Alexander Baunov

What we have witnessed is one of the first instances of a new, horizontal politics peacefully filling an old, vertical structure. The students didn’t choose one politician over another; they stepped forward themselves. Serbia has had its cake and eaten it, too. And, at least for now, all the store windows remain intact. carnegieendowment.org/russia…

While the Russia–Africa Forum has been going on for three days now, with all the extravagance of a lavish wedding, I’d like to draw your attention to this long article on the history of Russia’s relations with Sudan in recent years (in Russian). It shows how Russia’s engagement with Africa plays out not at forums, but on the ground. Among its many merits—from the care with which arguments are formulated to the accuracy of its information—the article is particularly valuable because it was written by a former Russian diplomat who worked on African and Middle Eastern affairs until 2022, including in Sudan itself. It is, in other words, a firsthand account, offering a view of realities that usually remain largely unnoticed, if not entirely invisible. “Russian-Sudanese relations, as such, do not exist and never have. It would be more accurate to speak of the personal relationship between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and whichever ruler happens to be in power in Sudan... It may seem that Russia has finally chosen a side in Sudan’s civil war. But that is not actually the case. At every turning point in Sudan’s recent history, the Kremlin has merely reacted to events on the ground—and each time belatedly. The same applies to Moscow’s latest moves regarding Sudan.” carnegieendowment.org/ru/rus… storage.googleapis.com/crng/…

The Russian bookstore chain Chitai-Gorod has spent around 100 million rubles removing books that do not comply with Russia’s new censorship laws. The company has spent tens of millions more on labeling books containing references to drugs, the chain’s CEO, Alexander Brychkin, told RBC. “We can’t just throw these books in the trash. They are toxic waste. So they have to be destroyed, and we have to pay for that too,” Brychkin added. According to him, a significant share of the costs comes from the fact that the books cannot be returned to suppliers. Instead, the company has to write them off as losses and pay for their destruction. The books are sent through industrial shredders, and the process is recorded on camera. Additional costs include removing the books from shelves, transporting them to warehouses, and processing them. Millions of books in the nowadays Russia are “toxic waste”

The moral shock following the loss of life in Novi Sad triggered the articulation of grievances and demands. Those who were dissatisfied crossed the threshold from complaining to taking action. What followed proved remarkably resilient: the movement sustained itself for two years. Horizontal protest movements often have a short half-life (think of Bolotnaya Square or the Yellow Vests), and the fact that the Serbian protests managed to develop a durable form is an achievement in itself. But then came the most important part: sustained protest action found a way to fill the existing institutional framework and make use of it without breaking it. And in Meduza: meduza.io/feature/2026/10/27…⁠ The Carnegie version: storage.googleapis.com/crng/…⁠

What happened in #Serbia looks less like one group of politicians defeating another and more like a victory of the people over the political class itself. Behind the winners stand neither oligarchs, nor defectors from the elite, nor the West. Within the movement, liberals and nationalists coexist, united by a demand for good governance. These elections mark one of the first cases in which the street did not break the existing institutional framework but peacefully filled it with its own political force. Now it must prove that the power of protest can become the power to govern. In a battle between the horizontal and the vertical that resonates with our times, it was the horizontal — as purely horizontal as possible — that won. My piece for Carnegie Politika, first published in Russian. carnegieendowment.org/ru/rus…

Right now, holding elections generates an extra sense of self-righteousness for Putin as he seeks to delegitimize his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin will thus try to argue that Zelensky’s term in office has expired while he himself is legitimately elected and just scored another resounding “victory” for his party. Never mind that the word “election” has a completely different meaning in the two countries. In Russia, voters cannot loosen Putin’s grip on power. This distinction will, of course, be lost on U.S. President Donald Trump, who echoes Putin’s lies about Zelensky’s electoral legitimacy. From my recent piece in the @ForeignPolicy foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/29…

Elections, now even more tightly managed by the same security services tasked with other forms of repression. In his first public remarks after the election, Putin told Russian servicemen that the result demonstrated support for the war against Ukraine. As of now, the Russian electoral process is no longer even an imitation of democracy. It has become an element of the war itself. My fresh piece in the @ForeignPolicy. foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/29… A terrible confirmation of this is what happened in Moscow to the electoral analyst Alexander Kynev.

