Category: Main
Posted on June 11, 2026
The Governor’s Gambit: How Regional Leaders Navigate Federal Power in Russia
Picture a regional governor in Russia walking into their office at 8 a.m. on a grey Tuesday. The stack of papers on the desk touches everything from potholes on a rural road to a federal demand for higher …
Posted on June 11, 2026
The Art of the Possible: How Regional Governors Navigate Federal Power in Russia
Russia’s federation is sprawling and lopsided. The link between the Kremlin and the regions isn’t a tidy chain of command. It’s a running negotiation, often quiet, sometimes tense. Regional governors sit in a strange spot: they run their …
Posted on June 9, 2026
Negotiating the Vertical: How Russia’s Regional Governors Navigate Federal Power under the Kremlin’s Watch
The relationship between Moscow and Russia’s regions has never been a simple matter of command and compliance. Since the early 2000s, the Kremlin has systematically reasserted control over a federation that, in the 1990s, sometimes resembled a collection …
Posted on June 4, 2026
Why Western Russia Analysis Needs More Nuance
Since the Cold War thawed, the Western lens on Russia has swung between fascination and fresh alarm. Analysts, officials, and pundits reach for big templates: a resurgent empire, a brittle petro-state, a monolithic security menace. Those frames catch …
Posted on June 2, 2026
The Structural Reasons for Russian Political Stability
Talk to most people about Russian politics and you’ll hear stories of sudden crises, whispered palace intrigue, or the outsized will of a single man. It makes for good headlines. But it misses something quieter and, I’d argue, …
Posted on June 1, 2026
How Economic Sanctions Actually Affect Russian Political Economy
Western sanctions on Russia have been framed, since 2014 and with a vengeance after February 2022, as a means to isolate, weaken, and ultimately reshape the Kremlin’s political economy. What we see on the ground, though, rarely matches …
Posted on May 31, 2026
Sanctions Didn’t Break Russia—They Remade It From the Inside
When Western sanctions first landed on Russia in 2014, the smart money was on a ruble collapse and a fast political unraveling. Ten years later, the economy hasn’t fallen apart. It’s mutated. I’ve spent the better part of …
Posted on May 29, 2026
How Economic Sanctions Are Reshaping Russia’s Political Economy
The morning after the first Western sanctions hit in February 2022, I sat in my Moscow kitchen watching the ruble flash-crash on my laptop. Colleagues were texting about ATMs running dry and flights booked solid. The consensus among …