Leonid Bershidsky

When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a radical overhaul of Russia’s governance system this week, he also ended the Medvedev era. Dmitry Medvedev was, at least formally, Putin’s closest sidekick, the politician with whom the strongman was most willing to share formal power. Whether or…

In the space of just a few momentous weeks, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most ambitious projects — a Russian natural gas export system to match the new geopolitical reality rather than the Cold War-era one — has taken its final shape. It will probably last, without major change, until…

Social-media companies insist they’re making progress in fighting the manipulation of their platforms. But two researchers, working on an extremely modest budget, have just shown that their defenses are routinely bypassed by an entire manipulation industry, largely based in Russia. In a report…

A German political crisis isn’t a raging, unstoppable, unpredictable forest fire: It starts with seemingly irreconcilable positions but then evolves into a tedious, detail-focused negotiation and, more often than not, a compromise. That’s the direction things appear to be taking after the…

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russophobes,” “aggressive nationalists” and certain countries (nod toward Ukraine and the Baltic states) are waging a “war” on the Russian language. That’s a strong word. But because Russian is regarded as the only major language under the monopoly…

More is required from the British and other European governments: They ought to be more humane. They also should understand that people smuggling is essentially a transportation business based on demand from the “passengers.” What makes it work are the economic realities of migration. Ignoring the…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to “open the gates” to Europe for Syrian refugees temporarily housed in Turkey unless the European Union stops its harsh criticism of his military operation against the Kurds of northern Syria. The threat is not new, though, and Erdogan is no…