Writer and historian, Associate Editor Spectator Magazine, Daily Telegraph columnist, ex-Newsweek Moscow Istanbul bureau chief. [email protected]
Joined February 2012
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owen matthews retweeted
What does 'victory' in Ukraine mean – or 'defeat'? Can there be lasting peace without justice? Direct talks between Russia, the US and Ukraine will finally commence in Abu Dhabi early next month, marking the beginning of the end of this bloody war.
As Kyiv and Moscow, plus their respective allies, prepare to thrash out the details of a grand bargain, it's vitally important to clarify what we mean by 'victory' or 'capitulation', as those terms get thrown around by politicians observing the war's closing act.
A hot mess of false starts, betrayals, Russian dissembling and European denunciation lies ahead.
And like exhausted sumo wrestlers taking up position on opposite sides of the ring before the final bout, both the Kremlin and Kyiv have, on the eve of talks, retreated to something close to their most maximalist negotiating postures.
✍️ Owen Matthews
Article | spectator.com/article/trump-… | @owenmatth
owen matthews retweeted
New additions to the growing line of former ministers across Europe who call for the transfer of Russian Central Bank assets, once they no longer have the power to achieve this.
thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…
owen matthews retweeted
Behold: This tweet and video are co-produced by a Ukrainian and a Russian official who have also co-produced a local truce along a significant section of the frontline.
History in the making? Fingers crossed.
This is how the process unfolded. I am sharing a video I filmed today together with @yana_lantratova, the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights.
☝️Humanitarian aid has arrived. People are now on their way. I am accompanying them: some buses are heading to Ukraine, while others are travelling to the territory of the Russian Federation.
This mission was made possible through the mediation of the First Lady of the United States, @FLOTUS. I would like to thank her.
❗️I am also grateful to the Defense Forces of Ukraine for strictly observing the ceasefire.
owen matthews retweeted
The French Atlantique 2 was there to detect, monitor and identify maritime threats. And that's exactly what it did, detecting the drone almost 40 minutes in advance.
The job of the French aircraft was to spot the threat and provide the warning. What happened next was up to the Bulgarian Navy. It was their responsibility to decide whether and how to intercept or destroy it.
It was the Bulgarian Navy itself that referred to bad weather conditions and the fact that the incident took place in its exclusive economic zone, not in Bulgarian territorial waters.
The French did their part. The rest was in the hands of the Bulgarian Navy. 🤷♂️
⚓ L'engagement de la France pour la sécurité maritime et la liberté de navigation est quotidien.
🚨 Contribution active d'un avion de patrouille maritime 🇫🇷 à une opération d'assistance en mer Noire : 18 vies sauvées 🛡️
🔍 En mer Noire, un Atlantique 2 de la @MarineNationale qui menait un vol de surveillance maritime a détecté trois drones de surface qui ciblaient un bâtiment civil.
La présence de l'aéronef a permis de :
📢 Détecter la menace et alerter l'équipage
📡 Diffuser la position du navire aux autorités compétentes et aider à coordonner les opérations de secours avec les forces navales bulgares mobilisées
🛑 Alerter les autres navires navigant dans la zone du danger potentiel.
Coordination, confiance et efficacité opérationnelle entre forces armées partenaires 🤝
owen matthews retweeted
Защо не бе спасен контейнеровозът с 421 контейнера на борда?
Над Черно море тече мисия за Enhanced Air Policing на НАТО, благодарение на активността на румънците.
От 7 дни патрулира специализиран френски самолет за ранно засичане и с възможност за радиоелектронна борба Atlantique 2. Около 60 мин. преди 3 руски дрона Murena-300S (според Reuters) да ударят кораба французите предупреждават българските власти за посоката им на движение.
Възникват 5 ключови въпроса:
1. Самолетът можел ли е да опита да заглуши и отклони дроновете, ако българските власти бяха поискали? Всичко се развива в нашата зона на отговорност. Отговор от България няма.
2. Испански F-18M Hornet (базиран в Румъния) е бил в готовност да унищожи дроновете. Имало ли е такава молба от България и ако "не" - защо?
3. По-важното - питали ли са ни французите дали да ги унищожат, а българските власти да са замълчали?
4. Радев казва, че не знае какви са дроновете, тогава от какво са се притеснявали да ги унищожат и спасят кораба, 421 контейнера и българското Черноморие от тежко замърсяване?
