Executive Summary: Human rights activists in Russia believe that the actual number of political prisoners serving time for anti-war views in Russia may be several times larger than is known to human rights organizations. Russia’s political prisoners increasingly come from non-political, working-class backgrounds, reflecting the... MORE

Executive Summary: Moldova’s pro-European ruling party retained its majority in the September 24 parliamentary elections despite Moscow’s attempts to influence the elections in favor of pro-Russian parties. A series of setbacks in Russia’s policy toward Moldova undermined the position of Dmitry Kozak, former deputy chief... MORE

Executive Summary: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet in Budapest to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine during an October 16 phone call that preempted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington. Putin’s phone call yielded a short-term advantage by... MORE

Executive Summary: Ahead of winter, Russia launched another campaign of combined air strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, including energy, gas production, and railway facilities. Russia is continually upgrading its missiles and strike drones, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of its air attacks. Several Ukrainian cities have... MORE

Executive Summary: Kyiv is moving toward more openly backing non-Russian national movements within Russia. It is convinced that such efforts will help it defeat Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and that the decolonization of Russia will ensure Ukraine’s future security. Such moves, which have their origins... MORE

Executive Summary: Late-Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, calls for Europe to develop a united, long-term strategy toward Russia while preserving the country’s territorial integrity. The Russian opposition remains fragmented, divided between Moscow-centric reformists such as Navalnaya’s camp and ethno-national or regionalist forces... MORE

Executive Summary: Russia is reforming its higher education system to instill an ultra-patriotic ideology through new required courses, such as “Fundamentals of Russia’s Statehood,” designed by the presidential administration with the goal of cultivating a “patriotic intelligentsia.” Structural changes include replacing the bachelor’s/master’s model with... MORE

Executive Summary: Moscow’s muted response to the October 10 announcement of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize win and the ceasefire in Gaza underline how Russia’s war against Ukraine has come to dominate the Kremlin’s attention. Recent independent polling by the Levada... MORE

Executive Summary: The effect of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Russian life is typically measured in terms of political opponents arrested, items in stores no longer available, or other “objective” figures. A more insidious and important metric, however, is its degradation of institutions. Nowhere... MORE

Executive Summary: In September, a series of Russian drone and military incursions into North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) airspace over Poland and Estonia triggered emergency consultations under Article 4 and revived debate on escalation of deterrence. The Russia–Belarus Zapad-2025 exercise revealed a shift toward precision-strike,... MORE