Russia

The massive prisoner swap which led to Russia’s release of prisoners Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among many others, is the greatest gift their families and loved ones could ever hope for — in several cases, it is a lifesaving development. But it also serves as an indication of just how much the practice has become a weapon of the world’s great powers. For my family, the news is deeply personal. Vladimir, a longtime dissident imprisoned for the crime of speaking out against the war in Ukraine in remarks to the state legislature of Arizona, was a pallbearer along with me for my father-in-law, John McCain. My wife joined with his, Evgenia, to speak to a bicameral congressional committee earlier this year to advocate for his release.

Last week at the Buxton International Festival I joined a big audience for an onstage interview with Anna Reid. She’s a writer who specialises in Eastern European history, was once the Economist magazine’s correspondent in Ukraine, and made her name with a brilliant book, Borderland, which was both a portrait, a history and an appreciation of that country long before it entered the western public consciousness. It’s still worth reading today. But at Buxton she was introducing her latest book, A Nasty Little War: the Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War, which opened the eyes of many in the audience (including me) to an almost forgotten but serious and grisly conflict straddling the end of the first world war.

Two Russian ships docked Tuesday in Venezuela’s La Guaira port, twenty miles away from Caracas. The stop comes after military exercises were conducted in the Atlantic, with four vessels stopping in Havana late last month. This is all part of a decades-long “look-at-us” operation, also known as a “show the flag” move, as Russia’s defense ministry puts it. While Russia’s presence in Cuba and Venezuela is not a new phenomenon, conflict in the East has only accelerated their muscle-flexing in the West. These movements mark Russia’s first extensive military exercises in the hemisphere in five years, as well as their first deployment of a nuclear submarine in close proximity to the US since the Cold War.