Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews is an Associate Editor of The Spectator and the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Yesterday

Owen Matthews

Are Ukraine’s deep strikes simply strengthening Putin’s hand?

From our UK edition

Are Ukraine’s deep strikes against Russia helping Kyiv win the war or strengthening the hand of Kremlin hardliners? Since early summer, an escalating barrage by Ukrainian long-range drones and cruise missiles have devastated oil refineries, sunk or damaged more than 220 ships in the Black Sea and burned at least a dozen large warehouses of Russia’s Wildberries online retail chain. The result has been a nationwide fuel crisis and deepening economic pain. For millions of ordinary Russians, the conflict has finally moved off the television screen and into their daily lives. In public, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he’s not for turning. The purpose of Ukrainian deep strikes is to ‘undermine our confidence in ourselves and our capabilities’, he told state TV last month.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Who gets to decide when assassination is justified?

When is extrajudicial killing just war by other means, and when does it become a state-sponsored act of terror? ‘We were not terrorists but fighters for freedom who fought with our eyes open,’ Menachem Begin wrote of Irgun, the irregular group of fighters he led during the 1947-48 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, the tactics of whom included bombings and assassinations. But where does the 1 August bombing of the Balzi Rossi restaurant in central Moscow – which killed at least five people and injured more than 20– stand on the scale? Some would describe the attack as a legitimate military operation. The bomb targeted the lavish birthday celebrations of Colonel-General Aleksandr Chayko, Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces (whose son-in-law died in the blast).

Monday

Owen Matthews

Why my father would have seen through Arday’s nonsense

From our UK edition

My father would have some hard words for ex-Professor Jason Arday, the serial fantasist poster cry-bully of our times, and his self-righteous claque of academic supporters. The old man’s qualifications as an Arday denier would be twofold. One, he spent his academic career studying class and society in the USSR (Privilege in the Soviet Union was the title of his most successful book). Second, as a man who made his own meteoric way from a hovel in South Wales to Oxford and then the Foreign Office, and as a member of an ethnic minority to boot, my father would have a few things to say to Arday about the realities of British social mobility and the mechanisms of oppression.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

A grim turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine

An important turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine. But unfortunately for Kyiv, it’s not the ‘tide is turning’ in Ukraine’s favour narrative that Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing ever since his long-range drone attacks began smashing oil refineries and logistics warehouses deep inside Russia and sinking dozens of ships in the Sea of Azov. Rather, last night not one of the 27 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at and around Kyiv was shot down. At least seventeen people were killed and a series of huge warehouses and major Ukrainian retail outlets were devastated.

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

Two wars are becoming one

Alarmed western observers are warning that the wars in Ukraine and Iran could merge into a single region-wide conflict. Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian oil platform, a Russian missile boat, and sanctioned cargo ships in the Caspian Sea late last month. But in truth, Kyiv has regarded Iran as a combatant in the Ukraine war since the summer of 2022, when the first Shahed drones arrived in Russian-occupied Crimea and Kherson. These drones were accompanied by instructors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who trained Russian operators in their use. Moreover, this was not even Ukraine’s first strike on an Iranian target in the Caspian.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Is Zelensky more focused on his survival than Ukraine’s victory?

On the face of it, Volodymyr Zelensky’s firing last week of his popular 35-year-old Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov was an inexplicable own-goal. As Minister for Digital Transformation, Fedorov led Ukraine’s push towards massive drone production. As Defence Minister since January 2026, he was widely credited with Ukraine turning the tables on Russia with long-range drone strikes and for cutting corruption in the military. Now, after a week of protests that saw thousands of young protesters take to the streets in Kyiv, Zelensky has fired Chief of the General Staff, Oleksandr Syrskyi, too.

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

Do Iran’s negotiators speak for the IRGC?

The infamous "Memorandum of Understanding" between the United States and Iran has broken down. One of the major points of failure has been the disagreement over which side controls the Strait of Hormuz.  Yesterday, President Donald Trump abruptly declared that his country should now be known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and "as such, as a matter of fairness, will be reimbursed at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped." "POTUS is absolutely right," replied Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, on X. "Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service. Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20 percent is of course too much. We will be fair.

