A study of Russian civil society and its resilience under authoritarian pressure. We explore how people defend human rights and free expression, how the state works to silence them, and why independent voices and grassroots initiative still matter for the country's democratic future
Victory Day means millions of people’s stories carefully told from generation to generation. There used to be those happy days when the Kremlin didn’t need this holiday for…
Until a few years ago most Russian opposition members had strongly believed that exposing corruption schemes is a way to consolidate people with different views making them realize…
In a previous article, I tried to describe how Russian propaganda works, specifically, the weakening of critical thinking, playing emotions (such as pity, fear, and anger), the creation…
A section of Russian analysts view the political potential for protests in Russia in the near future with scepticism: in the conditions of an economic crisis, Russians- adapting…
“Remember when they convicted X?” “No, I was already doing time in Magadan.” “Wasn’t Y there at the same time? We met at a pretrial before they sent…
Free Russia Foundation is honored to present the report "Russia's Bad Example" by Melissa Hooper with assistance from Grigory Frolov. Since the start of Vladimir Putin’s presidency in…
The Kremlin employed an ancient and underused instrument of Russian soft power in February when Kirill, Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, conducted an 11-day, four-country tour of Cuba,…
The brazen murder and its subsequent investigation demonstrate the nature and fragility of the Russian political regime. A year ago this Saturday, Boris Nemtsov, one of Russia’s leading…
Right after Putin's third term, and especially after the Maidan revolution in Ukraine followed by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent military conflict in Eastern Ukraine,…
Exactly three years ago, the Russian parliament passed a law that forbids Americans from adopting children from Russia. This was the Russian authorities' response to the “Magnitsky list”…
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