Carnegie Moscow Center
Inter-religious and interethnic relations are rapidly deteriorating in Russia, but the authorities lack the programs to cope with them, the mechanisms to create new programs, and the realization that both are urgently needed.
Russians need to see themselves as a Euro-Pacific country, and act accordingly by developing Russia's own Asia-Pacific territory and increasing its activity in the whole region.
Politicization and internal disengagement have increased tension within both Russian Orthodoxy and Islam in Russia, and secular and religious authorities are consciously facilitating these societal divisions in an effort to strengthen their positions.
Putin's regime has transformed Russian authoritarianism into a brand of personalized power that has the potential to shift toward a dictatorship.
Ukraine is the most important test of the Kremlin’s neo-imperialistic longings and also a test of the West’s interest in expanding its normative principles eastward—however, Ukraine itself should demonstrate a desire for deeper integration based on a democratic path.
Solutions to the challenges facing the global community require sharing fresh ideas about politics, economics, social issues, migration and ethnic conflict, religion, and education.
The Kremlin's proposed anti-corruption campaign will serve to bind the bureaucracy together in order to avoid disloyalty, with the main goal of redistributing the wealth of the elites among their members.
A verdict of acquittal or not guilty for Pussy Riot is unlikely because the verdict for this politically sensitive trial will be reached outside the courtroom.
The Kremlin is implementing counterproductive changes in relations between Moscow and the regions that offer little promise of improving the situation in the country.
It is unlikely that the members of Pussy Riot punk band will be found not guilty, because to recognize that they were not guilty would require acknowledging that the trial itself was a sham.