The Russian chief is militarizing his society and infusing it with patriotic fervor, reshaping the schooling system, condemning scientists as traitors, selling a brand new Orthodox religiosity and retrograde roles for ladies, and conditioning a brand new technology of youth to view the West as a mortal enemy in a combat for Russia’s very survival.
For this collection — “Russia, Remastered” — our journalists reported extensively in Russia, particularly Moscow and St. Petersburg, and central and western elements of the nation. Additionally they met with or spoke to Russians dwelling in exile world wide, together with officers, analysts, specialists and civilians.
Our reporting additionally relied on authorities paperwork, together with presidential decrees, transcripts of Putin’s speeches and remarks at public occasions, nationwide and native Russian information reviews and tv broadcasts, social media posts, blogs and Telegram channels.
Some individuals interviewed for this collection in Russia have since been imprisoned or have fled.
Right here’s what our reporting revealed:
The brand new Russia is positioning itself as a superpower nemesis of the USA.
Russia’s leader-for-life is working to restore his nation’s international energy of the Soviet period — not as a Communist bulwark however as a champion of Orthodox Christian values and an opponent of liberal freedoms in everlasting battle with the West, in a world redivided by huge powers into spheres of affect the place authoritarianism is an accepted various to democracy. Flouting international norms and thumbing his nostril at worldwide establishments, Putin is forging army partnerships with different totalitarian regimes that additionally view the USA as a risk, together with China, Iran and North Korea.
The brand new Russia claims to defend Orthodox values in opposition to Western cultural influences.
In November 2022, Putin signed a decree defining Orthodox values, puritanical morality and the rejection of LGBTQ+ identification as essential to Russia’s nationwide safety. Putin has outlined a messianic mission to avoid wasting the world from what he calls a decadent, permissive West, an method he hopes will resonate in socially conservative nations within the International South. The extremely politicized judicial system and media closely managed by the Kremlin are getting used to crack down on nightclubs and events. New patriotic mandates are being imposed on artists, filmmakers and cultural establishments. Some artists and performers have fled overseas, whereas others have been placed on blacklists to stop them from working in Russia.
The brand new Russia is militarizing society and indoctrinating a brand new technology of patriots.
Harnessing the battle in Ukraine, Putin has engineered a deeply militarized society, rewarding battle veterans and their kids with locations in greater schooling; introducing army coaching in faculties; and elevating these concerned within the battle into management roles. Telegram channels inform girls methods to be good troopers’ wives (by not complaining or crying); schoolchildren make drone fins, trench candles and customized socks for troopers with amputated limbs. The schooling system has been imbued with patriotic fervor. Liberal humanities packages are shut down in favor of packages that promote nationalist ideology, and partnerships with Western faculties have been canceled.
The brand new Russia is glorifying Stalin and rewriting historical past to whitewash Soviet crimes
Some individuals who had shut contact with Putin in his early years as president described his fervent mission to rebuild Russia as a superpower and his admiration not just for imperial czars but in addition for the Soviet dictator and wartime chief Joseph Stalin, who engineered the Nice Terror, the purges of the mid-to-late Thirties, despatched thousands and thousands to the gulag system of prisons and compelled labor camps, and had about 800,000 individuals executed for political causes. At the very least 95 of the 110 Stalin monuments in Russia had been erected throughout Putin’s time as chief.
The brand new Russia is crushing all dissent and limiting private freedoms.
Putin has squashed the political opposition in Russia making protests unlawful, criminalizing criticism of the battle, and designating liberal nongovernmental organizations and impartial media, journalists, writers, legal professionals and activists as overseas brokers, undesirable organizations, extremists or terrorists. A whole bunch of political activists have been jailed. Tens of hundreds of Russians have fled in a historic exodus, with some apprehensive they’d be reduce off from the world by sanctions, some afraid of being conscripted and despatched to the entrance, and others fearing they’d be persecuted for opposing Putin or the battle.
Reporting by Robyn Dixon, Francesca Ebel, Mary Ilyushina and Natalia Abbakumova. Images by Nanna Heitmann and Ksenia Ivanova. Graphics reporting by Júlia Ledur.
Lead editors: David M. Herszenhorn and Wendy Galietta. Further modifying by Vanessa Larson and Martha Murdock. Design and improvement by Yutao Chen and Anna Lefkowitz. Design modifying by Christine Ashack. Photograph modifying by Olivier Laurent. Video modifying by Jon Gerberg and Zoeann Murphy. Graphics modifying by Samuel Granados.
Further help from Matt Clough, Kenneth Dickerman, Jordan Melendrez and Joe Snell.
Robyn Dixon, The Put up’s Moscow bureau chief since November 2019, is on her third stint overlaying Russia, having had earlier assignments with the Los Angeles Occasions and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age courting again to 1993. She speaks Russian, French and English.
Francesca Ebel, a Russia correspondent for The Put up since November 2022, beforehand lined Russia and Ukraine as a multimedia journalist for the Related Press and was an AP correspondent primarily based in Tunis. She has a bachelor’s diploma in medieval and trendy languages from Cambridge College, the place she studied Russian, Ukrainian and French.
Mary Ilyushina, a Put up reporter overlaying Russia since 2021, beforehand labored for CNN’s Moscow bureau as a area producer. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic and is a graduate of Moscow State College.
Natalia Abbakumova has been a researcher and translator in The Put up’s Moscow bureau since 2001, collaborating throughout that point with 10 bureau chiefs. Beforehand, she labored briefly for The Economist. She holds a level in overseas languages (English and German) from Moscow Linguistic College.
