Anti-Western Influence Campaigns in Latin America: Understanding the Russia-Venezuela-Iran Triangle
Latin America has long been a playground for Russia’s anti-Western influence operations. But today Russia isn’t alone in this game: In recen...
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The Russia File
The Russia File podcast explores Russia: its history, politics, culture and society, and its relations with the surrounding countries, the United States and beyond. It is a companion podcast...
Episodes
20 of 36 episodes
The Role of Africa in Russia’s Geopolitics
Russia’s intensive involvement with the African continent goes back decades. During the Cold War, Moscow viewed Africa as its “natural” sphe...
Georgian Politics After Controversial “Foreign Agent” Law
In December 2023, Georgia was granted official European Union candidate status, but the country's path to EU membership may now be at risk b...
The Russian Aviation Industry Two Years after the Sanctions
One of the sectors targeted by U.S. economic sanctions is Russia's civil aviation. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bo...
Russia’s Battle around Reproductive Health and Women’s Rights
Russian authorities are taking tentative steps to limit access to abortion and other aspects of reproductive health, ostensibly to combat th...
Russia on the Second Anniversary of the Invasion of Ukraine
Two years after Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Maxim Trudolyubov, editor in chief of the Kennan...
Ukraine on the Second Anniversary of the Russian Invasion
Two years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Izabella Tabarovsky sat down with Mykhailo Minakov, the Kennan Institute’s senior a...
Buryatia and the High Toll of Russia’s War in Ukraine on Ethnic Minorities
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted some of its own domestic problems. One of them is the uneven economic development of...
Belarus Three Years After Protest
In August 2020, Aleksandr Lukashenko, authoritarian leader of Belarus, denied electoral fraud and claimed landslide victory in his sixth pre...
Berlin as a Home of New Russian Political Exiles
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Berlin has emerged as a crucial center of activity for both Ukrainian refugees and Russian political...
Israeli Military Experts on the Enabling Factors of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was supposed to illustrate the Russian army’s ability to conduct a “contactless,” “surgical” military operation...
Russian Culture as a Casualty (and Accomplice) of Putin’s War in Ukraine
The relationship between the artist and the state has always been fraught in Putin’s Russia, where government remains the primary funder of...
Lessons from "Cold War Radio": A Conversation with Mark Pomar
When in 1991 Boris Yeltsin invited Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to open a news bureau in Russia, the move was hailed as the clearest sign...
The Kremlin's Favorite Scapegoat: The Latest Attack on LGBTQ+ Rights in Russia
In November 2022, the Russian parliament passed a new bill banning any activity that can be interpreted as the promotion of “non-traditional...
Polish-Russian Relations Move from Reset to Ruin
Poland and Russia share a long history that has been full of grievances and unresolved traumas. And while 2007 saw a positive shift in the r...
Life under the Russian Occupation: A Conversation with Katerina Sergatskova
For those living under the Russian occupation in Ukraine, life has turned into a daily struggle and search for food, water, and medicine. Iz...
The Successor: The Story of Boris Nemtsov and the Country Where He Didn’t Become President - Part 2
The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of con...
The Successor: The Story of Boris Nemtsov and the Country Where He Didn’t Become President - Part 1
The story of Boris Nemtsov, Russia's prominent opposition politician assassinated in 2015, is deeply intertwined with pivotal moments of con...
Crumbling Memory: Russian Propaganda, World War II, and the Invasion of Ukraine
The war in Ukraine has highlighted Russian propaganda and the way it weaponizes the memory of World War II for political purposes—in this ca...
Russia and the West: Highs and Lows
Over the past 10 years or so, Russia’s relations with the West have been reaching new lows. In bilateral terms, no other relationship has be...