By Igor Pellicciari, Russia in Global Affairs, 8/10/22

The outbreak of war in Ukraine, considered by many as highly improbable until very shortly before the Russian military invasion, is not “surprising.” It is part of the West’s historical struggle to foresee the Kremlin’s decisions and to understand its objectives, both internal and external.

Contributing to this handicap in reading Russian events has been the abundant recourse to basic interpretations which, borrowed too easily from publicist narratives, have long prevented the formulation of more articulate hypotheses on what is happening in Moscow and the reasons behind these events.

Above all, the portrayal of Putin as a tsar, whose power is absolutely unchallenged in the Kremlin, is a simplification used to convey to the 24-hour infotainment audience the exceptional concentration of power in the hands of the Russian President.

Nonetheless, continually re-proposing such a simplified image without methodological adjustments has over time led to the crystallization of deforming lenses in analyzing Russia’s choices, ineffective in fully grasping their content and predicting their timing.[1]

This simple idea—easy to use for neophytes in Russian affairs—of a political framework focused on the figure of the President alone, prevents analysts from depicting the complexities of a political system that is rather difficult to decipher. And so is the institutional background (far from neutral) that accompanies it, the product of anomalous constitutionalization over the last two centuries, unparalleled in Europe.[2]

A second deforming lens leads to the obsessive focus on Vladimir Putin’s personal affairs, even on his physical and/or mental health, so much so that numerous works have gone into hypothesizing on his possible illnesses (serious, sometimes terminal) in a bid to find the causal link to the Kremlin’s decision-making strategies.

These approaches have been reinforced over the course of two decades of Putin’s rule but, despite their longevity, they have done little to help understand (not justify) Moscow’s present and future moves. In the West, they have led to the widespread belief—long outdated in the social sciences—that a country’s political course depends on one man and thus to a disregard of the remaining dynamics within Russia, creating an important information gap, to the detriment of the ability to keep an up-to-date mapping of institutional power.

The conflict in Ukraine has helped revive these basic interpretations with new vigor to such an extent that they have become pillars of the powerful and united European opposition to the war since the very first days of the Russian invasion.

Abundantly used by the media in the first conflict of the “social era,” they have also spread to professional and academic circles that are experiencing a chronic lack of Western expertise on the post-Soviet space. This is the result of the drastic decrease in investment in research studying the political and institutional aspects of Russia during the 1990s, following a dramatic decline in its geo-political importance.

OPTICAL ILLUSION

Today, alongside continuous daily reports from the Ukrainian frontlines, dramatic but failing to provide an overall picture, these deforming interpretative lenses have corroborated two beliefs, predominant in Western mass media:

a) the idea of Putin being solely responsible for the decision to unleash the war in Ukraine—and consequently for chartering its course;

b) the conclusion (which follows from point a) that Putin’s exit from the political scene is the shortest—if not the only—way to stop the hostilities.

These two premises have inspired multiple analyses and commentaries.

One predicted Putin’s exit due to the deterioration of severe illnesses (neurological and oncological) he is allegedly afflicted with; the other one openly hoped for the Russian President’s ousting, ideally at the initiative of the oligarchs angered by the harshness of the Western sanctions imposed after the start of hostilities in Ukraine at the end of February 2022.

Simplifications aside, these interpretations succeeded in immediately rallying Western public opinion, shocked by the outbreak of a real war in the heart Europe.

However, as the situation unfolded, these arguments lost relevance in the face of outcomes that contradicted the numerous predictions made in the first days of the invasion. These ranged from the duration of the conflict, which has become a marathon of attrition instead of the expected blitzkrieg, to the strengthening of the ruble despite initial projections of Russia’s default by mid-March 2022, to Moscow’s extra-Western diplomatic activism (China, India, Africa, the Middle East) despite assertions that Russia has been isolated from the rest of the world, to the absence of substantial internal opposition forces—both institutional and popular—capable of removing Putin from power (let alone the oligarchs, with their fortunes depending on the Kremlin’s decisions rather than the other way round).

