Mark Galeotti

Mark Galeotti

Mark Galeotti heads the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and is honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the author of some 30 books on Russia. His latest, Forged in War: a military history of Russia from its beginnings to today, is out now.

Friday

Mark Galeotti

The hypocrisy of Raab’s selective sanctions

From our UK edition

Will the new wave of sanctions on foreign human rights abusers, announced by Dominic Raab this week, work? While much of the coverage focused on the fact that, for the first time, London was acting unilaterally, rather than as part of a European or wider initiative, the actual measures – controls on entry to the country to them and their money – are pretty familiar. So, too, are the targets. In the first wave (we are promised more) are 49 'individuals and organisations involved in some of the most notorious human rights violations and abuses in recent years', from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and North Korea.

Thursday

Mark Galeotti

Putin’s referendum rigging is a sign of weakness

From our UK edition

Putin has his result. After a week of postal, online and in-person voting, his controversial package of constitutional amendments that mean he could stay in office until 2036 has been passed by a hefty margin of 78 per cent voted in favour and 21 per cent against, with a turnout of just under two-thirds of the electorate. That Putin got the endorsement he wanted is, in fairness, not the biggest surprise of the year. The irony is, though, that however rigged they may be, Russian elections, referenda and plebiscites do matter. The Kremlin will ultimately get or at least claim the result it wants. The real question is how much effort it has to put into getting it. How much propaganda needs to be pumped out? How many dissenting voices silenced? How much money spent on sweeteners?

Thursday

Mark Galeotti

The hunt is on for Putin’s successor

From our UK edition

Putin does like to spring a surprise. The first hour or so of his state of the nation address yesterday was the usual fare: Russia standing tall again, measures to address poverty, encouraging larger families. So far, so cut and paste. Then suddenly he dropped a series of constitutional bombshells: tougher presidential term limits, more powers for both parliament and the prime minister. Within three hours, prime minister Dmitry Medvedev was clearing his desk, and we had a sense of the shape of Russia after Putin’s presidency. Which is not, by any means, Russia after Putin. His current term ends in 2024, and although no one doubted he could stay on if he wanted, regardless of term limits, the real question was whether he truly wanted to.

Friday

Mark Galeotti

Some Russians think Britain’s bungled Brexit is just an illusion

From our UK edition

It's hardly a surprise that Russian and American views of the world differ sharply. But there is one area of unexpected congruence in Moscow and Washington: Brexit. Travelling between both capitals, it is hard to tell the difference between the perplexity and even suspicion with which Britain's ongoing and bungled departure from the EU is being viewed. Of course, the two administrations have rather different interests when it comes to Brexit. In the United States, there is some excitement among big business about the prospect of the UK market opening up. In the main though the feeling is one of dismay about the crisis gripping one of the country's closest allies.

Friday

Mark Galeotti

What does Putin really make of Britain’s Brexit mess?

From our UK edition

When it comes to Brexit, Britain's friends, neighbours, trade partners and even antagonists are generally united in one thing: wondering what on earth is going on. In Russia, there is a particular cocktail of satisfaction and bewilderment. The satisfaction is predictable. From the Kremlin's point of view, the whole Brexit extravaganza is a gift, regardless of the eventual outcome. Putin's strategy is essentially to divide, distract and demoralise the West, so that either we are sufficiently worn down to strike a deal that grants Russia the status he craves – essentially as hegemon of Eurasia and a fixture in any global negotiations – or else we are so fragmented, feuding and fatigued that he has a free rein.

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti

The trouble with Interpol

From our UK edition

At the last minute, the Russian police general everyone had assumed was a shoo-in to become the next head of Interpol was defeated by the acting head, South Korean Kim Jong-yang. It’s good news for the international police cooperation organisation, for the West and, arguably, for justice – but it’s not the end of the story. The presumed front-runner, major general Alexander Prokopchuk – formerly the head of Russia's Interpol bureau – has been accused of supervising the systematic attempt to apparently use the agency to persecute the Kremlin's political enemies. Nonetheless, until the eleventh hour, everyone saw Prokopchuk as the heir apparent. Moscow certainly seems to have thought so.

Tuesday

Mark Galeotti

Don’t be fooled by Putin’s bungling spies

From our UK edition

Suddenly Russian spies seem funny rather than fearsome. 'More Johnny English than James Bond’ as Security Minister Ben Wallace put it, as if the Salisbury pair had not killed on British soil. It’s certainly true that we have seen some big blunders on the part of the GRU, Russian military intelligence: Sergei Skripal’s would-be assassins presenting themselves as innocent sports nutritionists with a taste for thirteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture. Hackers caught in the Netherlands with laptops that had not been sanitised between operations. The names of 305 GRU officers made public because they registered their cars at their base, presumably in order to avoid paying car tax.