The political realities of contemporary Russia are poorly understood by Western observers and policy-makers. Yet whether it is the conflict in Syria, the Winter Olympics in Sochi or the crisis in Ukraine, Russia dominates the headlines.

In this highly engaging book, Andrew Monaghan explains the importance of 'getting Russia right', and not simply accepting dominant political narratives that focus on the theme of Russia's historical progress towards democracy, and more recently, on the increasing turn towards authoritarianism, and the major obstacle posed by President Vladimir Putin to...

The political realities of contemporary Russia are poorly understood by Western observers and policy-makers. Yet whether it is the conflict in Syria, the Winter Olympics in Sochi or the crisis in Ukraine, Russia dominates the headlines.

In this highly engaging book, Andrew Monaghan explains the importance of 'getting Russia right', and not simply accepting dominant political narratives that focus on the theme of Russia's historical progress towards democracy, and more recently, on the increasing turn towards authoritarianism, and the major obstacle posed by President Vladimir Putin to...

Russia is once again at the front and center of the security agenda of the United States. With many now seeing Russia as one of the most important threats, if not the number one threat to the United States and its allies, there is much debate about how to counter possible threats, where Russia might strike next, and how to deter Russian aggression. The war in Ukraine and Russia's intervention in Syria, combined with its extensive program of exercising for war, lends policy urgency to this debate. In this Letort Paper, Dr. Andrew Monaghan, a Brit¬ish academic and long-term scholar of Russia...

The book explores the Russian leadership's strategic agenda and illuminates the range of problems it faces in implementing it. Given these difficulties and the Russian leadership's concerns about an unstable and increasingly competitive world, the Russian official and expert community often use the term 'mobilisation' to describe the measures that Moscow is increasingly resorting to in order to implement its agenda. The book explores what this means, and concludes that many of the terms used in the Western debate about Russia both misdiagnose the nature of the challenge and misrepresent the...