The ideology, priorities, and policies of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin are almost certain to inform and guide Dmitri Medvedev's administration.

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...

As the Russian protest movement expands and radicalizes in the lead-up to the March 4 presidential election, the key question is not whether Vladimir Putin--and Putinism--will survive.

The reception in Moscow to U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul during his first few months on the job has been unusual, if not downright hostile, a lot more Cold War than Russian Reset.

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.

There is a Russian saying, lyod tronulsya, which means the winter ice on the river has cracked and begun to move, that things have begun to change deeply and significantly. This is what's happening in today's Russia.

The Russian president has repudiated key tenets of Putinism, but Putin is ignoring him.

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.