Comment for Reuters

Britain’s new PM Truss draws scathing reaction from Moscow

By Mark Trevelyan
September 5, 20228:36 PM GMT+2

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik, said the incident had helped to shape Russia’s attitude.

“Truss seems to the Kremlin a representative of this new generation of superficial Western politicians,” she said. “They … were so happy when she made this mistake. It was a gift to use instantly against her.”

Days before that blunder, Truss had confused the Black and Baltic Seas, allowing foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to complain of “the stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians”.

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Comment for The New York Times

Russia’s military setbacks may be weakening President Vladimir V. Putin’s reputation at home as a savvy geopolitical strategist.

By Anton Troianovski

As Moscow residents celebrated the city’s birthday this weekend with concerts and block parties, Vladislav, a taxi driver who moved to a city near Moscow from the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia looked upon all of the celebratory flags and stages with a bit of scorn. He said his 34-year-old cousin had been killed two weeks ago near Donetsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region, after having been conscripted into the pro-Russian forces. “Here, people are drinking late through the night,” he complained on Sunday morning after a weekend of revelry in the city. “No one cares about what is happening on the front.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, said that the Kremlin’s decision to play down the intensity and scale of the war in Ukraine had created parallel worlds: the reality of Europe’s biggest land war in generations on the one hand, and the business-as-usual atmosphere in Moscow on the other.

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Comment for Al-Jazeera

Russia post-Putin: What happens if the president suddenly dies?

PM Mishustin would become acting president and elections would be held, but experts say the substance of a post-Putin Russia is tough to predict.

By Niko Vorobyov
Published On 12 Sep 2022

“He can stay in power for 10 years or more if he wants, it really depends on the circumstances,” political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya told Al Jazeera. “I wouldn’t really pay too much attention to the problem of his health.” Should the 69-year-old die or otherwise leave office suddenly, the Federation Council has 14 days to call presidential elections, and if it does not, the Central Election Commission would.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin would become acting president. However, Mishustin is not seen as being particularly close to Putin, nor a credible candidate for any election. Instead, Stanovaya believes Putin’s departure will leave a power vacuum between business interests, security officials  such as Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu and other factions of the elite. “If something happens to him tomorrow, I believe that the system would survive; It’s still robust,” said Stanovaya.

“Conservative forces, siloviki [security officials] will seize the political initiative and take over. But if something happens to Putin later – one year or more – in this case, the risks of destabilisation are much higher. We will see infighting and the siloviki would have much less chance to keep the initiative. Next year the situation might be more different and difficult.”

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R.Politik telegram post quote for The Guardian

Kremlin fails to say whether Gorbachev will get state funeral

Putin acknowledges last Soviet leader’s ‘huge impact’ while grappling with his legacy of reform

in Moscow
Wed 31 Aug 2022 15.31 BST

It is unclear whether Putin will attend Gorbachev’s funeral at the Novodevichy cemetery or his farewell ceremony on Saturday at Moscow’s House of Unions, a short walk away from the Kremlin.

“He led our country over the period of complex, dramatic transformations and extensive foreign political, economic, and social challenges. He had a profound understanding of the need for reforms and sought to propose his solutions to the pressing problems.”

Putin had a strained relationship with Gorbachev, who initiated policies that ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin has called the collapse of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst and head of the analytical firm R.Politik, called the language of the message “tortured”.

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Comment for The Financial Times

Putin dismantles ‘naive’ Gorbachev’s legacy of freedom

Russian president has taken country in opposite direction to late Soviet leader who died this week

Polina Ivanova in Berlin and Max Seddon in Riga

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of Moscow political consultancy R.Politik, said that, in Putin’s mind, he was simply correcting Gorbachev’s mistakes.
“Putin thinks Gorbachev was too naive with the west and allowed the Soviet Union to collapse. He thinks a smarter, stronger, tougher geopolitical line could have stopped it,” she added. He viewed Gorbachev as a “weak politician who could not prevent the ‘catastrophe’”, as Putin described the Soviet Union’s collapse, she explained. “For Putin this is yet another event that shows he is on the right side of history.”

