The Russian spies hiding in plain sight
Yet it's not out of the question – as we learn from this thrilling book by the journalist Shaun Walker, which grabs you by the lapels from the very first page. It recounts the 100-year history of the covert Russian agents known in the SVR as 'illegals' (as opposed to the spies thinly disguised as diplomats abroad, the 'legals'). The murder of Trotsky in Mexico in August 1940, when an ice-pick was planted in the back of his head, was one of the proudest triumphs of the illegals programme.
Ironically, Trotsky's early life as an outlaw Bolshevik, creeping about the capitals of Europe under various aliases, would foreshadow and inspire the illegals. Consider the time Lenin and the gang met up in a pub in Islington, claiming to be a convention of foreign barbers. There's a direct line from here to the outlandish adventures of Dmitry Bystrolyotov, the most colourful of the characters whose stories Walker tells. He was a handsome fellow with a raffish moustache who at different times passed himself off as a Dutch artist, a Greek businessman, an English aristocrat and a Canadian timber merchant.
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Sky News
27 minutes ago
- Sky News
Europe's sanctions on Russia were to starve Putin's funds - instead something else has happened
Why is Donald Trump threatening to impose sanctions, or tariffs, or maybe both, on India in relation to the Ukraine war? The short answer is that India has established itself as one of the single most important customers for one of the single most important products made in Russia: crude oil. You only have to glance at the data on Russian fossil fuel exports to see what I mean. Nor is it just India. China has raised its imports of Russian fossil fuels by 44% since the imposition of sanctions. Back before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, by far and away the biggest recipient of Russian energy exports was Europe. Then Europe imposed sanctions on various different Russian products, most notably oil. The idea was to starve Vladimir Putin of the revenues he is using to fund the Russian war machine. Instead, something else happened: those Russian tankers which previously delivered oil to Europe instead started sending it to Indian oil refineries. The Middle Eastern oil tankers that had previously served those Russian refineries began sending their oil to Europe. Nothing, fundamentally, really changed. And while Europeans are no longer taking direct shipments of Russian oil, they are taking plenty of shipments of oil products - from diesel and petrol to kerosene - made from Russian oil in Indian refineries. In the face of this, Europe and its G7 allies have subsequently begun to try to prevent those tankers from taking Russian oil at all. A price cap was imposed on legitimate shipping companies, limiting the amount of revenue Russia could derive from its exports. That, in turn, created another step-shift: Russia began to build up its own "shadow fleet" of tankers which it used to carry on sending oil to India and China. And so, in the latest episode of sanctions "whack-a-mole", the G7 has begun to implement a separate round of bans on that shadow fleet. Now, the point is not that any of these measures were pointless. Each has made a marginal difference in clamping down on Russia and limiting its revenues. But the whole exercise has proved far harder than expected. All of which is why Donald Trump is now talking about raising tariffs or imposing sanctions on India. He has discussed imposing secondary sanctions on countries continuing to do business with Russia. For all that he is being painted as one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies, in reality, these are dramatic economic levers that even Joe Biden stopped short of pulling. The question is whether they do indeed get activated - and what happens next in the game of sanctions "whack-a-mole".
