Abstract The article discusses the rally-around-the-flag effect in the 2024 Russian presidential election, driven by a combination of war and electoral propaganda. Particularities of the Russian President’s electoral agenda and strategy were identified after comparing Putin’s public speeches delivered during two months preceding the election with (i) his speeches made at other times after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, (ii) debates in Russian Duma, (iii) war-related speeches of Ukraine’s and U.S. Presidents, (iv) media discourses on the war in Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. Instead of rallying his electorate around the Russian Army flag, Putin focused on the Soviet past and the fiscal-military State, which suggests a diversionary strategy. In his bid for re-election, Putin benefited from “irredentist nationalism” as a form of Russian imperialism. A corpus of political and media discourse on the war (208 million words across Russian, Ukrainian, and English) informed the analysis.
Abstract This article analyses volunteer and NGO responses to the December 2024 Black Sea mazut spill following the breakup of the tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 in the Kerch Strait. Drawing on qualitative methodology, involving 91 interviews and participant observation in Krasnodar Krai and Crimea, it applies Political Opportunity Structure theory to examine how the disaster temporarily reconfigured civic space under wartime authoritarianism. The study shows how moral shock, emotional labor, and strategic depolarization enabled large-scale mobilization, while the “politics of closed eyes” structured ambivalent cooperation between independent NGO s, GONGO s, and state authorities.
Abstract This article examines how ESG reporting by Russian extractive companies functions as a tool of authoritarian sustainability. It analyzes 2024 reports by Rosneft, Nornickel, ALROSA , and Lukoil to show how sustainability is framed as managerial expertise rather than public deliberation, constituting a regime of mediated environmental visibility. ESG disclosures translate risks into metrics, plot futures along roadmaps, and aestheticize corporate action, while excluding conflict, inequality, and local dissent. The reports enact controlled transparency: they disclose data but eliminate antagonism, producing an image of order. By combining managerial rationality with the performative language of corporate citizenship, these documents position companies as co-producers of social order. ESG reporting thus emerges not as a neutral managerial practice but as a political technology that stabilizes extractive governance, offering a conceptualization of ESG as a regime of environmental visibility and specifying its authoritarian configuration.
Abstract This article examines how Russian Indigenous and decolonial activists use digital platforms to advocate for environmental concerns – an engagement rooted in Indigenous peoples’ spiritual, social, and economic connections to their ancestral lands. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, opportunities for Indigenous environmental activism have become increasingly limited due to restrictions on civil society. Thus, digital media has become a crucial space for raising awareness of environmental issues and advancing Indigenous demands for environmental justice. Drawing on netnography and multimodal discourse analysis, the article analyzes three Indigenous and/or decolonial digital activist initiatives to explore the frameworks these movements use to incorporate environmental issues into their work, the concerns they raise, and the audiences they target. The analysis identifies three distinct media strategies – archivist, investigativist, and intellectualist – that these projects apply in their digital activism.
Abstract Russia is warming at a rate above the global average. Despite this, Russia’s climate policies remain insufficient, and the state leadership lacks the political will to address the issue. This article examines whether higher education can promote climate awareness and climate action. It evaluates the extent to which Russian higher education institutions are required to integrate climate change education into their curricula, and how these requirements are interpreted in curriculum design by individual institutions. The analysis aims to assess whether the Federal State Education Standards ( FSES ) and institutional guidance create space for academics to promote and nurture competencies for sustainability among students, particularly against the backdrop of state-level climate obstruction and increasing governmental oversight of higher education. It draws on a detailed analysis of the FSES for undergraduate and postgraduate programs across diverse disciplines, supported by a supplementary review of curriculum maps and program specifications from selected universities.
