Abstract This article explores three cases where the Kremlin has used military force outside the Russian Federation – the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, the 2015 military campaign in Syria, and the 2022 full-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine. The formal patterns of decision-making for military intervention and war fit that of a personalist regime, relying on advice from a smaller circle of decision-makers with background from the security services. Decisions are made without prior consultations with the legislature, and legislators are not in position to delay or subvert decision-making made at the top. Yet, questions arise as to why legislative approval is needed, and how such decisions are processed. The article suggests that while the legislature has little prior information as to the onset of military operations, it serves the purpose of legalizing such operations, thus providing a thin veil of legitimacy for the use of military coercive power. Moreover, it is also essential in curbing domestic resistance against war and initiate repressive measures against dissenters. While oriented towards preserving legislative status, the handwork of such approvals bears the signature of improvisation and regime-proofing subservience.

Abstract This article develops a set of quantitative indicators that allow for tracing the dynamics of Russia’s political regime along two dimensions: electoral evaporation, understood as a gradual diminishing in the level of competitiveness; and autocratic personalization, understood as the rise of the personalist traits of the regime. The values of the indicators offered in this article are derivable from the objective data, not from expert coding, which increases data reliability. The indicators are country-specific. This reduces the loss of information that is unavoidable in cross-national research. Electoral evaporation is measured on the basis of election results, while for measuring autocratic personalization, the article builds a composite index involving several indicators of personalist rule. The parallel tracing of these indicators’ values throughout the period under observation, 2004–2022, shows that the evaporation of the electoral component of the regime has occurred largely in parallel with the rise of its personalist component. At the same time, slow-downs in one of the components could be compensated by the accelerated increase of the other, to the effect that the authoritarian transformation of the regime continued to progress. There were also instances when the indicators’ values concurrently increased after periods of decline on both parameters.

Abstract This article, partly on the basis of previously-unconsidered primary sources and contemporary reporting, reexamines the conspiracy theory that developed regarding the 1999 Russian apartment bombings. It concludes, first, that the Russian government had net-negative incentive to carry out the conspiracy of which it is accused. Second, had the alleged conspiracy nevertheless been undertaken, it would have very likely unraveled; its failure to do so indicates that it probably was not undertaken in the first place. And third, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence indicates that there was not a real bomb at Ryazan.

Abstract The article analyses the patterns of framing the 1990s in the discourses circulating in the official Russian public sphere in the first year after the entry of Russia’s troops in Ukraine, that is officially called the ‘special military operation’, and the unprecedented retaliatory sanctions imposed by the West. It seeks to identify probable transformations of the myth that contrasts the turbulence of the early post-soviet period with the stability associated with Putin’s rule which previously served as a major pillar for legitimizing his power. It argues that despite Putin’s evident reluctance to recall the hardships of the 1990s in the context of an unfolding crisis, in media discourses, memories of the past traumatic experience turned out to be an essential symbolic resource for making sense of the new reality.

Abstract This study analyzes revelations from the trial and investigation in Ukraine concerning the mass killing that took place in Kyiv on 20 February 2014. This Maidan massacre of protesters and police led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government and ultimately to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the civil war and Russian military interventions in Donbas, and the Ukraine-Russia and West-Russia conflicts which Russia escalated by illegally invading Ukraine in 2022. The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters, nearly 100 prosecution and defense witnesses, synchronized videos, and medical and ballistic examinations by government experts pointed unequivocally to the fact that the Maidan protesters were massacred by snipers located in Maidan-controlled buildings. To date, however, due to the political sensitivity of these findings and cover-up, no one has been convicted for this massacre. The article discusses the implications of these revelations for the Ukraine-Russia war and the future of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

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Abstract The paper claims that contemporary Russian cultural policy has been determined by political transformations associated with the political project to establish sovereignty that has organized Putin’s regime since 2012. The idea behind it is traced to Putin’s 2006 intention ‘to make a people out of a mere population’. To understand that intention, and to explain the contribution of culture and cultural policy to its concretization, the paper draws on Foucault’s account of sovereignty and governmentality, and the development of the Gramscian notion of hegemony. The paper argues that Putin’s regime uses governmentality in its hegemonic project to establish sovereignty. To describe that project, and the contribution of culture and cultural policy to it, the paper presents evidence of the relation between Putin’s political actions and changes in the structure of Russian state and government, Russian culture, and the cultural policy infrastructure. The paper begins with a discussion of the draft Concept of culture introduced in 2018 and concludes with an examination of its fate in order to raise the question of the contingency of Putin’s hegemonic project.

Abstract The article analyzes specifics of instrumental and perceptional dimensions of the soft power of Russia. The analysis of these dimensions is particularly relevant in terms of studying the likelihood of the fact that Russia may continue applying the soft power strategy of long-term external influence. The main tools of the instrumental foundation of Russia’s soft power have been analyzed. Russia’s position in the rankings of well-known international rating agencies have been compared. The comprehensive studies are considered to be promising, combining detailed analysis of the soft power tools in the domestic and foreign policy strategy of the Russian Federation and the way it is perceived by different target audiences. It is concluded that foreign countries and societies perception of the soft tools application (mostly perceived as propaganda) may affect Russia’s low position in international soft power and branding rankings.

Abstract Over the past thirty years, relations between Russia and the EU have gone from the idea of a ‘Common European home’ and ‘the unification of everything except institutions’ to periods of fading partnership, culminating in the post-Crimean crisis and the current systemic confrontation over geopolitics and values. Today, the EU and Russia seem to be irreconcilable in terms of values, domestic politics, and geopolitical approaches. For the time being, the most likely scenario for EU-Russia relations will be tense coexistence with cooperation restricted by a climate of general mistrust. The best prospects for constructive cooperation will come from a common commitment to pragmatic ‘neighborliness’. Nevertheless, given the turbulence and unpredictability of international politics a return to “Greater European” integration cannot be entirely ruled out. The fundamental conditions for such a rapprochement still exist, though critical internal processes and external issues need to be resolved before this process can begin.