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
Rachel Reeves's self-defeating attack on British racing
Few British traditions can claim as long a history as racing. The first races thought to have taken place in these islands were organised by Roman soldiers encamped in Yorkshire, pitting English horses against Arabian. By the 900s, King Athelstan was placing an export ban on English horses due to their superiority over their continental equivalents. The first recorded race meeting took place under Henry II in Smithfield as part of the annual Bartholomew Fair. Nearly 1,000 years later, racing remains the nation's second most popular spectator sport. Five million people attend more than 1,400 meets throughout the year. The industry is estimated to be worth more than £4 billion, contributing around £300 million to the Exchequer, and supports some 80,000 jobs. No activity better unites Benjamin Disraeli's 'two nations'. Royal Ascot, the Derby and the Grand National are cornerstones of the sporting calendar. Britain still produces many of the world's finest horses, jockeys and races. More than 600 million people across 140 countries tune in to the National each year; in this country alone, around 13 million people, a quarter of adults, bet on it. Britain's racing success is something to be proud of, which naturally means that Rachel Reeves has decided to go after it. The Treasury is proposing to increase the 15 per cent tax on bookmaker profits to 21 per cent – the same levy faced by online slot games and casinos. The British Horseracing Authority predicts the rate hike would cause a £330 million loss of revenue in its first five years, and put more than 2,500 jobs at risk in the first year alone. In response to the proposal, the BHA has called a strike for 10 September – the first in the industry's history. Rather than racing, jockeys, owners and trainers will decamp to Westminster to lobby MPs. The industrial action is expected to cost around £700,000. Many senior figures in the world of racing fear that increased costs for operators would mean less money available for promoting the sport. Worse odds would be offered to customers, making bookmakers less competitive compared with black market sites, which are now more easily accessible than ever thanks to the large increase in Virtual Private Network downloads by people trying to circumvent the Online Safety Act. Reduced turnover means reduced profits for bookmakers, 10 per cent of which are paid to a levy designed to support the sport through prize money, veterinary research and equine welfare. Even before the Treasury's planned hike, the recent introduction of more stringent affordability checks on online gambling means that turnover is down and fewer thoroughbreds are being bred. British racing is falling behind as owners, riders and horses decamp abroad to wealthier competitions. This leaves the long-term sustainability of British racing under threat. The Chancellor's latest attempt to find a few pennies down the back of the Treasury sofa would repeat the error of last year's inheritance tax raid on farmers and the imposition of VAT on private schools. It is a mean-spirited and self-defeating assault on a part of the country's history and way of life that the Labour party does not seek to understand. If racing unites the upper and lower classes, it is uniquely vulnerable to stigmatisation by the middle-class prudes found so dis-proportionately among our governing lanyard class. Of course, many Labour MPs are enthusiastic supporters of racing – 23 represent racecourse constituencies. But any attempt to squeeze the industry until the pips squeak is representative of a Treasury mentality that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Taxing bookmaking at the same rate as online gambling draws a false equivalence between the two that ignores their fundamental differences. A punter at a race might enjoy six or seven bets in a day at most; an enthusiastic online gambler could place that number in a minute. Betting on racing requires research and skill (incidentally, The Spectator's own racing tipster, Penworthy, has had an excellent year). In contrast, online casinos are the gambling equivalent of Pac-Man, colourful distractions designed to be played on a loop. That is why online gambling and gaming make up the overwhelming majority of gambling addiction cases. In its zeal for protecting the vulnerable, the Gambling Commission, supported by the Treasury, could strangle the life out of the industry it regulates. In her quest to make her sums add up, Reeves may embark on another experiment which costs more than it raises. Reeves and the Treasury should recognise that next month's strike is an extraordinary protest from an industry facing an existential threat. Rather than breaking with the tradition of treating bookmaking differently to online gambling, the government should extend the industry support, through direct grants or a reformed betting levy. Yet with each day bringing rumours of the Treasury eyeing potential targets, the odds of the Chancellor putting the turf's future before her spreadsheets seem slim. Who would be willing to bet on it?
