How the West sleepwalked into another Cold War. A native of Yalta, Constantine Pleshakov is intimately familiar with Crimea's ethnic tensions and complex political history. Now, he offers a much-needed look at one of the most urgent flash points in current international relations: the first occupation and annexation of one European nation's territory by another since World War II. Pleshakov illustrates how the proxy war unfolding in Ukraine is a clash...

When the Soviet Union collapsed on December 26, 1991, it looked like the start of a remarkable new era of peace and co-operation. But Russia emerged from the 1990s battered and humiliated. Goaded on by a triumphant West, a new Russia has emerged with a large arsenal of upgraded weapons, conventional and nuclear, determined to reassert its national interests in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine, as well as fighting a proxy war in the Middle East. Conradi...

"The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad-while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat. They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One...

A senior Economist writer argues that the Kremlin's spymasters have excelled in their field beyond the capabilities of their Western-world adversaries, tracing the story behind the 2010 deportation of Anna Chapman while analyzing triumphs and disasters in Western intelligence throughout the Cold War as revealed by a leading Russian NATO spy.

"Russia's surprising return to the world stage since 2000 has aroused the curiosity-if not the fear-of the West. Gradually, the Kremlin went from a policy of deference to foreign powers to acting with independence. The driver of this transformation was President Vladimir Putin, who with skillful caution navigated Russia back into the ranks of global powers. In theaters of conflict such as Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, the Kremlin won significant victories...