Russia

We spoke to the Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna, and started by asking him to what extent the death of Alexei Navalny has intensified the need for international action against Russia.

Yulia Navalnaya says she knows exactly why her husband was killed on Friday but while she’s not yet revealing the reason, she places the blame squarely at Vladimir Putin’s feet. In the meantime she’s been addressing European leaders, recording videos and vowing to fight on for what she calls a Free Russia.

The only anti-war candidate standing in Russia’s Presidential election next month has been barred from taking part.

We spoke to Boris Nadezhdin, and began by asking if his growing popularity has become problematic for the Kremlin?

His surname derives from the Russian word for hope. And right now Boris Nadeezhdin is hoping the Kremlin will let him run for president against Vladimir Putin.

Russia has accused Ukraine of shooting down a military transport plane – which they claimed had 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war on board. The regional governor said the plane came down in a field, near the city of Belgorod – claiming there were no survivors.

Ukraine marked Christmas on December 25th for the first time after the government officially moved the date in a break with the Russian orthodox church.

The Ukrainian authorities have said that a devastating Russian strike on a town close to the front lines in eastern Ukraine has killed at least 17 people and left dozens injured.

Russian officials say the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been confirmed dead – after forensic tests on the ten bodies found after his private jet crashed on Wednesday. The timing of the crash – two months after Mr Prigozhin led a short lived mutiny, has pointed the finger towards President Putin’s…

Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of long-time Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, joins Krishnan Guru-Murthy to talk about her fight to free Russia’s political prisoners, the toll Vladimir’s detention has taken on their family and whether she can envisage a future in a free, democratic Russia, in this week’s Way to Change the World podcast.

In Russia the aftermath of the mutiny is less destructive, but ongoing, with claims sourced to the US government that at least one senior general was aware of the uprising and allowed it to happen.

In Ukraine, Russia continues to rain down terror in the form of missiles. But in Russia, the psychodrama continues to play out following this weekend’s mutiny by militia men of the Wagner group. Rumours swirl that their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has already left his exile in Belarus and is now back in Russia. Last night…

Hubertus Jahn, professor of the history of Russia at Cambridge University, explains how the “mafia boss” in the Kremlin has seen a crack emerge in his enterprise – and who knows what might happen next.

Here in Ukraine, the question is will history repeat itself? The last attempted coup in Russia in 1991 was quashed, but the Soviet leader Gorbachev was gone just months later. So is Putin now a President without a prayer?

We spoke to Kurt Volker, a diplomat who served as the United States’ Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017 to 2019.