In a new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, Gulnaz Sibgatullina documents how Russia’s anti-war movement in exile is struggling with political, ethnic, and generational divisions. Konstantin Sonin writes that Russians become refugees for a variety of reasons, including loss of work and income, fear of mobilization, aversion to a criminal war, and not wanting to expose their children to war propaganda.

Another new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, by Emil Dzhuraev, finds Putin’s language of war has fallen flat in Central Asia. Olexiy Haran and Petro Burkovskyi argue the invasion of Ukraine has cost Russia influence in South Asia, where energy and food crises constrain cooperation. The Kremlin has also turned to religious and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, portraying Ukraine as a fraternal Orthodox nation stolen from Russia by a corrupt West. This, according to Maria Popova, creates a “holy war aspect” to its war in Ukraine that Henry Hale describes as part of the Kremlin’s “throwing-spaghetti-at-the-wall” efforts to justify its actions.

Addressing how the conflict itself is playing out, a new PONARS Eurasia Commentary by Simon Saradzhyan shows that Moscow has been “alternating assertive and conciliatory tones” in its nuclear messaging. Volodymyr Dubovyk sees Putin’s “Christmas ceasefire” announcement as an effort to stabilize the Russian front line while presenting himself to the West as benevolent. For Oxana Shevel, Moscow lacks a path to victory unless Western support or Ukrainian morale collapses. And Burkovskyi reports that for the first time in recent years, Ukrainians feel more confidence, hope, and optimism than anxiety about their country’s future.

In another new PONARS Eurasia Commentary, Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov argue that old-style bureaucracy, norms, political culture, and expectations of center-regional dominance and control survived the collapse of the USSR. Erica Marat credits Ukrainian scholars’ push to ‘decolonize’ Slavic and Eastern European studies with inspiring those studying other former Soviet regions, while Volodymyr Ishchenko worries Western talk about Ukraine’s “decolonization” focuses too much on identity symbolism and not enough on social transformation.

On other topics, Ivan Kurilla argues that the US and Russia have developed historically as “constitutive others.”