Friday

Owen Matthews

The Chinese plot to destroy Musk’s Starlink satellites

From our UK edition

Does China have a plan to destroy Starlink, the low-earth orbit satellite system which provides internet connectivity to tens of millions of people – including Ukraine’s military? That is just one of the extraordinary revelations in a year-long investigation by the Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde. Their report is based on a set of power-point presentations from a secret 2023 Russo-Chinese military conference, as well as a working protocol from negotiations held in Moscow in June 2023, that were leaked last year to the German magazine Der Spiegel. This confidential material appears to provide detailed evidence that military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is far closer and deeper than previously understood.

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

What Trump and Erdoğan want from each other

Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s attending this year's NATO summit in Ankara for one reason only: “respect for President Erdoğan.” Trump told NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte last month that if it hadn’t been for the veteran Turkish President’s invitation, “I don't think I would have gone to it.” NATO’s summit will, therefore, be dominated by the alliance’s two most militarily powerful and at the same time most problematic members. Trump seems set on pursuing his long-held goal of making Europe pay for its own defense, while Erdoğan is determined to leverage his strategic relationship with the US, Russia and Ukraine to scrap restrictions on Turkish purchases of US military hardware.

erdoğan

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Putin has lost touch with reality

From our UK edition

As dark clouds of burning oil billow like thunderheads on the skyline of Moscow and black rain falls across the capital, why does Vladimir Putin fail to see that something fundamental is changing in the dynamic of his war? Why, when Donald Trump effectively agreed to hand over every inch of the Ukrainian territory Russia has captured and offered the Kremlin an easy off-ramp studded with juicy business deals, did Putin refuse? And why, for that matter, did the Russian President choose to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the first place? One answer is that Tsar Vladimir is mad, so blinded by his imperialist ambitions that he deliberately chooses to ignore the reality of a crashing economy, half a million dead fellow countrymen and a war that is obviously unwinnable.

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

The conspiracy of silence surrounding the Nord Stream bombings

From our UK edition

Six months after undersea explosions ripped through three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany I wrote a 2,500-word story for The Spectator entitled ‘Were Ukrainians behind the Nord Stream bombings?’ Citing senior European security sources, the piece revealed a conspiracy of silence – for fear of an anti-Ukraine backlash – by western intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities and government to cover up what they all knew to be the truth. Forensic evidence and a German police investigation had disclosed that pipelines carrying the Russian gas on which the economies of Germany and many other European countries depended had been blown up by a tiny team of Ukrainian saboteurs.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Chinese puzzle or matryoshka doll – the complexity of Sino-Russia relations

China and Russia are twins. Both are great Asian land empires; both are continental, multi-ethnic powers that expanded by pushing forward their borders rather than by crossing oceans; both have a deep tradition of autocracy that survives to this day; and both (more plausibly in China’s case) believe that their social contract, ideology and system of government is a universal one superior to all others. In Entangled Empires, the German historians Sören Urbansky and Martin Wagner explore the convoluted story of Russo-Chinese relations from the moment in the mid-17th century that roving Cossack bands bumped up against Siberian tribes who owed fealty to Beijing up to the latest performative amity between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Sunday

Owen Matthews

Starmer’s Russian oil tanker raid was a political stunt

From our UK edition

This morning, in a blaze of publicity, Royal Navy commandos boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the English channel in a move that No. 10 heralded as a blow against Vladimir Putin's war machine. It's good, of course, that for the first time in the war the British government has followed the example of the French and finally taken action. However, the boarding of the 107,000 ton Smyrtos has much more to do with political theatre than with actually strangling Russia’s economy.  The boarding of the Smyrtos has much more to do with political theatre than with strangling Russia’s economy  Though you’d never know it from statements from No.10 or Labour ministers, transporting and selling Russian oil is not in itself illegal.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Forever war: will Zelensky and Putin be brought to an exhausted peace?

