Author: Ksenia Kirillova / Eurasia Daily Monitor

The beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a serious blow to the Russian business sector. It did not, however, lead to a break in the private sector’s relations with the Kremlin. Associate researcher Andrey Yakovlev at the Business Center of Harvard University offers several reasons for such behavior. First, in his words, business...

On January 31, Russian presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin announced on his Telegram channel that he had received 105,000 signatures of support for the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (Telegram.me/BorisNadezhdin, January 31). Mr. Nadezh­din’s unexpected success in his Russian presidential campaign revealed that many Russians are ready to oppose the war openly if such...

Part II On January 4, Andrey Bezrukov, a former Russian intelligence officer and current propagandist, spoke on the Russian podcast Geopolitburo where he promoted the message that Russia has always carried out a mission of “peace and a civilization.” For the first time in many years, Russian propaganda has begun to appeal to the image...

In December, independent journalists and human rights activists prepared a prognosis of what awaits Russia in the near future. According to participants in the “Network Freedoms” project, Russian citizens should expect total censorship on the internet. The Russian authorities will begin to recognize popular public pages on social networks as “extremist” and will introduce penalties...

In recent weeks, Russia has witnessed increased reports of violence against military personnel. The violence includes demonstrative retaliation against “refuseniks” (Russians who avoid conscription), “meat assaults” (human wave tactics used by the Russian military in Ukraine) and attempts to send wounded soldiers to the Ukrainian front. Those who refuse to go on the attack are...

On November 19, the wives and mothers of mobilized Russian soldiers held a protest in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk against rumors of another mass mobilization and demanded the return of “their guys.” Similar protests have swept across Russia in recent weeks but were met with little state support (The Moscow Times, November 20). Despite...