In other words, the unfolding scenario lays bare the shortcomings of the vision based on the Putin=tsar equation and the consequent assumption that the imminent replacement of the Russian President by hook or crook is a guarantee of regime change preferred by the West. Hence the need to make more articulate assumptions about the actors in the Russian decision-making process.[3]

TURNOVER OF ELITES

In 2017, we argued why in a country with such resources, interests, ambitions, institutional framework and state apparatus as Russia, “the specific weight of an empire is far greater than any emperor (or tsar) coming to command it.”[4]  

This is not to deny the exceptional importance of the President in Russia and in particular the figure of Putin (nor is it to reduce the weight of his political responsibilities), but rather to put forward interpretations that complement, rather than contradict, the aforementioned basic consideration, giving it greater depth.

A historical tradition of sudden internal changes within the Kremlin, which the West took note of only after they happened, unable to predict their timing and outcome, would suggest a more systematic use of social science theories—and those concerning elite relations—in deciphering Moscow’s decision-making. They should be applied first and foremost to the political-institutional context in order to reconstruct the dynamics between the groups that animate the country’s mammoth civil service, of which Putin is the apex but also the expression, synthesis and point of coexistence.

Rather than in the Russian leader’s psychological profile, it is in the evolution of the Kremlin’s internal political balances that the origin of the Kremlin’s surprising choice to invade Ukraine with old-fashioned direct military action, more in keeping with the 19th than the 21st century tradition, should be sought.

In this regard, an earlier theory of ours, which ideally divided the first fifteen years of the Putin era into three phases, according to the civil service groups that flanked the Russian president, should be renewed and updated in accordance with the current events. These are the Intelligence, the Jurists, and the Diplomats.[5]

Although quite distinct from each other, these three elites did not clash but rather worked in synergy, alternating in the leadership role of the Executive, depending on the objectives and priorities of the moment.

Granted that these are indicative periods, the first phase encompasses a flexible time span from Putin’s inauguration (December 31, 1999) until Russia’s presidency of the G8 in 2006.

At the beginning of the millennium, Russia was a country that had come out hard from the dark decade of the 1990s: socially in tatters, with a collapsing public-economic sector, launched like a trapeze artist without a safety net into liberalism without theoretical or practical brakes, with catastrophic results.

The elite called upon to take charge of this complex situation came from the intelligence services, already the undisputed vanguard of the Russian civil service since Soviet times. The oligarchs, who enjoyed political dominance in the 1990s, played the decisive role in entrusting them with the reins of government. For the most part, they had become disinterested in staying actively involved in politics and sought, instead, to entrust running the country’s political institutions to their own righthand agents. Chosen precisely because of their reliability in the public sector, the intelligence services, guided by a primatus politicae unknown to the oligarchs, began to autonomize themselves from the latter and marginalize them, starting with the choice of government priorities.

Their main objective was to secure the “Russian style” of governance, in reaction to the dominance of neoliberal economists who had brought the country one step closer to collapse and sold off its immense resources to foreign entities.

In the following five years, intelligence remained a decisive factor, but fell back into formal roles more in keeping with its tradition, leaving the stage to the classical top echelons of the civil service, best represented by jurists, due to the traditional basic training common among PA managers. It was up to them to implement a new priority task of facilitating the resurgence of a pro-government lower-middle class, largely coinciding with the huge Russian state and para-state apparatus, in the belief that it would have a conservative impact on the status quo, thus strengthening the establishment.

As the center of gravity of the political system shifted towards a type of legitimation that was linked to real popular consensus and concentrated in the public sector, the iron rule of direct proportionality between power and money, which in the 1990s had underpinned the unchallenged dominance of (certain groups of) oligarchs, had been overcome. In fact, they were increasingly marginalized from policymaking, in a trend that the West struggled to understand, as speculation that they would be the protagonists of a coup d’état that would remove Putin from power continued to resurface from time to time. 

With these two phases over and government objectives achieved on the domestic front, roughly with the end of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential term in 2012, the outlook changed to refocus on the international front. With foreign policy strongly downsized after the end of bipolarity, which had relegated Moscow to secondary roles in the major negotiations of the time (above all, the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995), the Kremlin sought to regain the status of super-power, lost after the collapse of the USSR.

This explains why the third phase of government action focused on diplomats, particularly those trained at MGIMO University and disciples of Yevgeny Primakov, a figure of absolute reverence in Russian foreign policy circles, and a strong proponent of a doctrine designed to contain the U.S. through Moscow’s multilateral activism. Called upon to play key roles even outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the diplomats give a new twist to Russian protagonism in areas of geo-political interest as well as to the instruments used for this purpose. They work to create and maintain an intense network of privileged bilateral relations with international players, even opposing ones, from Saudi Arabia to Iran to Turkey, via Israel and Hamas, but above all, from India to China.