Removing Yabloko could end up hurting New People as well. Once a party running on relatively peaceful, anti-war messages is pushed out, voters who might have supported those messages may become less willing to vote for New People. New People cannot afford to use the same language, and after the crackdown on Yabloko — which may well continue — they will look particularly unpleasant as people willing to compromise with the system. Some voters who might have chosen New People if Yabloko had simply never been allowed to run could now turn away from them. Yabloko is Russia’s old liberal opposition party, while New People is a newer party represented in the State Duma and operating within the limits of Russia’s tightly controlled electoral system. At the same time, the broader electorate is being reminded that all these educated, liberal-looking parties are supposedly defeatists and traitors: some have already been exposed, while others have not — yet. It will not help New People much that they are part of the pro-war consensus, only with glasses. The glasses only make them stand out more. They make people suspect that New People would abandon the consensus as soon as they got the chance. The ideal response for New People would be to condemn Yabloko’s removal. But they are unlikely to dare. So they may go down together with Yabloko: Yabloko as the victim, New People as the silent bystander. And the broader purpose of all this activity may be to remind people that an election is coming, but in a safe, controlled way: plenty of election drama in the media, but none of it on the ballot.

You can’t keep a secret forever: Russia has seen a sharp increase in demand for specialists in military registration and mobilization records. According to HeadHunter, there are currently more than 2,500 vacancies for such positions. Around 1,300 of them were posted in the past week alone, the independent outlet Agentstvo (designated a “foreign agent” in Russia) reports. The openings are offered by government agencies, state-owned companies, and private businesses, including the Moscow city government, Roscosmos, organizations affiliated with the Ministry of Defense, MTS, and Almaz-Antey. For comparison, only 145 such vacancies were posted during the whole of 2021. After the partial mobilization was announced in autumn 2022, roughly 500 vacancies appeared by the end of that year.

« Russia has entered an “ideal crisis” that strengthens its sovereignty and unites society», Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Today is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The Russian Committee Against Torture has asked me to support its fundraising campaign, and I am doing so because I fully understand how important its work is. Judicial and investigative torture was abolished back in imperial Russia, yet it is widely practiced in Russia today. It is used in prisons, during criminal investigations, and even outside any legal process at all — simply in police stations or in the army. What is more, the state openly boasts about it, even on television, because it wants people to be afraid. This is a classic example of Russian doublethink: officially, torture does not exist, but everyone is supposed to know that it does. Yesterday, at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, the head of Russia's Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, proposed lowering the age of criminal responsibility to twelve. In today's Russia, this means that even twelve-year-old children will be tortured. And they will be — there is little reason to doubt it. In fact, it has already begun. The Russian regime presents itself as the defender of traditional human civilization against Western transhumanism. In reality, however, it practices dehumanization. Torture was abolished in England in the seventeenth century, across most of continental Europe in the eighteenth century, and even in Russia, as I mentioned, at the beginning of the nineteenth. Apparently, Russian traditionalism seeks its understanding of "protecting the human person" in those depths of history where the very idea of human dignity had not yet emerged. That is the real transhumanism: to leap over the entire humanist tradition and return to a time before it existed. If there is anything we can do to oppose this, we should. Here is the link to the campaign. I have checked it myself — it is genuine. You can also verify it through friends, Google, or AI. bf-pytkam.net/26-rubley-prot…

