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How Russian authorities try to highjack Navalny’s “smart voting”

Details: 09 September 2021; Igor Slabykh

On September 5, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered that Google and Yandex search engines hide search results for the term “smart voting.” The blocking measure comes in response to a claim filed by an obscure wool-trading company to protect its trademark recently registered under the same name. The entire affair clearly aims to disrupt opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s campaign aimed at outvoting United Russia voters. Backed up by the security agencies, it has been clumsy and cynical, barely maintaining a veneer of legality.

Details: Analysis

Putin and Ukraine: Power and the construction of history

Details: 08 September 2021; Dmitry Shlapentokh

Vladimir Putin’s article “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” offers the Russian president’s view of the two peoples’ common history, which was not as harmonious as he alleges. Crucially, Putin clearly believes that Ukraine’s identity, its very existence, is the result of power projection and its historical narrative can be changed. This thinking has serious political implications.

Details: Human Rights

August 2021: Liya and Artem Milushkin, Idrak Mirzalizade, the “sanitary case”

Details: 08 September 2021; Diana Fishman

In August, in the runup to Russia’s State Duma elections slated for mid-September, the pressure on opposition activists increased. Former members of the Open Russia movement Liya and Artem Milushkin were given lengthy sentences in a fabricated drugs case. Several defendants in the so-called “sanitary case” were handed down guilty verdicts. For “undesirable” jokes about xenophobia in Russia, standup comedian Idrak Mirzalizade was expelled from Russia.

Details: Analysis

Why Russia fails to protect intellectual property

Details: 31 August 2021; Igor Slabykh

On average, 62 percent of software in Russia is estimated to be pirated. For decades, the country has been on the U.S. watchlist of the world’s most vicious intellectual rights infringers. Even the Russian government is implicated in using software counterfeits.

Details: Analysis

Lessons in politics: The struggles of the Russian regions’ vaccine rollout

Details: 27 August 2021; András Tóth-Czifra

The problem of Russia’s slow vaccination rate is multilayered, with high vaccine hesitancy and insufficient production providing only partial explanations. Vaccine rollouts have varied widely across Russia’s regions, and local officials have struggled to maneuver the country’s centralized political system, a reluctant population, and regional specifics. Regional differences reflect the deeply rooted political issues of governance and public trust.

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