Mark Galeotti | The Spectator columnists & writers

Russia is peddling implausible tales of Ukrainian ‘dirty bombs’. Kyiv and the West are embarked on a campaign to counter this propaganda, and again the talk is of the risk of Moscow using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. And that’s the point.First of all, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu broke months of relative silence – with the West, at least – and called his British, American, French and Turkish counterparts. His main message was to assert, with no evidence in support of his claims, that Kyiv was preparing to use a dirty bomb. This is a conventional munition, around which is packed radioactive materials, which is dispersed when it explodes. Such a blast would be much less destructive than almost any nuclear explosion, but would still be considered a proscribed weapon of mass destruction.

Tsar Vladimir brings in martial law

Martial law can arrive with a bang: tanks on the streets, Swan Lake on the TV. It can also creep up on a country in the guise of a presidential edict with the title ‘The Decree On Measures taken in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of October 19, 2022 No. 756’. Either way, Vladimir Putin has just moved Russia one step closer to totalitarianism. What is interesting is just how long and half-hearted a process this has been. When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, the sharpest-beaked hawks in his entourage were urging total war, and with it an imposition of tight state control over much of the economy. Putin hesitated, though, and the technocrats and economic liberals in the government were able to get him to stay his hand.

The misconception about Putin’s big red nuclear button

There is a common misconception that the leaders of nuclear states have a 'red button' that can unleash Armageddon. As Vladimir Putin continues to hint at the use of non-strategic ('tactical') nuclear weapons in Ukraine, there is some comfort in the knowledge that it is not so easy.Ironically, launching the kind of strategic nuclear missiles whose use would likely spiral into global destruction is somewhat easier than deploying the smaller weapons which – however vastly unlikely – could conceivably be used in Ukraine. These lower-yield warheads would need to be reconditioned in one of the 12 'Object S' arsenals across Russia holding them, and then transported to one of 34 'base-level storage depots'. From there they would need to be loaded onto a bomber or mated onto a suitable other delivery system.

Putin’s attack dog brings a terrible type of warfare to Ukraine

The Crimean Bridge bombing was an unwelcome gift to both Vladimir Putin – who had celebrated his 70th birthday the day before – and the new overall commander of the 'Special Military Operation,' General Sergei Surovikin. Today, they returned the favour with a missile bombardment of Kyiv and other major cities of the like not seen since the start of the war. Missiles and kamikaze drones hit a range of targets, some perhaps considered strategic in the loosest sense such as bridges and railway hubs, but most entirely civilian. The west of the country, which has largely avoided the worst of Russian attacks, also came in for an indiscriminate pounding. The aim was clearly to punish and to terrorise, a revenge attack in response to what Moscow has been calling an 'act of terrorism' on the bridge carried out by 'the Ukrainian special services.

The Edition

Crash course: how the Truss revolution came off the road

37 min listen

The Edition

Crash course: how the Truss revolution came off the road

37 min listen

On this week's podcast: As Liz Truss returns from Conservative Party Conference with her wings clipped, has she failed in her revolutionary aims for the party?James Forsyth discusses this in the cover piece for The Spectator, and is joined by former cabinet minister and New Labour architect Peter Mandelson to discuss (01:08).Also this week: Is it time that the West got tough with Putin?Mark Galeotti writes in this week's magazine about the likely scenarios should Putin make good on his thermonuclear threats. He is joined by Elisabeth Braw, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to consider how the West should respond (13:14).And finally:Anthony Whitehead writes about the 'arrogance' of the Tyre Extinguisher movement in The Spectator this week, a new environmental activist organisation letting down the tyres on SUVs all around the world.

How should the West respond to Putin’s threats?

Vladimir Putin clearly wants us to worry that he is crazy enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. This fear was intensified this week when images surfaced that some – possibly in error – believed showed a train operated by the secretive nuclear security forces moving towards Ukraine. Despite this, many believe the likelihood of a nuclear attack remains extremely low. Yet it is a plausible enough threat for the West to be considering how it should respond if Putin were to unleash one. Russia has an estimated 1,900 non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs), from artillery shells to warheads for missiles; their yields range from a mere 0.5 to 100 kilotons, more than twice the power of the bomb that devastated Nagasaki.

