KGB related content 

Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev One night in January this year, a bronze statue of Azerbaijan's late strongman ruler Heydar Aliyev vanished from its perch on Paseo de la...

The death of the exiled Russian oligarch gives the Russian opposition a chance to refashion itself London's Frontline Club is one of my favourite haunts. The bar is full of...

A round-up of the international press on Friday, 14 December. EU leaders last night agreed to establish a single banking supervision regime and gave Greece new emergency...

A round-up of the international press on Tuesday, 20 November. Moody's, one of the big three credit-ratings agencies, has lowered France's rating from Aa1 from Aaa...

Ukraine's powerful but lonely president. When Viktor Yanukovych became Ukraine's president in 2010, he said the EU would be his top foreign-policy priority. Many were...

What to do in the face of 12 more years of Putin? Follow the money, for a start. The bombast and luxury were spectacular, but the foreign guestlist was on the sparse side....

Trade between Belarus and the EU is booming. That must change if the Lukashenka regime's abuse of human rights is to end,. Belarus is officially under a state of emergency....

A fine exploration of how – and why – Russia has failed to come to terms with Soviet crimes. “It was a long time ago, and it never happened anyway” is a chronicle of...

Will Belarusia's 'hick' outlast Russia's strongman? Probably. In 2010, Russian television aired a four-part series on Belarus's President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. It gave it...

Vladimir Putin and his regime have been accused of many things, but some of the charges are simply incorrect. As the spotlight of world opinion has swivelled towards Russia...

Protesters are back on the streets of Moscow, but the rest of the world does not seem to care. Twenty years ago, the new democratic leaders of Russia were left to be dragged...

Today's protests against Russia's leadership have strong echoes of the demonstrations of 20 years ago. The Russian Federation of today is not the Soviet Union of 1991. But...

Dmitry Medvedev offered an illusion of change. Now that the illusion has been dispelled, what policy should the West follow? The prospect of 12 more years of Vladimir Putin...

The film of le Carré's classic spy novel deserves its plaudits, but fails to capture the heart of Cold War espionage. The new film version of John le Carré's...

A documentary about the death of Poland's former president makes other conspiracy theories look like serious historical research. What's ‘illuminati' spelled backwards?...

Reflecting on the events that formed and maintained a divided Europe. I would like to compliment

Eastern Europe has plenty of conspiracy theories, but the truth is more prosaic: markets are usually wrong. Was it all a conspiracy? It is not the first time in eastern...

Everything seems to be up for grabs in the ex-communist countries of eastern Europe and beyond Look round eastern Europe and the news reads like a thriller: call it The...

The takeover of a London newspaper by Aleksandr Lebedev has all the makings of a political thriller. How about this for a thriller plot? An ex-KGB officer who was in London...

A film about a failed coup in Estonia in the 1920s has lessons for today's leaders as they similar economic hardships. Two years ago, when the script for ‘December Heat',...