When Putin Passed The Ball to Trump: New Book Extract
The Volgograd Arena, one of the stadia used when Russia hosted the 2018 football World Cup. (Photo by the author, from March 2019.) This latest post is an extract from The Return of Russia about how Vladimir Putin has used international sporting events to boost Russia’s international standing. It...
‘The Return of Russia’: live events on my new book, Spring 2026
This latest post is on upcoming events about my new book The Return of Russia: from Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin. In the coming weeks, I will be Birmingham, in Chiswick, west London, in Derby, and in Bristol. The book is a concise political history...
The Return of Russia: new details of upcoming live events.
This post is an update on the latest live events planned about my new book The Return of Russia: from Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin. Between now and the end of May, I am due to be speaking in London, Birmingham, and Derby. Details below....
New Book ‘The Return of Russia’: Podcasts and Live Events
MY NEW BOOK, The Return of Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin is published in the US and the UK on January 27 as a hardback and eBook. I will be doing live events in the UK in the coming weeks, including at the...
Out Now: The BBC And The Challenge of Reporting from Cold War Moscow
I have written a chapter for this new book, Conflict Resolution and the Cold War: Media Encounters Across the Iron Curtain published on 22nd January. My contribution is called, The next most important British personage in Moscow? The BBC and Soviet Union during the early decades of the Cold...
The Jacket for My New Book: ‘The Return of Russia’
The jacket for my next book ‘The Return of Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin’ is ready.My thanks to the Yale University Press design team, and to Terry Stiastny, Andrei Soldatov, Precious N. Chatterje-Doody, and Professor Robert Service for reading advance copies, and for...
New Book ‘The Return of Russia’: Now Available for Pre-order At Special Price
MY NEXT BOOK The Return of Russia: From Lenin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin is currently available to pre-order. In the UK, Waterstones has a special offer until 23:59 on Friday 17 October: 25% off the cover price of £20. The Return of Russia by James...
Our Dear Friends in Moscow: A Story of Russia And A Warning to the West
This post reviews Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (Public Affairs, 2025) RIGHT FROM THE DAWN OF THIS CENTURY, in the early days of their careers as journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan saw where power was...
New Books Network Podcast on ‘Assignment Moscow’
On 18 August, I spoke to Paul Starobin for his ‘America and Beyond’ podcast (part of the New Books Network). Paul and I spoke for almost an hour about Assignment Moscow, and more. We talked about the experiences of foreign correspondents in Russia during Russia’s revolutionary year of 1917,...
Simple And Moving: In Ukraine, A Story of Deaths, Not Degrees
CHANGING KREMLIN POLICY SHAPED MY EDUCATION. In the fall of 1984, I went to university in England to study Modern Languages: Russian and French. The Cold War was in its most terrifying stage since the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. The United States and Soviet Union were engaged in...