In Moscow's Shadows

The fastest way to lose your grip on Russia is to reach for the word “war” every time a scary headline lands. The incentives are everywhere: politicians who want public backing for big defence spending, media outlets that live on attention, and all of us who share first and think later. 
I look at two particular examples: the current fascination in the British press with the idea that Russia may launch an attack using long-range missiles, and a truly insane essay by Konstantin Malofeyev in his Tsargrad media outlet  fantasising about a tactical nuclear strike to end the Ukraine war. 
The British article is here, the Russian one here.
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You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

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Power doesn’t just seize territory. It seizes the story. I’m using a selection of 6 excellent new books to follow the narrative battlegrounds where modern Russia tries to control what people see as true, normal, and inevitable, and where society still finds ways to push back even when formal protest is risky, whether in framing Harry Potter, or surviving in the occupied Donbas.
The books in question are:
Alexis Lerner, Post-Soviet Graffiti. Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) - see also her Eurasian Knot podcast interview here.
Michael Gorham, Networking Putinism. The rhetoric of power in the digital age (Cornell University Press, 2026)
Eliot Borenstein,The Politics of Fantasy. Magic, Children’s Literature and Fandom in Putin's Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025). 
Greta Lynn Uehling, Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine  (Cornell University Press, 2023)
David Lewis, Occupation. Russian Rule in Southeastern Ukraine (Hurst, 2025) 
Martin Laryš, Rebel Militias in Eastern Ukraine, from leaderless groups to proxy armies (Routledge, 2025). 
Details of the Times event on 7 May I mentioned are here.
The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 
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Putin reportedly gathered top oligarchs behind closed doors and asked them to chip in to help fill the budget, with the war in Ukraine sitting unmistakably in the background. The idea seems to have been initiated by Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s gravel-voiced boss and one of the most polarising figures in Putin’s circle. After keeping a low profile since 2022, why is he coming back into the news? Because of the 'Prigozhin Syndrome': if you are a crony, not a friend, if you want something from the boss, you also need to demonstrate your utility.
That early podcast from 2022, by the way, In Moscow's Shadows 2: Mishustin, Sechin, Institutional vs Personal Power, is here.
The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

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A handful of memes and an online storm can look like nothing, right up until they start steering the news cycle. Efforts to talk up a secessionist Russian-speaking Estonian “Narva People’s Republic” look like a Kremlin disruption operation: manufacturing attention, stoking anxiety, and forcing journalists and officials into a no-win choice between silence and amplification. 

Rather more significant is the case of St Petersburg lawyer and Kremlin-friendly smear merchant, Ilya Remeslo, who has abruptly posted “Five Reasons Why I Stopped Supporting Vladimir Putin”, and then reportedly ended up in a psychiatric ward. A genuine conversion, a breakdown, a trap to catch dissidents, a pretext to shut down Telegram amid internet restrictions, or a very old-fashioned quest for money and status?

Maybe the regime really is under a kind of threat, not from a coup, but a slower, messier dissolution: elite resource fights, regional pushback over internet outages, war weariness, nationalist critiques from different directions. Russian political life is not dead, merely defrosting. 
Details of the event at the University of Chester on 16 April are here.
You can find details of my books, in English and translation, at my In Moscow's Shadows blog page, here.
Tom Adshead's New Kremlinology substack is here.
And if you want to know more about Russians With Attitude, look here.
The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Support the show

Or, 'Team Russia and the Undead Ideology Project' 
Can you create an ideology that is custom-engineered, poll-driven, focus grouped, workshopped and marketed? The Presidential Administration's Alexander Kharichev is certainly trying, suggesting the Kremlin's concerns about the future.
I also discuss Marlene Laruelle's excellent book Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime (Stanford UP 2025), and the link to Jeremy Morris's comments on it is here.
The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 
Support the show