Tag: Andrei Kolesnikov

Russia: Pandemic tests Putin’s grip on power

     

Whereas Mikhail Gorbachev granted his people freedom and suffered a crushing personal defeat, Vladimir Putin is doing exactly the opposite, says a leading analyst. Putin, whose greatest fear is pressure… Read more »

‘Never-ending state war against civil society’ meets the new face of Russia’s protests

     

Russian authorities have threatened protesters in Moscow with lengthy jail sentences in an attempt to dampen an unexpected surge in protest mood before a planned opposition rally, The Guardian reports…. Read more »

Russia protests target a system ‘chemically incompatible with democracy’

     

Police in Moscow detained 39 protesters at a rally calling for opposition candidates to be allowed to run in September’s elections to the Russian capital’s parliament. Opposition leaders cried foul… Read more »

Russia’s ‘Stockholm syndrome’: Stalin nostalgia at all-time high

     

Soviet — specifically Stalinist — nostalgia is alive and well in Russia, according to a new poll conducted by the Moscow-based Levada Center, The Moscow Times reports: Bloomberg adds that the poll… Read more »

‘Gaping paradox’ at heart of Putin’s authoritarian rule

     

The director of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anticorruption Foundation (FBK), Roman Rubanov, was briefly detained and told to return to a law enforcement agency for questioning on October 13,… Read more »

How Russia went wrong: opposition launches ‘political Uber’

     

On Sept. 12, Vladimir Putin quietly passed a landmark date: He had spent 6,602 days as the top leader of Russia, The Washington Post notes: Although not widely acknowledged, this figure… Read more »

Russia’s ‘surreal’ protests show fraying of social contract

     

  The latest wave of protests in Russia is too diverse and divergent to be unified by a single political leader, platform, or slogan—though there is one motto that people… Read more »

Russia’s election countdown: opposition pressured by Kremlin

     

Russia’s liberal opposition has been subjected to all kinds of pressure in the last few months, from leaked clandestine sex tapes to dubious court cases and physical violence. As parliamentary… Read more »

Life after Putin: ‘no doubt that political transition looming’

     

The EU is set to roll over its Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia for a further six months despite signs of the mood towards Moscow softening in some of the bloc’s member states,… Read more »