Here is my latest piece for Telegraph Blogs about Ukraine/Russia/MH17 that got picked up all over the place, and led to me appearing on Lateline (Australian TV) – the link to the recording of that interview and a transcript of it that they prepared is here: EMMA ALBERICI: Indeed. We’re looking […]
Here is the Putin video I referred to in the last post. Thanks to the miracles of WordPress it is now so easy to embed videos that even I can do it… I am now using this clip in Negotiating or Speechwriting masterclasses as a unique and in a way supreme […]
Two terrific pieces by Ben Judah on Vladimir Putin and the Russia he is making. The first has achieved instant acclaim, a searching and meticulously researched account of a Day in The Life of the Russian President in his bullet-proof bubble. One powerful, perfectly turned paragraph after another: And now […]
The Russian Embassy in London says on its website that it has written a letter of protest to the Daily Mirror: Mr. Lloyd Embley Editor «Daily Mirror» Dear Sir, The Embassy has noticed the article «Vladimir Putin’s daughter flees £2million Dutch penthouse flat as fury grows over jet tragedy» published […]
My latest piece at Telegraph Blogs on the MH17 disaster and who knows what has picked up a lot of attention, including in Australia: The cause of the attack on the plane will have been known immediately to the Russian side. Missiles capable of hitting aircraft at that altitude cannot […]
Long time no blog. Too much work that (unlike writing here) pays something, including mulling over my first book on the general theme of diplomatic speechwriting. Then there’s been the World Cup. I currently am busy preparing for several masterclasses in Poland later this month, on Diplomatic Drafting and (now) […]
Here is the link to my latest foray with Voice of Russia. I was on the programme for a panel discussion with Sarah Lain (RUSI), Martin McCauley (SOAS) in London, and Simon Fentham-Fletcher of RenAsset Management (via feed from Moscow). The discussion is hosted by Peter Lavelle, an American based in […]
When I was over in Moscow in late 2011 as an official observer of the Duma elections, I made my doomed trip to Nizhny Novgorod by train. Part of the fun was waiting at the large railway station in Moscow, where we passed the time having a go with air-guns […]
The bombastic smirking of Russia’s Victory Day parades is on a quite new scale this year. And why not? How often these days does a country get to boast to itself that it has grabbed part of some other country’s territory and seemingly got away with it? How did we […]
Things have slackened off again here, what with one thing and another. But here is the hefty piece I wrote about Ukraine last week for the Daily Telegraph. To be precise, I did not write it. I dictated it into my iPad from my hotel room in Gjakova (also known […]
