchs to oust him from power?

Kick Russia’s kleptocrats in their wallets

Putin runs a ‘rogue mafia state’, having turned Russia into ‘a gas station with nukes,’ in the words of Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and so the best way to hit the ruling clique is to seize the money they have looted during their self-serving reign.

Will sanctions stop Russia?

While the process of imposing economic sanctions is firmly institutionalised in the US and increasingly so in other Western nations, there’s little empirical research into their effectiveness.

Beware the bear in the Pacific

While China’s fast-expanding navy forms the main threat in the Pacific, Russia is also increasing its naval strength in the region, potentially threatening allied shipping in the east.

Navalny sheds light on dark corners

The cynical imprisonment of Alexei Navalny won’t secure the future of Vladimir Putin’s brutal dictatorship for long.

Counterpoint by Mark Nicol – Alexei Navalny – The fight for humanity

Protests against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny are growing in Russia, but the movement for democracy needs the support of both Russians and the West to face down the brutal dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.

Counterpoint by Mark Nicol – For the sake of Russia

Mark Nicol offers an imaginative vision of the past, present and perhaps future of mother Russia.

The martyrdom of Alexei Navalny

As protests in Belarus continue, the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny shows that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is equally afraid of losing his iron grip on power.

The Russia-China Axis menaces the West

The dictatorships in charge of Russia and China are taking advantage of the West’s unwillingness to invest in defence, or even believe in itself, and posing an ever greater threat to international security.