The Russian Lobby in the United States

In this in-depth investigation, historian Laurence Saint-Gilles sketches the contours of the Russian lobby in the United States and examines the conditions that have enabled it to penetrate deeply into American society and politics.

31 min read

They Made Putinism: Mikhail Lesin (1958-2015) from Russia Today to Hollywood

Dubbed by some as “the number one enemy of Russian independent media”, Mikhail Lessin was instrumental in reshaping the media landscape after Vladimir Putin became president. And he’s buried in Hollywood. The fifth part of the serial of the historian Cécile Vaissié.

26 min read

A Feigned Innocence

Our cartoonist tackles the destruction of the Kakhovka dam by the Russians, while the Putin regime continues to claim, falsely, its innocence. Like so many times already…

~1 min read

They Made Putinism: Alfred Koch, the man of Privatizations and NTV

The historian Cécile Vaissié offers Desk Russie the fourth part of her soap opera. If Alfred Koch is quite universally hated in Russia, it is above all because he is associated with the privatizations of the 1990s. Less so because he, “like the shark of capitalism”, contributed to the suffocation of the media under Putin.

28 min read

Wild Geese

Drones descend on the Kremlin, Russian rebels attack Belgorod, Russian positions are attacked in Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin and his entourage continue to show their faith in the final victory.

~1 min read

The Bakhmut Apocalypse

From the capture of Bakhmout by the militiamen of Prigojine, Jean-François Bouthors examines the symbolic meaning of this Pyrrhic victory. For him, the Wagner militia embodies a nihilism comparable only to the ideology of Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

8 min read

The Toxic Spell of “Imperial Knowledge”

Ukrainian political scientist and thinker Mykola Ryabchuk explains how Russia’s imperial vision of Ukraine has penetrated deeply into Western society, how its most toxic myths and clichés have been uncritically accepted and normalized.

12 min read

Yevgeny Prigojine’s Mania for Grandeur

This time, our cartoonist tackles the mania for grandeur of Putin’s “cook” who, according to rumours, was ready to divulge Russian military secrets to the Ukrainians in exchange for victory in Bakhmout.

~1 min read