Longtime dissident Aleksandr Skobov is being held in St. Petersburg on a charge of "justifying terrorism." The 66-year-old, who spent years in psychiatric hospitals in Soviet times, makes no apologies for his outspoken opposition to Vladimir Putin. And he has no intention of backing down now.
Despite his fearsome reputation as Putin’s top enforcer, Nikolai Patrushev’s and his son’s personal power base is too shallow to survive the potential death of the president.
One of the favorite protagonists in journalistic investigations of deeper sources of Moscow’s recent foreign policies is the flamboyant Russian idealogue Alexander Dugin. Equipped with a long beard, sonorous voice, and extroverted personality, Dugin is a telegenic speaker who easily checks the box of an archetypical Russian philosopher. In contrast to how he is often portrayed, Dugin is neither a philosopher of intellectual novelty nor an ideologue with direct access to the Kremlin.
Opinion | One of the favorite protagonists of efforts to understand Moscow’s recent foreign policy is the flamboyant Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, who recently said that Russia’s only true allies are the pariah states of Iran, North Korea and Belarus.