The Russia File

Latin America has long been a playground for Russia’s anti-Western influence operations. But today Russia isn’t alone in this game: In recent years Iran has become an increasingly prominent player on the continent as well—particularly in Venezuela. In this episode, Izabella Tabarovsky talks with Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about the growing Russian-Iranian infl...

Russia’s intensive involvement with the African continent goes back decades. During the Cold War, Moscow viewed Africa as its “natural” sphere of influence and a staging ground for active measures and proxy wars aiming to undermine American interests. When the USSR fell apart, an intermission followed. Today, Russia is unquestionably back. What draws Russia to Africa? Which African countries attra...

In December 2023, Georgia was granted official European Union candidate status, but the country's path to EU membership may now be at risk because of the recently adopted law “on transparency of foreign influence.” This controversial legislation targeting media and NGOs has sparked mass street protests and, coupled with violence against protesters and a bill that would restrict LGBTQ+ rights and f...

One of the sectors targeted by U.S. economic sanctions is Russia's civil aviation. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Boeing and Airbus, whose planes constituted 70 percent of Russia's fleet, announced they would freeze the delivery of spare parts. Many predicted that Russia's commercial aviation would soon be grounded—a potentially devastating development for a country of almo...

Russian authorities are taking tentative steps to limit access to abortion and other aspects of reproductive health, ostensibly to combat the demographic crisis, which has been amplified by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In this episode of The Russia File, Victoria Pardini and Nina Rozhanovskaya talk with two scholars of Russian reproductive politics and health, Michele Rivkin-Fish and N...

Two years after Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Maxim Trudolyubov, editor in chief of the Kennan Institute’s Russia File blog, to discuss where Russia is today. They discussed new trends in Russian emigration and the brain drain that never was, how the Russian economy has managed to defy predictions of immediate collapse, and who is actually running Russi...

Two years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Mykhailo Minakov, the Kennan Institute’s senior advisor on Ukraine and editor in chief of its Focus Ukraine blog, to discuss where Ukraine is today militarily, politically, socially and economically; Ukrainians’ sources of resilience; and why bipartisan support for Ukraine is in the national interest of the...

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted some of its own domestic problems. One of them is the uneven economic development of Russian regions and another is the unfair treatment of ethnic minorities. The Republic of Buryatia, a region in East Siberia, has been under the spotlight since February 2022, because of what looks like disproportionate representation of Buryats among the ran...

In August 2020, Aleksandr Lukashenko, authoritarian leader of Belarus, denied electoral fraud and claimed landslide victory in his sixth presidential election. The regime’s violent crackdown on the mass pro-democracy protests signaled a new era of political repression in the country and triggered a major emigration wave. In this episode of The Russia File, Nina Rozhanovskaya talks with political a...

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Berlin has emerged as a crucial center of activity for both Ukrainian refugees and Russian political exiles. It is here that many known and emerging leaders of the Russian opposition, political activists, human rights defenders, and independent journalists live, work, and gather to meet and discuss Russia’s future. Izabella Tabarovsky visited Berlin to meet w...

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was supposed to illustrate the Russian army’s ability to conduct a “contactless,” “surgical” military operation with minimal civilian casualties and damage to critical national infrastructure. Yet troops began committing war crimes in Ukraine virtually from the first days of the invasion. Did the Russian military anticipate applying such a level of brutality to civilia...

The relationship between the artist and the state has always been fraught in Putin’s Russia, where government remains the primary funder of cultural institutions and censorship of cultural production has been on the rise for at least a decade. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has posed new existential questions for those members of the artistic community who do not align themselves with...

When in 1991 Boris Yeltsin invited Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to open a news bureau in Russia, the move was hailed as the clearest sign yet that the Cold War was ending. Last year, Vladimir Putin’s regime forced RFE/RL to shut down its operations, causing staff to leave the country along with other Russian independent journalists, dissidents, and human rights defenders. With the current exodu...

In November 2022, the Russian parliament passed a new bill banning any activity that can be interpreted as the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences.” In December, President Vladimir Putin signed it into law. This legislation is an expansion of the notorious 2013 bill, which prohibited so-called “gay propaganda” among minors. Nina Rozhanovskaya spoke with Dr. Alexander...

Poland and Russia share a long history that has been full of grievances and unresolved traumas. And while 2007 saw a positive shift in the relationship, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 put an end to this “reset.” Since February, Poland has been a steadfast ally of Ukraine and a fierce opponent of Russia. Nina Rozhanovskaya talked with Polish political scientist Iwona Reichardt, deputy editor of N...

For those living under the Russian occupation in Ukraine, life has turned into a daily struggle and search for food, water, and medicine. Izabella Tabarovsky talked with the Ukrainian war reporter and editor in chief of Zaborona Ekaterina Sergatskova, about the skills needed to survive the occupation, Russian war crimes, and what Ukrainian journalists need the most to do their work. The conversati...

The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of contemporary Russian history. It is also strikingly relevant today, as the world grapples with Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine and Russia’s dramatic loss of freedom. In Part 2 of our conversation with journalist Mikhail Fishman, we discuss Nemtsov’s re...

The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of contemporary Russian history. It is also strikingly relevant today, as the world grapples with Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine and Russia’s dramatic loss of freedom. We discuss it with the journalist Mikhail Fishman, author of The Successor:  The Story...

The war in Ukraine has highlighted Russian propaganda and the way it weaponizes the memory of World War II for political purposes—in this case, to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this episode, Izabella Tabarovsky digs deep into Russia’s myths about the war and considers how the invasion of Ukraine is causing that entire symbolic universe to crumble. Guest: Dr. David Hoffmann. Commentators...

Over the past 10 years or so, Russia’s relations with the West have been reaching new lows. In bilateral terms, no other relationship has been more indicative of that trajectory than the one with Great Britain. The story of Russian-British ties, partnership, and animosity is thus important to explore. Joining the Kennan Institute's Maxim Trudolubov to discuss this is David Owen, a veteran British...

Many prefer to measure today's authoritarian regimes against the West’s standards in everything from governance to culture. But taking a closer look at the authoritarian world itself and studying its evolution is probably more illuminating. Despite constant geopolitical infighting, Russia and Turkey display striking similarities in the stance they take toward the West. Moscow and Ankara's crackdow...

A Soviet nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate, Andrei Sakharov fought for disarmament, world peace, and human rights. To what extent is his legacy relevant for today’s Russia and the world? What is the state of those values now, at a time when autocracies are on the rise and new international conflicts are developing?   The Kennan Institute's Maxim Trudolyubov discusses Sakharov's legacy in light...

The Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin made his pioneering spaceflight 60 years ago. In the USSR, it marked a time of optimistic, forward-looking modernization, of which the Soviet space program was the hallmark.   Maxim Trudolyubov discusses the Soviet-American space race and today’s newfound space enthusiasm with Victoria Smolkin, associate professor of history and Russian studies at Wesleyan University,...

Russia is often seen as a country that was led astray by a former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin. Informed by his training and character, it is often implied, he turned himself into an all-powerful ruler and turned Russia into the autocracy it is today. But what if he simply was helpless to do any better and is not in fact all-powerful?   The Kennan Institute's Maxim Trudolyubov discusses constraints...

Sputnik V, Russia's COVID-19 vaccine, is not just a scientific achievement but a golden moment for vaccine diplomacy. Despite the initial distrust—some of which persists to this day—dozens of countries have granted Sputnik V emergency use authorization. Why is Russia falling behind in its domestic vaccination campaign, and will Russia be able to maintain its international vaccine leadership? We ta...