Putin

Former US Ambassador to Nato, Ivo Daalder, discusses President Trump’s approach to the summit. Are Donald Trump’s calls on NATO to spend 4 per cent of GDP on defence realistic?

A massive game of political football kicked off today. The Russian World Cup has been criticised for being a showpiece for the Putin Presidency. And as if to illustrate that perfectly, his main opponent was released from jail just hours before the Russian national team convincingly won the first game of the month-long tournament. Our…

  The Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko – reportedly murdered in Kiev – turned up alive and well at a news conference in Ukraine. The Ukranian security services said the murder had been staged to expose Russian agents in their country. Mr Babchenko’s wife was not ‘in’ on the subterfuge – she’d said her husband was shot in…

  While Britain places the blame for the Skripal poisonings firmly on Russia, we went to meet the exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to ask about the Kremlin’s continuing strained relationship with the West. He was once Russia’s richest man, as head of the oil giant Yukos, before spending 10 years in prison for tax evasion.…