Russian Reading List (March 2022)

Here are approximately 125 online items about the Russian security issue (an informal hobby of mine) that I’ve happened to have read in the last 5 years.

Due to link-rot, some on the links may not work; others may now be behind paywalls when previously they were not; others may no longer exist on their original domains but may be found on things like Archive.org etc.

I look at this list as a modest contribution to the OSINT (open-source intelligence) community, but offer no opinions or criticisms or analysis of any of the following items:

Aiken, Steven. “If you think Russia poses no danger to Northern Ireland, then think again,” Belfast Telegraph, March 22, 2018.

Baev, Pavel K. “Russia Stumbles in the Fog of Syrian War,” Lawfare, March 2, 2018.

Bamford, James. “The Spy Who Wasn’t,” New Republic, February 11, 2019.

Barros, George. “Dostoevsky’s ‘Russian God’: Russian Attitude Toward Faith and Christianity,” Providence Magazine, August 12, 2019.

Bauer, Bob. “The Indictment of Russia’s Super PAC and the Open Question of Trump Campaign Complicity,” JustSecurity.org, February 16, 2018.

Bellingcat Investigation Team, “ ‘V’ for Vympel’: FSB’s Secretive Department ‘V’ Behind Assassination of Georgian Asylum Seeker in Germany,” Bellingcat 17 February 2020.

–––––. “FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning,” Bellingcat.com, 14 December 2020.

Benner, Thorsten. “The Dark Arts of Foreign Influence-Peddling,” The Atlantic, February 25, 2018.

Bennetts, Marc “Why Orthodox Christians are losing faith in Putin,” Politico EU, December 24, 2019.

Bershidsky, Leonid. “Putin is Struggling to Keep His Wars Separate,” Bloomberg, February 14, 2018.

Bogomolov, Alexander and Oleksandr Lytvynenko, “A Ghost in the Mirror: Russian Soft Power in Ukraine,” Chatham House Briefing Paper, January 2012.

Borrell, Josep. “My visit to Moscow and the future of EU-Russia relations,” European Union External Action Service (EEAS), Feb. 7, 2021.

Brodsky, Joseph. “Dreams of America Behind the Iron Curtain,” Lithub, March 14, 2020.

Brundage Miles, et al, “The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation.” Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford. February 2018.

Cadwalladr, Carole, “The Cambridge Analytica Files: ‘I Created Steve Bannon’s Psychological Warfare Tool‘,” The Guardian, March 17, 2018.

Chernichkin, Kostyantyn, “Power of decentralization: New money spurs villages,” Kviv Post, May 25, 2018.

Cohen, Raphael S. and Andrew Radin, “Russia’s Hostile Measures in Europe,” RAND Corp. 2019.

Collins, Ben and Gideon Resnick, Spencer Ackerman, “Leaked: Secret Documents from Russia’s Election Trolls,” Daily Beast, March 1, 2018.

Collins, Ben and Josh Russell, “Russians Used Reddit and Tumblr to Troll 2016 Election,” Daily Beast, March 1, 2018.

Collins, Liam. “A New Eastern Front: What the U.S. Army Must Learn from the War in Ukraine,” Association of the U.S. Army, April 16, 2018.

Cottrell, Robert. “Russia’s Gay Demons,” New York Review of Books, December 7, 2017.

Der Spiegel Staff, “The Breach from the East: German intelligence officials issued warnings back in 2016 of a cyber-espionage group known as Snake,” Der Spiegel Online, trans. Paul Cohen, March 5, 2018.

Deutsch Welle, “Russia, US battle for extradition of accused hacker Nikulin,” February 24, 2018.

Dobbins, James, Howard J. Shatz, and Ali Wyne, “Russia is a Rouge, Not a Peer; China Is a Peer, Not a Rouge,” RAND Corp., October 2018.

Dorfman, Zach, “The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco,” Foreign Policy Magazine, December 14, 2017.

–––––. “How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies,” Politico Magazine, July 27, 2018.

Edel, Anastasia, “My Mother’s Brilliant Career in Soviet Culture,” The New York Review of Books, May 29, 2018.

Entous, Adam and Ronan Farrow, “Private Mossad for Hire: Inside a plot to influence American elections, starting with one small-town race,” The New Yorker, February 18, 2019.

Esch, Christian interview with Oleg Sentsov, “They Try to Get Under Your Skin: Ukrainian Director Oleg Sentsov on Being a Political Prisoner in Russia,” Der Spiegel, October 15, 2019.

