Russia’s intensive involvement with the African continent goes back decades. During the Cold War, Moscow viewed Africa as its “natural” sphere of influence and a staging ground for active measures and proxy wars aiming to undermine American interests. When the USSR fell apart, an intermission followed. Today, Russia is unquestionably back. What dra…

In December 2023, Georgia was granted official European Union candidate status, but the country's path to EU membership may now be at risk because of the recently adopted law “on transparency of foreign influence.” This controversial legislation targeting media and NGOs has sparked mass street protests and, coupled with violence against protesters …

One of the sectors targeted by U.S. economic sanctions is Russia's civil aviation. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Boeing and Airbus, whose planes constituted 70 percent of Russia's fleet, announced they would freeze the delivery of spare parts. Many predicted that Russia's commercial aviation would soon be grounded—a potenti…

Russian authorities are taking tentative steps to limit access to abortion and other aspects of reproductive health, ostensibly to combat the demographic crisis, which has been amplified by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In this episode of The Russia File, Victoria Pardini and Nina Rozhanovskaya talk with two scholars of Russian reproduct…

Two years after Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Maxim Trudolyubov, editor in chief of the Kennan Institute’s Russia File blog, to discuss where Russia is today. They discussed new trends in Russian emigration and the brain drain that never was, how the Russian economy has managed to defy predictions of imm…

Two years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Mykhailo Minakov, the Kennan Institute’s senior advisor on Ukraine and editor in chief of its Focus Ukraine blog, to discuss where Ukraine is today militarily, politically, socially and economically; Ukrainians’ sources of resilience; and why bipartisan suppo…

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted some of its own domestic problems. One of them is the uneven economic development of Russian regions and another is the unfair treatment of ethnic minorities. The Republic of Buryatia, a region in East Siberia, has been under the spotlight since February 2022, because of what looks like dispro…

In August 2020, Aleksandr Lukashenko, authoritarian leader of Belarus, denied electoral fraud and claimed landslide victory in his sixth presidential election. The regime’s violent crackdown on the mass pro-democracy protests signaled a new era of political repression in the country and triggered a major emigration wave. In this episode of The Russ…

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Berlin has emerged as a crucial center of activity for both Ukrainian refugees and Russian political exiles. It is here that many known and emerging leaders of the Russian opposition, political activists, human rights defenders, and independent journalists live, work, and gather to meet and discuss Russia’s fu…

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was supposed to illustrate the Russian army’s ability to conduct a “contactless,” “surgical” military operation with minimal civilian casualties and damage to critical national infrastructure. Yet troops began committing war crimes in Ukraine virtually from the first days of the invasion. Did the Russian military antici…

The relationship between the artist and the state has always been fraught in Putin’s Russia, where government remains the primary funder of cultural institutions and censorship of cultural production has been on the rise for at least a decade. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has posed new existential questions for those members of the a…

When in 1991 Boris Yeltsin invited Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to open a news bureau in Russia, the move was hailed as the clearest sign yet that the Cold War was ending. Last year, Vladimir Putin’s regime forced RFE/RL to shut down its operations, causing staff to leave the country along with other Russian independent journalists, dissidents, …

In November 2022, the Russian parliament passed a new bill banning any activity that can be interpreted as the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences.” In December, President Vladimir Putin signed it into law. This legislation is an expansion of the notorious 2013 bill, which prohibited so-called “gay propaganda” among mi…

Poland and Russia share a long history that has been full of grievances and unresolved traumas. And while 2007 saw a positive shift in the relationship, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 put an end to this “reset.” Since February, Poland has been a steadfast ally of Ukraine and a fierce opponent of Russia. Nina Rozhanovskaya talked with Polish polit…

For those living under the Russian occupation in Ukraine, life has turned into a daily struggle and search for food, water, and medicine. Izabella Tabarovsky talked with the Ukrainian war reporter and editor in chief of Zaborona Ekaterina Sergatskova, about the skills needed to survive the occupation, Russian war crimes, and what Ukrainian journali…

The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of contemporary Russian history. It is also strikingly relevant today, as the world grapples with Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine and Russia’s dramatic loss of freedom. In Part 2 of our conversation with j…

The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of contemporary Russian history. It is also strikingly relevant today, as the world grapples with Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine and Russia’s dramatic loss of freedom. We discuss it with the journalist Mi…

