Russia’s New Political Momentum
(AIIA) Alexei Navalny’s return to Russia on 17 January 2021, his immediate arrest at the border, and a court verdict sentencing him to two years and eight months in jail started…
Event (Feb. 18): Sources of Reform in Russia: Celebrate Three New Books with the Authors
Join us for a book launch featuring new books from Evgeny Finkel, Scott Gehlbach, Bryn Rosenfeld, and David Szakonyi. In Reform and Rebellion in Weak States, Evgeny Finkel and Scott Gehlbach…
Petrov: Navalny has ruined Putin’s gambit
(Wall Street Journal) MOSCOW—The jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last month galvanized the biggest popular protests in Russia in nearly a decade, as his supporters were joined across the country…
Kurilla: No preparations for a foreign intervention, but prior operations largely began after the acute phase of home unrest was over
(U.S. News & World Report) The top U.S. military official for Europe on Wednesday expressed concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin may attempt to spur another crisis abroad as a way to…
Greene: The Kremlin has come to the conclusion that coercion is a better strategy than persuasion
(Slate) “This is not a sentence against him, but against all of us.” That’s how Ilya Klishin, a prominent Russian former journalist, described a Moscow court’s ruling yesterday sentencing opposition leader Alexei Navalny to…
Event (Feb. 4): The Storming of the US Capitol: Views from Eurasia with Dubovyk, Omelicheva, Pisano, Schatz, and Troitskiy
(PONARS Eurasia and IERES) On January 6, 2021, protestors carried out a violent attack at the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 United States…
Regime and the Opposition at the Regional Elections 2020: Between the Demand for Change and the Status Quo
(RAD) Abstract: On September 11–13, 2020, Russians elected 18 governors and 11 subnational legislatures. The “single voting day,” which due to the Covid-19 pandemic stretched over three days, took place in the…
PONARS Eurasia Scholars on Alexei Navalny’s return to Russia
(Washington Post) On Jan. 17, Alexei Navalny, perhaps the best-known domestic critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, returned to Russia in dramatic fashion after recovering in Germany from what he claims was deliberate poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok, allegedly by agents of the…
Navalny returns to Russia and brings anti-Putin politics with him
(The Conversation) Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his team have stunned the Russian government again, forcing President Vladimir Putin and his allies to confront significant protest led by a foe…
Dueling for the Soul of Russia
(Transitions) Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow on 17 January is a pivotal moment in Russian history. His decision to go home after five months recuperating in Berlin was an act of…
As Anger at Ruling Regime Boils Over, Putin Strikes Hard Against Dissent
(Moscow Times) Many now consider “Putin’s Palace” — that jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny exposed in a YouTube video that has garnered more than 80 million views in a matter of…
Putin’s new war on the opposition suggests he sees it as a real threat
(Washington Post) Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who returned to Russia last week after recovering in Berlin from an attempt on his life involving a military nerve agent, presented Russian President…