With Ukrainian forces liberating Kherson, Olexiy Haran sees a strategic and symbolic blow to Russia: strategic because of its location and symbolic because Putin claimed it would be part of Russia forever. Kirill Rogov thinks high-ranking officials are deliberately failing to carry out Putin’s orders properly, part of a creeping conspiracy that could lead to his quiet disappearance from power.

A new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo by Ivan Kurilla finds Russian attitudes on the war complex and varied. Paul Goode finds Russian TV primed domestic audiences for the February 2022 attack in much the same way it did for attacks in Crimea in 2014 and Georgia in 2008, while Andrei Semenov and co-authors find the Kremlin has been astroturfing Russia’s most pro-war social media platforms. Vladimir Gel’man warns changes to Russia’s higher education curriculum are an attempt to “brainwash” young people that could kill critical thinking for decades. A second new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, by Mariya Omelicheva, examines global opinion on the war, documenting how Russian pre-2022 “soft power” efforts have led scores of countries to avoid calling Russia the aggressor.

In a third PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, Adam Stulberg and Dennis Murphy find Russian and Western “coercive playbooks” are out of sync as Russia purposefully obfuscates. As for how the West should respond, Simon Saradzhyan says admonishment won’t stop Putin from rattling his nuclear saber, but could help convince him a first-strike would be met with universal opposition. Pavel Podvig reiterates that the only plausible use of nuclear weapons is a strategic one with mass casualties. For Samuel Charap, talking and fighting at the same time is often the norm in conflict situations, leading him to see value in maintaining diplomacy with Moscow to lay the groundwork for the future.

With the 2022 U.S. midterm elections now behind us, Samuel Greene notes that Russian trolls want the Republican base to call for a drawdown in U.S. support for Ukraine but face an uphill battle given the party’s split on the issue. Volodymyr Dubovyk feels the US is trying to balance supporting Ukrainian victory with fears about what a Russian defeat could bring. With the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, David Szakonyi discovers that some Western companies have maintained significant business interests in Russia, namely TotalEnergies (France) and Wintershall Dea (Germany). Focusing on elder care services in Russia, Anna Tarasenko finds a classic principal-agent dilemma.