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Ivan Davydov thinks Russia in 2021 will be remembered for its massaged election results, its jailed or exiled opposition figures, the overspilling tensions from protests in Belarus, and a widening exasperation at the government’s clumsy pandemic response
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Ivan Davydov explains the Kremlin’s addiction to targeting “foreign agents”
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Ivan Davydov on key developments in Russia in 2020
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In Russia’s Far East, a false state clashes with a doomed civil society, writes Ivan Davydov
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Ivan Davydov is scratching his head at the vacuous and facile advertising campaigns pushing for amendments to the Russian Constitution
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Ivan Davydov considers why and how protests against political repressions sometimes work
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Ivan Davydov reflects on the Kremlin’s communication with society in 2019
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The Kremlin is cracking down hard on protests in Moscow. Ivan Davydov reflects on what this says about relations between Russia’s rulers and those they rule
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Ivan Davydov reflects on the success of the recent campaign to free the Russian journalist, and the authorities’ response
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Ivan Davydov on the protest in Yekaterinburg and the institutional legitimacy crisis
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With public patience for gross corruption at an all-time low, a ticking time bomb has been laid at the foundations of Russian politics for years to come, writes Ivan Davydov
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A few electoral setbacks for the Kremlin in the regions has forced a rethink. Next time, the strategy will be more focused
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The Russian state is implementing a punitive online law that is leading to crackdowns on an increasingly wide array of social media posts. But it is proving to be a shambolic form of censorship that suffers from judicial overreach and absurd-sounding convictions.
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Yampolskaya's appointment is a cosmetic rearrangement of officials to stir fresh intrigue
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Here is how the Kremlin is enacting an unpopular economic reform: deny responsibility, declare its inevitability, distract the public with a popular sporting event
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Spoiler alert: Sergei Sobyanin is on course to retain his post at Moscow’s mayoral elections this September. The tactics bear a resemblance in miniature to how Vladimir Putin ran his campaign for his fourth presidential term.
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The pomp of Vladimir Putin’s fourth inauguration has a tsarist quality to it, and so does his government’s sanctioned violence against protesters.