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Iran’s women were the Islamic Republic’s first target for repression. This is the newest chapter in their struggle to win back their rights. | Ladan Boroumand

Online Exclusive by Andrei Kozyrev | The more determined democracies are to avoid war, the greater the risk that autocracies will wage it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t just another land grab. It’s an attempt to recolonize lost empire, and threatens to return us to the age of conquest. | Renée de Nevers and Brian D. Taylor

The Kremlin’s order to call up Russians to fight in Ukraine risks massive protests. It’s the riskiest decision of Putin’s rule, and it could lead to his undoing. | By Robert Person

Forget his excuses. Russia’s autocrat doesn’t worry about NATO. What terrifies him is the prospect of a flourishing Ukrainian democracy. 22 February 2022 By Robert Person and Michael McFaul Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has begun. Russian president Vladimir Putin wants you to believe that it’s NATO’s fault. He frequently has claimed (including again in an…

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion has exposed the fundamental instability of Putinism.   By Kathryn Stoner June 2023 Sitting in exile outside of Russia in 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Watching Yevgeny Prigozhin’s military rebellion in Russia, one might want to shorten that time frame from…

Nationwide protests against Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy caught the Chinese Communist Party off-guard. Expect the Party’s security apparatus to strike back with quiet precision. | Sheena Chestnut Geitens

In a matter of weeks, the Russian autocrat has erased his country’s prosperity in a feckless attempt to rebuild a doomed empire. | By Kathryn Stoner

Online Exclusive by Daniel Fried | It is tempting to believe the horrors of the past will not haunt our future. Vladimir Putin is proving that we hold such beliefs at our peril. 

In 2021, democracy’s fortunes were tested, and a tumultuous world became even more turbulent. Democratic setbacks arose in places as far flung as Burma, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Sudan, and a 20-year experiment in Afghanistan collapsed in days. The world’s democracies were beset by rising polarization, and people watched in shock as an insurrection took…

The Turkish president came to power as an antiestablishment everyman. Twenty years later he is an authoritarian leader clinging to power. Will the forces that catapulted him to power be his demise? | Philip Balboni

The Russian leader declared war on his country’s independent journalists. But Russian media outsmarted him by taking their operations overseas. They are now reaching more people than ever before. | Roman Badanin

Our struggle against the Soviet Union offers vital lessons for how to confront the aggressive totalitarian threat that Beijing now represents. | Carl Gershman

From Putin’s invasion to Kim’s nuclear saber rattling, the West has punished the world’s worst regimes. But have sanctions missed their targets? | Agathe Demarais

Why Emmanuel Macron’s reelection hangs on him winning support from the very people he has ignored most. April 2022  By Moshik Temkin This month’s French presidential election is giving off a strong sense of déjà vu. As in 2017 and 2002, a center-right presidential candidate (this time, current president Emmanuel Macron) faces off in…