There is little doubt that as the May 25 presidential elections draw closer, the situation in Ukraine, both internally and externally, will continue to escalate. And it’s no wonder. On the one hand, no serious external power, naturally, will risk opposing elections in any country which has found itself in the midst of an extended political crisis. ( Read more... )

The discussion surrounding Russia’s annexation of Crimea is sure to occupy the international community for some time. The world might never even come to a relative consensus on the issue. But is that even necessary ( Read more... )

I find it interesting that the “Magnitsky List”, being discussed actively in the US has caused such an emotinonal reaction from the Russian elite.  It seems that possiblity of being included in this one or a similar document frightens Russian officials even more than, say, American BMD system in Europe. However for the rest of Russians the ( Read more... )

Although Vladimir Putin has returned to Kremlin as a president, he will be a president of a different country than he was in 2004 or Dmitry Medvedev was in 2008. During the election campaign Putin was constantly asked how come in the last 12 years he hadn’t managed to fix all the issues that he was promising to fix in 2012 and after. Putin’s answer ( Read more... )

Everyone is playing the guess game of how long Dmitry Medvedev will “survive” as the new prime-minister of Russia. In this article I raise several questions concerning the role of prime-minister in Russia and most importantly - why is there a prime-minister in Russia altogether.

In Russia we’ve seen two distinct administrative models so far. First ( Read more... )

President Medvedev’s term is coming to an end. The majority of Russian public as well as Russian establishment has a rather low opinion of the results of this term. Those who praised him “in advance” have drastically changed their attitudes since then, bashing Medvedev for not fulfilling their high expectations and hopes. The good old national ( Read more... )

At last Russian leadership has realized the importance of long-term strategic planning when it comes to foreign policy and issues of national security. Russia is too big and too important to ignore global trends and tendencies let alone not make any attempts to affects those trends and turn them around for its own benefit. The world today is going ( Read more... )

It would seem that Putin’s victory at the presidential election should have brought stability to the country, make political game predictable and give peace of mind to private sector. In reality however everything seems to be the other way around. The completion of the election cycle has solved none of the problems. On the contrary most of the ( Read more... )

Here you can follow my recent articles translated from Russian to English, as well as find links to the original texts. My Russian language LV blog can be found here: n_zlobin.

Russian society is cooling off after an unusually heated presidential race, which is only natural. The society has accepted the results of the elections while various political powers are taking a breather in order to get their thoughts together. However in the nearest future the debates and discussions will heat up again, as the country ( Read more... )