Investigations

A KGB manual, published in English for the first time, reveals how Soviet spies infiltrated Western governments in an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse.

The war in Ukraine, having cost more than 9,000 lives since it begun in the spring of 2014, has now entered a relatively stagnant phase. No major offensives have occurred since Russian regular forces assaulted the city of Debaltsevo in February, 2015. Along the static front lines, warfare more closely resembles that of the First […]

By now a large body of evidence has been accumulated which proves that Russia is supplying both equipment and soldiers from its military to the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Last year, the initial focus was on the weapons such as tanks and anti-aircraft missiles which were showing up in separatist-controlled […]

Johnson’s Russia List, or JRL, run by David Johnson, is a widely-read and influential email newsletter and website, also referred to as a listserv, which publishes a regular compilation of English-language news on Russia from a variety of sources. On February 10, an interesting article with a rather shocking headline was included on that day’s list: […]

One of Ukraine’s most famous battles was waged at Ilovaisk (here on Google Maps). As we reported in our summary of the battle which we posted in August, 107 Ukrainians and 300 Russians were reportedly killed between August 7th and September 2, after Ukrainian troops which had been on the offensive suddenly met unexpectedly heavy […]

This article is co-written by Luke Rodeheffer and Devin Ackles. Admist the chaos in Ukraine, the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia recently convened in Astana as part of the Eurasian Economic Commission. Beyond the upbeat statements from the troika’s leaders, one topic that remains a source of anxiety is how effectively a common labor […]

Kyiv, Ukraine — “Maidan shouldn’t be there,” said my friend as we sat in her kitchen in Kyiv. Before, when I was living there as a researcher interviewing the far right activists who would come to the center of the Ukrainian revolution, my friend’s kitchen was a reprieve from the politics of my work. We […]

As Friday’s opening ceremony draws near, the Institute of Modern Russia, of which The Interpreter is a special project, has launched a comprehensive and interactive website detailing the myriad cases of corruption and controversies surrounding the Olympic Games in Sochi. The website, available in both English and Russian, presents “exclusive information on 26 Olympic-related objects, including […]

In a blockbuster report released today, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny details the waste, fraud, and mismanagement behind the most expensive Olympics ever. It was inevitable that Alexey Navalny would do something big with the Olympics. The opposition leader famous for his anti-graft muckraking — and put on show trial for bogus “embezzlement” charges — […]

Recent history of the Russian media shows how the media system was preconditioned by the country’s political development. In the 1990s the Russian media system underwent major transformations following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The media were introduced into new realities: the market economy, the end of ideological control of the Communist Party, political […]