What societal factors influence the reach of Russian propaganda outlets among fringe audiences? Recent debates within international relations and political communication have questioned the ability of Russia’s information warfare practices to persuade general public opinion in the West. Yet, Russian propaganda outlets have historically focused on reaching Western fringe communities, while a growing literature on societal resilience argues that variance in specific societal factors influences the effect of information warfare. Here I study the degree to which various societal factors condition Russia’s ability to reach fringe audiences. I measure the reach of Russian propaganda outlets among online fringe communities in ten Western European countries in the three months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I compare national measures of public service media, media trust, affective polarisation, and populism and find descriptive indications that the latter two are tied to performance of Russian propaganda outlets in fringe communities. In addition, I find reach to be concentrated among regional great powers, highlighting the need to consider strategic risks when discussing societal resilience.

Research on the dissent–repression nexus assumes that repression of non-violent protesters undermines popular support for the regime. We challenge this assumption, arguing that coercion does not automatically generate legitimacy costs as bystanders’ pre-existing beliefs about targeted socio-political groups condition how repression is evaluated. While we expect bystanders to disapprove of and sanction repression of liked protester groups, we hypothesize that they will approve of and perhaps even credit the regime for repressing groups they do not sympathize with. We probe these hypotheses in a pre-registered survey experiment (with 3,569 Russian respondents), in which we pre-evaluate respondents’ beliefs about different socio-political groups in Russia and vary the participating group and the government’s response in a realistic protest vignette. The results corroborate our hypotheses and even show that the Russian president’s approval ratings are largely unaffected by regime coercion, indicating that autocrats have much more leeway in using repression than usually thought.

Using a Bayesian Global VAR model as a methodological tool, we analyze how heightened geopolitical risk shocks propagate across advanced economies and quantify the economic effects of these events. The global VAR impulse response functions in response to the skyrocketing Russian geopolitical risk after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed a contraction of GDP and an increase in inflation. Eastern European and Baltic countries are particularly affected by the Russian geopolitical risk shock. We also document a strong component of the Russian geopolitical risk shock that is not driven by fossil fuel prices.

The accession of Sweden and Finland to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is typically seen as a serious geopolitical setback for Russia, the opposite of its goals to limit the alliance’s spread eastwards. In contrast to Moscow’s stances on Ukraine and Georgia, however, its reaction to NATO’s Nordic expansion is more ambiguous. This article uses the framework of critical geopolitics to analyse several layers of Russia’s discursive reaction: practical, formal, and popular. This study finds that much of the popular geopolitics continues pre-2022 trends, presenting a securitised and nationalistic construction of NATO as a threatening ‘Other’. On the other hand, more moderate and pragmatic assessments in formal geopolitics balance against bellicosity and highlight the agency of the Nordic states, suggesting Russia may return to peaceful cooperation. In practical geopolitics, there is a gap between discourse and practice. Alongside more negative official discourse on NATO Nordic expansion, there was also reduced Russian military activity and an avoidance of provocative steps. These two faces – realism and pragmatism as opposed to securitised and nationalistic threat deterrence – reflect the structure of Russian geopolitical culture when it is applied to the North and Nordic NATO expansion.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s early opera Oprichnik is overdue for rediscovery as one of the composer’s most overt forays into the queer themes that critics and scholars have long appreciated in his mature works. Oprichnik features the composer’s most extensive and provocative employment of travesti in its depiction of a historical figure mostly remembered for his rumoured sexual relationship with tsar Ivan IV. This paper takes a detailed look into this and other queer features of the opera within their cultural, historical and biographical contexts. These contexts, including the development of trouser roles in Russian opera, transformations in public discourse on sexuality and gender, and Tchaikovsky’s relationship with his pupil Vladimir Shilovsky, help bring into focus the special appeal the sixteenth-century Muscovy of Ivan the Terrible and his oprichniki had as a topos for a Russian artist experimenting in the artistic depiction of sexual and gender variance.

