Gabriel Gavin is a Moscow-based journalist covering central and eastern Europe.
In 1942, as Hitler’s forces swept through the Soviet Union, the Red Army went underground. Outside the city of Kerch in Crimea, 10,000 Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers dug into the caves of a limestone quarry, ready to defend their position to the last man. Intent on flushing them out, the Nazis bombed them from
‘Our home is our heart,’ a video posted by a couple from the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel begins, showing them cycling through its leafy streets and playing with their dogs. In a split second, the picture changes. Their house is on fire. Outside, a car has ploughed into a ditch, its young passengers shot dead.
Russian forces have reportedly been ordered to watch last year’s state-funded propaganda film Sky. The Kremlin-funded drama follows the lives of Russian airmen in Syria, where an estimated 18,000 people are believed to have died in Moscow’s bombings. With jets soaring through the sky and explosive special effects, it tells the story of Oleg Peshkov, a pilot shot
Goris, Armenia ‘Where we deploy our own troops within our own borders is nobody’s business but our own,’ Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said a few months ago, as tens of thousands of Russian soldier gathered close to the border with Ukraine. ‘They pose no threat to anybody.’ Now, with Russia’s brutal invasion of the
Yerevan, Armenia ‘This is our land,’ Anna says, looking out over her roadside flower shop. ‘Lenin promised it to us.’ Her father was born across the mountains in Russia, one of around 100,000 displaced Armenians only able to return home after world war two. ‘But thanks to Lenin, we have our own country. A free
Istanbul, Turkey A cheer rings out in a secret command centre. On the screen, another Russian missile launcher has vanished in a cloud of shrapnel and smoke. Working miles behind the front line, a team of Ukrainian drone operators is trying to turn the tide of the war against the Kremlin’s forces. The most effective
Istanbul, Turkey Wherever you go in Istanbul, Atatürk is rarely far away. Portraits of the man who founded the Turkish Republic hang in the Grand Bazaar and in apartment building foyers. His face is etched on everything from street signs to café mugs. With his vision of Turkey as a liberal, secular state, Atatürk set
In the Spring of 1988, the body of Britain’s most notorious Cold War spy was lowered into the ground at Kuntsevo cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow. Kim Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union, a quarter of a century earlier, had rocked the world of espionage. Western spooks were left scrambling to work out just
‘They wanted me to fight, and I knew I had to leave, or die.’ My translator, a former English teacher from Syria, was explaining how, after the army knocked on his door one day, he had fled the country and moved more than 2,000 miles to Liverpool. This was 2018, the bloody civil war was
Chelyabinsk is one of the most polluted places in the world. On 29 September 1957, an explosion ripped through the nearby Mayak nuclear plant — which processed plutonium for the Soviet Union’s atomic bombs — casting a cloud of highly radioactive debris across the central Russian region. Despite communist officials keeping the disaster tightly under
Zoliborz is one of Warsaw’s most prestigious addresses. Its leafy streets are popular with journalists, university professors and, as of last week, thousands of protestors. The suburb is home to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s former prime minister who has led the ruling Law and Justice party for close to two decades. Despite holding no government office
On Tuesday, Franek Sterczewski made a break for the border. Wearing a long trench coat and carrying a blue plastic bag, he managed to outrun one armed soldier before being stopped by a line of officers. Sterczewski, however, wasn’t fleeing his native Poland — he was trying to help those who desperately want to get
The EU is building a wall — and they’re going to make Belarus pay for it. This week, the tiny Baltic nation of Lithuania began erecting a barbed-wire border fence on its frontier with its neighbour, Europe’s most notorious autocracy. Meanwhile, Brussels is ramping up economic sanctions against Belarus. Lithuania’s parliament has declared a state
Russia made headlines last August when it triumphantly unveiled its pioneering coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V. But now, nearly a year on, it has a more dubious claim to fame – as the anti-vax capital of the world. For months now, sparkling clean pop-up clinics offering jabs to the public, with no appointment needed, have been
In 2001, US President George W. Bush stared into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and said he saw his soul. Joe Biden, on the other hand, famously claimed to have told the Russian leader, ‘I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ Now the new incumbent of the Oval Office might have