Driven by its ambition to regain the role of global actor it once played in the days of bipolarity, Moscow shows interest in macro-areas—such as the former Soviet space—that were, in fact, snubbed during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency and characterized by post-ideological rejection of any elements even remotely reminiscent of the communist period.

In foreign policy, the new course manifested itself most vividly in the pursuit of objectives by using diplomatic instruments rather than military action, even when a symmetrical response would be predictable and consonant with Russian tradition. It was in this context that the decision had matured to channel huge resources into international aid policies, with Moscow definitively leaving behind the subordinate role of Beneficiary to become one of the main Re-emerging Donors of the period.

Russia’s specificity lies in interpreting this role by reconnecting to the Soviet tradition of “catch-all” aid: not limited only to cooperation and/or humanitarian interventions but extended to any sphere or resource of state competence, including interventions in the fields of defense, energy, technology, and up to direct financial support.

A clear example of this modus operandi in the field of international aid is Russia’s recent assistance to third countries during the pandemic, in particular its support for their immunization campaigns. The Russian vaccine, the first of the kind announced on a global scale (August 2020), is characterized by a purely public matrix that allows the state to control its entire production and distribution cycle, making it a geo-political instrument in the pursuit of its foreign policy objectives.

Similar to what has been seen in other fields such as sports (Olympic Games in Sochi, FIFA World Cup) or technology (cooperation in international missions in space and the Arctic), Russian aid seeks to pursue soft power politics, which alongside the aims of classical power politics creates a new image of an open and engaging country, as opposed to the harsh and military one of the Soviet period.

From this perspective, the Kremlin’s turn towards Ukraine represents a striking departure from the choices made in previous years. It is so incongruent with the previous policy that it cannot reflect the preferences of Russia’s diplomats. Even if they are opposed to war, observers have nevertheless harbored excessive hopes that this might lead to active opposition, which is rarely the outcome of disagreement in Russia’s rigidly vertical state culture.

Updating the theory of the turnover of Kremlin elites, the decision to use the military instrument to defend national interests in foreign policy is to be placed in the fourth phase, which began even before the Ukraine crisis and was marked by the growing influence of the military. A traditional element of national identity, the military (Armiya) is an operational manifestation of the defense sector, unlike the U.S. military, which is strictly public and acts as the driving force behind research in a variety of fields (such as, referring to pandemics, bacteriological studies) that are private in the West and have civil applications.

Having begun its rise during the conflict in the Caucasus in 2008, continued it with the spectacular annexation of Crimea in 2014 (through an intelligence operation rather than combat action), and solidified it in Syria, with results being far from predictable, however, the military has repeatedly demanded a greater political role in the last decade. In Russian military culture, this has never propelled anyone directly to the top of the government (as in Latin American military regimes), but rather reflected the ability to show one’s worth in combat, be it a classic war scenario or a hybrid intervention such as the aid campaign in Italy “From Russia with Love,” during the COVID-19 outbreak.

When the Kremlin’s initial plan to implement a “blitz-without-war” in Ukraine on the Crimean model, with a co-optation of the leadership and nerve centers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and regime change in Kiev evaporated, an alternative plan was undertaken that envisages a full-scale long-term military action with the use of professional army units on the Syrian model. However, the point is that once these sectors of the army are mobilized, it becomes difficult to limit the scope of their advance or call them back in the name of negotiations, precisely because of the enhanced role of the military in the Kremlin.

CONCLUSIONS

This can be summed up in three observations from the recent past, which form the basis for several predictions for the immediate future:

On the past:

-The Russian political system cannot simply be reduced to the role played by Vladimir Putin, albeit decisive and powerful. Although he is at the top of the decision-making pyramid, his power is nevertheless mediated by a huge public and para-state sector and internal interest groups, whose influence must be balanced and managed.

-After the Intelligence Service, the classic Civil Service, and Diplomacy, the defense sector has taken central stage in the Kremlin’s decision-making process.

