Russia’s political and social behaviour can seem surprising. It is like there always is, despite a relatively highly educated population and access to western, liberal ideas, a return to archaic, paternalistic, antagonistic and violent structures and behaviours. Can this be due to a combination of traditional family structures, late development of literacy, and relative isolation, rendered possible by a certain economic and political autarchy? Were the changes of the early 1990s illusory, carried by groups and people whose influence was only accidental and now the old structures return?

Russia’s propaganda, which is largely aimed at the so-called “global south”, denigrates the West as degenerate, poor, and being in “satan’s power”; while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as their representative and saviour. Never mind the fact that the Russian onslaught on Ukraine triggered a worldwide food crisis and made automobile transport and education once again unavailable for hundreds of millions in the global south.

Walking directly into the defunct Soviet Union’s ideological worn-out shoes, neo-imperial Russia of today poses itself as a friend of the poor and oppressed masses outside the West. The Kremlin’s top rashists criticise the “golden billion” (золотой миллиард zolotoi milliard), or the West’s inhabitants who enjoy peace and prosperity across the rich global north. On this platform, the Russian government usurps for Moscow the right to speak on behalf of the world’s poor and huddling seven billion, living the so-called global south. But who is Russia’s golden thousand (золотая тысяча zolotaia tysiacha) whom this rhetoric benefits and who literally own Russia?

Despite various sanctions put in place against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy is surprisingly doing much better than expected. It appears for now that at least in the short term, the Russian economy is able to bypass sanctions as long as other countries are willing to pursue business as usual with Russia. Whether or not the sanctions will have a longer-term effect and have any impact on Russian aggression remains to be seen.

When western countries adopted sanctions against Russia in response to Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine, western politicians promised nothing less than the complete breakdown of the Russian economy. The French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire spoke of the “collapse” of the Russian economy, while US President Joe Biden said that “We will keep raising the economic cost and ratchet up the pain for [Vladimir] Putin and further increase Russia's economic isolation.”

Wagner’s abortive rebellion in Russia shows that there can be no business as usual. In order to prepare for an uncertain future, we must now accept some hard facts about the Russian Federation and prepare for its possible collapse.

Prigozhin’s challenge to Putin on June 24th has exposed the perilous situation now faced by the Russian president. While the country’s leader may attempt to crack down further on internal dissent, this may only further reveal his current weakness. As it stands, the established rules no longer seem to apply.

It has been almost a decade since Russia’s information operations became widely recognised as a means by which Moscow can reach out to influence western democracies. And throughout almost all of that period, one question that has consistently been raised is whether or not these information operations work.

In addition to high-profile interventions of Russian disinformation, such as attempts to influence elections in the United States, there are multiple other targeted campaigns in which Russia has sought to bring about specific outcomes in target countries. This has all been happening alongside long-running operations designed simply to degrade a particular country’s societal cohesion or trust in institutions.

Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression continues to make headlines around the world. However, what has not been discussed to any great extent is the fight against disinformation and collaborators on the home front. With no end in sight to the fighting, it is clear that such espionage could prove pivotal to the war’s outcome.

More than a year into Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine, the fight with Moscow’s propaganda is entering another important stage. Despite all the efforts of Ukraine’s special and secret services, there are still some pro-Russian Ukrainians or Russian citizens themselves who are spies, trying to provide essential information to the Russian Federal Security Service.

While in the region Czechia can be considered a positive case in resisting authoritarian influence, it has been far from perfect, especially when considering its recent turbulence. Nevertheless, there are now a lot of practices countering malign influence – including that of China – in Czechia that could serve as examples for both the region and the wider EU.

Since February 24th 2022, the whole of Europe and the world have been witnessing a new phase in the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which has reshaped the European – and to a large extent also the global – security order. Issues such as the shelling of Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, often described as “nuclear blackmail”, frightened the global community into fearing a repeat of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in the Soviet Union.

De facto pro-Russian communities are clearly consolidating in the context of the upcoming Polish parliamentary elections. The groups in question are made up of people who have contacts with entities linked to the Russian state. We can assume that the Russian Federation not only supports such groups through the Polish-language sources it runs, but also has influence on the activity of some of the people operating within these communities.

By mid-2022, the first activities of those promoting pro-Russian statements in the Polish information sphere were clearly perceptible, indicating the growing consolidation of a broad pro-Russian community with political ambitions. The start of 2023, especially the first weeks of the year, only further showed this to be the trend.

Iran is one of the largest and most influential countries in the Middle East. Given the protests of recent months and Iranian involvement in the Russian war in Ukraine, it is necessary to bring Iran back into the spotlight of geopolitical analysis.

Since mid-September 2022, people in Iran have been demonstrating against the regime. The protests were triggered by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Jina Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly violating Islamic dress codes and died in police custody. The incident sparked mass protests across the country.

Putinism has been built as a model of the Russian state envisioned for decades, if not centuries. In this way, Putinism has ended history for all who are subordinate to it.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” said Vladimir Putin in 2005. These infamous words were a sign that a political change had taken place in Russia. It marked a departure from the not so successful attempts at democracy building in the 1990s towards the path of authoritarianism. In that very same speech, however, Putin also declared the responsibility of the Russian Federation to protect Russian-speaking populations outside Russia, which was later used as the key argument to start aggression against Ukraine.

Russian war crimes in Ukraine and the terror against people in occupied territories will go down in the history books. In a sense, the Russo-Ukrainian War is a clash of civilisations. Wartime politics has exposed the long-known yet startling truth about the low price of human life in Russia – a product of a deeply entrenched culture of violence. There is a direct link between the war in Ukraine and the political disempowerment of Russian society.

Both Ukrainians and EU citizens have been shocked by Russian war crimes, but equally shocking may be how Russia’s politicians and military leadership treat their soldiers. They are nothing more than cannon fodder, utilised in the name of Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions. Even more perplexing is the fatalism and the lack of resistance from conscripts sent to be slaughtered on the frontline, as well as from their families.