The evidence at Nuremberg Two of Russian war crimes will be overwhelming. Satellite images, drone footage, eye-witness accounts, Bellingcat open-sour… - John Sweeney

The gossip inside the Moscow beltway is that the assassination [of Boris Nemtsov] was commissioned by Putin's psychopathic quisling in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and that Putin was furious with him for ordering the hit. I don't know whether that is true or not. It's possible that Kadyrov did have Nemtsov killed of his own volition; it's also possible that Kadyrov over-interpreted a Putin criticism, a bit like Henry II's comment, 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' on Thomas a Becket; it's possible that Putin had Nemtsov killed and his goons switched on the fog machine and pointed it at Kadyrov. Readers who find this unsatisfactory are asked to go back to the sentence in the introduction of this book: 'It's hard to check facts in Russia because if you do it properly you end up dead' and start again.

Putin is a rational actor inside a bunker, so deep, so deprived of light and information, that he is pulling levers without understanding how the modern world is responding, without understanding that some of his levers at least are no longer working, without understanding that invading countries at peace is what the Nazis did.

Russia and the true nature of Russian power is fabulously hard to read. You can watch the Bentleys swish by and drink cocktails in the Metropol Hotel and not get it that you are living inside a twenty-first century kleptocracy which will crush you if you choose not to accept its crooked rules. All becomes much clearer, much faster, close to light-speed fast, when you challenge the source of that power, the secret police state within a state.