On balance, a British withdrawal from the EU would bolster Russia’s preferred geopolitical narratives and make it more difficult for the West to counter Russian power plays, argues James Nixey,… Read more »
Why has divining Russia’s political future been so hard? asks Timothy Frye, the Director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. It is a challenge not because of the supposedly… Read more »
Corruption, the trading of favors, embezzlement, and favoritism are not just endemic in Russia, but part of a kleptocratic system of rule through which Vladimir Putin controls the elite, says… Read more »
Banking records obtained from the Panama Papers show links between cellist Sergei Roldugin, a close ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and the case of Sergei Magnitsky (left), a Russian lawyer… Read more »
It has been years since Russia’s protest movement showed much moxie, sending tens of thousands onto the streets of Moscow for raucous demonstrations against electoral fraud and Vladimir Putin’s third term as… Read more »
For an authoritarian government looking to tighten control of an unruly internet, who better to call than the architect of China’s “great firewall”? That was the thinking of Konstantin Malofeev, a multimillionaire… Read more »
Many of the apparent contradictions in Russia today can be explained by the fact that Vladimir Putin and his regime have entered what political scientist Guilliermo O’Donnell called “the impotence of… Read more »
Over the past decade and a half, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been an economic dynamo and a basket case, an imperfect democracy and a tightening tyranny, notes Foreign Affairs. The case of Boris Nemtsov provides… Read more »
The biggest surprise about the Russian reaction to the Panama Papers leaks came in the form of a poster that depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin as the drug-addled protagonist played by Johnny Depp in… Read more »
The head of Russia’s Central Investigative Committee has urged the country’s officials to step up control of the internet, using China’s experience as a model to counter pressure from… Read more »