Tim Marshall

It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Crimean War of 1853–6

North European Plain

Warsaw Pact in 1955

base was built in Chechnya to deter any would-be attackers, be they the Mongol Golden Hordes, the Ottoman Empire or the Persians.

Warsaw Pact state bar Russia was in NATO or the European Union.

‘Workers of the World Unite’,

Russian island in the Bering Strait is two and a half miles from an American island in the Strait, Little Diomede Island, and can be seen with the naked eye.

High up in the Urals there is a cross marking the place where Europe stops and Asia starts.

taciturn, stoic, grizzled