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Sanctions

‘Silent Partners’ – organised crime’s profitable collaboration with sanctioned regimes

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Three decades after the conclusion of Cold War 1.0, the global stage is witnessing an unsettling revival of Cold War dynamics and tensions. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to mark the start of a new era. However, relations between the United States of America, Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, [...]

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The EU: House of Cards?

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The gloss of the EU utopian ideal has well and truly tarnished. The EU-project has now come to mean very different things to different people. The Union now covers 27 countries, a combined population of around 447 million and a hugely diverse mix of cultures, nationalities, and social and economic circumstances. A white-collar worker in

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Iran: A sorry state

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Failed states are those unable to maintain economic or political credibility and in a virtual state of collapse, incapable to fulfil the functions of a national executive. Rogue states are those openly funding and supporting action with extreme prejudice that goes against the social contract of the supposedly peaceful world order and which thus choose

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Russian cold wars: It’s all Greek to me

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Timeo danaos et dona ferentes, runs the ancient maxim: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Today, we might update this to cavete a Graecis navibus navigantes – beware of Greeks sailing ships. Lloyds List has exposed, over the past six months, a fleet of tankers, registered in/owned by Greece and conducting operations in the waters of

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Divide and conquer: The Kremlin’s gambit

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Petrov’s Defence, known popularly as the Russian Game, is a chess opening based around symmetry: the second player matching the moves of the first through pawn, knight and so on, in a game that has a reputation for leading to protracted, difficult draws unless a player can seize upon a momentary advantage that may come

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Getting all your ducks in a row

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The environment for winning and retaining business has rarely been more challenging. Most prominently, in geo-political terms, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the knock-on effects on politics and economies worldwide. In addition, the rising tensions between China and Taiwan, an escalated war of words and ideology between various delineations of ‘East’ and ‘West’, and

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The magic black money tree

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While walking through the edge of Utah’s Fishlake Forest, it is possible to cross over 100 acres and simultaneously pass forty thousand trees, and just one. This is because the colony of Pando Aspen trunks (‘I spread’) share a single underground root system, with each apparently individual tree simply being part of a larger, hidden,

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Belgium and Russia: More than a Mere footnote?

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The death of Russian budget supermarket, Mere, in Belgium, just four months after opening can be read either as a cautionary tale of stunningly misreading the public mood on the part of the owners or a surprise that, given the strength of public feeling across Europe to Russian business, it took so long. Either way,

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The luxuries of avoiding sanctions

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Global sanctions on Russia continue apace, and there are rare admissions from within the country that these are working. Transport Minister, Vitaly Savelyev, has indicated that current trade logistics have been ‘virtually wrecked’, and the news that McDonalds and Starbucks are to permanently leave the country is, to the ordinary Russian, just as disappointing as

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