5. Кой е решил, че въоръжените самолети могат да защитят търговски кораб на 11 морски мили от брега, но не и на 17 морски мили, когато е под непосредствена атака? На кое конкретно правно основание?
България пропуска всички възможности дроновете да бъдат унищожени, след като са засечени 60 мин. преди да се взривят.
Аргументът на управляващите, че нямат право на това извън териториални води е нелеп. Дроновете не плават под ничий флаг. Те са без каквато и да е идентификация, съответно представлявайки опасност за корабоплаването има възможност да бъдат неутрализирани.
Радев дължи обяснение на какво конкретно международноправно основание твърди, че България не е могла да пресече непосредствена атака срещу цивилен кораб извън териториалните води.
Нищо от това не е направено. От Демократична България ще искаме изслушване на премиера, министъра на отбраната, началника на отбраната и началника на Военно разузнаване.
owen matthews retweeted
A container ship attacked by maritime drones has sunk off the coast of Bulgaria; there were Ukrainians on board.
The vessel Contship Jet, owned by a Greek company, was heading from the Israeli port of Haifa to the Romanian port of Constanța carrying a cargo of 421 containers.
All 18 crew members - 14 Filipino nationals and four Ukrainians - were evacuated by a Bulgarian warship and brought to Varna.
Unfortunately, a "joint coordination mechanism, consultations, and data exchange" is not what will stop Russia.
Black Sea NATO members must act together to prevent such attacks: deploy a naval patrol group and strengthen defense capabilities.
owen matthews retweeted
I’ve seen Caolan Robertson’s response, where he acknowledges lifting our video. He blames it on his editor but ultimately takes responsibility.
It’s always good to see people own their mistakes, it makes this space better for everyone. I appreciate it and accept his apology.
The five seconds of video is easy to dismiss, but five seconds of an animated map takes hours of work — research from a journalist and manual work from a videographer and a graphic designer. Our video team is small but we do our best to make sure our video reporting is well researched and properly sourced.
Caolan @CaolanReports says he wants to learn from this and improve his practices. I think that’s the right call, especially since other journalists have spoken out about past cases where Caolan used their work without credit. Hopefully, this will be the push to review those practices. It would help to look into the video’s origin before launching a public attack, too.
As for further steps.
Caolan says he emailed us to resolve it. We have checked our inboxes, including organization’s and my own, and found no messages from him. He is very welcome to reach me or the team directly. A private conversation is always more effective.
On the copyright claim. Yesterday, Caolan filed an appeal to our claim with Youtube, which automatically blocks our right to retract the claim while the appeal is being considered.
That said, we decided we will not contest his appeal or take legal action about the copyright infringement. If we don’t participate, YouTube will likely remove the strike from his channel. We made this decision because Caolan acknowledged his mistake and pledged to improve.
I hope this ends it and we can all move on and focus on our actual work: bringing truthful reporting from Ukraine to the world.
owen matthews retweeted
Самый мощный ударный корабль российского флота — атомный крейсер «Петр Великий» — решили не восстанавливать из-за износа
meduza.io/news/2026/10/30/sa…
owen matthews retweeted
Since a few Kyiv Independent readers have asked, I’d like to explain what happened with Caolan Robertson’s video, out of respect for our supporters.
Our team found that a video on Caolan’s @CaolanReports YouTube channel included a fragment of an earlier Kyiv Independent video, used without permission and without a request for permission. It wasn’t just footage. It was an animated map that takes our team a lot of work to produce.
Importantly, Caolan’s video cropped out our logo from the fragment. Instead of crediting our work, it fully removed the attribution to the Kyiv Independent. That isn’t citation or fair use.
Our team member did what is standard when your content is used this way on YouTube: They filed a copyright report. YouTube reviewed the case and removed the video. We follow the same process whenever our work is used without permission, regardless of who the creator is.
Worth noting that a removal like this doesn’t kill the creator’s work: The video can simply be re-uploaded without the copyrighted material.
So I was surprised that Caolan instead chose to publicly attack the journalists whose work he lifted, and to appeal to journalistic solidarity in a case where he didn’t demonstrate any.
Our team has been reporting on the ground in Ukraine since before the full-scale invasion. We’re independent, funded mostly by our readers, and we earn every dime. We’re very proud of our work, from front-line reporting to war crimes investigations. We respect the work of other journalists and expect the same for ours.
I wish Caolan all the best in telling his audience about Ukraine. If he ever wants to use our work, he’s welcome to ask, like anyone else.