–––––. “I Started Seeing Agents Everywhere [Interview with Daria Navalnaya],” Der Spiegel International, December 16, 2021.

Fandos, Nicholas and Adam Goldman. “Ex-Aide Saw Gordon Sondland as a Potential National Security Risk,” New York Times, October 16, 2019.

Feldman, Evgeny and Mikhail Stavtsev (photo editor), “I hate that I’m broken: Two years ago, Dasha Lesnykh’s partner was sent to prison as part of the ‘Moscow Case’,” Meduza, December 2021.

Galeotti, Mark. “Former Russian Spy Scandal Suggests the Old Espionage Rules Are Breaking Down (Op-ed),” Moscow Times, March 6, 2018.

–––––. “Russia in 2020. Like 2019, but more so,” RaamOpRusland, December 23, 2019.

Gershman, Carl. “In an Era of Geopolitical Uncertainty, Lithuania Inspires,” World Affairs, March 2, 2018.

Gessen, Keith. “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.–Russia Imbroglio,” New York Times Magazine, May 5. 2018.

Gessen, Masha. “The Fundamental Uncertainty of Mueller’s Russia Indictments,” New Yorker, February 20, 2018.

“Getting Out from ‘In-Between’: Perspectives on the Regional Order in Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia,” eds. Samuel Charap, Alyssa Demus, Jeremy Shaprio, (RAND Corp, 2018).

Goldsmith, Jack. “The Puzzle of the GRU Indictment,” Lawfareblog.com, 21 October 2020.

Gordin, Michael D. “Zhores Medvedev and the battle for truth in Soviet science,” Aeon Magazine, February 6, 2019.

Gorenburg, Dmitry. “Russian Strategic Decision-Making in a Nordic Crisis,” Security Insights, July 2019.

Grozev, Christo. “Russian Spying is Privatized and Competitive. Counterespionage Should Be Too,” Newsweek, July 27, 2020.

Halpern, Sue, “The Drums of Cyberwar,” NYRB, December 19, 2019.

Harding, Luke. ” ‘In Russia, the new evil is rooted in the old evil’: novelist Sergei Lebedev on Putin, poison and state terror,” Guardian, Feb. 13, 2021.

Hart, James. “Putin is Europe’s unifying villain,” Kyiv Post, March 16, 2018.

Helson, Kevin, Affidavit, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, [against Maria Butina, “Redheaded NRA spy”,] July 14, 2018.

Hertling, Mark and Molly K. McKew, “Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor,” Politico Magazine, July 16, 2018.

Hink, Garrett. “Evaluating the Russian Threat to Undersea Cables,” Lawfare, March 5, 2018.

Hundley, Lindsay. “How the Kremlin Uses Agenda Setting to Paint Democracy in Panic,” Lawfare, Feb. 11, 2021.

Ioffe, Julia. “What Putin Really Wants: Russia’s strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He’s really just a gambler who won big,” The Atlantic, January/February 2018.

–––––. ” ‘These Bastards Will Never See Our Tears’: How Yulia Navalnaya Became Russia’s Real First Lady,” Vanity Fair, July 8, 2021.

Johnson, Tim. “Hoax attempts against Miami Herald augur brewing war over fake, real news,” McClatchy – DC Bureau, February 24, 2018.

Kerenov, Denis. “ ‘Sovereign Russian Internet is not yet possible.’ Interviews with Internet Censorship Researchers in Russia,” Yuga.ru, February 22, 2019.

Kirchick, James, “The Roots of Russian Aggression,” National Review, May 24, 2018.

Komarnyckyi, Stephen, “A Castle Build on Sand? Ukrainian Literature and Crimea,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 19, 2018.

Kramer, Andrew E. “Russian General Pitches ‘Information’ Operations as a Form of War,” New York Times, March 2, 2019.

Kransnikov, Denys. “Honest History: How one treaty made Ukraine vassal of Russia for 337,” Kyiv Post, June 22, 2018.

Kris, David. “Law Enforcement as a Counterintelligence Tool,” Lawfare, March 6, 2018.

Lake, Eli. “Don’t Be Fooled: Russia Attacked U.S. Troops in Syria,” Bloomberg, February 16, 2018.

Lilla, Mark “The Treason of Intellectuals [and Julien Benda],” Tablet Magazine, December 6, 2021.

Lucas, Edward. “West should have heeded Ukraine’s warnings about Russia long ago,” Kyiv Post, December 3, 2017.

Mackintosh, Eliza. “Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy,” CNN Special Report, May 2019.

Magnay, Diana. “Russia’s decriminalising of domestic violence means women continue to die,” Sky News, March 21, 2021.

