North Asia

“Why isolate ourselves from Western culture? I don’t understand it: Russia is part of a wider civilisation.” A statement by Elizaveta Likhačeva, former director of the Pushkin Museum, has sparked a patriotic outcry in Moscow led by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

In his book *People Behind the Fence*, journalist Maksim Trudoljubov explains the different types of Russian citizenship, based on moral service and private property. He also explores how a post-Putin and post-war transition might be organised on the basis of these principles.

Patriarch Kirill travelled to the capital of Tatarstan for the feast day of the famous Marian icon and celebrated the anniversary of the historic church. Built to commemorate the visit of Peter the Great, it was converted into a planetarium during the Soviet era. “Here one realises just how much greater God’s power is than that of man.”

Queuing is the fundamental form of social organisation and political control in Russia. It offers an image of communal existence, where the all-powerful state distributes benefits from the top, and the people, like supplicants, are organised in a single chain at the bottom.

A cryptocurrency magnate and financial beneficiary of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Sentenced in Moldova to 15 years’ imprisonment for a fraud worth one billion dollars, he was also considered a criminal in Russia. Until 2023, when he put his ‘talent’ at Moscow’s disposal to circumvent sanctions and bolster pro-Russian movements.

Russian citizens have been worn down considerably by the war. Like the elderly, people who are still full of vigour have rushed to take refuge in comfortable information and social bubbles, aware that they have lost any prospect of a normal life

The mother of two Chechen dissidents who fled abroad was abducted in 2022 by the security forces whilst at her home in central Russia and taken to Grozny, where she remains in prison. Now her daughter Aliya has appealed to Ajšat Kadyrova, former Minister of Culture and Social Affairs, in a last-ditch effort to secure her release.

Serebrennikov and Bogomolov were the most acclaimed figures in Russian theatre, celebrated far beyond the country’s borders. But since the start of the war, the former has left Russia and is now working in Europe, whilst the latter has remained in Moscow, urging the intelligentsia to “set aside their contempt for their own people” and to “work, live and believe”.

From Ukraine, Sister Ligy Payyappilly, a nun from Kerala, shares her account of a journey to the areas closest to the front line of the war with Russia. “We have been alongside people for whom the war is not just news but a daily struggle for survival. The challenge is to give children living here a chance.”

​​Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil facilities are also having repercussions in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with rising prices, a shortage of aviation fuel and growing uncertainty over energy security. Meanwhile, Moscow is seeking supplies from Kazakhstan, which has restricted exports to protect its domestic market.

By trying to impose on society a false narrative of “preventive self-defence”, Putin is attempting to completely absolve himself of personal responsibility before history for triggering a new Cold War, which has effectively isolated the country from the developed world and set its development back by decades.

Kiev’s increasingly intense attacks, even on Moscow and St Petersburg, are leading the propagandists of the Russian invasion to accuse their own leadership ever more openly of failing to understand the situation on the front line. And former General Popov, who was removed from his post in 2023 after criticising Gerasimov, is now being portrayed as a ‘victim of the truth’.