Putin, Russia, and the moral imperative of the West
(LSE) Imagine a world stripped of the basic elements of human decency, honesty, and honour, a world where the primordial instinct of greed, accumulation, avarice, and lust for endless power trumps…
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Russia
2417 posts
Back to Square One
(Moscow-on-Thames) The dust hasn’t yet settled, but we can draw some early conclusions from today’s protests in Russia. In a nutshell, the Kremlin and the opposition are at a stalemate. I don’t…
A New Wave of Research on Civilizational Politics
(Moscow Times) Russia’s signature Sputnik V (for “Victory”) Covid-19 vaccine has been enmeshed in controversy from the moment of its launch. Western analysts have questioned Sputnik V’s safety, efficacy, and most…
Petrov: The perception that Putin has stayed away from the public doesn’t compare well to Navalny’s bold comeback
(AP) The return to Russia from Germany by opposition leader Alexei Navalny was marked by chaos and popular outrage, and it ended, almost predictably, with his arrest. The Jan. 17 flight…
Navalny Has Set a Damning Dilemma for Putin’s Regime
(Eurasia Daily Monitor) The decision of Russian democratic opposition leader Alexei Navalny to return to Moscow was announced on January 13 in a deliberately matter-of-fact way—and produced a full-blown political storm.…
Rogov: Navalny’s return is a brave step; Kurilla: Navalny has set the agenda
(Deutsche Welle) An arrest warrant instead of flowers. With barely enough time to leave the plane, Alexei Navalny was taken into police custody. It was a cold reception for one of the…
Greene: The signs in Russia are there—the discontent is there, the deprivation is there
(RFE/RL) When Vladimir Lenin stepped off a train at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station in April 1917, he set in motion events that would transform Russia and ultimately divide the world into…
How Much Should We Worry About a Resurrected Russia? More Than You Might Think
(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) President Vladimir Putin, in a quote he attributed to Winston Churchill, declared as early as 2006 that, “Russia is never as strong as she looks, Russia is never…
Kurilla: The American variety of public opinion is alien to Russians
(Meduza) Allegations that Twitter violated the First Amendment are misguided because the U.S. Constitution only bars state censorship, according to historian Ivan Kurilla. American culture, however, has long endured other means of restricting free…
Russia’s opaque digitalisation
(Riddle) At the 2018 Gaidar Forum, an annual gathering of Russian experts and reformist officials, participants were asked to vote on their preferred methods of public control over the state. Digital platforms turned…