Manoilo, Andrey, “Interview,” in “Russia This Week – December 3, 2017,” Middle East Media Research Institute, December 3, 2017.

May, Ruth. “Putin: From Oligarch to Kleptocrat,” New York Review of Books, February 1, 2018.

McKew, Molly K. “The Gerasimov Doctrine,” Politico Magazine, September/October 2016.

–––––. “Putin’s Real Long Game,” Politico Magazine, January 1, 2017.

–––––. “How Twitter Bots and Trump Fans Made #ReleaseTheMemo Go Viral,” Politico, February 2, 2018.

–––––. “Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable,” Wired, February 16, 2018.

–––––.”How Liberals Amped Up a Parkland Shooting Conspiracy Theory,” Wired, February 27, 2018.

–––––. “Searching for a Stronghold in the Fight Against Disinformation,” Cigi.org (Center for International Governance Innovation), June 4, 2018.

–––––. “ ‘They Will Die in Tallinn’: Estonia Girds for War with Russia,” Politico, July 10, 2018.

McLaughlin, Jenna and Zach Dorfman, “ ‘Shattered’: Inside the secret battle to save America’s undercover spies in the digital age,” Yahoo News, December 30, 2019.

Meek, James. “The Village Life,” London Review of Books, 41 (6 June 2019).

Mendick, Robert and Adrian Gatton. “BP chief executive Bob Dudley ‘poisoned in Russian plot’,” The Age, April 30, 2018.

Michel, Casey and Andrei Soldatov, “Russian journalist explains the role of the Panama Paters in Russia’s interference operations,” ThinkProgress.org, August 2, 2018.

Mishulovich, Ellis. “Why Does Russia Build So Many Doomsday Weapons?” National Review, April 19, 2018.

Morson, Gary. “Pray for Chekov: Or What Russian Literature Can Teach Conservatives,” The Heritage Foundation: Russell Kirk Memorial Lecture, December 13, 2016.

–––––. “Pig and People: The Rise and Fall of the First Russian Populists,” Weekly Standard, July 29, 2018.

–––––. “Leninthink,” New Criterion, October 2019.

Multiple interviews, “An unbeatable disappearing act: New legislation in Russia will dramatically reduce transparency when it comes to state officials and their relatives. We asked investigative journalists how this affects their work,” Meduza, Dec. 23, 2020.) trans. Karina Mamadzhanyan.

Munich Security Report, Munich Security Conference 2019, ed. chairman Wolfgang Ischinger.

Napalkova, Anastasia; Timur Sazonov, Anna Pushkarskaia, “ ‘Putin’s Palace’: Builders’ story of luxury, mould and fake walls,” BBC World, Feb. 16, 2021.

Nardelli, Alberto and Mykhailyna Skoryk, “The Professor At The Center of the Trump-Russia Probe Boasted To His Girlfriend in Ukraine that He Was Friends with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,” Buzzfeed.com, February 27, 2018.

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), “Love, Offshores, and Administrative Resources: How Marrying Putin’s Daughter Gave Kirill Shamalov a World of Opportunity,” OCCRP.org 7 December 2020.

Paganini, Pierlugigi. “Czech President wants Russian hacker Yevgeni Nikulin extradited to Russia instead of US,” SecurityAffairs.co, February 25, 2018.

Polymeropoulos, Marc and Kristin Wood, “A Blueprint for the Future: The CIA in 2021 and Beyond,” Just Security, 20 October 2020.

Pomerantsev, Peter. “The Info War of All Against All,” New York Review of Books, August 23, 2019.

Ponomarenko, Illia. “De-mining Donbas will take up to 40 years, Ukraine’s military says,” Kyiv Post, April 3, 2018.

Priestap, Bill and Holden Triplett, “The Transformation of Business in an Age of Espionage,” Lawfareblog.com, 20 October 2020.

Quinn-Judge, Paul. “The Revolution that Wasn’t,” New York Review of Books, April 19, 2018.

Rampton, Roberta. “Obama: Russia doesn’t make anything, West must be firm with China,” Reuters/Yahoo News, August 23, 2014.

Roth, Andrew. “Covering the Russian protest: ‘Police usually let western reporters go’.” The Guardian, Feb. 8, 2021.

“Russian Analyst Tymofeev: Being In The Kremlin List Requires a Choice: ‘You Have To Decide Whose Side You Are On, The Whites Or The Reds’,” in MEMRI no 7315, February 4, 2018.

Saivetz, Carol R. “Russia’s New Crises on the Periphery,” Lawfare, February 14, 2021.