-Moscow’s choice to switch from the carrot (aid) to the stick (war) in pursuing its geopolitical goals should be understood in this context.

On future scenarios:

-Possible escalation of the conflict in Ukraine in intensity and duration precisely because it is managed by the Kremlin’s military rather than political logic.

-Moscow’s recourse to military action to resolve its disputes could become a recurring instrument of its foreign policy.

-A change of leader in the Kremlin (highly unlikely to come at the hands of the oligarchs) will not make the leadership that planned and supported the Ukrainian invasion fade away. Moreover, it would be difficult to come to terms with any post-Putin leadership because we know very little about the actors operating backstage.

Kremlin website, 8/16/22

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,

Esteemed foreign guests,

Let me welcome you to the anniversary 10th Moscow Conference on International Security. Over the past decade, your representative forum has become a significant venue for discussing the most pressing military-political problems.

Today, such an open discussion is particularly pertinent. The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.

These objective processes are being opposed by the Western globalist elites, who provoke chaos, fanning long-standing and new conflicts and pursuing the so-called containment policy, which in fact amounts to the subversion of any alternative, sovereign development options. Thus, they are doing all they can to keep hold onto the hegemony and power that are slipping from their hands; they are attempting to retain countries and peoples in the grip of what is essentially a neocolonial order. Their hegemony means stagnation for the rest of the world and for the entire civilisation; it means obscurantism, cancellation of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism.

They are using all expedients. The United States and its vassals grossly interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states by staging provocations, organising coups, or inciting civil wars. By threats, blackmail, and pressure, they are trying to force independent states to submit to their will and follow rules that are alien to them. This is being done with just one aim in view, which is to preserve their domination, the centuries-old model that enables them to sponge on everything in the world. But a model of this sort can only be retained by force.

This is why the collective West – the so-called collective West – is deliberately undermining the European security system and knocking together ever new military alliances. NATO is crawling east and building up its military infrastructure. Among other things, it is deploying missile defence systems and enhancing the strike capabilities of its offensive forces. This is hypocritically attributed to the need to strengthen security in Europe, but in fact quite the opposite is taking place. Moreover, the proposals on mutual security measures, which Russia put forward last December, were once again disregarded.

They need conflicts to retain their hegemony. It is for this reason that they have destined the Ukrainian people to being used as cannon fodder. They have implemented the anti-Russia project and connived at the dissemination of the neo-Nazi ideology. They looked the other way when residents of Donbass were killed in their thousands and continued to pour weapons, including heavy weapons, for use by the Kiev regime, something that they persist in doing now.

Under these circumstances, we have taken the decision to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine, a decision which is in full conformity with the Charter of the United Nations. It has been clearly spelled out that the aims of this operation are to ensure the security of Russia and its citizens and protect the residents of Donbass from genocide.

The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is attempting to draw out this conflict. It acts in the same way elsewhere, fomenting the conflict potential in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As is common knowledge, the US has recently made another deliberate attempt to fuel the flames and stir up trouble in the Asia-Pacific. The US escapade towards Taiwan is not just a voyage by an irresponsible politician, but part of the purpose-oriented and deliberate US strategy designed to destabilise the situation and sow chaos in the region and the world. It is a brazen demonstration of disrespect for other countries and their own international commitments. We regard this as a thoroughly planned provocation.

It is clear that by taking these actions the Western globalist elites are attempting, among other things, to divert the attention of their own citizens from pressing socioeconomic problems, such as plummeting living standards, unemployment, poverty, and deindustrialisation. They want to shift the blame for their own failures to other countries, namely Russia and China, which are defending their point of view and designing a sovereign development policy without submitting to the diktat of the supranational elites.

We also see that the collective West is striving to expand its bloc-based system to the Asia-Pacific region, like it did with NATO in Europe. To this end, they are creating aggressive military-political unions such as AUKUS and others.

It is obvious that it is only possible to reduce tensions in the world, overcome military-political threats and risks, improve trust between countries and ensure their sustainable development through a radical strengthening of the contemporary system of a multipolar world.

I reiterate that the era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. No matter how strongly the beneficiaries of the current globalist model cling to the familiar state of affairs, it is doomed. The historic geopolitical changes are going in a totally different direction.

