And this time, I don’t think Putin is going anywhere. As they say, history doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes.

When Vladimir Putin returns to the Russian presidency on Monday, May 7, the pageantry surrounding his inauguration will aim to portray a picture of unassailable strength, a confident master of his domain invulnerable to pressures from within or without. But things are not quite as stable...

In his 2011 State of the Union Address, with six members of the Supreme Court present, President Obama famously attacked the Court’s Citizen’s United decision. At the center of Obama’s criticism was his completely erroneous contention that the decision opened the floodgates to foreign corporate spending in U.S. election campaigns.

Obama's comment reminds general election voters, most of whom dislike his current major policies, that he might go even further "after my election."

Thank you, Madam Chairman.Among the very top priorities of U.S. foreign and security policies, I doubt there are many – if any – objectives more important than a free, democratic, stable, and prosperous Russia, at peace, in the long last, with its own people, its neighbors and the...

Far from enhancing the Putin regime's legitimacy, the election will diminish it further in the eyes of a significant part of the Russian population.

Now that it seems a certainty that Russia is headed for (at least) 12 more years of Putinism, alarm bells ought to be sounding. Why? Because by every indicator--macroeconomic, political, social--the system that Putin forged in the early 2000s is all but exhausted and is driving the country toward a dead end.

Just like the leaders of the civil rights movement, Russia's activists seek to effect vast political and social change by personal and deeply moral effort fueled from within.