And, as usual, don’t miss a few interesting pieces published on Carnegie Politika last week (in Russian): Sergey Vakulenko on the consequences of the new wave of strikes on Russian oil refineries (and the possible abolition of the fuel damper mechanism): storage.googleapis.com/crng/… An interview with Alexandra Prokopenko on the future head of the Central Bank and why the government needed a law allowing budget revisions without the participation of the State Duma: storage.googleapis.com/crng/… Natalia Kiseleva on culture at SPIEF as a diagnosis of contemporary Russia: storage.googleapis.com/crng/… Galia Ibragimova on how Central Asian countries’ efforts to reduce their reliance on transit routes through Russia are being undermined by new wars: storage.googleapis.com/crng/… An interview with Temur Umarov on how long Tokayev plans to stay in power and what BP’s arrival in Uzbekistan tells us about the region’s future: storage.googleapis.com/crng/… And a new episode of Baunovcast with Mikael Zolyan on the elections in Armenia and why they became an important event in regional politics: storage.googleapis.com/crng/…

Speaking with Salma Abdelaziz on CNN @SalmaCNN about the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow and what they reveal about changing public attitudes toward the war inside Russia.

There is one major difference both from the wars into whose framework the Russian regime has tried to force the current war against Ukraine, and from the wars to which more detached outside observers compare it. For loyal and politically neutral Russians, the war increasingly makes less sense precisely within those familiar frames. At first, Russians were prepared for a distant war, something like Syria. The comparison with World War II, launched by the authorities around autumn 2022, implies that things begin badly: fear, hardship, the enemy at the gates of Moscow. But then a great effort of will, labor, sacrifice, and endurance turns the tide. The war rolls back, and fear and tension recede, eventually giving way to relief and even joy. The same is true of the Napoleonic invasion and even the Russian Civil War: first Petrograd, then Crimea — not the other way around. But in this war everything is reversed. It is not rolling back, it is rolling in. Anxiety and pressure are not fading but growing. The enemy is near Moscow not in the first year but in the fifth. So what is this supposed to mean — that everything is only beginning now? And then hungry ideologues wander around cheering it on: “Yes, yes, it is only beginning! Now you will finally have to make real sacrifices. Get ready, fellow citizens, hurrah!” Indeed, elements of fuel rationing are appearing, and classic wartime hardships (rather than sanctions-related inconveniences) are only beginning to emerge in the fifth year of the war. That is unusual. People are not prepared for such a course of events. This war overturns the very framework offered to explain it. Each New Year of the war was supposed to push the enemy farther away from the heart of Russia, not bring it closer. People have questions. The same applies to the more detached comparison with Russia’s local wars, including some unsuccessful ones. Afghan mujahideen did not bomb Moscow or Tashkent. The Finns did not bomb Leningrad. The Poles achieved their Miracle on the Vistula, not on the Dnieper. Even in the Crimean War, Russia’s enemies only brushed against its territory: they operated in the Baltic, captured a single fortress, threatened Solovki and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. All of that was far from the capitals and comfortable places of everyday life. Even World War I reached cities far from the front mainly through casualty notices and consumer shortages, not through fire and steel. None of the familiar frameworks works anymore, and no new understandable one is being offered. The head of the Russian regime continues to rely on the “patient Russian people. (Stalin's defenition)” He himself adapts to restrictions, including on freedom of movement. The public will adapt too. If Ukrainians have lived under bombs for five years and still study, work, run businesses, and raise children, then why should his subjects be any different? They too will get used to it and learn to live that way — for the sake of victory.

A few texts from last week (in Russian): A piece by Tatiana Stanovaya on how Putin, because of the decision-making environment he has created around himself, has trapped himself in the Anchorage framework — and why no concessions should be expected from him. storage.googleapis.com/crng/… A piece by Alexander Atasuntsev on the future of Armenia’s relationship with Russia after Pashinyan’s election victory. storage.googleapis.com/crng/… An interview with Maria Kolomychenko on why the authorities need a state VPN, why it will not solve Russia’s IT problems, and whether Roskomnadzor can succeed in blocking all VPNs. storage.googleapis.com/crng/… A piece by Mikael Zolyan on the results of Armenia’s election and their implications for Armenian society. storage.googleapis.com/crng/… A piece by Alexey Uvarov on why legal continuity with the USSR did not necessarily predetermine Russia’s return to dictatorship. storage.googleapis.com/crng/…