And, of course, your conference is another important proof of the objective processes forming a multipolar world, bringing together representatives from many countries who want to discuss security issues on an equal footing, and conduct a dialogue that takes into account the interests of all parties, without exception.

I want to emphasise that the multipolar world, based on international law and more just relations, opens up new opportunities for counteracting common threats, such as regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and cybercrime. All these challenges are global, and therefore it would be impossible to overcome them without combining the efforts and potentials of all states.

As before, Russia will actively and assertively participate in such coordinated joint efforts; together with its allies, partners and fellow thinkers, it will improve the existing mechanisms of international security and create new ones, as well as consistently strengthen the national armed forces and other security structures by providing them with advanced weapons and military equipment. Russia will secure its national interests, as well as the protection of its allies, and take other steps towards building of a more democratic world where the rights of all peoples and cultural and civilisational diversity are guaranteed.

We need to restore respect for international law, for its fundamental norms and principles. And, of course, it is important to promote such universal and commonly acknowledged agencies as the United Nations and other international dialogue platforms. The UN Security Council and the General Assembly, as it was intended initially, are supposed to serve as effective tools to reduce international tensions and prevent conflicts, as well as facilitate the provision of reliable security and wellbeing of countries and peoples.

In conclusion, I want to thank the conference organisers for their major preparatory work and I wish all participants substantial discussions.

I am sure that the forum will continue to make a significant contribution to the strengthening of peace and stability on our planet and facilitate the development of constructive dialogue and partnership.

Thank you for your attention.

The Economist, 8/6/22

Eduard K. can’t recall the exact chain of events that led him to approach a Ukrainian military checkpoint and shout: “Putin is my president.” The fashion designer says he remembers an increasing state of panic as war raged outside his home in northern Kyiv. Even when shells weren’t exploding nearby, he would cry uncontrollably at the news he saw on his phone. He became obsessed by the Russians, the evil forces advancing on the other side of the forest. Perhaps he was searching for them when he left his home, in slippers and pyjamas, for the Ukrainian positions inside the woods. Instead, he remembers saying he was looking for Katya Chilly—a camp, new-age Ukrainian Eurovision entrant—before announcing his allegiance to Russia’s president. He was roughed up for his troubles.

That afternoon Eduard K. was admitted to one of Kyiv’s psychiatric hospitals. Yaroslav Zakharov, the doctor who saw him first, says his illness was far from unique in a country traumatised by five months of fighting. War has affected every Ukrainian in some way, and stress is magnifying problems present in the most vulnerable. In normal circumstances the psyche works like a digestive system, the doctor says; it is able to adapt and process extreme experiences. Prolonged war changes that. The expectation of suffering debilitates the nervous system. “People like to control things, and war doesn’t let you do it,” he says. Ukraine’s health ministry predicts that the war will leave 3m-4m people in need of pharmacological interventions, and another 15m requiring psychological support.

Dr Zakharov’s ward was a hive of activity when The Economist dropped by in late July. A soldier had just been admitted after an incident in which he turned firearms on a colleague on the frontline. The entire second floor of the building had been taken over by the military, the doctor revealed, with new admissions increasing in line with the hostilities in the contested Donbas region, in Ukraine’s east.

The most intense pressure on resources, however, came during the battle for Kyiv in March, when the hospital stayed open despite missiles flying over and landing near it. The doctors discharged all but the most dangerous patients, and spread their meagre resources as best they could. There were many tragic incidents. One of the discharged men, who had a history of mental illness, hanged himself after discovering that his home near Kyiv had been ransacked by Russian soldiers. His wife is now receiving treatment.

Eduard K. says that many of the patients admitted alongside him came directly from Bucha or Irpin, suburbs of Kyiv where occupying Russian forces committed terrible atrocities. The men were of all ages and backgrounds, he says, from the very young to the very old, and friendly. One group of patients got it into their heads that Eduard K. was God. “They introduced themselves one by one: this is Archangel Michael, and this so-and-so is Archangel Gabriel”, he recounts.

Some were too traumatised to speak, but brought Eduard offerings instead: apples, odd tea bags, coffee, socks. By the end of his first day on the ward his bedside table was overflowing with unsolicited gifts. One young patient would bring him one-kopeck coins. He had evidently witnessed Russian atrocities near his home in Bucha, though he was never able to communicate exactly what.

