The Putin regime has little to fear from the latest public protests which, despite drawing large crowds, are apolitical. True politics will only become possible in Russia when both the opposition and the regime focus on the tedious work of practical politics, says Nicolai N. Petro in his highly pe
Last month amendments were passed to the law codifying the FSB’s surveillance of those citizens deemed to be threats to national security. Nicolai Petro, unlike some Western commentators, sees these as potentially making Russia's domestic security procedures among the world's most transparent.
The latest Russo-Ukrainian gas spat may have finally taught the elites in those two countries a vital lesson. Namely, that they stand to gain far more from acting in concert,
Those seeking to categorise Dmitry Medvedev, the presumptive next president of Russia, have quickly settled into two camps: pessimists, who dismiss him as a puppet of Vladimir Putin, and optimists,
Mischa Gabowitsch's openDemocracy article "Inside the looking-glass", a response to my own article "Russia through the looking-glass, is a welcome opportunity further to dispel frequently-aired
A troubling rift has developed between western and Russian perceptions of Russian reality. In the west, an increasingly common view is that President Vladimir Putin is intent on destroying democracy