Volodymyr Zelensky stood proudly on the steps of 10 Downing Street this week, flanked by Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany, ready to discuss Europe’s latest package of support for Ukraine’s ongoing war effort. Though the conflict has, as of this week, lasted longer that the first world war, Zelensky is in some ways in the most heroic period of his presidency. Ukraine not only continues to stand firm against intense Russian assaults but also seems to be regaining a strategic advantage with its long-range drone strikes. Europe has stepped up to replace US funding and diplomacy and the fall of Hungary’s Viktor Orban has unlocked a €90 billion loan package. Yet it is also the most sordid period of Zelensky’s presidency.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Is the West deserting Ukraine at precisely the wrong moment?

From our UK edition

Moscow is coming under direct drone attack, the Russian economy is creaking, patriotic bloggers are ever more apocalyptic in their predictions of military disaster and evidence is piling up that Russia’s elites are becoming seriously disillusioned with the war and Vladimir Putin himself. Is this the moment for Britain to desert Ukraine by easing sanctions and refusing to commit more money to Kyiv’s military? Last week, the British government issued licences for the import of gasoline products from Russia refined in a third country. No. 10 also approved  licences for British companies to continue to service tankers carrying Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Thursday

Owen Matthews

Russia is becoming embarrassingly dependent on Beijing

A week after Donald Trump was greeted in Beijing by well-orchestrated crowds of flag-waving schoolchildren, it was Vladimir Putin’s turn to pay a visit to China’s Red Emperor. Protocol-watchers spotted a distinctly lower level of pomp and circumstance afforded to Putin than to Trump – though Kremlin media were quick to emphasise that this was a working meeting, the latest of over 40 Putin-Xi summits over the last two decades. Both sides paid formal homage to the ongoing strength of the Dragon-Bear alliance. Xi observed that relations between Beijing and Moscow were at ‘the highest level of comprehensive strategic partnership’, as he called on both countries to oppose ‘all unilateral bullying’ in the international arena.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Starmer’s sanctions U-turn will put money in the Kremlin’s pocket

From our UK edition

The British government yesterday quietly issued two sweeping import licences for Russian oil and gas. This may ease European supply problems but makes a mockery of Sir Keir Starmer’s claims to be getting tough on Vladimir Putin. The first of the licences, released late last night with minimal fanfare, grants an indefinite general trade licence allowing imports of diesel and jet fuel refined from Russian crude in third countries. This means that fuel processed in India or Turkey from Russian oil can now legally enter the UK market.

Owen Matthews

I gave up drinking. Don’t call me teetotal

I hate teetotallers. The pitying looks they give you with their cold, unclouded eyes. Those patronising, bored smiles they smile, as though they are indulgently listening to the table-talk of children. Their uncouth early departures from the dinner table and tactless talk of early starts. Teetotallers are as bad as people who insist on whipping out their phones to film fellow guests when they’re dancing. They’re buzz-killing squares who should learn to live a little.   And yet … I have, despite my worse judgment, recently mounted the wagon. In my heart, I remain a devoted drinker. In my mind, I continue to see myself as the Falstaffian life of the party.

Owen Matthews

I gave up drinking… but don’t call me teetotal

From our UK edition

I hate teetotallers. The pitying looks they give you with their cold, unclouded eyes. Those patronising, bored smiles they smile, as though they are indulgently listening to the table-talk of children. Their uncouth early departures from the dinner table and tactless talk of early starts. Teetotallers are as bad as people who insist on whipping out their phones to film fellow guests when they’re dancing. They’re buzz-killing squares who should learn to live a little.   And yet … I have, despite my worse judgment, recently mounted the wagon. In my heart, I remain a devoted drinker. In my mind, I continue to see myself as the Falstaffian life of the party.

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

How Putin got the Hollywood treatment

Sometimes life disappoints you in interesting ways. I hated Giuliano da Empoli's 2022 book The Wizard of the Kremlin, a fictional political thriller about the dawn of Putinism, with a shuddering passion. I had, therefore, been looking forward to despising the film version when it arrived in cinemas last month, too.  Yet it turns out that TWotK, directed and co-written by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, is an impressive film: visually stunning, well cast, a straight story well told. Paul Dano (the greasy-faced young preacher from There Will Be Blood) plays Vadim Baranov, the fictional ‘Wizard’ of the title, a whizkid theatre and TV executive tasked with creating and curating a successor to the ailing Boris Yeltsin.