The success of ‘Putinism’ then, is that it operates as a system of depersonalized authority. The man himself sits apart. He still, broadly, enjoys the benefits of hovering above everything else. To…

Ukrainian attacks on fuel infrastructure and on online retailer Wildberries are disrupting middle-class Russians’ sense of normality. Moves to step up military conscription could push the system towar...

Any excuse for an EU4 reference Over 1600 days of war. Is that a lot? Maybe it is when you consider full-scale war has lasted more than a sixth of Putin’s time in power. Really, this is just an exc…

As the row over banning Masha and the Bear continues to escalate, British Russia experts have themselves come under attack, accused of spreading pro-Russian propaganda. Both the calls for a ban (Gu…

YouTube video by Center for New Critical Politics and Governance

On the three-year anniversary it is pretty interesting that a piece about Prigozhin’s March is published by Fontanka. It’s an interview with Prigozhin’s former lawyer-troubleshooter who is pedallin…

Why Putin can’t end the conflict.

Marc Bennetts’ new book pretty much hits the spot for anyone who wants a comprehensive and accessible journalistic treatment of ‘how we lost Russia’.

The quote is from my book, but I wanted to write a bit more here about inequality in Russia because it is often underplayed and misunderstood. Scroll to the end if you just want the ‘news’ about th…

A Birmingham sculpture. Credit: Oosoom – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, I just returned from the annual conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies where I …

This week on Russia Unfiltered, Jonny Tickle, Jeremy Morris and James Pearce take a closer look at the state of Russia-focused academia in the West.With Jeremy heading to the annual British Association for Slavic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES) conference, we use the moment to ask a bigger question: what has happened to the field since 2022? Four years into the war, access to Russia is limited, funding has shifted, and the balance between research and public commentary is changing.We discuss whether the discipline is now dominated by war-related topics, how trends like decolonisation and Ukrainian studies are reshaping the landscape, and what gets lost when fieldwork becomes difficult or impossible. The conversation also turns to the realities of academic conferences, who gets to attend, who gets excluded, and whether these spaces still reflect genuine scholarship or something closer to advocacy.Along the way, we explore how research trends move in cycles, from Soviet everyday life to cultural history, and why some of the most interesting work today is happening far away from headline politics.This podcast is an independent project and does not represent the views of our employers or affiliated institutions.

The best and ‘truest’-to-life parts of the film are about the difficult relationship between Talankin – who is unhappy about the war and the direction of the country – and his mother, colleagues an…

D’Anieri on history, security dilemmas, democratization and European divergence after 1991 In this post I want to share with you why I think Paul D’Anieri’s updated Ukraine and Russia: From Civiliz…