It is important to note at the beginning that the majority of Russian officials, as well as the majority of Russian people more generally, do not think that contemporary Russia is in decline. To the contrary, they believe that it is a state with the... MORE

On August 1, 1991, following a cordial meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, US President George H. W. Bush arrived in Kyiv to deliver what later became known as the Chicken Kiev Speech to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Bush warned... MORE

Prior to 2014, there were expectations that Russia’s probable decline would happen as an Argentina-type scenario of steady sagging/decay. This looked rational in economic terms, but authorities—faced with political crises and basically unable to fix the problem of legitimacy following their electoral win in 2012—decided... MORE

In my view, the most prominent feature of Russia’s decline has little to do with its struggling economy, runaway corruption, and poor governance; or even with its alarming demographic trends. It is about the process of re-Stalinization, which has dramatically defined and perpetrated the decay... MORE

As early as in the late 1980s, academic Nikita Moiseev remarked that Russia was entering a period of dusk that could, in equal measure, turn into a dawn or a decline. Today, there is hardly anybody left outside the immediate “Kremlin circle” (or for that... MORE

Whatever Russian leaders may insist when depicting their country’s regained greatness, Russia, seen in the longer run, is of course a declining power. Even a sketchy overview suggests this, for a variety of reasons. If one starts with geopolitical might, she or he will see... MORE

The Russian economy is contracting, and household incomes are decreasing, but social and financial distress do not translate into sizable political or social protest. President Vladimir Putin continues to be popular, while opposition groups are marginalized and seemingly incapable of seriously threatening the formidable authoritarian... MORE

It is widely believed that contemporary Russia’s decline started right after the annexation of Crimea, when, in the course of less than one week, the Kremlin almost irreversibly predetermined the future of the entire nation. By acting as an aggressor—breaking international law, bilateral and multilateral... MORE

Looking into the remaining years of the 2010s, it is only too obvious that decline is set to be the dominant trend in Russia, and it is easy to predict that the trajectory will be neither smooth nor agreeable for this diminishing power and its... MORE