Against the backdrop of the failed Trump-Putin summit in Budapest and now US sanctions on Russia’s largest oil companies, political scientist Nikolai Mitrokhin provides an overview of the situation on the battlefield and looks at what the results of the Ukrainian campaign of strikes against Russian oil refineries have been.

Journalist Ruslan Suleymanov explores how Russia is trying to build ties with the new power in Syria, rebranding former “terrorists” as political partners and working to preserve its foothold in a reshaped country.

Former US presidential aide and Council on Foreign Relations fellow Thomas Graham spoke with RBC about prospects for a peace settlement in Ukraine and how recent incidents involving Russian drones over Europe could influence it.

Some 3.5 million Russian citizens, including those who left Russia and have residency or citizenship abroad, have lost access to their invested capital because of sanctions, even though their assets have nothing to do with the state or oligarchs. Sociologist Anna Kuleshova looked at the issue in a special report.

More than a historical record, the Satinsky Archive captures the cultural and economic upheavals of the 1990s through voices that reveal the hopes, failures and unexpected consequences of rapid change. In this article, Daniel Satinsky shares his motivation for establishing the archive.

In June 2025, a team from the HSE Center for Sociocultural Research published a paper in the Journal of Community Psychology examining the link between Russians’ sense of civic identity and their psychological well-being. The authors found a positive correlation between respondents’ sense of belonging to Russian society and the effectiveness of their coping strategies.

Abel Aganbegyan, an RAS academician and a former Gorbachev economic advisor, looks at why, since 1991, Russia’s economy has grown only a third, yet US GDP has doubled, EU GDP has added 50%, and Chinese GDP and Indian GDP have ballooned thirteenfold and ninefold.

Transactions involving foreign investors leaving Russia have dropped to roughly a third of last year’s level. Experts say the exodus that once supported M&A volumes has about run its course, with few investors now willing to sell at steep mandatory discounts and facing a long approval process.

As tensions between Russia and the US hit new lows, few remember that much of modern Russian life was actually built on American ideas.

The situation in the Russian book market today seems like a paradox. On the one hand, the industry looks to be thriving; on the other hand, anything that falls outside the “norm” is suppressed with terrifying severity. I describe this two-sided picture in the first person – as someone who has worked in the industry for years.

Cultural historian Ilya Kukulin examines key innovations in Russian-speaking cultural institution-building that have emerged outside of Russia since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Publisher Felix Sandalov discusses an important Russian cultural phenomenon of the 2020s, the so-called “new tamizdat” – the publication of banned books and writers by emigrant publishers outside of Russia.

Based on ethnographic research of small-town Russia, sociologists Yakov Lurie and Sasha Kappinen challenge the idea of the war in Ukraine as a major turning point or defining political event.

Historian Sergey Chernyshov outlines how Ivan the Terrible’s capture of Kazan in the 16th century has been viewed throughout the centuries and reflects on what Tatarstan’s recent ban on events to mark the exact date mean for Tatar identity.

Based on her research, Vlada Baranova claims that the war in Ukraine has led to the ethnicization of conflicts and confrontation between the federal authorities, perceived as “Russian,” and the indigenous population. Language and environmental activism is becoming more tinged with nationalism, as well.

Following Wagner’s mutiny in June 2023 and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, the Russian government sought to replace the group in international operations in the Middle East and Africa. Antonio Giustozzi and David Lewis examine the shifts in Russian policy based on a series of interviews with Wagner personnel and other informed interlocutors.

In recent years, Georgia's ruling party has been shifting the country toward Russia, putting its long-standing cooperation with Washington and Brussels at risk. Nicholas Castillo examined the reasons behind this shift.

Moscow’s return to the Middle East rests on three main pillars: arms exports; access to military bases; and use of its private military companies, such as the Wagner Group.