Tag Archives: moscow

NY Dispatches: Fragile sovereignism

Posted on December 14, 2020 by

The State Duma adopted, in the first reading, a bill expanding the defition of “foreign agents”, a discriminatory law first adopted in 2012. It appears that the updated law will be approved in the final reading in early 2021, opening … Continue reading →

Posted in Dispatches, Elections, Policies | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

Elections that matter

Posted on August 6, 2020 by

Elections, however rigged and manipulated, have been an important source of legitimacy for the political system that Vladimir Putin created. Elections provide the procedural background to electing the docile legislatures on which to pass laws. For Putin they provide an … Continue reading →

Posted in Elections, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

A show of force

Posted on July 3, 2020 by

According to the official results 78 percent of the 67 percent of Russian citizens who voted in a plebiscite on Vladimir Putin’s constitutional reform – or just over 50 percent of all voters – supported the reform, which will enter … Continue reading →

Posted in Elections | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

Vladimir the Cautious

Posted on April 19, 2020 by

Policies guided by risk-avoidance have allowed Russia to build up significant fiscal reserves before the pandemic hit. But risk-avoidance does seem to serve the country well during the pandemic and it did not neutralize the adverse effects of an overcentralized … Continue reading →

Posted in Policies, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

NY Dispatches: the issue of waste management

Posted on December 11, 2019 by

On Sunday thousands protested in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia’s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station between Arkhangelsk and the Komi Republic, which is planned to absorb 46 million tons of waste … Continue reading →

Posted in Dispatches, Policies | Tagged , , , , , , | 0 Comments

NY Dispatches: crackdown on Navalny

Posted on October 19, 2019 by

Recent weeks saw the Russian authorities conducting an unprecedented crackdown on Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which included labeling it as a “foreign agent”. Below I am trying to answer the questions of what triggered this crackdown and whether the goal … Continue reading →

Posted in Dispatches, Elections | Tagged , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

A competitive succession

Posted on October 1, 2019 by

When two close Putin associates give strangely identical but ideologically divergent interviews, suddenly all the talk is about the Kremlin’s towers and Putin’s succession, instead of the September regional elections, which the Kremlin would like to leave behind as soon … Continue reading →

Posted in Kremlinology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 0 Comments