Carnegie Moscow Center
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 real cost of Russia’s current isolation will be felt in the long term: the country will miss opportunities for growth and will continue to stagnate.
Sino-Russian digital cooperation is robust and mature. This relationship is much broader than a simple alliance of conspiracy-minded governments seeking to protect their citizens from hostile forces.
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 Kremlin needs the constant narrative of a war in which it plays a righteous role to maintain public loyalty
Russians’ life expectancy and quality of life remain extremely low by Western standards. If the state actually had working institutions, it would have dramatically increased its investments in human capital, education, and health care. Instead, the state prefers to invest in protecting its only institution: “the besieged fortress.”
Russian consumers are increasingly unhappy, but their discontent is being frozen in depression rather than manifested in social protest.
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.