Policy & Practice: Civil society responses to Russia's war on Ukraine in Russia and beyond

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO THE UCU STRIKE.

The media are awash with headlines relating to Russia's war on Ukraine – of Putin’s military setbacks and Ukrainian advances, of the broader geopolitical tensions, and of the economic fallout. In part because of the Russian state’s crackdown against independent media and dissenting voices within Russia itself, it is trickier to get a sense from within the country of responses to the war. How do ordinary Russians see the war – and to what extent do their perceptions matter to Putin's regime? How have Russia's security services sought to manipulate and repress domestic opposition to the war? And how have the civil society activities of Russians outside of Russia – including in the UK – influenced responses to the war? This panel will discuss these questions and more.  

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Russian investigative journalists, co-founders and Editor and Deputy Editor, respectively, of Agentura.ru – an online resource focussed on the Russian security services. Together they have co-authored three books: The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (PublicAffairs, 2010); The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (PublicAffairs, 2015); and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (PublicAffairs, 2019), an updated version of which is to be released in paperback in November.        

Tomila Lankina is Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics & Political Science. Her latest book, The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press 2022) is on the long-term patterns of social reproduction in Russia from Tzarist times to the present and on why these legacies matter for democracy, development, and social inequalities. She also helps coordinate the informal LSE Taskforce that she set up together with other LSE colleagues to support students and scholars following Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Chair: Ben Noble is Associate Professor of Russian Politics at University College London in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, as well as an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.