The entire politics desk of one of Russia’s top daily newspapers, Kommersant, quit on Monday in protest over censorship after two veteran reporters were fired. The walkout at the newspaper controlled… Read more »
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian rulers have worked assiduously to weaponize corruption as an instrument of foreign policy, using money in opaque and illicit ways to gain influence… Read more »
Komsomolskaya Pravda has taken the unusual step of reporting on a speech Valery Solovey delivered in the provinces in which he not only denounced the Putin regime for wasting the oil… Read more »
Authoritarian rule is not imposed on Russians from above but is solicited from below by the people themselves, claims Sergey Karaganov, a former Putin advisor and one of Russia’s leading… Read more »
There is little prospect of a Russo-American ‘grand bargain’ or rapprochement, even if Vladimir Putin visits Washington, in part because the US will not abandon democracy promotion, a RUSI analysis suggests: Russia unsuccessfully pushed for… Read more »
The lives of Russian kleptocrats in Britain are suddenly fraught with new anxieties, the Washington Post reports: Critics in London of Russian President Vladimir Putin are reevaluating their need for… Read more »
“Kleptocracy at its worst” is how US Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently characterized dealings at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a heavily indebted state development fund currently under investigation for fraud… Read more »
Russian police briefly detained opposition figure Ilya Yashin (left) on Thursday, two days after he released a report alleging widespread corruption by President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, the Organized… Read more »
It is widely understood that corruption is a pervasive problem in many societies and undermines public confidence in the political system and government institutions, argues Carl Gershman, President of… Read more »
The arrest on June 24th of Nikita Belykh (above), the liberal-minded governor of the Kirovsk region, was headline news on Russian state television. It even preceded the report on… Read more »