A 10-year-old boy from a Tajik family was stabbed to death by a neo-Nazi Russian teenager on December 16 at a school near Moscow, but the murder has prompted almost no sympathy or even comment among Russians at home or abroad. Meanwhile, BBC News Russian details the worsening plight of Central Asian migrant workers in Russia.

The terrifying story of Mikhail Loshchinin, a Belgian-Russian dual national who went to Russia to visit his ailing father but was detained at the border. He now faces charges of "high treason" for, allegedly, wiring money to a friend in Ukraine in 2022. According to his mother, Loshchinin is also in danger of going blind in prison due to an untreated eye condition. And yes, he was tortured in custody to make him more cooperative.

Filmmaker Sergey Erzhenkov has memorialized the late pianist, writer and antifascist Pavel Kushnir, who died in a Russian detention center in 2024. Erzhenkov's compelling film "Kushnir" features the pianist's friends and admirers, and it also has English subtitles, making it accessible to international audiences. I've posted it here along with a translation of Erzhenkov's Facebook ntro to his film and a 2024 BBC podcast about Kushnir.

The Russian opposition and antiwar movement in exile is in disarray again after Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kara-Murza have a mighty row over which members of this non-elected group are worthy of representing "Russian democratic forces" at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

"Social parasitism" was a criminal offense in the USSR from 1961 to 1991. People who were unemployed without a valid reason could be sentenced to corrective labor, exile, or imprisonment. Citizens engaged in shadow private business were often prosecuted on this charge. The poet Joseph Brodsky was also convicted of "social parasitism."

Since trans and LBTQ rights are under attack from Astana to Missouri, the defense of these rights is a transnational cause, as witnessed by these dispatches from the front lines by Yara Tychina, Peter Leonard, BBC Russian Service, Erin Reed, and Paisley Currah.

They want it all, but they can't have it. Or can they? Two reflections on (certain) Russians always getting what they want.

As Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine heads to the four-year mark with no signs of ever ending, Russia's crackdown against dissenters has expanded, as exemplified by the cases of Varvara Volkova, Felix Eliseev, Ilya Shakursky, OVD Info, and Yulia Lemeshchenko.

In October, a possible educational outing at the local cemetery, where Duke Serge von Leuchtenberg de Beauharnais is buried, unexpectedly sent me down an NTS rabbit hole, a journey that, a month later, has just as serendipitously expanded to new itineraries charted by Mitya Volchek, David Albanese, the FSB, and Gerald Frost, and surprise guest appearances by William Sloane Coffin and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Andy Borowitz, Fred Kaplan, Heather Cox Richardson, and Cathy Young on the Stable Genius's Kremlin-drafted "peace plan" for Russia and Ukraine.

Buy our book.

"Let's have you all over when the war ends": Bristol UP, "Charlemagne," ambicolonial theorists, News from Ukraine Bulletin, the L.A. Times, Sarah Hurst, Jennifer Szalai, and Quentin Peel go in search of the "good Russians."

Simon Pirani: "The powers on both sides of the geopolitical divide are frightened of similar things: the defiance and resilience of the opponents of Putin’s war, and the anger that has brought millions of people on to the streets of north American and European cities, in protest at the Gaza genocide. They are frightened of beliefs that are taking shape, in varying forms, that humanity can and should strive for a better, richer life than that offered by the warmongers and dictators. Some of these beliefs are expressed in the chapters of this book."

The 2005 murder by neo-Nazis of Petersburg musician, philosophy student, antifascist, and Food Not Bombs activist Timur Kacharava was a signal event in post-communist Russia's precipitous slide into full-blown fascism at home and bloody war in Ukraine. As they have every year since Timur's murder, Petersburgers gathered to remember him on 13 November 2025.

Black is beautiful if it moves units. Otherwise, it gives white the heebie-jeebies.

There can be no better way to mark this website's 18th birthday today than by promoting a new book in whose birth it played a part — Voices Against Putin's War: Protesters' Defiant Speeches in Russian Courts, edited by Simon Pirani and published by Resistance Books (London).

ICE has also been targeting Russian asylum seekers, as exemplified by the cases of Buryat activist Alexander Bolokhoev and Peterburg anti-electoral fraud activist "Dimitry." Their stories are told by Julia Khazagaeva, Buryadmongol, Sota News, and New York Magazine.

"Eating seeds as a pastime activity": this all-star omnibus post features School of Rock, Martin Sheen, John Cusack, Slavoj Žižek, Russian political prisoner Mikhail Krieger, Shirley Manson, Memorial, Pussy Riot, Petersburg anti-war activist Yegor Shramko, Hanna Perekhoda, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin, Heather Cox Richardson, and System of a Down.

This omnibus features profiles of Ukraine's youngest defenders; a snapshot of military aid to Ukraine; an account of how Russias systematically tortures Ukrainian POWs; a fundraising t-shirt that asks a question I've been asking here for the last 18 years; this week's News from Ukraine Bulletin; and a report on how Russia is erasing Mariupol's Ukrainian identity by stealing property.

"Blood is fuel. Hell is full. Devils are here": depaywalling is a civic duty in these desperate times.

Grim reflections by TV's "The Rookie," The Bulwark's Adrian Carrasquillo, and Dr. Stacey Patton on America's continuing, monstrous war on Black and Brown people, as exemplified by the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, the recent South Shore raid in Chicago, and ICE's systematic and demonstrative dehumanization of the people it abducts.

The documents and eyewitnesses collected in Russian Reader No. 2738 would lead only a fool conclude that Americans, Russians, and Israelis—as polities—love children. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the other direction.

TV series "High Potential," Stacey Patton, and James Sacré on the current scary conjuncture at home and elsewhere, and where it might lead us.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky is the son of controversial Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzanovsky. In 2022, Andrei emigrated to Israel, where he plunged into pro-Palestinian activism on the West Bank. Republic published this contentious interview with Khrzhanovsky in late July, but it has become only timelier since then, especially because Khrzhanovsky is a rarity: a Russian voice publicly denouncing Israel's actions as "genocide."

Los glaciares de las montañas Pamir, en Tayikistán, se están derritiendo a un ritmo alarmante, lo que tiene consecuencias para la agricultura y la energía hidroeléctrica en Asia Central.