In a new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, Hilary Appel and Boyang Liu find evidence Beijing is hedging bets rather than backing Moscow’s war effort or flouting Western-led sanctions on Russia. Jennifer Murtazashvili interprets Tajik president Emomali Rahmon’s demand for “respect” from Russia last week as “a plea for more Russian attention” rather than an “emphatic statement of autonomy.”

With Russia openly attacking civilian infrastructure, Olexiy Haran sees a sign its military is struggling to “compensate for military losses.” Pavel Podvig adds that “you really need to make it clear that you are willing to target civilians” for a nuclear threat to be effective, though he thinks the risks are still low and says Western intelligence would almost definitely know if Russia took steps to deploy such weapons.

How stable is Vladimir Putin’s regime? Vladimir Gel’man does not expect elite splits, finding Russia firmly beholden to a “single celestial body.” Nikolay Petrov argues against taking Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s public displays of loyalty at face value: “Like in the Middle Ages, Kadyrov is a vassal of Putin personally, not of Russia.” And Richard Arnold points to the 300,000 young Russians enrolled in Cossack education systems as evidence the regime is becoming more dependent on Cossack social structures, particularly for mobilization. Yuri Zhukov sees Putin’s declaration of martial law in parts of Ukraine as an attempt to formalize what’s already there and to signal he is taking the situation seriously.

At the mass level, Kirill Rogov says new polling data show “a shift of public opinion is underway” as disappointment with Putin consolidates. And for Scott Radnitz, the flight of military-age men from Russia indicates its propaganda is failing. Rogov goes on to describe Putin’s position as a “no-win trap,” though questions whether it is fatal or fixable, while Konstantin Sonin characterizes Putin’s actions as “participating in creating” a collapse not unlike that of the Soviet Union in 1991. Addressing a bill the State Duma discussed this past week that would further restrict public discussion of LGBTQ issues in Russia, Maria Popova sees Moscow signaling its distance from the West with no regard for the people it affects. A new e-book edited by Marlene Laruelle shows how the Black Notebooks of German philosopher Martin Heidegger have reshuffled far-right studies in Russia.