The war in Ukraine has highlighted Russian propaganda and the way it weaponizes the memory of World War II for political purposes—in this case, to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this episode, Izabella Tabarovsky digs deep into Russia’s myths about the war and considers how the invasion of Ukraine is causing that entire symbolic universe t…

Over the past 10 years or so, Russia’s relations with the West have been reaching new lows. In bilateral terms, no other relationship has been more indicative of that trajectory than the one with Great Britain. The story of Russian-British ties, partnership, and animosity is thus important to explore. Joining the Kennan Institute's Maxim Trudolubov…

Many prefer to measure today's authoritarian regimes against the West’s standards in everything from governance to culture. But taking a closer look at the authoritarian world itself and studying its evolution is probably more illuminating. Despite constant geopolitical infighting, Russia and Turkey display striking similarities in the stance they …

A Soviet nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate, Andrei Sakharov fought for disarmament, world peace, and human rights. To what extent is his legacy relevant for today’s Russia and the world? What is the state of those values now, at a time when autocracies are on the rise and new international conflicts are developing? The Kennan Institute's Maxim T…

The Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin made his pioneering spaceflight 60 years ago. In the USSR, it marked a time of optimistic, forward-looking modernization, of which the Soviet space program was the hallmark. Maxim Trudolyubov discusses the Soviet-American space race and today’s newfound space enthusiasm with Victoria Smolkin, associate professor of his…

Russia is often seen as a country that was led astray by a former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin. Informed by his training and character, it is often implied, he turned himself into an all-powerful ruler and turned Russia into the autocracy it is today. But what if he simply was helpless to do any better and is not in fact all-powerful? The Kennan Ins…

Sputnik V, Russia's COVID-19 vaccine, is not just a scientific achievement but a golden moment for vaccine diplomacy. Despite the initial distrust—some of which persists to this day—dozens of countries have granted Sputnik V emergency use authorization. Why is Russia falling behind in its domestic vaccination campaign, and will Russia be able to ma…

Most Russians have long stopped expecting that any real change may come from electoral politics, a playing field tightly controlled by the Kremlin. And yet, a slew of recent, successful popular movements are proving that, even without real elections, Russians can stand up for their interests. People have defended their electoral choice in Khabarovs…

Thirty years ago, a million Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in Israel. Overnight, they became one of the largest Russian-speaking communities in the world outside the former Soviet Union. Who are the Russian-speaking Israelis? What did their arrival signify for the country? We discuss these questions with Ksenia Svetlova, Matti Friedman, and Yo…

The media environments in Russia and the US are almost mirror opposites. In the US, mainstream media can cut away from the sitting president on live television or poke fun at him in their opinion pages. In Russia, independent media are happy just to stay alive. The internet and social media, often seen as sources of polarization in the US, are a li…

America’s universities and think tanks produce first-rate studies of Russia’s history, culture, and politics. And yet, the way Russia features on the U.S. political stage and in the American media is not particularly nuanced. Why is that? Jill Dougherty, a long-time CNN journalist and an expert on Russia and Kevin Rothrock, Senior Editor at the Eng…

Earlier this year, Vladimir Putin published an article in a Washington, DC think tank publication seeking to explain to American audiences the “real” lessons of World War II. Why is so much of Vladimir Putin’s attention devoted to WWII? In what ways does it serve his political interests at home and abroad? What messages was he trying to communicate…

While everyone is preoccupied with the COVID-19, public protests, and electoral politics, the world’s three largest nuclear powers are busy modernizing their arsenals. They are doing this in a world that will soon be left without any strategic arms control treaties. Is nuclear still the world’s most powerful deterrent? What do Russian and all other…

With presidential term limits for Vladimir Putin nullified, has Russia become more authoritarian? What is the difference between "overt" and "informational" dictatorships? Do democracies – or the West as a political and cultural concept - still have the appeal they once had for the countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union? Does the left-…

For the Kremlin, the memory of World War II is fodder for a national myth of military glory and sacrifice. But for ordinary Russians, the story is more complex. Izabella Tabarovsky, Maxim Trudolyubov and Masha Lipman delve into the myths and explore stories that never became part of the national narrative.…

Well-known Belarusian journalist Franak Viačorka and the Russia File's Maxim Trudolyubov discuss Belarusian society's newfound agency and wonder why President Lukashenko is no longer comfortable being seen as pro-Russian.

In a conversation with Samuel Greene, director of King's Russia Institute, the Russia File discusses the Kremlin's COVID-19 politics and Russian society’s newfound empowerment.