Russia

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Our Russian allies

From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: For years past the vodka monopoly in Russia has been a public scandal. Government officials, in order to get good financial returns, have connived at the abasement of the people by encouraging drink. Year by year the revenue from the vodka monopoly has increased by leaps and bounds till the present year, when it was estimated to yield £93,000,000, or very nearly a third of the total revenue of the Russian Empire. Critics of Russia have long lugubriously prophesied that, in spite of all the Tsar's protestations in favour of temper. ance, he would never venture to take any step which would impair such a magnificent revenue as this. He has not only promised steps; he has already taken them.

Thursday

Ismene Brown

Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin: ‘The KGB put a microphone in our marriage bed’

‘People in the West don’t understand nothing. Even the new Russian generation don’t understand anything at all. You don’t know, and it’s better you don’t.’ Maya Plisetskaya scrutinises me with her beautiful, kohl-rimmed, 88-year-old eyes, a gaze made wary in childhood, when her father was shot as an enemy of the Soviet people, her mother jailed, and her Jewish family broken by persecution. ‘Can anyone understand how if you took a single carrot from the collective farm, just one carrot, you could get ten years’ prison? Who could understand that?

Wednesday

Rachel Halliburton

The nation that Putin crushed – and the world forgot

Putin, at least 12-foot-high, glowers from the wall of a gym where men are training to wrestle. He is at the centre of an unnerving triptych. On his left is the image of Akhmad Kadyrov, the former President of the Chechen Republic who was assassinated by Islamists in 2004. To his right is Akhmad’s son, Ramzan Kadyrov, now Chechnya’s president, and instigator of a personality cult that manifests itself in everything from Instagram posts of chasing ostriches to dancing with Gérard Depardieu. [caption id="attachment_8902652" align="aligncenter" width="520"] Republic of Chechnya, 2013. Wrestling training in the central gym.

Pádraig Belton

Postcard from Ukraine – meet the artists in exile from the People’s Republic of Donetsk

It was Orthodox Trinity Sunday when Luba Michailova received word that separatists would soon occupy the premises of the Donetsk art centre she founded. She was in Kiev at the time, and recalls now that her first response was religious: 'Any difficulties in life you get, it's for your good, and for testing you.' The following morning, at 8 o'clock, several staff were at work cleaning when 15 men in balaclavas appeared, firing Kalashnikovs into the air. Michailova tells me, 'So when it happened, I knew it would happen, but I never thought it would be so painful.' Donetsk now is in the hands of the masked separatists who brought down MH17. But before May, Donetsk boasted TEDxDonetsk talks, literary festivals, residencies, and exhibitions by artists from abroad.

Friday

Anne Jolis

The European market hangover – bad news is bad news again

In the latest Spectator, Liam Halligan takes a sobering look at European markets bearing the brunt of sanctions against Russia. 'The western economy that’s suffered most, by far, is the largest one in the eurozone. Germany’s manufacturing thoroughbreds have sunk tens of billions of euros into Russian production facilities in recent years. . . . 'This helps explain why, having grown 0.8 per cent during the first three months of 2014, German GDP shrank 0.2 per cent in the second quarter. The eurozone’s powerhouse is now on the brink of recession. Industrial production dropped 4 per cent in August, the biggest monthly fall since early 2009. Exports were down 5.8 per cent — again, the steepest drop since the Lehman collapse in 2008.

Thursday

Liam Halligan

Europe will reconcile with Russia, and soon. It can’t afford not to

After months of escalating tensions over Ukraine and talk of a new cold war, Russia and the West could soon reach a surprising rapprochement. The eurozone economy is suffering badly and sanctions against Russia are partly to blame. Winter is also upon us, and that reminds every-one Vladimir Putin still holds the cards when it comes to supplying gas. The clincher, though, is that Ukraine is heading towards financial meltdown. Unless an extremely large bailout is delivered soon, there will be a default, sending shockwaves through the global economy. That’s a risk nobody wants to take — least of all Washington, London or Berlin. Sanctions against Russia were always going to hit western Europe hard.

