Chapter 4 focuses on labor migration from Central Asia to Russia as the first exclusionary migration cycle. Growing migration after 2000 made Russia one of the world’s major migrant-receiving states. The chapter explains why Putin retained a visa-free regime with the much poorer former Soviet states of CA, allowing millions of their citizens free entry to Russia, where most stayed and worked with undocumented status. As the numbers of the ethnically distant Muslim migrants rose, welfare nationalist grievances emerged in the cities and regions where migrants were concentrated. Citing public opinion surveys, speeches by mayors and governors, election and party platforms, and mass media, the chapter shows how politicians framed and used welfare nationalist discourses to placate citizens and scapegoat migrants for declines in popular welfare. It highlights the role of sub-national officials in mobilizing anti-immigrant politics and channeling pressures for exclusionary policies to Putin. These pressures produced legislative and normative changes that progressively excluded migrant families from social sectors and subjected workers to increasing abuses, including deportations and other forms of exclusion. A sub-set of migrants who contributed to Russia’s national security were treated as more deserving.

Chapter 7 turns to ethnic return migrations, Russia’s Compatriot Resettlement Program and the Poland’s Karta Polaka (Pole’s Card) program. In these cases migrants entered ‘virtuous inclusionary cycles’ : societies were receptive to them as co- ethnics, political elites sponsored and financed their resettlement and media, mostly state-controlled in both states, lauded their contributions. The chapter analyzes the motives of the Polish and Russian governments in sponsoring re-settlers, including demographic replacement for declining populations, workers to fill labor shortages, and symbolic nationalist political agendas. It shows that welfare nationalist grievances did emerge over the resetlers’ social privileges and nationals’ competition with them for scare social resources. There were also disputes over the boundaries of national belonging. In sharp contrast to the exclusionary migrations, Russian and Polish political elites managed and mitigated grievances rather than mobilizing them for political gain. Resettlers confronted obstacles to integration: severe restrictions on residence and job rights in Russia, limited language fluency in Poland. Still, inclusionary policies gave resettlers social, economic and civil rights denied to those in exclusionary migrations.

This chapter traces developments in the energy sector from the systemic crisis under Gorbachev, through Russia’s difficult start after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the consolidation of Russia under Putin.

Chapter 5 traces the relationship between participatory technologies and information management in Russia. It argues that the Direct Line acts as a barometer of public opinion, a forum through which authorities can disseminate information to the public, and a tool to monitor and selectively punish officials. Moreover, this chapter explains how participatory technologies help authorities create the impression of effective governance and act as a means of public image making.

This chapter discusses corruption in Russia. It proposes a view that recognizes the ambiguity between the apparent anarchy of the observed conflicts in Russia’s society and the centrality of the State, the Kremlin, and President Putin. Background information on Russia’s economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union is presented first, with a focus on distributional issues. A series of existential struggles that the state has faced and examined what is known about corruption in Russia is then discussed. For the Russian state, corruption has been a crucial tool in addressing its existential struggles and a highly contested political arena. The theme of anti-corruption has been utilized by both reformers and the Kremlin for their own purposes.

This chapter describes the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the immediate sanctions and export control measures that followed. While focusing on the U.S. response, it describes key steps taken by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, and others. The chapter links developments in the ground war to the key economic responses by the forces aligned against Russia. As the extent of the Russian invasion became clear, sanctions were announced and subsequently ratcheted up extremely rapidly. The chapter also highlights the extraordinarily coordinated nature of the sanctions response.

This chapter discusses Putin’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022. It also describes the sanctions imposed against Russia in response.

This chapter examines a key aspect of the worldwide sanctions response: sanctioning individuals personally, including wealthy oligarchs holding vast, often-hidden wealth. This chapter explores how and why certain individuals were sanctioned, like Putin’s daughters and prominent Russian government and business figures. Lesser-known sanctioned figures are also discussed. It also discusses the difficulties of linking assets to sanctioned individuals once wealth is laundered and converted into certain types of assets. The chapter discusses measures taken by various jurisdictions to improve the effectiveness of sanctions by promoting financial transparency.

