The Russian system is in a crisis whose outcome is uncertain. But social protest is unlikely to deliver change. Change is more likely to come about through modernization from above.
Truck drivers have staged the biggest anti-government protest in Russia since 2012. But the logic of their discontent is one they are so far unprepared to accept: that the whole political system is at fault.
The strikes by Russian truckers are a new challenge for the Kremlin and represent a breach of the government’s social contract with its citizens. But the regime has learned how to deal with these protests and how to stop them from becoming politicized.
The award of the world's most prestigious literary prize to Svetlana Alexievich is a seal of approval for her genre of polyphonic non-fiction and her insights into the catastrophes of the Soviet era.
Little more than a week into Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, new evidence has emerged about the Russian public’s attitudes towards Putin’s latest military intervention.
Putin is laying claim to the legacy of the 1945 Yalta conference. But Russia's attempts to rewrite history to justify its current policies are not working.
The parallels between the late Soviet era and contemporary Russia are indeed striking. But is this analogy applicable? Not entirely. To assess Russia’s future we should look not to its own recent history, but to the developments in countries that experienced similar transitions.
Vladimir Putin is making a bid to regain global respectability by leading a fight against ISIS and evoking the anti-Hitler coalition of World War II. The West is yet to be convinced that the appeal to be “brothers-in-arms” is serious.
A new Ukrainian campaign to blockade Crimea is a gift for the Kremlin as it tries to distract the public’s attention away from the major challenges facing the peninsula and the questionable actions being undertaken by the Russian government against its population.