Thursday

Alexandra Coghlan

Why, if Cecilia Bartoli invites you to a party, you drop everything and go

Classical music has a few certainties: Götterdämmerung will always be that little bit longer than you remember, it will reliably rain if you pack a Glyndebourne picnic, and if Cecilia Bartoli invites you to a party, you drop everything and go. Which is why I found myself in Paris earlier this week, along with most of the record industry, prepared for serious music and some even more serious thrills at the launch of Bartoli’s new disc St Petersburg. There are times when only a palace will do. For most of us those times are few and far between, but if you’re mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli – ‘La Gioiosa’, a classical music phenomenon and one of its biggest-selling stars – then life, and art, are far from everyday.

Owen Matthews

Letter from Donetsk: peace, with missile attacks

For what is technically peacetime, there’s a lot of shelling going on round here. Donetsk airport is still held by the Ukrainian army and the rebels of the Donetsk People’s Republic bombard it furiously every day. The Ukrainians reply by lobbing back artillery shells and Grad missiles. Both sides bristle with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, so the war is a static one, fought by a series of artillery duels, first world war-style. Underneath the smart new airport built by Turks for the Euro 2012 championships is a warren of deep Soviet-era bunkers and tunnels, where the Ukrainian defenders retreat with their howitzers when the barrages get too heavy. Construct your own metaphor: deep, indestructible veins of the past lying underneath the fragile modernity of the present.

Friday

Ismene Brown

We have a new dance critic – and she’s not happy with The Arts Council

Hello. I recognize some of you. We’ve bumped against each other in Sadler’s Wells or Covent Garden or the Birmingham Hippodrome. I look forward to meeting you below the line sometime. This is the second time I’ve returned to reviewing dance after a break. I’ve spent the past year doing a Russian MA to further a book I’m working on, and not going to much dance at all. But here I am again. Why do I keep coming back to dance? I’m a musician rather than a dance person, really, and there are very few musically alert and visually intelligent choreographers around, capable of adding dance to music and coming up with more than the sum of the parts.

Thursday

Neil Clark

Václav Klaus: The lies Europe tells about Russia

Václav Klaus has made a habit of saying things others shy away from saying, but it doesn’t seem to have done him much harm in the popularity stakes. Quite the opposite: the 73-year-old ardently Eurosceptic free-marketeer has legitimate claims to be regarded as the most successful ‘true blue’ conservative politician in Europe over the past 25 years. He was, after all, prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 1998 and then his country’s president for a further ten years, from 2003 to 2013. So when we meet after a typically hearty Serbian lunch — at the International Science and Public Conference in Belgrade — I am keen to ask if he has any advice for David Cameron and the British Conservative party.

Thursday

Charles Walker

Regardless of the impact on our economy, Putin must be stopped

Walking around London this lunchtime with my family, my stomach tightened as it struck me that we may conceivably now be sliding towards a war with Russia. A war with consequences that could end up destroying everything we value. Not physical assets – they can be replaced – but those we love and hold dear. The poverty of the West’s response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is breathtaking. Sanctions are announced, then re-announced, in the hope that perhaps the crisis on our borders may just resolve itself, with Putin deciding he has tweaked our tail enough. Such an outcome, however desirable, is pie in the sky. Let’s be clear that Putin holds the West, its leaders and its values in contempt. We are weak; he is strong.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Tusk as European Council President is a mixed blessing for Cameron

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, has been appointed the new European Council President. Tonight, Tusk has had warm words about how imperative it is that Britain’s concerns about the EU are addressed. As Open Europe reports, he called the possibility of an EU without Britain a “black scenario.”   Tusk’s appointment is a mixed blessing for David Cameron. On the one hand, Tusk comes from a non-Eurozone country meaning that he’ll be sympathetic to Britain’s desire for single market protections for the Eurozone outs. The Ukraine crisis has also reminded the Poles of how important Britain is in terms of stiffening the EU approach towards Russia; meaning that Tusk genuinely would be loath to see Britain leave.

Thursday

The Spectator

Six rivals for the name Isis

Not in their name The BBC decided to start calling the Islamic terror group Isis by the acronym IS instead. Some organisations who are retaining the name: — Isis Equity Partners London-based private equity group — The Isis Student magazine at Oxford University — Isis day spa and hair salon in Oxford (not to mention hair salons in Birmingham, Ascot, Sunningdale and Writtle) — HMP Isis Young Offenders’ Institution in Thamesmead — Isis Motors Secondhand car dealership in Hayes, Middlesex — Spirit of Isis Ethically sourced crystal shop in Bedford Fighting faiths It was claimed that more British Muslims are fighting for jihadist forces than have joined HM Forces. What is the declared religion of British servicemen? Christian 86% No religion 12.

