Journalist Julia Ioffe returns to The Naked Pravda to discuss her new book, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, which was recently listed as a finalist for the National Book Award. Julia describes her years-long writing process, the blending of memoir and historical analysis, and the unique perspective provided by the narratives of women from the top echelons of Soviet and Russian society. The episode provides a detailed look at the complexities of Soviet and Russian feminism, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in this history and gender studies.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (2:25) Chronological structure and key figures
• (6:07) Stalin’s daughter: A metaphor for Russia
• (9:49) Challenges of historical accuracy
• (18:09) Balancing American paradigms and Russian perspectives
• (29:22) Class and cultural differences

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now passed the three-and-a-half-year mark, and there is still no end in sight. The Trump administration’s recent push to negotiate a ceasefire ground to a halt in early September, after Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Vladimir Putin’s proposal to meet in Moscow, dismissing the invitation as a sign that his Russian counterpart has no desire to negotiate.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russian troops are continuing their offensive in central Donbas. While Ukrainian forces have succeeded in slowing their advance, this has come at the cost of Kyiv’s defenses elsewhere, creating vulnerable gaps between frontline positions that Russian forces can slip through. With the front line becoming increasingly fluid and peace talks stalled, Russia has also continued to launch deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, targeting the country’s energy grid ahead of the approaching winter months. 

By all appearances, Putin believes that if Russia’s military keeps pushing forward, it will eventually outlast and overpower Ukraine. But how much longer can the Kremlin sustain its war machine? 

In a new report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), senior fellow Maria Snegovaya and Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program director Max Bergmann break down the mounting costs of Russia’s war effort and outline four plausible scenarios for the war’s next chapter. Dr. Maria Snegovaya joins this episode of The Naked Pravda to discuss their analysis.

Time stamps for this episode:

• (2:05) The current state of the Russia–Ukraine war
• (4:49) Russia’s war strategy and unchanging goals
• (8:03) How sustainable is this war for the Kremlin?
• (13:12) How Russia is replenishing its military losses
• (17:30) Potential scenarios for the war’s future
• (26:55) Strategies for Ukraine and Western allies

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

In recent weeks, Estonia, Poland, and Romania have reported breaches of their airspace by Russian aircraft. Just this week, Norway revealed that Russian aircraft have violated its airspace three times this year after more than a decade without such intrusions. Last week, three Russian fighter jets reportedly violated Estonian airspace for 12 minutes, flying miles deep into Estonian territory with their transponders off. The most extreme incident was in Poland, where NATO allies shot down four of roughly 19 Russian drones that wandered in from Belarus. Warsaw vows to shoot down any more Russian aircraft that violate its airspace, setting the stage for an incident similar to what happened nearly 10 years ago, when the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian bomber near the Syrian–Turkish border.

The Naked Pravda spoke to Dr. Olga Oliker, the program director for Europe and Central Asia at Crisis Group, about the escalating tensions in Eastern Europe and how the situation compares to the downed bomber in Syria in November 2015.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (4:31) The dynamics of Russia’s airspace incursions and NATO’s response
• (9:22) Escalation risks and strategic implications
• (15:07) Comparing past and present: Lessons from 2015
• (20:27) NATO’s preparedness and future strategies

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On June 25, NATO leaders agreed at their annual summit on a goal of spending five percent of their gross domestic product on defense, more than doubling the old two-percent target. It’s unclear how many members will actually reach this goal. Even the target relies on some creative accounting: of the five percent, only 3.5 percent is pledged to what officials call “pure” defense spending, with the remainder going to security and defense-related “critical infrastructure.”

Ahead of the NATO summit, The New Yorker published “Collective Punishment: Why is Donald Trump upending America’s commitment to NATO?” a story by contributing writer Joshua Yaffa, the author of the 2021 Orwell Prize-winning book “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.” In his new article, Yaffa describes how the looming threats of Russian aggression and American withdrawal are pressuring European leaders to reassess their approach to NATO and their broader defense strategies. He joined this episode of The Naked Pravda to discuss the story.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Historian Benjamin Nathans joins The Naked Pravda to discuss his new book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement (Princeton University Press, August 2024). In the post-Stalin USSR, when the regime seemed eternal and there was little tradition of resistance to totalitarianism, citizens who came up against the arbitrary Soviet justice system had to invent their own strategies for effecting change. Nathans looks beyond the familiar stories of figures like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn to explore how the dissident movement coalesced, and what that history can tell us today.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Anthropologist Jeremy Morris joins The Naked Pravda to discuss his latest book, Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance (Bloomsbury, March 2025). The conversation explores Morris’s extensive fieldwork across urban, regional, and rural Russia to understand how society has responded to the collapse of the USSR, capitalist social Darwinism, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. He shares insights into his ethnographic methods, emphasizing the importance of embedded, long-term relationships and the distinction between social suffering and geopolitical resentment. Morris also critiques the limitations and biases of polling data in news coverage and underscores the need for more diverse voices in understanding contemporary Russian society.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

