Mikhail Komin

This shows that the Kremlin no longer needs more nuanced co-optation strategies for the urban class. The regime is standardising Moscow with the rest of the country. The authoritarian toolkit is shrinking and simplifing — alongside the urban middle class it once tried to manage.

Коворкинг для активистов «Открытое пространство»* объявил о закрытии после признания «иноагентом» — Новая газета Хаб социальных проектов «Открытое пространство» (ОП) сообщил, что прекратит работу своих отделений в Москве и Петербурге — спустя 4 дня после того, как Минюст внес организацию в перечень «иностранных агентов».

Only this week, key remaining civic nodes were dismantled. “Open Space,” one of the last offline hubs for activists, closed after being labelled a “foreign agent.” Memorial was declared “undesirable.” Now the Gulag Museum is being ideologically repurposed.
7/
novayagazeta.ru/articles/20...

During 2023-2026, the remnants of Moscow's previous heritage of “liberal willingness” often previously supported by Mayor's officials or close to Putin oligarchs as Roman Abramovich are being systematically destroyed.
6/

That equilibrium began erode right after the start of the invasion. In may 2023 the criminal case against theatre director Berkovich shoked the cultural community. Later this year “naked party” scandal reinforced the message that even apolitical cultural space had narrowed.
5/

The logic was rational rather than liberal. By allowing multiple semi-autonomous cultural and civic platforms, the authorities diffused frustration among the urban middle class, redirecting overt political opposition into symbolic, historical or artistic discussion.
4/

Депкульт слезам не верит. Как Сергей Капков однажды попытался сделать из Москвы прогрессивную столицу, но в итоге от нее остался «концлагерь с велодорожками» — Новая газета Европа Современная Москва — мечта любой диктатуры. На фоне санкций, международной изоляции и фактического военного положения столица поражает своим безразличием ко всему перечисленному, продолжая жить и выглядеть как богатейший европейский город. Очень зеленый, с отличным сервисом и транспортной инфраструктурой, чистыми улицами, относительно низким уровнем преступности и нелегальной миграции, блистательной архитектурой и гастрономической сценой, бурной ночной жизнью. Всем этим был шокирован американский журналист Такер Карлсон, приехавший в Москву в феврале этого года и заявивший , что «она оказалась намного красивее любого города в моей стране». Москва ломает предрассудки о «странах-изгоях» и порождает скепсис: может, если Патриаршие опрятнее Монмартра, на Усачевском рынке аргентинские креветки дешевле картофеля фри в Амстердаме, а в выглядящем как музей метро нет крыс и наркоманов, как в Нью-Йорке, Владимир Путин делает всё правильно? Парадокс в том, что та самая продвинутая Москва, порази

This period is often associated with the so-called “Kapkov era” when cultural institutions, public lectures, parks and museums became venues where active urban audiences could engage in critical reflection — albeit in reframed, non-confrontational forms
3/
novayagazeta.eu/articles/20...

For much of the 2010s, Moscow occupied a special position within Russia’s increasingly conservative political order. While overt political protest was opressed after 2012, space for indirect expression — via culture, history, and civic projects — remained comparatively wider
2/

Today Moscow has announced the restructuring of the Gulag Museum into a “museum of the victims of genocide among Soviet people”, now headed by a war veteran. It perfectly illustrates the last years developments in the Kremlin toolkit for managing urban dissent.
1/
www.mos.ru/news/item/1...

Ramzan Kadyrov is on death watch. Again. Persistent reports about the Chechen leader’s health are resurfacing at a moment of vulnerability for the Kremlin.

Politico published a story with my contribution on the power transfer in Chechnya if Kadyrov were to die. The timing is telling: amid fresh news about the car crash with Kadyrov's son, whom he is grooming as his heir in opposite to Kremlin's candidate.
www.politico.eu/article/ram...

8/ Together, these dynamics reshape the edges - not the centre - of the EP. The pro-Kremlin bloc is bigger, louder, and more ideologically diverse. But it remains fragmented and isolated, able to signal Moscow’s narratives — yet still far from being able to shape EU policy.

7/ My personal “favourite” example in SMER is Ľuboš Blaha — the most emblematic case. His long-standing alignment with Moscow isn't symbolic: he travelled to Ru, spoke at MGIMO, met with the head of the SVR, and built a full political persona around anti-Western narratives.

6/ But the most dramatic transformation comes from Robert Fico’s SMER.
Its enlarged group now ranks among the most reliably pro-Russian actors in the entire EP — a sharp contrast with its more ambiguous positioning in earlier years.

5/ Even stronger shift is visible in AfD. The delegation is larger, and with the new far-right blocs providing ideological cover, AfD’s voting record becomes deeper red.

