A newly coalescing “Mobilization Party” in the Kremlin is convinced that it can only save its own position and boost that of Russia internationally by shaking up the political board in radical ways and that the most effective way to do...
“Even the toughest authoritarian regime cannot operate on force alone,” Andrey Piontkovsky says, noting that the collapse of public support for Vladimir Putin and his regime means that the Kremlin leader is now considering what he must...
Russia is not in a position to engage in an arms race with the United States, Andrey Piontkovsky says; but Vladimir Putin does have “a plan for victory.” It involves using nuclear blackmail on the assumption that if he threatens to use...
There are so many aspects to Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid” war against the West that it is remarkably easy for Moscow to hide what it is doing one place by doing something else elsewhere. That makes the annotated checklist of his...
The Russian high command has long wanted to have a domestic crowd control role, rather than as has been the case in recent years standing by as the FSB and the interior ministry gain influence in the Kremlin because of what they do in that...
Five years ago this weekend, the Sochi Olympiad ended with many Russians convinced that it showed Russia had truly recovered as Vladimir Putin promised. But those hopes, Kseniya Kirillova writes, were soon dashed by the doping scandal that...
Three days ago, Pavel Felgenhauer published in Moscow’s Novaya gazeta an article headlined “The Dependence of Russia on China is Growing with Each Passing Day.” It has now been taken down, something that only highlights its...
New polls show that the share of Russians who would like to go “back to the USSR” is at its highest levels over the last 15 years, a development many find troubling because it will make the future evolution of Russia toward a normal...
The regime Vladimir Putin has created in Russia is an “existential” enemy of the West and an international system intended to limit the use of violence by one state against others, Aleksandr Skobov says. His aggression against Ukraine...
On Western Christmas when too few outside of Moscow and Kyiv are paying close attention, the Moscow media has filled up with stories that the Ukrainian military is preparing to launch a chemical weapons attack against the breakaway regions...
In and around the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, there has arisen in the post-Soviet era a trio of creative musical figures of an exceedingly singular character. All three, as it happens, are women. And though Ukraine is hardly known as a...
