Anna Zueva looked into private shelters in Tomsk, Nizhny Novgorod and outside Moscow to find out what kind of help women get there and what challenges the organizations face. The biggest problem, she claims, is that the Russian state does not recognize domestic violence as a problem.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer updates her monograph Galvanizing Nostalgia? to explore why many in the republics are against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Sakha, Tyva and Buryatia and with diaspora communities, she outlines an uneven legacy of revitalization and grievances in relation to the Kremlin and its policies.

Anna Zueva writes about the plight of the merchant houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Buryatia. These architectural monuments could be saved, but officials are instead spending money from the regional budget on the so-called DNR.

Adam Lenton analyzes the 2021 data for what it tells us about Russia’s changing ethnic landscape and how the politics of the census is impacting debates on the ground among ethnic minorities in Russia.

Ceyda Giray cites several factors – economic, political and geographic – to explain why the mobilization has proceeded in a more orderly way and provoked considerably less protest activity in Tatarstan versus other Russian regions.

Infographics are based on Rosstat data

Farida Kurbangaleeva spoke with representatives of the local academic community in Kazan and the independent student media project Storm about government pressure, silent protest, and how the university administration is cooperating with law enforcement.

The famous Russian journalist Alexey Pivovarov and his Redaktsiya team traveled to Kaliningrad and Novosibirsk to see how the war and sanctions are being felt in Russia’s provinces.

Adam Lenton on how Russification continues to erode the rich linguistic landscape of the North Caucasus, while private citizens are stepping in with innovative solutions such as Avzag, a multi-language dictionary of Caucasian languages.

According to Nadezhda Zamyatina, a leading researcher at the Department of Socio-Economic Geography of Foreign Countries of the Moscow State University Geography Faculty, Nenets Autonomous Okrug is among Russia’s most ready regions “for experiments and the introduction of modern best practices for economic and innovative development.”

Sarah Lindemann-Komarova on how the “special military operation” and sanctions are seen in the Russian provinces and how Siberians continue to live their lives and demonstrate resilience.

Gulnaz Sibgatullina on how the cultural scene of ethnic minorities has confronted the ethnocentrism of Russianess long before the war and how it has attempted to contribute to a decentering of what it means to be Russian.

A short summary of the most important political developments by Nikolai Petrov.

Sergey Mikhailov writes about the way politicians who crafted Minsk agreements are clarifying their own position and the meaning of the agreements in retrospect and argues that Angela Merkel and François Hollande chose not to notice the agreements were essentially unworkable.

Maxim Blant writes that even though Russians working remotely from abroad are technically contributing to the country’s GDP, they are also taking out enormous funds from the Russian economy and aggravating the contraction in consumer demand. State spending on the war might make up for that, but it seriously undermines financial stability.