Riddle Russia

Alexander Kharichev, head of the Presidential Administration’s Directorate for Social Analysis and a senior Kremlin ideologue, has given marching orders to pro-government electi...

Markets are now locked into a tit-for-tat barrage of leaks and occasional airstrikes between the US and Iran as talks continue. Coupled with the current strategic momentum Ukrainian forces possess from the success of medium-range strikes on logistics—an advantage that may not prove enduring—the mounting headlines about elite frustration are evidence of inertia. The political ...

Russia’s «pivot to the East» began long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From the outset, Moscow conceived it as a strategic signal to the West: Kremlin had an alternative to partnership with the developed democracies.

It is no coincidenc...

For both Russia and Ukraine, the war has become an attritional grind with little end in sight. While analyzing who controls what village is useful for determining whether Putin can achieve his minimum war aims of capturing Donbas, it does little to illuminate the war’s longer trajectory. A major under-examined factor is how Ukraine has relied on the European Union to fund its...

Putin’s visit to Beijing, well-timed to follow President Trump’s trip to meet with Xi Jinping, left few doubts about the state of Russia-China relations. Russia is structurally trapped as a junior partner of diminishing value. The