At The Frontline Club in London: 25 Years of Putin
Russian soldiers in Grozny. Chechnya, March 2000. © James Rodgers Are you in London on March 26? If so, please join us at the Frontline Club for a discussion marking 25 years since Vladimir Putin was first elected president of Russia.On 26 March 2000, I was reporting for the...
Latest Radio Interviews on Russia and Ukraine
This week I have given a number of radio interviews on President Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war. My take essentially is that Russia and Ukraine remain too far apart for a ceasefire to work. With the United States having temporarily suspended arms supplies and intelligence...
Trump’s Ukraine Offer Gives Putin The Place He Wants in History
The White House, Washington DC, July 2024 © James Rodgers This piece was first published on the website of The Conversation on February 18, 2025. You can read that version here. The meeting in Saudi Arabia between senior delegations from the United States and Russia could be the first...
Crimea 2014: the West’s ‘terrible mistake’. Was it the first? War in Ukraine, two years after 2022
A hoarding opposite the Russian embassy in Berlin, February 2023 © James Rodgers This latest post is an article I wrote for a special issue of Baltic Rim Economies, published in February 2024 to mark the second anniversary of the escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine. You can read...
Defying Putin: Remembering Navalny, and my Gift from Ukraine
Flowers laid in memory of the Russian opposition politician, Boris Nemtsov, at the site of his murder near the Kremlin in 2015. Photograph from March 2019 © James Rodgers THE DEATH IN PRISON THIS WEEK of Alexei Navalny, the highest profile critic of Vladimir Putin, has reminded the world...
Tucker Carlson and Putin: A New Chapter in the Kremlin’s History with western media
This post brings together some of my media commentary on Carlson’s interview with Putin, which was posted on Carlson’s website on 8th February 2023 ‘THE ANSWER WE GOT SHOCKED US,’ Tucker Carlson told viewers of his interview with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He was explaining his astonishment at...
MOSCOW, OCTOBER 1993: when tank shells settled Russia’s political crisis
This was the worst political violence in Moscow since Russia's revolutionary year of 1917, and was much more than an aftershock of the political earthquake that had brought down Soviet power. ...
At Henley Literary Festival, Friday 6 October
On Friday 6 October, I will be appearing at Henley Literary Festival, in conversation with Keir Giles about our books on Russia. Keir is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody, published, like my own Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin, by Bloomsbury. We will be...
Journalism in the Russia-Ukraine War, and soaring sales of ‘1984’: recent podcast and radio interviews
THIS MONTH I have recorded two new podcast interviews, the first for Silicon Curtain with Jonathan Fink If you have not come across this series, do take a look at the other interviews, too. Jonathan gets excellent guests and the audience continues to grow. This time, Jonathan and I...
REPORTING RUSSIA: LIVE BOOK EVENT AT THE FRONTLINE CLUB, LONDON, 10 MAY 2022
Russia’s war in Ukraine has put journalism on the frontline both in covering the fighting itself, and in the way that new laws have made independent journalism in Russia all but impossible. These are just some of the issues I will be discussing in conversation with Nanette van der...