Satter, Raphael, “AP Exclusive: Undercover spy exposed in NYC was 1 of many,” Associated Press, February 10, 2019.

Schreck, Carl. “Poroshenko Accuses Moscow of ‘World Hybrid War,’ Denounces ‘Russian World’,” Radio Free Europe, February 17, 2018.

Seaton, Matt. “The Long Afterlife of the KGB,” New York Review of Books, December 5, 2020.

–––––. “Londongrad oligarchs are being forced back to Russia’s embrace,” Financial Times, June 1, 2018.

Semko, Liza. “EU top envoy’s failure in Russia draws wave of criticism,” Kyiv Post, Feb. 8, 2021.

Sharansky, Natan with Gil Troy, “The Doublethinkers: in assessing my own liberation, I recall a conformity that feels terrifyingly familiar today,” Tablet Magazine, Feb. 10, 2021.

Shedd, David R. and Ivanna Stradner, “Putin is Winning Russia’s Hybrid War against America,” National Review, December 9, 2020.

Schinder, John R. “British Intelligence: Yes, Russian Spy Was Poisoned by Kremlin,” Observer, April 10, 2018.

Shlapak, David A. “The Russian Challenge,” RAND.org, 2018.

Smith, Helena, “Greece accuses Russia of bribery and meddling in its affairs,” The Guardian, August 11, 2018.

Snyder, Timothy. “Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism,” New York Review of Books, March 18, 2018.

Soldatov, Andrei and Irina Borogan, “Putin’s Secret Services,” May 31, 2018. Foreign Affairs, May 31, 2018.

–––––. “Some Habits Die hard. How KGB-spies abroad got a second life,” RaamOpRusland, December 16, 2019.

–––––. “Russia’s Secret Organizations Are Not Secret Anymore. It Seems They Don’t Care,” Moscow Times, December 17, 2020.

–––––. “What Has Become of the GRU, Russia’s Military Intelligence Agency?” Moscow Times, April 21, 2021.

Standish, Reid interviewing Andrei Soldatov, “There’s a New Player Leading the Kremlin’s Moves Abroad: the Russian Army,” Foreign Policy, September 3, 2019.

Stein, Jeff and Patricia Ravalgi. “Poison, Hacker, Meddler, Spy: How Russian Agents Ran Wild in 2020,” SpyTalk.com, Dec. 31, 2020.

Strokan, Sergey. “The Dashed Hopes of Trump” in MEMRI no. 7277, January 11, 2018.

Troianovski, Anton. “An Arctic Spy Mystery: An Arrest in Moscow Shakes Norway’s Far North,” Washington Post, February 3, 2018.

Tucker, Patrick. “How to Inoculate the Public Against Fake News,” Defense One, February 19, 2018.

Walker, Shaun. “Putin’s Quest for Lost Glory,” The Guardian, February 18, 2018.

Weiss, Michael, Holger Roonemaa, Mattias Carlsson, Liliana Botnariuc, Pierre Vaux, (with additional reporting by Christo Grozev, Riin Aljas, and Ruslan Trad), “The Fallen Mercenaries in Russia’s Dark Army,” New/Lines Magazine, December 19, 2021.

Weiss, Michael. “What Russia Understands about Trump,” New York Review of Books, August 2, 2018.

–––––. “The Long, Dark History of Russia’s Murder, Inc.,” New York Review of Books,December 18, 2019.

–––––“The Making of a Russian Spy,” The Atlantic, June 26, 2019.

Wood, Tony. “Putin’s Palace,” London Review of Books, Feb. 18, 2021.

Yapparova, Liliya. “ ‘It’s always a choice’ ‘Bellingcat’ lead investigator Christo Grozev explains how his team unmasked the Russian agents who tried to kill Alexey Navalny.” Meduza, December 18, 2020.

–––––. “The angry and the powerless: How the opposition protests in Belarus became a guerilla movement,” Meduza, January 5, 2021.

Yourgrau, Barry. “The Literary Intrigues of Putin’s Puppet Master,” New York Review of Books, January 22, 2018, trans. Alexei Bayer.

Zhigalkin, Yuri. “ ‘Компенсируют свои обиды’. Российская Псаки-мания” (“[‘Compensate for their grievances.’ Russian psaki-mania]”), trans. Google Chrome, Svoboda.org 01 December 2020.

Zverintseva, Tatiana. “From Stalin’s camps to Putin’s laws: How ‘the Russian mafia” came to be,” trans. Hilah Kohen, Meduza, February 19, 2019.