There have been arrests and releases, petty prosecutions and sensible legal revisions. The overall trend in Russia may be toward a tougher line on potential dissent, but the path is a faltering, ...

These days, the Russian government seems to observe jihadist terrorist attacks in the West with a thinly-veiled satisfaction.

It is not peace in our time, it may well never even happen, and even if it does, probably won't last. It is not the result of humanitarian impulses, but of cynicism ...

A British inquest on the murder of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko has concluded that it was "probably" sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow is sanctioning Turkish goods and holidays, but is this enough to assuage President Vladimir Putin's evident fury at the shooting down of one of his bombers?

As Muscovites lay flowers before the French Embassy, the depressing irony is that Moscow is not immune to the kind of terrorist attacks which ripped at the heart of Paris.

Modern wars tend to start well, with deceptive techno-thriller ease. They quickly tend to degenerate in messy, unpredictable ways that favor the desperate, the unpredictable, the insurgent and the unseen.

Castigating the Kremlin on moral grounds, without behaving in an unimpeachably moral way, is simply going to alienate Moscow and create a wholly false series of assumptions on which to base policy, ...

The more the West lets itself be shocked into responses by Putin, the more power it gives him and the more reason he has to continue to goad and needle, writes columnist ...

Trump and Putin both offer simple solutions to complex, intractable problems. They offer a refreshing, outspoken, macho alternative to tainted political classes regarded as bland, ineffectual and corrupt.