Comment for Bloomberg

Russia Probes Car Bomb That Killed Daughter of Putin Ideologist

  • Searching for potential Ukraine link in Darya Dugina’s death
  • Dugin has been vocal advocate of Russian control over Ukraine
Bloomberg News

Dugina was sanctioned by the US and UK after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The UK called her a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation” about the war. The US Treasury cited her role as chief editor of the website United World International.

Dugin’s never been as influential on Putin as is often portrayed, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consultancy R.Politik. Still, the murder of Dugina may lead to further radicalization of Russian society, she said.

“This murder makes the conservative camp even more radicalized and the difference in understanding the ‘red lines’ from the authorities is deepening,” Stanovaya said by telephone.

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R.Politik telegram post quote for the NYT

The clamor over the assassination of Daria Dugina highlights the prominence of her fellow pro-war Russian ultranationalists.

By Anton Troianovski

Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, wrote that Ms. Dugina’s murder “is serving to increase dissatisfaction with the authorities in conservative circles, who believe that the Kremlin is drawing red lines in the wrong place and is too hesitant when they are violated.”

The F.S.B. said that the Ukrainian suspect entered Russia on July 23, rented an apartment in the Moscow building where Ms. Dugina lived “in order to organize the murder of Dugina and obtain information about her lifestyle” and attended the same festival on Saturday. It also released video footage that it said showed the assassin crossing the border into Estonia, driving a gray Mini Cooper.

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R.Politik telegram post quote for The Washington Post

Car-bomb killing sows unease among cheerleaders of Putin’s war

By Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina
August 22, 2022 at 6:53 p.m. EDT

Analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of think tank R.Politik, said the killing could increase pressure on Putin to respond with a tougher approach to the war. The Kremlin would struggle to control increasing confrontation and violence between rival political camps in Russia, Stanovaya predicted in a Telegram post.

“Putin’s future decisions may look weak and less legitimate to a shocked conservative part of the elite and society,” Stanovaya wrote. “Dugina’s assassination creates the conditions where a political demand for a more radicalized political leadership than Putin himself is formed. And the Kremlin will not be able to meet it.”

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Comment for Bloomberg

Russia Probes Car Bomb That Killed Daughter of Putin Ideologist

Bloomberg News

Dugina was sanctioned by the US and UK after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The UK called her a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation” about the war. The US Treasury cited her role as chief editor of the website United World International.  Dugin’s never been as influential on Putin as is often portrayed, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consultancy R.Politik. Still, the murder of Dugina may lead to further radicalization of Russian society, she said. “This murder makes the conservative camp even more radicalized and the difference in understanding the ‘red lines’ from the authorities is deepening,” Stanovaya said by telephone.

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Op-ed for The New York Times

By Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She writes about Russian domestic politics and foreign policy.

That’s the line from President Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine, in its fifth month and with no end in sight, may be grueling. But senior Kremlin officials keep repeating that Russia, gaining the upper hand in Ukraine’s east, will achieve all its goals.

That might seem hard to believe. After all, Russia has been forced to retreat from Kyiv, experienced several military reversals, faced sanctions on an unprecedented scale and been subjected to a chorus of international condemnation. To call such a litany of difficulties and outright failures a success may be to court the charge of propaganda, hypocrisy or even self-delusion.

But it’s what the Kremlin seems to believe. Over two decades I have closely followed Mr. Putin’s words, behavior and decisions, forming a comprehensive picture of the president’s calculations. Based on his public rhetoric and policy moves and informal discussions with insiders, I have been able to work out — as far as is possible — the contours of the Kremlin’s current thinking. What is very clear is that in late May, the Kremlin came to the firm conclusion that it is winning this conflict in the long run. And Mr. Putin, in contrast to the early chaotic months, now has a clear plan.

Consisting of three main dimensions, the plan is a kind of strategic Russian doll. Each aspect fits within another, amounting to a grand scheme that goes far beyond Ukraine yet centers on it. It may sound extremely fanciful, and it certainly reveals how divorced from reality — to put it mildly — Mr. Putin is. But it’s important for the West, whose response has wavered between confrontation and acquiescence, to understand the full scope of Mr. Putin’s hopes as it continues to assess its role in defending Ukraine against Russian aggression.

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