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
Putin's trap: how Russia plans to split the western alliance
Though you wouldn't know from the smiles around the table at the White House this week, a trap has been set by Vladimir Putin designed to split the United States from its European allies. In Washington on Monday, Europe's leaders, plus Sir Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed with Donald Trump that the killing in Ukraine should and can be ended as soon as possible. They lavished praise on Trump for reaching out to the Kremlin, despite having themselves treated Putin as a pariah for the past three years. And they even enthusiastically applauded the notion of security guarantees similar to Nato's Article Five 'all-for-one and one-for-all' mutual defence clause as a way to safeguard Ukraine's borders in the future. But behind every one of these apparently promising areas of agreement lurks a fatal misunderstanding of the intentions of the one man in the world who has the power to make the war stop – Putin. Let us not forget that the Washington talks were based on Trump and his team's highly optimistic interpretation of what Putin had agreed to in Anchorage, Alaska. That team included precisely zero Russia experts capable of reading the hidden meaning behind Putin's weasel words. Steve Witkoff, Trump's leading point man on Kremlin affairs, is a real estate lawyer with no experience of diplomacy. And the last time that Trump himself spoke in person to Putin, in Helsinki in 2018, he was quickly persuaded by his Russian counterpart that Kremlin election interference was all just a big hoax. One of Putin's great skills is appearing to be measured and constructive when in fact he's being insincere, intransigent or plain threatening. Take his innocuous-sounding remarks at the post-summit Anchorage press conference. In order to achieve a long-term settlement in Ukraine, Putin said: 'We need to eliminate all the primary root causes of the conflict.' Decoded, that is a clear reference to Putin's historical thesis that Ukraine is an invented country that has been used for centuries by Russia's enemies as a base from which to attack Moscow – and in his view remains so today. He called, apparently reasonably, for Trump to 'consider all the legitimate concerns of Russia and reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world on the whole'. But to Putin that 'just balance' means a withdrawal of most Nato forces from countries along Russia's borders. The remark that has caused most excitement among European leaders was Putin's assurance that 'naturally we are prepared to work on' Trump's suggestion that 'the security of Ukraine should be secured'. Trump and his team came away from Anchorage in the belief that Putin had acquiesced to western security guarantees – and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff himself have been touting that as a major breakthrough. In truth it's no such thing. Security guarantees were discussed at length during the abortive peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in April 2022, and detailed plans of what those guarantees might look like were included in three drafts of a peace deal that was never signed. Back then Russia, absurdly, tried to insist on itself being a guarantor of Ukraine's security as in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, and on having a veto over any intervention. But that point was never resolved after Europe promised Ukraine it could win the war in the field rather than compromise at the negotiating table. Trump was caught on a hot mic in the White House telling his European guests: 'I think Putin wants to make a deal. You understand that? As crazy as it sounds!' In fact, it doesn't sound crazy at all – Putin undoubtedly does want to make a deal. But what Trump has not yet grasped is that Putin wants to make it on his own terms. And therein lies Putin's trap. His plan for the endgame in the war is to do everything in his power to convince Trump – his new best buddy and business partner – that he is behaving reasonably, making concessions, bending over backwards to keep dialogue open. At the same time, he will lay down a series of conditions that Zelensky will refuse to accept. At which point Europe will be forced to choose between heroic and principled words about refusing to compromise Ukraine's sovereignty – which would mean supporting Ukraine's war effort without US assistance – and an ignoble compromise with the Kremlin. Take the 'land swaps' which Trump has mentioned so many times. In reality, that's a reference to Putin's demand that Kyiv surrender control of the third of Donetsk and a small sliver of Luhansk provinces that he has so far failed to take. In exchange, Putin proposes to withdraw from small chunks of Sumy and Kharkiv provinces that he occupies, and also drop his claim on the remainder of Kherson and Zaporizhia. Effectively he's demanding some very valuable and heavily defended real estate – including the fortress cities of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Konstantinovka – in exchange for land that he has not yet been able to conquer. Amazingly, Trump has reportedly agreed that this is a reasonable price for Kyiv to pay for peace. Yet Zelensky cannot surrender this territory either politically or practically. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died defending those positions, and it's possible that his troops would refuse orders to withdraw even if he tried to make them. And Ukraine's ultranationalists would be literally up in arms over such a betrayal, making Ukraine instantly ungovernable. Putin has laid a similar political minefield for Zelensky and his European allies over legal recognition of the territories he has occupied. Again, Trump is reportedly in favour of forcing Kyiv to de jure recognise Crimea as Russian, while leaving the rest of occupied Ukraine in a legal limbo. Again, such a humiliation would be political death for any Ukrainian leader who made it and incur the armed wrath of legions of angry, heavily armed, well-organised and politically vocal veterans groups such as Azov. Putin has dozens more such humiliations in store for Kyiv and its backers before he is ready to end his assault on Ukraine. On the economic front, his wish list includes the lifting of sanctions, a resumption of flights and the unfreezing of billions of Central Bank assets. On the geopolitical front, he wants a constitutional guarantee that Ukraine will never join Nato and restrictions on weapons and troops Nato can deploy to border countries such as the Baltic states, Romania and Poland, as well as an assurance of no more Nato eastward expansion to Moldova and Georgia. In Ukraine, he would demand the enshrinement of Russian as an official language, granting Russian-speaking regions the right to their own education and examinations, and the restoration of the properties of the wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which remains loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. He would also insist on scrapping Ukrainian laws banning Soviet symbols and suppressing the memory of Soviet-era war heroes and cultural figures, in addition to allowing towns to restore demolished monuments to Russian tsars and writers. Putin would have Kyiv un-ban Russian-language radio and TV stations and newspapers, as well as political parties sympathetic to Moscow, and unfreeze the assets of the 5,000 people sanctioned for being pro-Russian by Ukrainian presidential decree. That's to mention just the top dozen of Putin's demands. Some he will get, some he won't. But we can be sure that he will push for all of them, and more. The question for Europe is stark: what will they do if and when Ukraine refuses to submit? If Trump is fine about surrendering the remainder of Donbas, we can be sure that he's not likely to take a stand against Putin over such details as statues of Pushkin or the rights of the suppressed Russian Church (a major grievance for religious-minded MAGA supporters). J.D. Vance, the US Vice-President, has made his position on Europe clear. 'This is your neck of the woods… you guys have got to step up and take a bigger role in this thing,' he said earlier this month. 'If you care so much about this conflict you should be willing to [fund] this war yourself.' The US, for its part, 'wants to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing, we want to stop the killing', he added. Trump has repeatedly promised to do his best to play the peacemaker. But if the Ukrainians and their allies don't wish to agree, Washington will walk away. 'Keep fighting,' wrote Trump last week. 'Good luck.' The brutal truth is that for the past three years the Europeans have been lying to Ukraine and themselves. In the spring of 2022, Europe, led by Boris Johnson, encouraged Zelensky to fight on and promised Ukraine 'as much support as they need for as long as they need it'. Ukraine kept its part of the bargain, and with the help of hundreds of billions in military and financial aid pushed Putin's far larger army back from over half of the territory it once occupied. That's an extraordinary achievement. But it hasn't been enough to win. And by this point many of Kyiv's most passionate defenders in Europe are starting to acknowledge that there is little military or political point in fighting on. Others, like the Baltic nations, disagree. For those allies who believe that it's time to call it a day, the main point that remains to be decided is how Ukraine's reduced new borders can be protected in a way that Putin will not dare to challenge. Starmer and Emmanuel Macron's idea of putting Nato boots on the ground is foolish and misunderstands that the basis of Putin's paranoid logic in starting the war was to avoid precisely that outcome. The 'Nato Article Five-like' security guarantees of which Italy's Giorgia Meloni spoke in Washington this week (albeit accompanied by extravagant air quotes) sound formidable. The problem is that security guarantees have to be credible to work. And will Putin believe that Starmer or Macron will send their voters' sons to fight over Donbas, when they have already said that their proposed minuscule peacekeeping force will be 'backstopped' by US air power? Of more practical use is a proposal to create a network of air defences made of Patriot batteries and drones along the length of Ukraine's border, funded by Europe. That's what Ukraine's reported offer to buy $100 billion in US weaponry is about, and includes a staggering $50 billion to develop new-generation drones in partnership with the world's biggest experts in Ukraine itself. Ben Wallace, the former UK defence secretary, has called Trump the 'appeaser-in-chief' and warned that the peace process could be 'another Munich 1938', when independent Czechoslovakia was sacrificed to Hitlerite aggression. But that is a bad analogy. At Munich, Sir Neville Chamberlain failed to avert war. Today's Ukraine, with western help, has failed to win a war. But neither have they lost. Instead, like Finland in 1941, they have heroically fought a much stronger adversary to a halt and saved 80 per cent of their country and now face a bloody, attritional stalemate. Putin would like nothing more than for Europe to encourage Ukraine to fight on, and to lose even more of their land and independence. The question Ukraine's friends must ask themselves today is whether it's time to choose an unjust peace over a righteous but never-ending war.
