Gazprom has recently reported progress in talks with China on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline. Oil and gas market expert Mikhail Krutikhin argues that the colossal costs of building it will have to be swallowed so Gazprom can fulfill its obligations on the first Power of Siberia contract and that the project will never break even.

Driven by leaders’ personal chemistry, US-Russia relations have long been prone to falling apart when core national interests clash. Currently, Trump is betting that a personally negotiated deal with Putin could succeed where institutions have failed – but history says otherwise.

Vladimir Putin’s surprise meeting with Archbishop Alexei of Sitka and Alaska during his recent U.S. visit has stirred deep unease within the Orthodox Church in America. Far from a mere exchange of courtesies, the encounter has been criticized as a carefully staged act of Kremlin propaganda—one that risks compromising the Church’s moral integrity and entangling it in the politics of war.

Benjamin Nathans, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement speaks with writer Dmitry Bykov about his book, about the Soviet mindset in the 1960s and 1970s, and about the prospect of democratic reforms in Russia.