Happy Monday! If you follow terrorism and extremism in Russia closely, you may have stumbled across mentions of the Citizens of the USSR. You may also have not heard much about them, beyond the name, a cursory characterisation, and details of whatever punishment is being handed down to the latest member to fall foul of the law. This week, I’ve been reading Mikhail Akhmetyev’s book on the topic, so I thought I’d share a few insights into the Citizens of the USSR movement that he details. With...
7 days ago • 4 min read
Happy Wednesday! I hope your week is going well and you’re filled with inspiration. Or, if you can’t manage inspiration, at least vaguely satisfying! This week, I want to offer a brief reflection on Ukrainian proposals to legalise private military companies (PMCs). It’s an idea that makes sense, but also carries risks — as the Russian experience shows. Here’s what you’ll find this week: Zelenskiy proposes legalising PMCs The logic of legalisation Cautionary lessons from the other side...
19 days ago • 4 min read
Happy Monday! I hope life is treating you well. My schedule remains hugely disrupted — and will for the rest of the month. If I miss a week, forgive me. I’m here this week, however, and I wanted to offer a brief reflection on different scenarios for Russia’s future, amid speculation about internecine struggles within the regime. Specifically, I want to highlight some obvious gaps and a missing scenario from a recent article on the topic. With that in mind, here’s what you can expect this...
28 days ago • 4 min read
Happy Monday! I hope the world is treating you well. Here, it is quiet. Working for myself means regularly alternating between feast and famine, and this is most definitely a season of famine. I’m hoping January will be significantly busier, but if you’ve got a project that you think I can help you with, now is a great time to get on my schedule! When it comes to the ideas I explore here, I often fall into one of the traps that is the curse of academia: the pursuit of originality. I look for...
6 months ago • 8 min read
Happy Monday! I hope your weekend was filled with joy. I’ve spent the last week tinkering with the Russian Security Research Lab — and I’ve now connected all the main data sources, so some kind of progress is definitely being made! This week, I want to look at the conviction of eight people for their involvement in the October 2022 attack on the Crimean bridge, and what issues it highlights both with terrorism cases in Russia and reporting on them. With that in mind, here’s what you can...
6 months ago • 5 min read
Happy Monday! Time is an arbitrary concept, but I thought I’d experiment with a different release schedule — to see both whether it fits better into my schedule and whether it leads to more people reading. It’s always hard to tell, but life is all about variety. So, happy Monday it is! This week, I’ll be picking up from last week’s discussion of Proyekt Media’s efforts to map nepotism in the regime of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (read that one here). Having already discussed the strengths...
7 months ago • 5 min read
Happy Friday! I hope this week is bringing you at least some joy and satisfaction. I’ve spent much of it working on the Russian Security Research Lab (RSRL), trying to get in-text references to connect to the appropriate databases. This has involved writing lots of code (no-code software really means less-code software), merging two massive databases as a workaround to an insurmountable problem, and swearing a lot at my computer/AI. But I’ve nevertheless been making progress. This week,...
7 months ago • 6 min read
Happy Friday! I was missing from your inbox last week because I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. I hope you missed me (if not, why not?!). And, to be honest, sometimes I struggle for an idea that I think is worth your time. But, this week at the eleventh hour, I’ve got a small idea I want to explore: The apparently declining media profile of Apti Alaudinov. With that in mind, here’s what you can expect this week: A fading media star? Limited evidence to support a hypothesis...
7 months ago • 4 min read
Happy Friday! It’s been a bit of a quiet period for me over the last month, but this week I’ve been busy doing one of the types of client project that I enjoy the most: producing a review of the academic literature to answer a question that matters to them. It's always one of my favourites because (a) I get to learn new things and (b) I know the end result is definitely useful to someone. Today, however, I don’t expect to be particularly productive, because I’ve been up far longer than the...
8 months ago • 6 min read