The Ukrainian government has sent mental-health specialists into some of the worst-hit towns. Nataliya Zaretska, a psychologist, has been working in Bucha for the past three months, helping civilians process the trauma of occupation. She expected her programme to end after six months, but the demand has been so high that she has opened a new mental-health centre in the town. Ms Zaretska says that the spectrum of mental illness is wide. She works with soldiers who have returned after being tortured in captivity, and locals who have been prisoners in their own homes.

The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of Vladimir Putin’s invasion—the bogus claims of Ukrainian Nazism, of “liberating” Russian-speaking Ukrainians, of “high-precision” missiles that end up killing civilians in shopping centres—makes recovery complicated for many people. There are few things as dangerous for mental health as the feeling of betrayal and illusion, says Olena Nahorna, a colleague of Ms Zaretska now embedded with Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Those who understood from the start that Russia was the enemy were better at coping with the horrors of the war, she argues. Those who thought they were friends found it tougher. “A lot of Ukrainians saw in Moscow a neighbour, albeit an eccentric one. It was a personal tragedy when that eccentric friend burst into their homes and started killing them.”

Ms Nahorna identifies one potential upside to war: the national unity forged by the shared experience of trauma. Eduard K., now discharged from Mr Zakharov’s care, says the extreme nature of his experience has given him new clarity in life. “I realise I could be dead, that different soldiers might have shot me, and that is a big kick up the backside.” His doctor agrees, but cautions it is too early to know the full extent of his trauma—and Ukraine’s. Mr Putin, he says, has dropped a delayed-action bomb on the psyche of every Ukrainian.

Barely holding back tears, the doctor reveals that his own rage pushed him to try to enlist. He was persuaded against it by a former patient now fighting in Donbas. “She told me I needed to take good care of myself, that I would be needed by all of them when the war is over.” She was right.

This is my most powerful interview yet. I took Maria, a fierce liberal, anti-war protester to the FRONT LINES of the war in the Donbass to see things for herself, to speak to the people for herself. This woman, with balls of steel, even walked with me through the streets of Svyatogorsk, with Ukrainian snipers just 200 meters away, to speak to civilians trapped in their basements and bring them food. How much of what she believed was right? Or wrong? This is an interview you must see to believe. – John Mark Dougan

Link here.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 8/4/22

Under the pressure of war, crackdown, and emigration, Russia’s media landscape looks increasingly as it did in the bygone Soviet era.

In the Cold War, that meant a consolidated national press offering the official narrative with little political diversity, and a range of alternative voices based outside the country trying various means to penetrate official obstacles to reach Russian audiences.

It’s not quite that bad yet today.

The funding for state media has indeed tripled since the war began, even as laws to curtail critical journalism have proliferated. And most independent media – and the journalists who worked with them – have left Russia in recent months after being declared “foreign agents,” forbidden from reporting on the war and, in many cases, physically shut down by authorities.

But thanks to the advances and ubiquity of the internet, independent media today are able to make their voices heard in a way that was impossible during the days of the USSR. Some of them have established full-scale operations from a safe perch outside the country, aiming to bring alternative news and views to Russians online. Quite a few journalists have remained in Russia but retreated to obscure precincts of social media to express themselves, or to provide information anonymously for existing outlets.

“There are so many ways to reach people nowadays that were unimaginable in the past,” says Masha Lipman, co-editor of the Russia Post, an online journal of expert debate in English and Russian that still seems to be accessible in Russia without using a VPN. “As long as the internet exists, and the restrictions are not impenetrable – the Russian government is trying – then it’s as if the émigré press now has a real foothold and can compete in the Russian information sphere.”

Russians setting the agenda

Not every independent journalist has decamped abroad. Some continue working within the still-permitted spectrum, trying to produce valuable work within increasingly restrictive legal conditions. And a few say they’re just not leaving, no matter what.

“I was born in Russia and have lived here all my life. Why should I leave?” says journalist Vasily Polonsky. He’s worked for several alternative outlets, including TV Dozhd and the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and has been declared a “foreign agent” under Russian law. “Who will stay here to express a position different from the official line?” he asks. “As long as it’s possible, I’ll stay here and work, even if I can only seem to use about 15% of my professional capacities.”

But most of Russia’s critical media voices now operate outside the country – a situation that is starting to resemble the old Cold War.

