Society:<\/strong> Profiling Pussy Riot, (opinion) Andrey Kortunov looks at Russia\u2019s Millennials, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 delayedInternational: <\/strong>Still a long way from agreement in Brussels, troop confusion in Kazakhstan, (opinion) Fyodor Lukyanov says negotiators might need a jolt, (opinion) Alexander Kolbin demands a new Russian \u2018expansionist ideology,\u2019 (opinion) Andras Toth-Czifra says the West needs clarity and a self-assessment, the U.S. Senate readies \u2019nightmare\u2019 sanctions, the Baltics want more troops, (opinion) T\u00f3th-Czifra tracks Russian rhetoric on Kazakhstani sovereignty, and researchers track westward military transfers from SiberiaPublic policy:<\/strong> (opinion) Dmitry Nekrasov dissects the Kremlin\u2019s \u2018myths\u2019 about Western hostile intentions, and Putin\u2019s spokesman challenges the BBC<\/p>\n In November 2021, the feminist protest group Pussy Riot turned 10 years old. For the entirety of the group\u2019s existence, the Russian authorities (among others) have been trying their damnedest to shut them up. After staging a \u201cpunk prayer\u201d in Moscow\u2019s Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2012, three Pussy Riot activists were sentenced to two years in prison. After a demonstration at the 2018 World Cup, other Pussy Riot members, who ran onto the field in police uniforms, were arrested \u2014 and the group’s unofficial spokesman Pyotr Verzilov was promptly poisoned. In the last two years, arrests and prosecutions targeting Pussy Riot activists have only become more frequent. Just last month, members Maria Alyokhina and Lyusya Shtein went on hunger strike while serving two-week stints in jail. Meduza special correspondent Kristina Safonova spoke with past and present members of the group to find out who exactly they were in 2011 \u2014 and who they are now.<\/p>\n In a research paper on Generation Y, Russian International Affairs Council director-general Andrey Kortunov argues that Russian Millennials today are more pessimistic on average than their Western counterparts, though the opposite was true until recently (thanks to relatively low unemployment, good upward social mobility, and low indebtedness). Kortunov says Russian Millennials will likely mimic patterns in the West, where the generation has embraced leftist ideology, he says (with some trepidation). It falls to Millennials to revive the Communist Party and Just Russia with new blood and \u201cnew forms of political mobilization.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s likely that the Millennials\u2019 main historical achievement as a generation will be the realization of a long overdue \u2018leftist turn\u2019 in world politics and economics,\u201d says Kortunov, adding that he hopes it will be \u201cless costly for humanity\u201d than Russia\u2019s experiment with \u201cone of the options of leftist ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd79\ufe0f Developers in Ukraine postpone sales of computer game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 until December 8<\/strong> (GSC Game World says the delay is needed \u201cto fulfill our vision and achieve the desired state of the game.\u201d The franchise has sold more than 15 million copies since the first game\u2019s release in 2007.)<\/p>\n Russian and NATO officials convened for talks at the alliance\u2019s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, January 12. The meeting came two days after diplomats from Russia and the U.S. held similar talks in Geneva. Both discussions were largely inconclusive. Washington and NATO are attempting to push back against sweeping security proposals put forward by Russia in December, while also trying to deter Moscow from launching a full-fledged attack on Ukraine. Speaking to the press after Wednesday\u2019s talks, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the two sides remain divided on fundamental issues. <\/p>\n Kazakhstan has come under criticism from the United Nations after troops deployed to protect strategic infrastructure amid a crackdown on protests in Almaty were seen wearing blue helmets reserved for UN peacekeepers. According to UN spokesperson St\u00e9phane Dujarric, Kazakhstan\u2019s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has offered assurances that the issue has been resolved. However, as reported by RFE\/RL\u2019s Kazakh service, the presence of forces from Belarus\u2019s peacekeeping company has caused further confusion, as their insignia closely resembles the UN emblem.<\/p>\n Russia in Global Affairs editor-in-chief Fyodor Lukyanov says Moscow has been uncompromising in talks with the U.S. and NATO about European security deliberately to prevent the United States from spinning the dialogue into technocratic negotiations that preserve the general status quo. The dialogue happening now is the most important diplomacy in Europe since Germany\u2019s reunification, says Lukyanov, so it\u2019s no wonder that emotions are running high. Washington insists on limiting the talks with Moscow to concrete issues like Ukraine, but Russia seeks a larger reassessment of continental security principles.<\/p>\n Despite the seriousness of this week\u2019s talks, it could take a \u201cnew and quite dangerous escalation\u201d to jolt Russia and the West into seeking new forms of agreement to bridge the current \u201cperception gap.\u201d<\/p>\n PIR-Center consultant Alexander Kolbin says Russia has struggled with geopolitical \u201cself-censorship\u201d since the USSR\u2019s collapse. The Kremlin, he says, has tried to pursue its national interests without the conceptual framework that underpins the Western and Chinese worlds. Early in Vladimir Putin\u2019s presidency, three crises (U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2001, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004) raised alarms in Moscow about Russia\u2019s potential military, geopolitical, and domestic political vulnerabilities, says Kolbin. Ever since, the Kremlin has been stuck merely \u201chinting\u201d at a \u201cRussian world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPutin\u2019s ultimatum\u201d on Russian dominance of the former USSR \u201cis a big step in the direction of rejecting national self-censorship,\u201d but Kolbin says the country still lacks the ideological chops to articulate a coherent, attractive framework for expansion. Unlike Washington, London, or Beijing, says Kolbin, Moscow still fears accusations of \u201cgeopolitical nostalgia\u201d and \u201crevisionism.