More properly known as "Owned Matthews," as there is a good case to be made that he is "owned" by the Kremlin, a case we will be making here.
He is a journalist (born 1971), whom we theorise the Kremlin probably got some sort of hold on during his lengthy stays in Moscow as Bureau Chief for Newsweek (2006-12). This was either through kompromat or from threats or leverage on members of his family -- he is half-Russian through his Soviet mother Lyudmila Bibikov and is married to another Russian, Xenia Kravchenko.
His career trajectory -- Oxford educated, reporting on Yugoslav and Balkan matters before moving onto Moscow -- would be exactly the kind that would lead the Kremlin to target him to convert into an agent of influence in the West, and Matthews is intelligent enough to do quite a good job at it, masking his toxic shillery behind a disguise of "political realism" and jaded cynicism, a bit like John Mearsheimer.
This is all very apparent in his latest piece for the Spectator, a masterclass in subtle shillery, where he uses weasly writing to push the myth of "Russian invincibility," "Putin's genius," and the "weakness of the West." Nice work if you can get it!
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