The Nord Stream blasts are Putin’s warning shot to the West

While the Ukrainians are fighting a conventional war on their own territory, Russia and the West are engaged in an unconventional one fought by economic pressure, political subterfuge and dirty tricks. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines seems just the latest example. Both of these lines linking Russia to Germany have sprung devastating leaks. The cause, according to seismological readings, was a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm, too directed (and powerful enough to breach 4cm of steel and a thick concrete mantle) and too synchronised to be any kind of an accident. There are those in Russia who, predictably enough, are blaming the Ukrainians. Given that the Russians took their last working submarine in 2014, though, this is implausible even by their standards.

Even Putin knows he is losing

Vladimir Putin's latest escalation over Ukraine not only demonstrates that even he doesn’t think he’s winning the war but what happens when a leader knows he has to do ‘something' but doesn’t quite know what. Momentum was, after all, no longer on his side. He seems to have hoped that over a hard winter, either Ukraine would lose the will to fight or the West would succumb to ‘Ukraine fatigue'. However, Ukraine's impressive counter-offensive in the north-east not only confirmed Kyiv's continued and even growing will and ability to fight but also galvanised Western support. Meanwhile, the West is not alone in feeling the pain. Putin went to Samarkand for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation hoping for some political, if not practical endorsements for his war on the West.

How Russia’s ‘shock jocks’ covered the Queen’s funeral

Modern Russia is a propaganda state, but not in the same way as the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has squeezed out any independent media, but all the same, the coverage of the Queen's funeral demonstrated how this is a post-modern propaganda state, in which competing 'narrative entrepreneurs' try to make their mark and please the boss. As I have written before, the official line on the Queen's death was strikingly respectful, taking its lead from Vladimir Putin's own message of condolences. There were some spiteful and critical comments, primarily on social media, but even these were then shouted down in what seems to have been a genuine public outcry. Although Putin claimed that he would have been too busy to attend anyway, that he was one of the few heads of state – along with Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko and Myanmar's Lt General Myint Swe – not invited either to attend or send a representative did hit a nerve.

How will Putin respond to his latest defeat?

Russia is retreating at speed along the Kharkiv front, leaving behind burnt-out tanks and, even more tellingly, undamaged ones, too. There are television images of locals welcoming Ukrainian forces and accounts from eyewitnesses on the spot – but none of that has made it into Russian state media. As the Kremlin struggles to find some way of spinning the unspinnable, this will affect not just its public credibility but also elite unity. The Russian defence ministry is talking about a 'regrouping' of its units. State TV is extolling the 'exploits' of its gallant soldiers. Government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, recounting an alleged victory, trips itself up by placing the action deep into formerly Russian-held territory.

Why even Vladimir Putin has paid tribute to the Queen

It is a mark of the Queen’s standing that even Vladimir Putin, in the midst of an undeclared economic and political war between Russia and the West, sent King Charles III his ‘deepest condolences’ after Her Majesty’s death. The Russian leader noted that: ‘The most important events in the recent history of the United Kingdom are inextricably linked with the name of Her Majesty. For many decades, Elizabeth II rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage.’ Calling it a ‘heavy, irreparable loss,’ he wished the King ‘courage and perseverance’ and sent ‘the words of sincere sympathy and support to the members of the royal family and all the people of Great Britain.’ On one level, it would be easy simply to dismiss this as hypocritical cant and the meaningless language of international diplomacy.

Russia’s Ben Stiller ban is a sign of Putin’s desperation

What do Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, the chairman of the BBC, Piers Morgan, and, er, me, have in common? The answer is that we’ve all been banned from Russia. For some of us, that’s a blow. For others, an irrelevance. But for all of us, it’s a strange accolade: somehow Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin thinks we’re significant, dangerous or hostile enough to need to be kept out at all costs. What level of insecurity does it take to worry that the screen Zoolander and Harvey Milk, respectively, represent a threat to the stability and integrity of the Russian Federation? And what desperation demands that this be done not quietly, if, as and when the need arose by simply denying a visa application (which is how all states can exclude unwanted visitors), but by a public, open-ended, formal ban? Sean Penn, to be sure, famously said that he was 'thinking about taking up arms against Russia' (though he concluded that he wouldn’t).

What the defenestration of Ravil Maganov says about Russia

In my travels when I was still persona grata in Russia, I never got the sense that their windows were unduly flimsy or inviting. Nonetheless, the tally of Russians and Russian-connected individuals who have met their end by jumping or falling out of windows is such that it has become a rather tacky and tasteless meme. Most recently, Ravil Maganov, chair of the Lukoil conglomerate died after falling out of a window in Moscow on Thursday. This follows on the heels of the death in Washington DC of Dan Rapoport, an American businessman who used to be active in Russia before leaving and becoming a critic of the regime. He apparently jumped from an apartment building in Georgetown. Beyond this, there has been a spate of suicides and deaths among senior Russian businesspeople of late, like the apparent murder-suicide on the Costa Brava, where according to the Spanish police, a former manager from liquefied natural gas producer Novatek killed his wife and daughter and then himself.

Gorbachev was no saint. But he was a kind of hero

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead at the age of 91, and in a way I feel orphaned. I became fascinated by what was still then the Soviet Union in its late years of sclerosis, when one moribund geriatric at the top of the system succeeded another (the dark joke at the time went as follows: a KGB guard stopped someone at one of the state funerals and asked him if he had a pass – ‘oh,’ came the reply, ‘I’ve got a season ticket’). But my early years as a Russia-watcher were during his time as General Secretary, and if my seniors had become used to the idea that the USSR was a stagnant, unchanging police state, for us, the thought that there could be change, even change for the good, was baked into our assumptions. My deeply unfashionable belief that Russia can change for the better, that it can someday find its way back into the European family of nations, is a by-product of this era.

The stalemate in Ukraine won’t last forever

Addressing the vexed question of who is winning the war in Ukraine, six months on, is a task to challenge military strategists, geopolitical analysts – and semanticists, because so much depends on what ‘winning’ means. On one level, after all, one could suggest everyone is losing. That said, we cannot escape the fact that both Moscow and the West had essentially written Ukraine off at the start of the war. The conventional wisdom was that it would take perhaps a fortnight for Vladimir Putin’s much-vaunted war machine, the product of two decades of heightened military spending, to defeat its Ukrainian counterpart. Instead, the Ukrainians proved determined and disciplined in the defence, and imaginative and impassioned in the attack.

What the Dugin assassination tells us about Russia

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened on Saturday night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’ – who had been a cheerleader for the war in Ukraine. Indeed, she was under sanctions, with the UK government describing her as a ‘frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine’.

Ukraine has found Russia’s Achilles’ heel in Crimea

Another day, another Russian arms depot up in smoke. The latest attack, this time on an ammunition storage site near Mayskoye on the Crimean peninsula, highlights three particular aspects of this phase of the war, and the degree to which Kyiv is adapting quicker and more effectively than Moscow. The first is that the long-heralded Ukrainian counter-attack is, so far, less about a melee on the ground and more about a methodical attempt to target Russian supply lines. Until now, this has been through missile and rocket strikes, although Moscow’s claim that the Mayskoye attack was carried out by ‘saboteurs’ would – if true – represent an interesting new approach. (And a serious embarrassment for the Russian security forces, given that the alleged attackers apparently also managed to disappear.

Ukraine’s Crimean strike marks a new stage of the war

For most Russians, the brutal realities of Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' have not really struck home. Ukraine's attack on the Saki airbase near Novofedorivka in western Crimea on Tuesday begins to change all that, marking a new stage of the war, one with both dangers and opportunities for Kyiv. The Kremlin’s spin doctors tried to claim that the explosions filmed by horrified Russian holidaymakers were caused by an ammunition fire. However, as videos began going viral on Russian social media, there was no question in the posters' minds but that this was an attack. They voted with their feet, or at least their wheels, and the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the mainland became one long traffic jam as panicked holidaymakers fled the peninsula.