I can’t judge the military side of it, but last night’s Russian strikes on Kyiv damaged not only buildings in and around the Kyiv Pechersk #Lavra, Ukraine’s most important Orthodox monastery, but also the Dovzhenko Film Studio and the Arsenal complex — two other sites deeply woven into Kyiv’s historical and cultural identity. The choice of targets may not be entirely coincidental. Just days ago, a Ukrainian strike reportedly damaged the Panorama Museum of the Defence of Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea, home to Franz Roubaud’s famous panoramic painting depicting the defence of the city during the Crimean War. Created for the fiftieth anniversary of the siege of Sevastopol and opened in 1905, Roubaud’s panorama became one of the principal shrines of Russian military memory. For Sevastopol, the museum is more than a cultural institution. It is one of the city’s key lieux de mémoire — a civic shrine tied to its identity as a fortress and military port. For Putin’s generation and virtually everyone raised in the Soviet Union, visiting the panorama was a standard part of patriotic education. The building occupied an almost sacred place in the Soviet historical imagination. Whether or not today’s strikes were intended as a response, they hit sites that play a similar role in Kyiv’s identity to the one the panorama museum plays in Sevastopol’s. More broadly, we may be seeing a gradual expansion of target selection: beyond military facilities, infrastructure, industrial sites and residential buildings, and increasingly toward symbolic, historical and cultural landmarks. Given how much Putin’s worldview — and the propaganda system built around it — operates in the realm of symbols, memory and historical narratives, it is conceivable that cultural targets are being chosen not only for military reasons but also for their psychological and symbolic impact. Striking places that embody a nation’s identity can be a way of trying to undermine morale and weaken a society’s sense of itself.

I saw Kirill #Serebrennikov’s The #Blizzard in Düsseldorf @GruendgensPlatz today, with Filipp Avdeev, Felix Knopp, Varvara Shmykova and others. The production begins with such scenographic grandeur — on the scale of a musical or an opera — that you start wondering: what can the director possibly do next to raise the stakes rather than lower them? If there is wind, fog, and snow on stage from the very first minutes, what is left for the finale? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Snow, like in the Yakut language, comes in many names and varieties. More importantly, it is not the snow that intensifies the acting, as often happens, but the other way around: the performances of Avdeev, Knopp, and the rest alter the very intensity of the winter landscapes around them. The most potentially shocking episode — Doctor Garin being boiled in an illusory cauldron — is rendered as a classic expressionist actor’s monologue. A very powerful one. Now I want to see August Diehl in that scene and find out where he takes it. A production Russian-German in its cast turns out to be Russian-German in its theme as well. Sorokin’s pair — the representative of the intelligentsia and the representative of the people, Doctor Chekhov and his Sancho Panza, a winter Chichikov and his Petrushka — gradually becomes a pair of Stolz and Oblomov, though not master and servant but doctor and coachman. In short, what a Russian shrugs off can be fatal to a German. Or rather, to both. German enthusiasm — even a kind of proud altruism (the doctor crossing a snowy plain to deliver a vaccine against a Bolivian plague) — multiplied by the Russian “God willing, we’ll get there somehow,” ends in disaster for both men. A Russian, having started something beyond his powers, drags both himself and the European alongside him into disaster. It recalls Yura Borisov’s character in Compartment No. 6, released just before the 2022 war, who throws himself into taking a Finnish woman obsessed to see the Kola Peninsula petroglyphs through an icy storm. Only he gets her there; Sorokin’s coachman does not deliver his doctor. Doctor Garin’s dying monologue, delivered twice — first while being boiled in the cauldron of a narcotic hallucination, then in the delirium of freezing to death — forms the two pillars of the production. Between them stretches Perkhusha’s bilingual speech, full of emotional swings and logical confusion. The frozen Russian and German are eventually discovered by two Chinese men in spacesuits that now look less cosmic than anti-plague and anti-radiation. It is with them that a new and “serious” life begins for the German, who survives but loses his legs.

With Becky Anderson @BeckyCNN discussing “Putin’s Davos” — the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which this year opened amid the smoke of Ukrainian drone attacks.