The Naked Pravda interviews journalist and author Jill Dougherty about her new memoir, My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin, where she recounts her experiences studying and working in Russia. Dougherty talks about early influences, such as discovering the Russian language through an eccentric schoolteacher and later watching the Moon landing from a Leningrad dormitory. She shares insights from her decades-long career at CNN, covering key events from the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin. Dougherty also discussed contemporary challenges in understanding Russia, restrictions on Western journalists, and the implications for future Russia experts.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Last month, as another 30 days of war passed in Ukraine, Russian activists, economists, and politicians in the exiled anti-Kremlin opposition spent much of their time arguing about a banking scandal from the last decade. The debate has been as mystifying to outsiders as it is confusing to those without an education in finance. 

With help from Ilya Shumanov, the general director of Transparency International-Russia in exile, The Naked Pravda breaks down the squabbling and criminal stakes at the heart of the scandal involving Probusinessbank, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and activist Maxim Katz.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:27) The complex schemes at play in Probusinessbank
• (20:35) Where the Russian authorities and the FSB fit in
• (32:21) Political repression and legal battles

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

On October 20, Moldovans cast their ballots in both a presidential election and a constitutional referendum — and the results shocked many.

In the referendum, which asked whether the country should change its constitution to include the goal of joining the European Union, the “yes” vote won by just over 50 percent. Meanwhile, in the presidential election, pro-E.U. incumbent Maia Sandu came in first but failed to win an outright majority. 

The day after the vote, Sandu accused “criminal groups” of attempting to undermine the democratic process by working with foreign forces to try and buy as many as 300,000 votes. Now, she’ll face pro-Russian candidate and former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo in a high-stakes run-off scheduled for November 3. 

What does all of this say about Moldova’s political landscape and future foreign policy orientation? To find out, The Naked Pravda spoke to Moldovan journalist and writer Paula Erizanu and Ecaterina Locoman, a senior lecturer in international studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Institute. 

Timestamps for this episode:

• (3:05) Judiciary Reforms and Controversies
• (6:25) The Referendum and Its Implications
• (9:47) Election Day Atmosphere and Concerns
• (12:28) Post-Election Developments and Fraud Allegations
• (17:01) Russia’s Influence and Moldova’s Future
• (21:26) Impact of the Ukraine War on Moldova
• (23:14) Kremlin’s Strategy and Moldova’s Challenges
• (25:03) Public Opinion and the E.U. Referendum
• (30:37) Moldova’s Path Forward

Prefer reading over listening? Subscribe to Meduza’s weekly newsletter The Beet to receive abridged excerpts from this episode.

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно

Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos” appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote false sexual misconduct allegations against vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

At WIRED, David Gilbert wrote that researchers have linked a group they’re calling “Storm-1516” to the campaign against Walz. “Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West,” Gilbert explained. A few days earlier, NBC News also reported on Storm-1516, citing its work as demonstrative of Russian propaganda’s growing utilization of artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks.

Two days after the WIRED report, Washington Post journalist and Russia expert Catherine Belton reported on another bad actor implicated in spreading the allegations against Walz: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop with a long and winding record that includes internal affairs investigations, early discharge from the Marines, and a penchant for posting confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents, and judges on his blog, which led to 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping. To escape that indictment, Dougan fled to Moscow, where he soon put his conspiratorial blogging skills to work, effectively enlisting in the Russian intelligence community’s “Internet war” against America.

Records show and disinformation researchers argue that Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with deliberately misleading names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. Lately, he’s reportedly started using a GRU-facilitated server and AI generator to create phony videos like the deepfake video showing one of Walz’s former students accusing him of sexual abuse.

With a little more than a week until the U.S. presidential election, Meduza spoke to Renée DiResta — the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality and an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — about Russian propaganda, how it’s evolved over the years, and how American social networks are responding (and not responding) ahead of the November 2024 vote.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:00) The Role of Social Networks in Identifying Fake Accounts
• (9:35) Government and Platform Collaboration on Inauthentic Behavior
• (16:46) A Case Study: Maxim Shugaley and Russian Influence in Libya
• (21:45) Twitter’s Public Data Dilemma
• (24:25) Bespoke Realities and Content Moderation
• (25:57) The Tenet Media Case
• (27:28) The Role of Influencers in Propaganda
• (35:26) Marketing and Propaganda: A Historical Perspective
• (38:27) The Democratization of Propaganda
• (39:36) Name Your Poison: Tyranny or Chaos

Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно