The scene seemed more suited to an Austin Powers spy farce than a John le Carré cold war intrigue. “I told Moscow that you are such a good boy,” lieutenant colonel Sergey Solomasov, a spook working for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, told his Slovak contact, Bohus Garbar. “Moscow decided that you’ll be a hunter.” But Solomasov — on paper, Russia’s deputy military attaché in Bratislava — was wrong. Garbar did not get a chance to hunt. Instead he was the hunted: Slovak agents had filmed the meeting with his handler. On March 14, Solomasov was one of three Russians expelled from Slovakia “for acting in contravention of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations”. Though Garbar — a well-connected, muckraking blogger — was a lowly target, the Russian’s other recruits were not: Solomasov’s network included a Slovak colonel and a senior official in...

Experts gathered to speak to the Helsinki Commission on Tuesday about Russia's extensive and seemingly effective propaganda campaign regarding Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Peter Pomerantsev, who was born in Kyiv but spent 10 years working as a journalist in Russia, spoke of Russian President Vladimir Putin's major role in directing the propaganda machine at the hearing. "He depends on their feeling that, in the words of his own spin doctors, there is no alternative to Putin," Pomerantsev, who is now a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Agora Institute, said, referencing the Russian people. "And that is why he's doing so much to control the information environment, emotions and perceptions at home. It’s why breaking through the new information Iron Curtain is a challenge, which is as much psychological as it is technical," he added. Also during the hearing, Fatima Tlis, a Russian-American journalist, spoke of the varied tactics Russia uses on...

Ukraine has accused Russia of forcibly relocating thousands of civilians from Mariupol, the strategic port city devastated by Russian shelling. Russia is housing an estimated 5,000 at a temporary camp in Bezimenne, east of Mariupol, seen in satellite images. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 40,000 had been moved from Ukraine to Russian-held territory without any coordination with Kyiv. A Mariupol refugee, now in Russia, said: "All of us were taken forcibly". Some Ukrainian officials describe Russia's actions as "deportations" to "filtration camps" - an echo of Russia's war in Chechnya, when thousands of Chechens were brutally interrogated in makeshift camps and many disappeared. It is an internationally-recognised abuse of human rights for a warring party to deport civilians to its territory. While 140,000 civilians have managed to...

The Ukrainian people are suffering enormously after Russia’s unprovoked invasion. The past month has brought daily news of anguished families, devastated cities, and refugee flight unseen in Europe since World War II. In armed conflicts, civilians are always at risk. However, as scholars of past wars and genocides, we want to highlight the particular dangers to girls and women. “Rape is as much a weapon of war as the machete, club, or Kalashnikov,” writes Christina Lamb in her 2020 book Our Bodies, Their Battlefields. Weapons of war have taken down buildings, roads, and infrastructure. But as Russian troops push more aggressively into Ukraine’s cities and towns, the risks to girls and women grow. The current conditions of violence and vulnerability set the stage for a repeat of crimes committed by the Russian military’s forebear, the Soviet army. Anthony Beevor and...

Emotional compartmentalization is among the fighter pilot’s most essential skills. Especially in wartime, when there is little time to reflect on one’s mortality, or to honor the dead. Apart from their fears and sorrows, however, there is another emotion, unique to war, which Ukrainian fighter pilots must now also control each time they fly. It is their rage, provoked by the Russian pilots who continue to bomb and murder Ukrainian civilians. “Sometimes you respect your opponent, but not in this case,” a 29-year-old Ukrainian air force MiG-29 pilot, who goes by the call sign “Juice,” said about his enemies. “They’re crazy. They’re not human. It’s a sin for all your life to kill people like this. It’s absolutely stupid and immoral, and I can’t imagine how they will live with this through the years, and their families, too.” After a pause, Juice added: “But as professionals, we should keep calm and...

Western sanctions have disrupted nearly every part of Russia’s financial system, but there is one big exception. The domestic-payments system continued to work smoothly after Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. pulled out earlier this month. While the card giants’ exit from Russia was viewed as a significant move by many in the West, the reality on the ground was anything but. Most Russian consumers never lost the ability to use their Mastercard- and Visa-branded cards to pay for things within the country. There were roughly 197 million Mastercard or Visa cards in Russia at the end of 2020, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication. But behind the scenes, the cards don’t rely on the U.S. networks’ systems to process payments in Russia. For years, they have used a homegrown system overseen by Russia’s central bank. The National Payment Card System—known by its Russian initials...

Germany is no stranger to the wrong side of history. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Berlin spent the past 16 years with its feet firmly planted on the wrong side of the divide over how to handle Russia. Less predictable was the speed with which Germany abandoned its stance toward Moscow in recent weeks by halting the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, sending arms to Ukraine, embracing sanctions against Russia, and even announcing it would start pumping substantial sums into its own army. In other words, it agreed almost overnight to do everything the U.S. and other allies had been prodding it to do for years. Berlin even ginned up a hashtag-ready motto for the shift: Zeitenwende, i.e. the dawn of a new era. Weeks later, it’s become clear that what German leaders are really trying to say is: ‘Let’s move on.’ On that score, the Germans have had about as much...

In Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, amid the deadly rumble of heavy Russian artillery, there is much that feels familiar. Not least a terrible feeling of dread. Nearly 30 years ago I was in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, a territory in southern Russia that dared declare independence from Moscow as the Soviet Union was breaking apart. The Chechens paid heavily for their presumption. The Russian army twice invaded and twice flattened the city in what has become a familiar Russian playbook for imposing control over outlying regions of the former Russian empire and bludgeoning people into submission. Ukraine is very different from Chechnya, which was a small territory of just one million people in the North Caucasus. Ukraine is a sovereign nation with a population of more than 40 million, an armed force of over 200,000 troops, and a...

The head of Ukrainian energy giant Naftogaz has accused European countries of funding Putin’s Ukraine war and called for a complete ban on Russian energy exports. “Russia earns USD 1 billion a day from its energy exports and this keeps its bloody regime afloat,” commented Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko in a recent interview with the Atlantic Council. “If the international community wants to impose crushing sanctions on Russia, this must include a full embargo of Russian gas, oil, and coal exports.” Vitrenko said that while Ukraine continues to provide gas transit services to Russia, it would be ready to lose transit revenues in order to stop the war. He expressed frustration over the position of Russia’s biggest EU customers, who have informed Ukraine that they are not yet ready to stop buying oil and gas from the Kremlin. So far, EU leaders have agreed to gradually phase out...

Last week, a Russian soldier surrendered a tank to Ukrainian military forces after his team fled, in return for $10,000 and a lenient jail sentence. “He could not return home because his commander said he would shoot him and write it off as combat losses," said a Ukrainian official. “He said the command of the troops was chaotic and practically absent. The demoralization was enormous.” Another mutiny occurred when Russian soldiers killed their commanding officer near Kyiv after half their comrades died. As Russian desertions increase, Ukraine offers $1 million to any Russian pilot who delivers a jet and $500,000 for a combat helicopter. NATO estimates that 40,000 out of Russia’s 190,000 troops in Ukraine have been killed, wounded, captured, or have gone missing in the first month of the war. So it’s not surprising that on March 25, Russia’s generals announced a retreat from Kyiv to the...