Why Zelensky is purging the security services of Ukraine

Could a general of the SBU, the security service of Ukraine, really have helped Russia take the city of Kherson? Could a colonel have tipped off the Russians as to where the Ukrainians had lain mines north of Crimea? The Ukrainian government certainly appears to believe that fifth columnists within the SBU have been Moscow’s secret weapon in this war – this week Volodymyr Zelensky fired the head of the agency (and his childhood friend) Ivan Bakanov, along with the country’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova. A total of 651 alleged treason and collaboration cases have now been opened against prosecutorial and law enforcement officials, and more than 60 officials from Bakanov and Venediktova’s agencies have been accused of working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories.

Russia is militarising its economy

The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine isn’t a war – there’s a law and a possible maximum sentence (though no one seems to have faced it yet) of 15 years in prison to stop you claiming it is in Russia. Yet Russia does seem to be inching towards a wartime economy, for all Vladimir Putin’s recent bullishness. At the recent (if rather sparsely-attended) St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin struck a triumphalist note, crowing that ‘the economic blitzkrieg against Russia never had any chances of success,’ and ‘gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future didn't come true.’ That’s both true and not true. There has been no meltdown, not least thanks to eight years of conscious sanctions-proofing in Russia, and down to the financial wizardry of technocrats like Central Bank chair Elvira Nabiullina.

Does Putin’s ‘toxic masculinity’ really matter?

Apparently, if Vladimir Putin had been a woman, everything would be just tickety-boo. Speaking to German TV, Boris Johnson has said that Putin is the ‘perfect example of toxic masculinity’ and that had he been a women – ‘which he obviously isn’t’, Boris felt the need to clarify – then ‘I really don’t think he would’ve embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has.’ Johnson was using Putin’s example to argue the case that Nato and the West ‘need more women in positions of power’ – Liz Truss is likely to agree – but this also speaks to a dangerous tendency of modern democratic leaders to make sweeping and exaggerated statements presumably meant to be crowd-pleasers, which risk backfiring in all kinds of ways.

What Russia’s military shake-up reveals about Putin’s war in Ukraine

When General Alexander Dvornikov was made overall commander of Russia’s forces in April, it looked as if the amateurishness and incoordination of the early stage of the Ukraine war might be being addressed. Now, though, Dvornikov is not around, and a new commander may shape a savage new phase of operations. In recent days, the Russian defence ministry announced that Colonel General Alexander Lapin was in command of the Central Group of Forces in Ukraine, while General Sergei Surovikin was heading the Southern Group of Forces during the invasion. Of Dvornikov, who has not been seen for weeks, there was no mention, and the British Ministry of Defence suggests he has been removed from his post. Lapin has been commander of the Central Military District since 2017 and is considered a safe pair of hands.

How Russia’s cartoon heroine turned on Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin’s regime has a track record in building up public heroes whom it hopes to use, only to find the ungrateful wretches unwilling to play the roles it intends. The most recent is Natalia Poklonskaya, a woman whose trajectory from cartoon heroine to legal adviser has starkly illustrated the way Putin faces criticisms not just from remaining liberals at home, but also nationalists. Poklonskaya shot to fame amidst the Russian take-over of Crimea. A Ukrainian, she had been a senior prosecutor in Crimea, then in Kyiv, until she resigned in the wake of the ‘Euromaidan’ rising, ‘ashamed to live in the country where neo-fascists freely walk the streets.’ She returned to Crimea and after it was annexed by Moscow was appointed its Prosecutor.

Putin is no Peter the Great

Putin has a penchant for history, but only insofar it flatters him and his views. Last year, he gifted the world a 5,000 essay that essentially pre-justified his invasion of Ukraine with amateurish fantasy history, and now he is comparing himself with Tsar Peter the Great. It is not a comparison that fits or flatters. Peter the Great is one of the, well, greats of the Russian historical pantheon. He ruled from the late 17th to the early 18th century, and in that time became the first tsar to travel in Europe, built a new capital at St Petersburg, and was both founder of the Russian navy and victor, on points, of the 20-year Great Northern War against the Swedish Empire, leaving Russia a dominant Baltic power. Speaking on Thursday on the 350th anniversary of Peter’s birth, Putin said that Peter did not take anything from the Swedes – although he acquired territories along the Baltic coast and much of Karelia – but simply ‘returned’ to Russia what had been its own.