\u201d To break free from these constraints, he argues, the Kremlin needs to create a \u201clegitimate basis for the cultural, economic, and military expansion\u201d of its world, formulating \u201ca full set of positive meanings for each instance of expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n Until Russia develops its own such ideology, the \u201cobjects of positive Russian expansion\u201d will have no alternative to the doubts about this world already offered by more confident great powers.<\/p>\n Center for European Policy Analysis non-resident fellow Andras Toth-Czifra says NATO can hold discussions with Russia without committing \u201cappeasement,\u201d if they prevent war and have substance. He proposes re-establishing NATO-Russia Council meetings and negotiating various rules on cybersecurity, military drills, and missile deployments. Dialogue gives NATO (or Ukraine) the chance to \u201cspell out in clear terms\u201d the automatic responses to any further Russian aggression, reducing the \u201cprotracted ambiguity\u201d that \u201cvexes allies\u201d and \u201cemboldens Russia\u2019s hawks.\u201d<\/p>\n The West, meanwhile, needs to address (1) its own \u201cwaning domestic consensuses around democratic values and the principles of international law,\u201d and (2) the EU\u2019s \u201cmoribund enlargement policy,\u201d which helps Russia find \u201callies among the corrupt and the extremist\u201d in disillusioned outsider countries. Toth-Czifra also argues that the West must support Russia\u2019s \u201cbattered\u201d civil society. \u201cA democratic Russia is the strongest guarantee of peace in Europe,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u2696\ufe0f U.S. Senate Democrats propose sanctions bill against Russia in case of expanded invasion of Ukraine<\/strong> (The legislation, which has the Biden administration\u2019s support, would target senior Russian state officials, financial institutions, specialized financial messaging services, introduce prohibitions on sovereign debt trading, rescind waivers on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and add sanctions to Russia\u2019s extractive industries. The sanctions\u2019 implementation would still be conditional on a presidential determination.)<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude4f The Baltic states want more NATO troops deployed on their soil to deter Russia<\/strong> (NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has threatened to consider sending reinforcements to the region if Russia expands its invasion of Ukraine)<\/p>\n \ud83c\udf10 (Opinion) The Kremlin\u2019s \u2018spiritual gurus\u2019 have embraced narratives dismissing Kazakhstani statehood, but \u2018Russky Mir\u2019 nationalism isn\u2019t the Putin administration\u2019s only guiding principle<\/strong> (political analyst Andr\u00e1s T\u00f3th-Czifra says the thing to watch will be what rewards Moscow seeks in Kazakhstan for its CSTO assistance)<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd0e OSINT researchers track heavy military vehicles being transferred from Siberia and Far East to Russia\u2019s borders near Ukraine<\/strong> (but there\u2019s apparently no evidence of a National Guard or military police mobilization that would likely be needed for occupying large areas of the country)<\/p>\n Economist Dmitry Nekrasov says Russia\u2019s political leaders have embraced conspiracy theories about foreign powers plotting to break up Moscow\u2019s empire since the Bolsheviks, who used the narrative to argue the legitimacy of Marxism\u2019s \u201cclass warfare\u201d ideology. The Kremlin\u2019s adoption of the myth has even made it a self-fulfilling prophecy, Nekrasov says, arguing that Russia\u2019s own leaders either imagined or provoked each supposed threat against the nation. The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, for example, was actually a mix of formerly subjugated peoples fighting for their independence and Western powers fighting German conquerors. The total aid delivered to the Whites, moreover, was just a fraction of what the Land Lease program later handed Stalin.<\/p>\n In fact, says Nekrasov, \u201ctime and time again,\u201d the West acted more mildly \u201cthan one would expect in response to the Soviet state\u2019s behavior.\u201d In this history of moderation, he includes the \u201cobligations fulfilled by the Allies\u201d during World War II and America\u2019s decision not to attack the USSR with nuclear weapons. Nekrasov even argues that the Soviet Union\u2019s rapid military build-up in the 1930s paved the way for Adolf Hitler\u2019s rise to power, suggesting that Russia provoked its own most obvious foreign aggressor in the past century.<\/p>\n Except for the Nazis, says Nekrasov, the West has repeatedly tried to stabilize events in Russia during periods of weakness. Moscow has accepted this aid when it needs it, but talk of Western threats returns as soon as the Kremlin feels safe again.<\/p>\nSociety<\/h3>\n
\ud83c\udf51 Putin\u2019s trigger: Ten years later, Pussy Riot has been forced out of the country almost entirely (44-min read)<\/h4>\n
\ud83c\udf39 (Opinion) Millennials will revive leftism in Russia and around the world<\/strong><\/h4>\n
International<\/h3>\n
\ud83d\udd4a\ufe0f Russian and NATO officials say they are far from agreement after talks in Brussels (3-min read)<\/h4>\n
\ud83d\udee1\ufe0f Belarusian peacekeeping insignia adds to confusion as UN criticizes Kazakhstan over troops wearing blue helmets (3-min read)<\/h4>\n
\u23f3 (Opinion) More danger still could be needed for West to grasp seriousness of Russia\u2019s security concerns <\/strong><\/h4>\n
\ud83e\udde0 (Opinion) Russia needs an \u2018expansionist ideology\u2019 to end its post-Soviet \u2018self-censorship\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\ud83e\ude9e (Opinion) NATO needs to shed all ambiguity with Russia while also looking hard into a mirror<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Public policy<\/h3>\n
\ud83d\udd2e (Opinion) The Kremlin\u2019s self-serving, self-fulfilling \u2018foreign threat\u2019 myth<\/strong><\/h4>\n