Even though the Kremlin regularly claims that it is fighting Nazism in Ukraine, a claim that is without foundation, the Kremlin is now using real neo-Nazis to prosecute that war, undermining still further Russian justifications for the...
Some in the West are now beginning to say that Putin and his entourage are “’copying the Nazis,’” says Aleksandr Skobov. In fact, given what they are saying and doing in Ukraine, it is far more appropriate to say...
Vladimir Putin may think he is restoring the Soviet empire; but in fact, he is willy-nilly recreating the conditions which led to its demise – and in a way that ensures that the approaching end of a new Moscow-centered empire will...
It is impossible to imagine that Soviet leaders would ever have used the language the Putin regime is using now about Ukraine or to have done so with such a lack of shame, Aleksandr Skobov says. And as a result one must conclude that the...
Many Russians blame their country’s moves toward fascism on Vladimir Putin alone, Lev Ponomaryov says. But it is “important in principle” to recognize that those pushing Russia in that direction include a far broader...
Many who hear Vladimir Putin’s most outrageous statements or see his most aggressive actions are inclined to say he is living in a parallel reality; but in fact, Vitaly Portnikov says, the Kremlin leader constantly monitors reality...
For the 30 years of the existence of the Russian Federation, the Kremlin has increasingly gotten involved in unnecessary wars because such conflicts distract attention from its failures elsewhere and obscure the low quality of the...
The passive aggressive nature of a significant portion of Russian society is the reason that the country has become increasingly Soviet again, Alina Vitukhnovskaya says. The dictatorship is not primarily to blame; instead, the country is...
Since the recent Russian Duma election, some members of the Russian opposition have tied themselves in knots with a discussion of whether electronic voting played a positive or negative role in the outcome. But such discussions completely...
Putin’s attention to and approval of ever more distant if equally odious figures from Russia’s medieval past show that he is committed to the idea that “mass repressions and terror are no more and no less than...
In 2014, after the first Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory in the Donbas, soldiers who had lost limbs in battle were seen for the first time in public as they returned home. Since the full-on invasion by Russia in February 2022, the...