How the West is helping Putin’s propagandists

One might not think that J. R. R. Tolkien has much to do with the bitter war in Ukraine, but one would be wrong. A particular epithet, once used by Ukrainians specifically for the Russian soldiers who have shelled, looted and raped their way into their country has begun to be applied also to the Russians who support the war and, increasingly, all Russians. That epithet is orc, the brutal and brutish foot soldiers of the dark lord Sauron, who spill in their countless numbers from the land of Mordor to kill and to despoil. Tolkien's works are very popular in both Russia and Ukraine, and there as elsewhere have been subjected to scholarly deconstruction, naked plagiarism and appropriation into memes. Indeed, even before the Ukrainians were calling Russia Mordor, the term was used by Russians embittered by the failure of the so-called Bolotnaya protests against Vladimir Putin's return to power in 2011-12.

Does Putin have blood cancer?

Suddenly, we are all diagnosticians. Clips of a puffy Putin slurring his words, his hands twitching or clutching a table for grim death, have led to all kinds of speculation about his health. It does seem probable that he is suffering from some ailments, to be sure. However, we need to be careful we do not get carried away with the speculation. Putin is notoriously private and his health is considered well off-limits. For a man who built much of his personal brand on his judo-fighting, ice hockey-playing, bare-chested horseback-riding persona, illness and ageing are obviously sensitive topics. Nonetheless, it has long been known that he suffers from recurring back problems, and appears to have undergone surgery more than once.

The real reason for Putin’s intelligence shake-up

It has been reported this week that Vladimir Putin is shifting responsibility for covert operations in Ukraine to a different intelligence agency. The Fifth Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB) has now reportedly been usurped by ‘military intelligence’ – still widely known by its old acronym of GRU, but actually called the GU, the main directorate of the general staff. Lt Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, first deputy head of the GU, is now expected to take over Russia’s intelligence capabilities in Ukraine. To some this is evidence of inter-agency conflict and the decline of the FSB inside the Kremlin’s walls. But it is more likely that Putin is simply digging in for a long war. It’s fair to say that Vladimir Putin isn’t prone to introspection.

How Ukraine rained on Putin’s parade

The Russians know how to put on a parade, and Victory Day is the showiest of the shows. It may have been a portent, though, that inclement weather conditions forced the cancellation of the aerial flypast. It quite literally might have rained on Vladimir Putin’s parade. This shouldn’t have happened. Typically, if there is any danger that this high holy day of Putinism might see rain, then the air force seeds the offending clouds the day before to make them rain, so the sun can shine on 9 May. It usually works, until it doesn’t. Which is itself something of a metaphor for what is happening now in Russia. There had been much over-heated speculation that Putin was going to use his speech from the top of Lenin’s Mausoleum to make some major policy announcement, whether an end to the war or the opposite, upgrading his ‘special military operation’ to a full ‘war.

Why Putin’s ‘Satanic’ missile launch matters

In some ways, it’s a headline-writer’s dream: Putin puts his faith in Satan. In reality, it’s actually Putin’s new RS-28 Sarmat (‘Sarmatian’) heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, which has become colloquially known in western circles as the ‘Satan II’. It is intended as a replacement for the R-36M, which in Nato parlance is known as the SS-18 ‘Satan.’ Following a successful test on Wednesday Putin asserted that the missile would not only ‘reliably ensure Russia's security from external threats’ but that it would ‘provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.’ It is certainly true that it is a powerful, next generation weapon. It has an estimated range of 18,000km (11,000 miles), travels fast enough to hit London in 13 minutes (depending on where it is fired from), and can carry up to 15 separate warheads, a mix of nuclear bombs, Avangard hypersonic glide bombs and decoys.

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