explainer

“I know everyone who tried to kill me”, stated Alexei Navalny after publishing the investigation into his poisoners. But do we know the names of everyone the Kremlin has tried to poison? Investigations into opposition activist Alexei Navalny, spy Sergey Skripal, and civic activists from the North Caucasus are just the tip of the iceberg. Who have the FSB and their colleagues tried to poison, and how?

According to the Russian ministry of finance, $250 million could be saved annually if the interior ministry reduced its staff by 10%. The finance ministry also proposed to cut the army by 10%, or around 100,000 people. How many security services does Russia have, and what do they cost to maintain?

“To The Hague!” is a common chant at protests in Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, as demonstrators demand their authoritarian leaders be sent to the International Criminal Court. Putting a dictator on trial isn’t easy, but it is possible.

A new nuclear power station will soon be going online – the seventeenth in the former Soviet region. It is being built in Belarus by Rosatom, who will start loading fuel rods into the reactor this August. Russia plans to build 15 nuclear reactors over the next decade. Does our region need new nuclear plants? 

Oil now costs what it did back in the 1990s – $20 a barrel. High prices for hydrocarbons have allowed the Russian, Azerbaijani and Kazakh economies to grow rapidly in the last twenty years. Will they survive this period of the cheapest oil ever? How long will it last? Why is black gold no longer gold?

The Kremlin spent $70 mln on organising the Russian-African summit in October, 2019. Then, Russian leader Vladimir Putin stated that in recent years Moscow had written off $20 bn of African countries’ debts. Why does Russia need Africa?