Taki

You can’t make friends with Uncle Sam and survive for long

Can somebody tell me when America last got it right? Uncle Sam’s track record in selecting leaders in faraway places reminds me very much of my own where libel is concerned: plaintiffs 5; Taki 0. Let’s see, the good Uncle overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran back in the early 1950s in order for the Shah to become his man in Persia. The Shah went gallivanting in St Moritz, threw very expensive parties in Persepolis and spent money like a Saudi camel driver-turned-prince on American weapons. But once the Shah became a pariah, the Home of the Brave chickened out. The Shah became Shah who? Only Henry Kissinger admitted knowing him and even managed to get him a bed in a cancer hospital. What about the Diem family before that?

Radek Sikorski

Radek Sikorski’s notebook: Goose-steppers in Oxford, and a drone in my garden

As the BA flight from Warsaw landed at Heathrow, I felt a little tremor of anxiety, though it wasn’t anything to do with fear of flying. I was here for the Pembroke College gaudy. I had never attended a reunion before, and I had doubts about it. What if the people I really liked didn’t show up? What if I didn’t remember somebody’s name, while they remembered me? Above all, did I really want to see a bunch of old people claiming to be my contemporaries? It turned out to be a delight.

Michael Lind

The wars that really are about the oil

Is international conflict really just a fight over oil? It sometimes seems that way. In Syria and Iraq, the militants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ sell captured oil while battling to establish a puritanical Sunni theo-cracy. From Central Asia to Ukraine, Russia is contesting attempts (backed by the US) to minimise Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ allows the US to threaten the choke points through which most of China’s oil imports must pass. Conspiracy-mongering petrodeterminists who try to reduce world politics to nothing but a clash for oil are too crude (pun intended). No shadowy cabal of oil company executives pulls the strings of world politics.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Ukraine ‘destroys’ Russian military vehicles

Ukrainian military have destroyed a 'significant' part of a Russian military column that crossed into the country on Thursday night, the country's president has claimed. A Ukrainian military spokesman told journalists that 'appropriate actions were taken and a part of it no longer exists'. In a statement on his website, President Poroshenko said he had discussed the 'entry of Russian military machines to the territory of Ukraine'. Commenting on reports of this, the President 'informed that the given information was trustworthy and confirmed because the majority of that machines had been eliminated by the Ukrainian artillery at night', the statement said. More to follow...

Thursday

The Spectator

Violence, fear, confusion: this is what comes into a leadership vacuum

The old cliché that ‘nothing happens in August’ has again been brutally disproved. From the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war to the Russian invasion of Georgia six years ago, August is a month often packed with violence — but rarely more so than this year. In Syria, Christians are being crucified for refusing to convert to Islam. In northern Iraq, there are reports of mothers throwing their children from mountains rather than leaving them to the jihadis who are parading the severed heads of their victims. Russian convoys are rolling towards the Ukrainian border as Vladimir Putin tests the resolve of the West. Barack Obama has watched this unfold from his holiday spot in Martha’s Vineyard; David Cameron from the Portuguese coast.

Martin Vander Weyer

Why a City job should be graduates’ last resort

August is the season for conversation about career choices. Every holiday party seems to include new graduates or next year’s graduands in need of grown-up advice. Many yearn to be pastry chefs, having devoted their student years to watching The Great British Bake Off. Some want to be journalists, and I tell them it’s more fun than having a secure job with a decent income. Happily I’ve only met one young man this summer who wants to go into financial PR, the métier in which I believe Satan himself did his first internship.

Saturday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: How to talk to a pacifist

‘Keep your temper’, from The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘When a nation goes to war the policy of the Government nearly always fails to carry with it the convictions of a minority.  It is, of course, very rare for a Government who make war to find themselves without the support of the majority – for, as a rule, they would not even contemplate war without ascertaining the general tendency of public opinion – yet such cases have happened. It is probable that the majority were opposed to the war of George III. and Lord North against the American colonists.