Category Politics

One more year

It’s been a bad year for all decent Russians. As the country continues its long descent into existential misery, the ugliness of its political regime contrasts remarkably with the charms of the winter season. Unusually for this millennium, December has…

Fiona Hill and the two presidents

Fiona Hill’s new book, There Is Nothing for You Here, went on sale last week – five and a half years after Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin had been published (co-authored with Clifford Gaddy). Hill served as the national…

Novaya Gazeta’s Nobel Prize

Maria Ressa, an investigative journalist from the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, have been jointly awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. AP comments: Considering how critical Novaya Gazeta has been toward Putin and his government, Peskov’s [Putin’s…

Electoral epistemology 2

Judging by reports from electoral precincts, Russia’s Communist party received more votes than the Kremlin’s own United Russia in the party-list election yesterday. Also, the Kremlin’s candidates appear to have lost in most of the first past the post (FPP)…

Electoral epistemology

From CNBC’s recent Russia dispatch: Adeline Van Houtte, Europe analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, noted Wednesday that the vote will be an important test for United Russia… “United Russia is now polling at around 30%, substantially lower than in 2016. Despite…

Age is a cunning beast

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign made a big deal of Joe Biden’s advanced age, claiming he was too senile to be president. The Kremlin’s propagandists in the media, both traditional and social, rushed to ridicule Biden as well, along the lines…

The prognosis is unfavorable

In the past two or three months, the Kremlin has suppressed all organized opposition and outlawed most political speech. Apparently terrified that the regime’s growing unpopularity would translate into a humiliating defeat at the Duma election in September 2021, Putin’s…

Russia’s true leader

Oleg Kashin in the New York Times today (“Aleksei Navalny Is Russia’s True Leader“): Now, after getting rid of all his opponents, real and imaginary, Mr. Putin finds himself alone. Like the queen in a Russian fairy tale, who every…

“Kipling was a great writer”

This past Wednesday, AP reported from Moscow on Putin’s 2021 state of the nation address: In an apparent reference to the U.S. allies, he compared them to Tabaqui, a cowardly golden jackal kowtowing to Shere Khan, the tiger in Rudyard…