The article addresses the paradox of the Russian legislation on nonterritorial, aka “national-cultural” autonomy – the lack of utilitarian ends and functions combined with a high domestic public demand for it. The author seeks to explain the case as simulation, or activities for the sake of demonstrating activities without definite substantive purposes. The analysis reveals that the relevant law’s goals and justifications voiced by the stakeholders were merely a combination of socially acceptable opinions unrelated to result-oriented action. These opinions were part of a common-sense worldview based on group-centric and essentialist vision of ethnicity and on neoliberal postulates, such as the need to foster bottom-up initiative and self-organization, the rejection of governmental social obligations, and the need for strict regulatory mechanisms securing fair relationships among the players. A brief comparison with a similar case in Europe reveals that simulation can take place in other contexts related to nonterritorial autonomy. Thus, a focus on simulative action must be a promising approach for research concerning the imaginaries of groups as entities and actors.

The cessation of the Russian Federation’s membership in the Council of Europe (CoE) under Article 58 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Article 8 of the Statute of the CoE is an important decision in the wake of Russian aggression against Ukraine involving serious human rights violations. Consequently, Russia’s disengagement from CoE mechanisms means Russians and other victims of human rights abuses seeking justice are no longer protected by the ECHR, as of September 16, 2022, thus affecting the human rights protection framework in Europe amidst the war. This implies that Russia no longer has a judge in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Article 20 of the ECHR. Its citizens will no longer be able to appeal against their government to the ECtHR under the individual ECHR applications mechanism, raising serious concerns about Russians’ lack of access to the ECtHR and the non-implementation of ECtHR judgments, which tests the reach and resilience of Europe’s human rights framework in protecting peace and security in the region.

In this context, the authors argue that since the ECtHR no longer exercises its jurisdiction in Russia, it is necessary to analyze the Rome Statute’s role in this regard. A possible solution can be found in European Union (EU) nations undertaking national investigations through mutual partnerships against the individuals who have committed atrocities of international concern, such as crimes against humanity or war crimes, based on the principle of international jurisdiction, to reestablish international peace and security.

Russia’s penal system was arguably the largest penal system of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, law and society and criminological research continues to neglect the subject. This article presents a new theoretical and analytical framework that seeks to understand penal development in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The new theoretical framework—penal transformation—aims to locate significant periods of penal change in diverse and disputative external, compliance-building, and bureaucratic regimes. It argues that the Council of Europe’s compliance rules, and the escalating authoritarianism of the Putin regime, have together hindered a more refined approach to the study of the prison in state-society relations. When considered alongside legacies of the Soviet Gulag penal system, this scenario has created an enduring penal structure and culture where prisoners remain acutely vulnerable to rights violations.

This article explores the evolution of US policy on Antarctica, focusing on its legal, environmental and geopolitical aspects. It aims to identify changing US priorities in this regard. The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) governs the region, emphasizing peace, scientific cooperation and environmental protection. The USA has issued four major memoranda on Antarctica in 1982, 1994, 2020 and 2024. This article highlights growing geopolitical competition, particularly with China and Russia. China frames Antarctica as essential to its global rise, using dual-purpose technologies that blur the line between science and strategic military interests. Similarly, Russia’s activities in the region raise concerns about potential violations of the ATS’s peaceful purpose mandate. The USA maintains its leadership in Antarctic diplomacy, advocating for environmental preservation and scientific cooperation. This article concludes by emphasizing the need for international collaboration to address climate change, resource exploitation and rising strategic tensions, ensuring Antarctica remains a region dedicated to peace and science.

Autocrats frequently appeal to socially conservative values, but little is known about how or even whether such strategies are actually paying political dividends. To address important issues of causality, this study exploits Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 2020 bid to gain a popular mandate for contravening presidential term limits in part by bundling this constitutional change with a raft of amendments that would enshrine traditional morality (including heteronormativity and anti-secularism) in Russia’s basic law. Drawing on an original experiment-bearing survey of the Russian population, it finds that Putin’s appeal to these values generated substantial new support for Putin’s reform package, primarily from social conservatives who did not support him politically. These findings expand our understanding of authoritarian practices and policy making by revealing one way in which core political values are leveraged to facilitate autocracy-enabling institutional changes and potentially other ends that autocrats might pursue.