President Erdogan of Turkey signed a deal with the Russians on 12 January for a cease-fire, relieving Idlib of its siege by Assad, Iran and Russia in fulfilment of the understanding reached in September 2018. The cease-fire has been blatantly breached. Erdogan is infuriated. He declared that Turkish patience "is at an end." There are … Continue reading Russia Double-Crosses Turkey

The British have abandoned the European Union - at eleven o'clock Greenwich Mean Time last night - and the world reacts, except the United States, navel gazing as usual, happily engrossed in the forthcoming football super bowl and, unhappily, in the never ending soap opera of impeachment. The Russians do not know quite how to … Continue reading Brexit: Russia’s Reaction

The Russian deep state TV channel Zvezda aired a new documentary on the Berlin Tunnel last Wednesday, 22 January: "Samaya Skandal'naya Proslushka XX Veka". The tunnel burrowed through from the Western side of Berlin - occupied by the Allies - through into the East, the Russian zone - nominally under the jurisdiction of the G.D.R. … Continue reading The Berlin Tunnel: True and False

When bringing to Moscow a delegation from the House of Lords back in the summer of 2002, I was anxious lest they be misled: not by the Russians, of course, who were at sixes and sevens after President Putin's decision to open the intelligence books to the Bush administration after 9.11, but by our own … Continue reading GRU History: Ivashutin, Master of Counter-Intelligence

The dislocation of the massive Russian ice shelf in 1992 and its subsequent drift out into the open sea has long since defied any expert prediction. Some optimists, particularly in Washington D.C., naively believed political democracy would take firm hold under Boris Yeltsin. Even as he collapsed in a drunken stupor Yeltsin was painted as … Continue reading Is Russia Becoming Africa?

How good investigators, whether policemen or secret service analysts, do their job is a fascinating subject, as absorbing as reading the best of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In The  Adventure of the Silver Blaze Holmes noticed the odd fact, which the usual, clumsy official detective completely failed to comprehend: that, when the racehorse was … Continue reading Russian Assassins’ Entrepot in France

The German Government today declared two Russian "diplomats" persona non grata. Given Berlin's persistent attempts to improve relations with Russia, this comes as yet another blow to Moscow's hopes of reaching some kind of understanding with the EU on a sustained basis and remove the sanctions originally imposed as a result of the Russian invasion … Continue reading Another Skrypal’