Then, the Russian émigré press was largely confined to exiled readerships, with few opportunities to reach audiences inside the USSR. Only big state-supported radio stations such as Radio Liberty, the BBC, and Voice of America had the capabilities to counter Soviet jamming efforts and bring a different narrative to Soviet citizens in their own languages.

“In those days, millions would be listening, and they considered those signals from outside the country to be the voice of truth,” says Ms. Lipman.

But there are some important differences from the past, she says. “Those Cold War-era radio stations were run by foreign governments who were fighting their ideological battles with the USSR. Russians may have worked for them, but they were not in charge. Today Russians are running these [exiled] media ventures; they are the bosses and they set the agenda.”

The online newspaper Meduza, probably the most popular opposition-minded voice, decamped years ago to Latvia where, despite mounting difficulties with news-gathering inside Russia, it continues to make its coverage available to any Russian able to use a VPN. The TV station Dozhd was finally hounded out of its Moscow studios in March, after years of tightening regulations, and recently started broadcasting from a borrowed studio in Riga, using YouTube, a platform that has not yet been blocked in Russia.

“It didn’t make any sense to stay. We’d have been no use to anyone, including our families,” says Ekaterina Kotrikadze, news director at Dozhd. “This is really different. How do you reach people? How do you understand the country when you are outside of it?”

Staff members at Dozhd have been debating how to continue gathering news and contributions from inside Russia, bearing in mind that such work may be criminalized by Russian authorities, putting journalists at serious risk. They are especially concerned for people like Mr. Polonsky, Ms. Kotrikadze says.

“It’s just impossible to do your job as a journalist from inside the country now,” she says. “There are several journalists who remain and continue to work. Polonsky is one of ours who refuses to leave. What to do about him?”

“People were waiting for us”

Despite government efforts to silence them, independent media have been able to maintain a connection with their audience. Ms. Kotrikadze says her first show in late July from Latvia – she’s also an anchor – got a million and a half views, and a lot of positive feedback.

“People were waiting for us, and knew where to look,” she says. “We’ve kept in touch on Telegram channels, of course, and our relaunch is still partial. But we are back on the air.”

The now-closed Ekho Moskvy radio station has also fallen back on YouTube. Several of its top contributors now broadcast their familiar critical commentary on a channel they call Live Nail, though not full time.

YouTube remains a viable platform for alternative Russian media because its made-in-Russia replacement, RuTube, is still not ready after suffering from a devastating hacker attack early in the war. Many official Russian news channels, and pro-Kremlin voices such as Sputnik and Russia Today, still rely on YouTube, and hence it remains one of the few pluralistic platforms that Russians can access without a VPN.

The biggest worry, Ms. Lipman says, is that independent media have lost their former business models. “News outlets like Meduza and Dozhd used to get advertising income in the Russian market, and were relatively successful. Now they are completely cutoff from that, and it’s going to become a problem.”

“The situation is changing very fast”

Some independent outlets try to carry on within Russia, despite being labeled “foreign agents” and subjected to constant legal harassment. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta attempted to continue publishing without breaking any of the new laws concerning war reporting, but nevertheless was forced to stop in March. In early July, it successfully registered the first issue of a weekly magazine, called No, but its site was subsequently blocked.

Nadezhda Prusenkova, Novaya Gazeta’s press secretary, says the staff has no idea what will happen next.

“We’re going through a very difficult period,” she says. “It’s not clear whether we’ll open a new site, or issue another edition. Right now, all I can say is that the situation is changing very fast.”

One publication that continues with some tiny semblance of normality is the 20-year-old Caucasian Knot, which produces critical news coverage about southern Russia and the wider Caucasus region. It’s been declared a “foreign agent” and its website has been blocked in Russia. But despite pending court cases, the site has been able to keep working so far.

Its editor, Grigory Shvedov, attributes that to the fact that its area of focus is not Ukraine. It employs a network of regional journalists and bloggers, most of whom are not anonymous, to concentrate largely on human rights issues in the Caucasus. They have attempted to calculate casualty rates for Russian soldiers from the region who’ve been sent to Ukraine, but only using open and official sources.

“It’s not getting any easier,” he says. “Some can’t work at all. Some topics cannot be covered. But we want to keep working. And we intend to do that until it becomes impossible.”