Vladimir Putin, the KGB and the German Nazi G...

When a 2023 club brawl ended in a Freetown, Sierra Leone parking lot shooting, cops and reporters pointed the finger at “Omar Shariff,” a portly Turkish millionaire who’d spent much of the past six months throwing cash about at the city’s casinos and top-end restaurants. But Shar ...  Show more

We told you his life story in our 2022 episode, and now we're back with the sequel. El Mencho rose from poverty to build the CJNG into Mexico’s most violent and influential cartel, trafficking fent, meth and coke across the hemisphere. After years on the run with a huge U.S. boun ...  Show more

A week on from an aborted uprising, Vladimir Putin is still standing. But for how long? The brief rebellion, launched by the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin, marked the greatest challenge to Putin's rule since he came to power, 23 years ago. The mercenary l ...  Show more

What’s it like to live next to the world’s worst neighbour: Vladimir Putin’s Russia? In 2024, pro-democracy Georgians are beaten for resisting their pro-Moscow government from enacting a Putinesque “foreign agents” law. Poland is rearming against the Russian threat, and the Balti ...  Show more

Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s chef”, leads the Wagner Group of mercenaries fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. He had lambasted Russia’s military leaders for months, but the mutiny he <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/06/24/wagner-rebels-turn-aga ...

For Western audiences, the past few weeks have been a torrent of information about what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine. Daily updates of Russian military advances. Horrifying videos of buildings exploding and innocent civilians being killed. Announcements of increasingly se ...