Russia’s Battle around Reproductive Health and Women’s Rights
The Russia File
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 Nataliya Shok, about the country’s long history of reproductive rights, the current rhetoric regarding family values, and what restrictions might lie ahead. They also discuss the debates...
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Russia on the Second Anniversary of the Invasion of Ukraine
The Russia File
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 Russia. This is part 2 of our conversation about the second anniversary of the invasion. It was recorded on February 6. For show notes and relevant links please visit:
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Ukraine on the Second Anniversary of the Russian Invasion
The Russia File
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 United States. This is part 1 of our conversation about the second anniversary of the invasion. It was recorded on February 6. For show notes and relevant links please visit:
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Buryatia and the High Toll of Russia’s War in Ukraine on Ethnic Minorities
The Russia File
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 ranks of Russian soldiers. In this episode of The Russia File, Nina Rozhanovskaya talks with Buryat activist and research scientist Mariya Vyushkova about Buryat history and identity, Russia’s...
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Belarus Three Years After Protest
The Russia File
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 analyst Artyom Shraibman about how the situation in Belarus has changed over the past three years, the effects of the war in Ukraine on Belarusian state and society, the regime’s new repressive...
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Berlin as a Home of New Russian Political Exiles
The Russia File
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 with some of the people who are involved in Berlin’s emerging Russian political diaspora culture. In this episode of The Russia File, she talks to Alexey Yusupov of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation...
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Israeli Military Experts on the Enabling Factors of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
The Russia File
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 civilians? If not, how did it become so widespread so quickly? What role has Russia’s early operational and tactical failures, its doctrinal causes, and its general military culture played in...
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Russian Culture as a Casualty (and Accomplice) of Putin’s War in Ukraine
The Russia File
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 the Kremlin’s agenda. In a wide-ranging conversation, Nina Rozhanovskaya and journalist Sophia Kishkovsky discuss the impact of the war and the growing domestic pressure on the Russian arts and...
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Lessons from "Cold War Radio": A Conversation with Mark Pomar
The Russia File
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 exodus from Russia reaching levels comparable to those following the 1917 revolution, the experience of “Cold War radio” has suddenly become relevant again. What lessons does American international...
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The Kremlin's Favorite Scapegoat: The Latest Attack on LGBTQ+ Rights in Russia
The Russia File
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 Sasha Kondakov about the repercussions of this discriminatory legislation, the rationale behind Russia’s crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community, and what its timing can tell us about Russian...
info_outlineAmerica’s universities and think tanks produce first-rate studies of Russia’s history, culture, and politics. And yet, the way Russia features on the U.S. political stage and in the American media is not particularly nuanced. Why is that? Jill Dougherty, a long-time CNN journalist and an expert on Russia and Kevin Rothrock, Senior Editor at the English-language edition of Meduza, join the Kennan Institute’s Maxim Trudolyubov to discuss the state of Russia studies and Russia stereotypes in the American political language.