Aidar Aganin, a leading Arabist who reopened Russia's embassy in Tripoli, was the natural choice for Cairo. The post is instead going to a Turkologist who ran the Foreign Ministry's information security department, a field long tied to the FSB and SVR. Since Bogdanov left, security men have been taking over the Arab desks.
On March 11, 2026, Russia could have vetoed a UN resolution condemning Iran, its strategic partner, and chose to abstain. Meanwhile Russia nearly doubled its oil exports to Asia, filling the gap left by Iranian barrels. And Ukrainian crews were shooting down Iranian drones over the Gulf.
Moscow invited the leaders of all 22 Arab League states to its first Russian-Arab summit, set for October 15, 2025. Five days before, the Kremlin announced a postponement. According to Bloomberg, only Syria's president and the Arab League's secretary-general had agreed to come. Why did Russia lose the Arab world?
In August 2025, Belarus proposed allowing martial law if Russia is attacked, as Russian troops came for the Zapad-2025 drills. NATO's chief believes Russia will be ready to fight the alliance within five years. The Baltics, Transnistria, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan are possible targets, but Russia itself may face China.
In December 2024, the Assad regime, which Russia had propped up since 2015, collapsed while Russian forces did nothing. Six months later, Washington and Brussels lifted sanctions, and Syria's new rulers are talking of peace with Israel. How did Moscow manage to lose its closest Arab ally?
Since 1950, only four heads of state have come to power through purely peaceful protest. Far more dictatorships have fallen to coups: in one study, 102 of 201 autocracies were toppled by insiders. What does this mean for Putin's regime and for a Russian opposition that still relies on peaceful marches?
In 2022, Russian billionaire Ruben Vardanyan gave up his citizenship, moved to Nagorno-Karabakh and became its state minister. In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces seized him as he fled with other refugees, and Moscow did not intervene. In April 2025, the International Court of Justice refused to protect him.
Garry Kasparov sees Trump's second term as the Putinization of America, with Elon Musk as its leading oligarch. Alexander Dugin welcomes the same changes and calls Trump Putin's ideological twin. Both agree that Trump's America is starting to look like Putin's Russia. They differ only on whether that is a disaster.
In 2022, many in the Russian opposition believed that Ukraine's victory would quickly bring down Putin's regime. Three years later, the Russian economy has survived sanctions, and the West avoids a direct clash with a nuclear power. Would a bad peace be better than endless losses?
Donald Trump promised to end Russia's war against Ukraine in a week by pressuring Kyiv into concessions. When Zelensky refused, Trump called him a dictator and began repeating Kremlin talking points. Yet Congress, the defense industry and Europe may well stop him from abandoning Ukraine.