An online journal on Russian affairs. На русском @RidlRussia
Joined May 2015
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Riddle Russia retweeted
Three years ago I made the argument that we should locate the proximate cause of the war to Putin's developing ideological obsessions under conditions of unique agency. I have not stopped being right.
ridl.io/putin-s-agency-and-t…
Vladimir Putin used most of his call with the leaders of Finland and Norway to lecture them about medieval Slavic history, underscoring the difficulties Europe faces in asserting itself in upcoming peace talks with Russia.
w/ @maxseddon @HenryJFoy @FT
ft.com/content/a384acd1-c90c…
Riddle Russia retweeted
Russia’s economy is crawling, not recovering. Growth at just 0.6% (Jan–Aug), real wages up but consumption and the civilian supply side eroding. Nominal gains mask a grinding slowdown heading into 2027.
@ntrickett16 for @RiddleRussia
ridl.io/crawling-forward/
Riddle Russia retweeted
While Putin courts African leaders with multipolar talk and anti-West rhetoric in Moscow, a real war veteran mayor, in Kirov just got purged.
Nikita Gorelov (mobilized soldier turned local head) was sidelined despite the “veterans as new elite” PR.
The political bloc’s message: combat service alone isn’t enough—you need the right connections.
Andrey Pertsev @RiddleRussia on the limits of the veteran experiment. Link first comment
Russia failed to turn the SCO into a unified diplomatic bloc supporting its position on Ukraine. The organization’s largest members avoided rhetoric endorsing Moscow’s actions and demonstrated no willingness to support its territorial claims.
ridl.io/the-sco-after-2022-r…
Divergence between U.S. and EU strategies can weaken overall pressure on Russia even without the formal lifting of sanctions. How exactly?
ridl.io/a-sanctions-reprieve…
Riddle Russia retweeted
The Kremlin knows which Russian numbers Western analysts actually use—and how they use them. A clear checklist of the seven most common mistakes that turn official Russian data into misinformation.
Thread 1/4
“Idealizing the past has become our national pastime. The rejection of constructing an imagined future is locking Russians in the present.”
@Vladi_Moscou on why so much of Russian discourse stays stuck looking backward. From 2021 but no less relevant.
Thread 1/4
Putin did not create Russians’ fear of the future. He uses it. The result is a society that debates which version of the past to return to (1960s, 1980s, 1990s) more readily than it imagines something new.
3/4
Still one of the sharper explanations for why “stability” remains such a powerful frame in Russian politics years later.
Full text - ridl.io/how-russians-learned…
Riddle Russia retweeted
What does Putin want from the #SCO after 2022?
Not an anti-Western alliance—at least not yet. Moscow wants diplomatic visibility, sanctions resistance, and a stage for its multipolarity narrative.
But the SCO gives Russia much less than the Kremlin hoped.
1/4
Riddle Russia retweeted
U.S. sanctions relief is giving Russia breathing room on oil exports — and quietly testing the credibility of the whole Western sanctions regime. How bad is it?
Thread 1/9
The less consistent sanctions policy becomes, the harder it is to sustain their effect. For some, the prospect of relief may become an incentive to resume trade with Russia; others will continue to be deterred by legal and financial risks.
ridl.io/a-sanctions-reprieve…
Russia wanted SCO after 2022 to prove it wasn’t isolated, push multipolarity and lock in anti-sanctions solidarity. It got summits and rhetoric. It didn’t get a unified Ukraine position or new institutions. China’s weight and member divisions set limits ridl.io/the-sco-after-2022-r…
Riddle Russia retweeted
The Kremlin isn’t tightening its own belt. It’s taking one to the public. Siluanov elevated, taxes rising, rates stuck at 14%, and no growth tailwind into 2027. @ntrickett16's @RiddleRussia weekly economic note.
ridl.io/reaching-for-the-bel…
Siluanov is back as deputy PM. Taxes are going up. The Bank of Russia sees inflation stuck high. @ntrickett16 on why “belt-tightening” now means the state squeezing households and business harder.
ridl.io/reaching-for-the-bel…
For now, the government reshuffle suggests that Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his ultra-conservative personnel policy and that stagnation in the power vertical persists.
ridl.io/a-prime-minister-wit…
Riddle Russia retweeted
#Serbia votes Oct 25 in snap parliamentary elections. Almost two years of student protests (sparked by the Novi Sad canopy collapse) have challenged Vučić’s long rule. Russia has clear stakes in the outcome.
1/10
Riddle Russia retweeted
This Hungarian position will be recurring.
Magyar unblocked the accession process, but he was quite straightforward about the long negotiation process with Ukraine.
The replacement of Orban with Magyar was misinterpreted as a faster accession process for Ukraine.
We, at @RiddleRussia, warned about having huge expectations regarding the “de-Orbanisation” of Hungary’s foreign policy.
ridl.io/de-orbanisation-of-h…