We are all on the same side when it comes to this: We want as many voices as possible telling the world about Ukraine. But being on the same side means respecting and crediting each other’s work. Credit matters because the reporting everyone draws on has to come from somewhere.
Thank you.
owen matthews retweeted
Russia’s most powerful nuclear-powered cruiser, the Pyotr Velikiy, is to be scrapped
It is the flagship of Russia’s Northern Fleet and the only operational nuclear-powered vessel of the Orlan-class project.
A commission has deemed the cruiser’s repair and modernisation unfeasible. The ship has completely exhausted its service life and is beyond restoration.
The cruiser was originally scheduled for modernisation after work on the Admiral Nakhimov was completed. However, repairs to the latter dragged on for eight years, during which time the Pyotr Velikiy became completely obsolete.
Two other cruisers of the same class, the Admiral Ushakov and Admiral Lazarev, have already been decommissioned and are awaiting scrapping.
Earlier, reports emerged that repairs to the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov had effectively been halted. The ship has been undergoing repairs since 2017, but work has virtually ground to a halt in recent months.
owen matthews retweeted
“Ragozin’s case also raises questions about Canada’s military presence in Latvia, where Canadian troops are said to be defending “freedom, democracy and peace” as part of a NATO mission on the Russian border.
Ragozin said he believes the threat that Russia poses to Latvia and other Baltic states “is real.
“However, when it comes to domestic politics, the threat mongering, the war mongering, is a tool of political business,” he explained.”
NEW: While Mark Carney moves Canada closer to the EU and hails our “shared values,” member state Latvia is busy deporting critics.
This month, the Latvian government declared journalist @leonidragozin “persona non grata” and cancelled his residency permit. He had lived there for 12 years.
readthemaple.com/canada-deep…
owen matthews retweeted
This is what I wrote in November 2025 about the 28-point peace plan. Sounds familiar today, doesn’t it?
"What matters to (Putin) is not an agreement with Ukraine, but an agreement with the U.S. in which Washington formally recognizes Moscow’s terms. That is why the provision on “Russia-NATO dialogue” will become the centerpiece for the Kremlin. Putin will seek to expand it, elevate it and make it the main axis of any negotiation.
Within this dialogue, he will revive the ultimatum of 2021, in which he demanded that NATO retreat to its 1997 borders. Ukraine, for the Kremlin, is a secondary question to be resolved within a broader U.S.-Russia-NATO negotiation over the post-Cold War security architecture. Putin has already defined what outcomes he considers acceptable, and he will approach the negotiations as a victor."
owen matthews retweeted
Whatever tiny amount of freedom exists in Russia is being extinguished, bit by bit. rferl.org/a/russia-newspaper…
owen matthews retweeted
Honoured to appear on @borzou’s podcast Badlands:
“For years, journalist Leonid Ragozin has tracked the far right across eastern Europe, reporting on fascist and neo-Nazi movements in Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia.
It has cost him everything. As the fringe groups crept into the mainstream, they’ve targeted him for retribution. He’s now something of a triple exile, all but banned from the countries he knows and loves.
In the latest episode of badlands, Leonid joins host Borzou Daragahi for a discussion about the challenges he faced while covering the rise of rightwing extremism in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia.
He discusses his own journey in the post-Soviet world, including his embrace of the Ukrainian Maidan movement, and his growing disillusionment with events in the country. He also describes the rise of neo-Nazi influence in eastern Europe and the connections between fringe groups and like-minded players in the West.”
borzou.substack.com/p/how-eu…
owen matthews retweeted
1/14 The war is becoming harder to sustain and harder to end. Kyiv is recovering territory while Russia destroys the economic foundations of its resistance. Washington explores a bargain w/ Moscow; Europe pays more but struggling to shape the settlement. Essential Ukraine #32. 🧵
owen matthews retweeted
Essential point. Whatever the current majority moods about peace and war among Ukrainians, the mobilized nationalist minority has only become more politically influential, enough to override them. This has happened not because of any significant nationalist conversion, but because of massive population displacement in particular. Too many have chosen exit and adaptive loyalty over voice. Those who were more privileged and organized have been amplified, while those who were more plebeian and atomized have become even more politically marginalized. This class dynamic of the war makes the majority of Ukrainians something like hostages in our country.
owen matthews retweeted
30 October 1961. Tupolev Tu-95V No. 5800302 carrying the RDS-220 bomb. The bomber had a nine-man crew, including navigator Major Ivan Nikoforovich Mite. The shock wave from the explosion travelled around the world three times.