Describes the facts of Donald Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine into announcing investigations of his presidential rival Joseph Biden and how exposure of that effort led to a renewed effort to impeach him.

The chapter is split into two major sections, with the first addressing Russian linkages in Moldova and Ukraine. By supporting authoritarian-minded elites in these two states, Russia can help its chosen allies gain and consolidate power. While this notion of bolstering authoritarians is outside the focus of this book, how Russia goes about doing it and the lessons drawn are very much part of the learning process, and so are included here. The next section of the chapter analyses the internal networks in all four case studies that help with learning. The chapter argues that internal networks are crucial to learning and that Russia plays a key role in supporting authoritarian-minded elites in Moldova and Ukraine.

The internal aspect of learning is something that the existing literature has not investigated in detail. A range of examples are investigated in this chapter, with the first section addressing Belarusian and Russian learning from the Soviet Union. Then the chapter analyses how Putin learnt from his image failure after the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in the early 2000s. The Kursk sinking led to a significant change in image with Putin becoming a macho-man. The 2009 Moldovan Twitter Revolution led to learning after the protest on the part of the nominally pro-European government and the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan provided learning opportunities for Ukrainian governments. The chapter then addresses sub-optimal legislation in Belarus and Russia and potential learning from the failure. Learning from failure has not been investigated too much in the existing literature and this chapter addresses the issue.

Authoritarian learning is a concept that does not merely occur at the highest levels of government. Rather, those involved in the actual learning tend to be personnel further down the state hierarchy. This chapter analyses which state institutions are involved in learning. While information is difficult to obtain, there are pointers in the chapter to the notion that lower-level personnel are the main protagonists when it comes to learning. While there are several institutions involved in learning, there are differences in the number engaged in learning from external and internal examples

Under Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine became increasingly autocratic. His concentration of political power and economic assets engendered opposition, but Ukraine seemed stable. While Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia, making significant concessions in return for cheaper energy, he resisted the economic integration that Putin sought, hoping instead for a more popular Association Agreement with the EU. His efforts to play Russia and the EU against one another made Ukraine’s status a zero-sum game internationally. By 2013, it looked like Russia was primed to finally achieve the goal of reeling Ukraine back in, as Yanukovych succumbed to Russian pressure and delayed signing the EU Association Agreement.

As Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s borders in late 2021, few believed that Russia would actually carry out a full-scale invasion. On February 24, 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine along four axes. Contrary to expectations, Ukraine put up a spirited response and Russia’s attack stalled. The West enacted extensive sanctions and provided arms to Ukraine. By the summer of 2022 the war bogged down, with Russia in control of roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Both sides appeared committed to pursuing success on the battlefield rather than the bargaining table. The war was turning into a contest of logistics, resupply, and endurance.

After 1999, Ukraine and Russia both slid toward autocracy. As Leonid Kuchma’s autocracy made him a less fit partner for the West, he moved closer to Russia, and Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election looked set to solidify Russia’s position in Ukraine. The overturning of that rigged election via the Orange Revolution shocked the Russian leadership. In addition to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Ukraine, revolution now appeared to threaten the Putin regime. By merging the Ukraine–Russia conflict with the growing Russia–West conflict, this episode made both harder to solve.

The Orange Revolution initially appeared as a victory for democracy in Ukraine and as a geopolitical victory for the West. Those two ideas – democratic revolution and geopolitics – became tightly linked in the eyes of Russian leaders, but whereas western thinkers saw democracy as fostering peace, Russia saw it as a weapon. The Orange Revolution also made Ukraine appear to be the fulcrum of security dilemma politics in central Europe. Both Russia and the West saw the other’s designs on Ukraine as threatening their security and as undermining the status quo. Meanwhile, the Orange Revolution fizzled, Viktor Yanukovych made a remarkable comeback, and Russia reasserted itself, bolstered by Putin’s popularity and by booming energy prices.