Russia

The man with no name is now a prisoner with a number. Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader poisoned by security officers back in August, flew back to Moscow yesterday and was promptly arrested. Whether this is symbolic catch-and-release or a sign that the Kremlin plans to bury him – literally or metaphorically – in its prison system remains to be seen. The Kremlin certainly did everything they could to prevent his return being a media event. He was due to arrive at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where a crowd of journalists, supporters and riot police jostled in anticipation. So too did a rent-a-mob of supposed fans of a Russian media personality who, judging by her Instagram feed, wasn’t expecting this kind of reception. Anything to muddy the waters.

Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees have been warmly received by the massed ranks of anti-Trumpists in Washington. But the warmth stateside is nothing compared with the rave notices the incoming administration is receiving in much of Europe. There is particular delight in the UK, where the special Boris-Donald relationship evaporated within seconds of Biden’s election victory. The enthusiasm derives partly from a sense that, as some have put it, the adults are back in the room. The image of Trump as ‘toddler-in-chief’ was projected on to his whole volatile administration. Now the line-up announced by the incoming President looks and sounds serious, sober and a lot more like US administrations are supposed to be.

With Brexit, the arrival of a new US administration, and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the government’s foreign policy docket for 2021 will likely be pretty full, but in the odd spare moment, perhaps when he’s walking Dilyn, Boris might want to give some thought to his Russia policy. The great virtue is, after all, that there is pretty much nowhere to go but up. Putin’s Russia is an antagonist, and although the threat is primarily through disinformation, espionage and subversion, the first necessity is a continued firm reaffirmation of the UK’s commitment to Nato. This is, after all, not just or even mainly as a source of common military defence, but a powerful statement of solidarity.

From vicious tragedy to outright farce, the saga of the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has acquired a surreal new chapter. Pretending to be an aide to the powerful secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Navalny actually rang up one of his would-be assassins and got him to confess, on tape. It’s hilarious; it’s astonishing; it’s embarrassing. Does it prove that Russia’s security agencies are the Keystone Kops of the intelligence world? Citizen investigator outfit Bellingcat and the Russian journalists of the Insider recently published the results of an extraordinary inquiry into the attempted assassination in August 2020, when he was on a campaign visit to Tomsk, in Siberia.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. When a reclusive figure comes bearing gifts, when the air is full of familiar golden oldies, and when time itself seems to stand still. I am talking, of course, of Vladimir Putin’s annual marathon press conference this week. Stretching for hours – four-and-a-half in this case – these carefully choreographed events have in the past been opportunities for Putin to present himself in a variety of roles: the omnicompetent chief executive; the caring father of the nation; the stern defender of the Motherland. This one was much the same, but somehow the magic has been slipping away. The coronavirus precautions probably didn’t help.

It may be time for Father Christmas to look for a new home, before the Russians kick him out. ‘This is our Arctic,’ declared the Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov when he went to the North Pole in 2003. Four years later, another Russian expedition, again led by Chilingarov, planted a titanium flag on the seabed 2.5 miles below the Pole. It was a symbolic gesture of a geopolitical ambition. The jingoistic Chilingarov proclaimed: ‘Our task is to remind the world that Russia is a great Arctic and scientific power.’ Since 2013, Russia has invested heavily in seven military/naval bases along its Arctic coast to strengthen the country’s power and influence.

Never one to let a bandwagon pass by, Vladimir Putin launched his own national vaccine programme the moment Britain said it was starting its roll-out. Given how badly Russia has been hit, you would expect it to be a popular move. But Russians themselves seem cautious, not least because they mistrust the Kremlin. On Thursday, Russian health officials announced a new record of more than 28,000 coronavirus cases reported in a single day, bringing the total caseload to almost 2.4 million. Russia has the world’s fourth-worst case numbers, behind only the USA, India and Brazil, with over 41,000 deaths to date. Or at least 41,000 according to official statistics — confidential documents leaked to the press suggest the real figure is at least 75,000.

I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what they were like, back when I was five or six and enjoyed staring at a globe of the world, she described them as ‘drunken and stupid, but very brave’. This was, by Mother’s standards, an extremely kindly benediction. Most of her descriptions of the world’s various people did not contain commendations. There were a few exceptions — Trinidadians were ‘drunken and stupid, but very cheerful’, for example. But by and large, to her the world comprised people who were drunken and stupid, apart from the Muslim world, where people were merely ‘stupid’.