4/ RN’s voting pattern tells the story. In 2022–2024, the party often softened its stance — abstaining or splitting its vote on key resolutions.
But after the 2024 election, RN returned to a more assertive line, voting against Ukraine-support measures

3/ The emergence of two new far-right groups in this Parliament has clearly shifted the dynamics. With stronger allies and greater parliamentary weight, traditional Kremlin-leaning parties have become noticeably bolder in how they vote on Russia- and Ukraine-related resolutions.

2/ Among the most striking results: Germany’s BSW dominates the top of the pro-Kremlin list. All 3 leading MEPs - and 4 of the party’s 5 members overall - appear in our Top-20, underscoring that Kremlin-friendly voting comes not only from the far right but also from the far left.

A new piece for @euobserver.com an Novaya Gazeta Europe: we continue tracking, via voting behaviour, how the pro-Kremlin bloc in the EP looks. Bad news: it has nearly doubled since 2024. Good news: it’s still too small to shift outcomes and consist of the newcomers euobserver.com/news/ard633...

Spekulationen über Lawrows Machtverlust: Will Putin seinen langjährigen Außenminister loswerden? Jüngst fehlte Sergej Lawrow bei wichtigen Treffen. Es gab Gerüchte, Russlands Chefdiplomat büße an Einfluss ein. Wie es um sein Verhältnis zu Wladimir Putin bestellt ist.

My comment for Tagesspiegel looks at Sergei Lavrov’s current position within Russia’s foreign-policy system. He has not been removed — but his centrality is being diluted as Moscow increasingly decentralises the implementation of foreign-policy decisions.

www.tagesspiegel.de/internationa...

8/ In short, Russia’s global vision is not about partnership but hierarchy:
a world where sovereignty means separation, justice means balance, and history itself is the ultimate source of legitimacy.

7/ ➡️ Temporal dimension:
Russia’s future is written through its past. The mythology of the “Great Patriotic War” (WWII) and imperial continuity replaces modernisation with restoration — reclaiming lost status rather than imagining progress.

6/➡️ Distributive dimension:
The Kremlin imagines a world of several “centres of power” where the West is only one pole. China dominates economically — but Russia sees itself as an ideological pole, offering moral leadership against Western “decadence”.

5/ ➡️ Institutional dimension:
Russia seeks to reshape global governance through regional and non-Western formats — the EAEU, CSTO, BRICS+ and the SCO. These institutions form concentric circles of influence, projecting a “multipolar” balance centred on Moscow.

Late-stage Putinism: The war in Ukraine and Russia’s shifting ideology The Kremlin is creating a new, more unified ideology, which it is disseminating among the Russian population and using to attract global south countries to a new conservative alliance.

4/
Moscow frames this as a defence of “civilisational sovereignty”. And here we continue my report for @ecfr.eu on how Russia presents itself as a state-civilisation leading the global anti-colonial struggle for the right to define what is really fair & just ecfr.eu/publication...

3/
➡️ Normative dimension:
We trace how Russia’s concept of sovereignty has expanded far beyond law or borders — now meaning cultural, digital, technological, and even nuclear independence. It’s about control and reframing of every sphere where the West once set standards.

2/ The book applies a new shared analytical framework to study how major powers imagine world order — from the US, China and India to Turkey and Russia. Each chapter looks at four dimensions of a country’s “vision order”: normative, institutional, distributive and temporal.

Competing Visions for International Order: Challenges for a Shared Direction in an Age of Global Contestation This book explores the international ordering visions of key global and regional powers in the international system from 2014 onwards. Using a fourfold analytical framework based on the distributional, normative, institutional, and temporal dimensions of the visions propagated by the relevant political elites in the states/actors in question, the book addresses the ultimate question in international relations for the coming decades: To what extent can the visions pushed forward by the leading po

1/ Together with @Veer_Laine, I’ve contributed a chapter on Russia to the new Routledge volume Competing Visions for International Order (2025). It explores how Moscow imagines the world as a “sovereign state-civilisation” — a moral counterpole to the West
www.routledge.com/Competing-V...

3/ As I told The Economist, during last 2-3 years “all sources of power are war-related". In today’s Russia, political survival depends on how visibly you serve the war effort. Every ambition must wear or at least pretends to wear the camouflage.

2/ Figures like Anna Tsivilyova (Putin’s alleged cousin), media tycoon Konstantin Malofeev, and war veteran Artyom Zhoga now rise fast — symbols of a “wartime elite” built on loyalty, faith and combat experience. Old elite groups must find, how they can be usiful for Putin's war.

1/ The Kremlin’s hierarchy is shifting.
The new "The Economist" story with my small contibutions explains how the war in Ukraine has elevated a new class — ultra-conservatives, relatives, and "svp" veterans — while sidelining old groups and technocrats in particular
www.economist.com/1843/2025/1...

10/ The Kremlin’s plan is simple: summon these reservists for two-month “special training,” then deploy them to Ukraine — avoiding a politically risk. This legal tweak doesn’t just expand Russia’s capacity to fight — it expands its ability to pretend it hasn’t mobilized again.