A week ago, President Vladimir Putin swaggered triumphantly onstage at a post-election event surrounded by young people in T-shirts reading “Putin — Russia — Victory,” and he confidently shrugged off Western criticism of the vote as neither free nor fair. This weekend, a very different Vladimir Putin addressed a nation shocked by a massacre at … Read more
When Vladimir Putin finally spoke about the worst terrorist attack to hit Russia in 20 years, he swept over the glaring failure of his security state to prevent the assault, which left at least 133 dead, despite a clear warning from the United States on March 7 that a strike on a concert hall could … Read more
MOSCOW — On the final day of a presidential election with only one possible result, Russians protested Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian hold on power by forming long lines to vote against him at noon Sunday — answering the call of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had urged the midday action before dying suddenly in prison last … Read more
Voters across Russia cast ballots Saturday on the second day of an election set to formalize six more years of power for President Vladimir Putin, who faces no serious challengers after crushing political dissent over his nearly 25 years of rule. The election comes against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has stifled independent … Read more
VILNIUS, Lithuania — A close associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “henchmen” on Wednesday of being behind a brutal attack that left him hospitalized. Police said an assailant attacked Leonid Volkov on Tuesday as he arrived in a car at his Vilnius home, where he lives in … Read more
TALLINN, Estonia — When charismatic opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, more than 50,000 Muscovites expressed their shock and outrage the next day at the brazen assassination. Police stood aside as they rallied and chanted anti-government slogans. Nine years later, stunned and angry Russians streamed … Read more
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during the Future Technologies Forum at the World Trade Center in Moscow on February 14, 2024. Alexander Kazakov | AFP | Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is united as it faces the threats of “international … Read more
The pastel-hued village where Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminov settled on the coast of Spain must have seemed a world away from the war he thought he had escaped last year when he defected to Ukraine. But the discovery of his bullet-riddled body last week appeared to deliver a menacing new signal from Moscow that those … Read more
When the now-martyred Alexei Navalny was a sarcastically witty student in this first author’s 2010 Yale class, he asked how my lessons on charismatic leadership apply to challenging collective cowardice. Winston Churchill’s 1938 book, While England Slept, presciently sounded the alarm on how Nazi Germany built up its war machine under the nose of England’s … Read more
Few people understand what Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the slain Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, is going through right now better than Evgenia Kara-Murza. Like Navalnaya, she has experienced what it’s like to have a spouse jailed for challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her husband, the Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, has been languishing behind bars … Read more