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Interview with Pavel Felgenhauer, Russian military expert. Since the annexation of the Crimea by Russia, in March 2014, nothing is as before on the international stage. Respect for the territorial integrity of European countries and the inviolability of their borders (listed in the Helsinki Accords of 1975) was violated. The Budapest Memorandum 1994 - under which Russia, Britain and the United States guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for denuclearization - is trampled. Russia continues to destabilize Ukraine by more or less openly helping pro-Russian rebels in the east. Much of the Donbass region is occupied by the separatists. The Ukrainian army suffered a heavy defeat late August 2014 while trying to chase them. The current status quo is fragile. Adapted from the source document.

One of the fiercest critics of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Boris Nemtsov is in fact a native of this city along the banks of the Black Sea. The Deputy Prime Minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin, and a resolute opponent of Vladimir Putin for the last ten years, Boris Nemtsov doesn't mince his words in denouncing this pharaonic project, for which he estimates the total cost at more than $50 billion - making this the most expensive Olympics ever, whether Summer or Winter. As he explains in this interview with Politique Internationale, the organization of this immense event in a city known first and foremost as a seaside resort is absurd from every angle. According to Mr. Nemtsov, the decision to hold the Winter Olympics in Sochi meets two sole objectives: establish Mr. Putin's international credibility, and enable his cronies to enrich themselves illegally by winning outsized contracts without a glimmer of competitive bidding. Adapted from the source document.

Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin in the spring of 2012 was accompanied by an unprecedented wave of popular protest, as well as a significant burst of international activity by Moscow. In this interview with Politique Internationale, Andrei Grachev, former spokesman and advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, and still a leading expert on Russia, looks at his country's domestic situation and foreign policy issues. He pulls no punches in decoding an extremely complex political environment, characterized by cynical and shady involvement in the Syrian conflict; increasingly tense relations with the U.S. and the EU, as well as several countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union: and, on the domestic front, the rise of a determined opposition, rooted in the educated urban class that Grachev calls the 'Internet society', as opposed to the pro-Putin provincial classes who get all their news from state-controlled TV. The message is clear: the Putin system has more surprises in store. Adapted from the source document.

Born in 1962 in Moscow, the philosopher Alexander Dugin and geopolitics has taken over a theory created by Russian emigres in the 1920s: Eurasianism. According to this worldview, the Soviet Union was a new incarnation of the Russian Empire - a space whose scope and multi-ethnicity needed a strong centralized state, forced assimilation of border populations 'dangerous' and constant repression of any form of democracy, self-management or advocacy of individual freedom. For eurasists, Russia represents a unique civilization with its own historic mission: to create a new center of power and culture that will enlighten the world - and this, especially since the West is doomed to decay. Adapted from the source document.

Explaining rapid deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia, which began in late 2013 and has accelerated dramatically in recent months? Answering this question requires to gather the scattered pieces of a complex puzzle. Adapted from the source document.

Igor Kaliapin is becoming one of the most respected public figures in Russia. Trained as a physicist, he founded a small company in his native city of Nizhny Novgorod in the 1990s. He was immediately confronted with untamed racketeering by corrupt civil servants. In response, he helped found the Nizhny Novgorod Human Rights Society to protect the weaker members of society. This new NGO quickly specialized in the fight against a far more terrible evil than corruption: the virtually systematic use of torture in police stations and detention cells. Renamed the Committee Against Torture, the organization is developing internationally as well. In this Interview Mr. Kaliapin spotlights one of the darker sides of contemporary Russia and explains that given the increasingly authoritarian environment that came with Vladimir Putin's third presidential term in March 2012, fighting to protect human rights is more necessary than ever. Adapted from the source document.

Bill Browder has had a rather extraordinary destiny. Grandson of a head of the American communist party, son of a well-known mathematician and victim of McCarthyism, when young he opted for a career in ... business. Setting up shop in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, he was in the front row when the privatization of state-owned companies started in Poland, then Russia. Mr. Browder understood that the era was conducive to very fruitful deals, and he created the Heritage Fund, an investment fund that was phenomenally successful during the 1990s. But the situation quickly took a turn for the worse. The companies in which Heritage held stakes were riddled by corruption. Mr. Browder wanted to fight this scourge, but this type of combat was very risky in Vladimir Putin's Russia. In this fascinating and exclusive interview, the businessman with an unparalleled history recounts his odyssey in the mysterious corridors of Russian business and justice. Adapted from the source document.

Viktor Khrapunov well knows how the murky regime in Kazakhstan operates. He should, since he operated at the heart of the system for fifteen years. Energy Minister, then Mayor of Almaty (the country's largest city), then Governor of East Kazakhstan Province, this unobtrusive senior civil servant had a ringside seat while the country was being carved up by the clan of its immovable president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in office since the country gained independence in 1991 after the Soviet Union's collapse. In 2007, Viktor Khrapunov fell from grace and fled the country. Now he has decided to lift the lid on the clique that pulls all the strings in Astana. Rampant corruption, embezzlement of eye-watering sums of money, media censorship, election-rigging and even physical liquidation of political opponents.... The picture he paints in this very special interview with Politique Internationale is hair-raising. Adapted from the source document.

Since Vladimir Putin's election as Russian president in 2000, the Federal Security Service (FSB), which replaced the much-feared KGB following the collapse of the Soviet Union, has emerged from the shadows. This comes as no surprise. After all, Putin began his career there, rising to head of the organization by the late 1990s. All the upper echelons of the Russian administration today include former FSB agents. Moreover, previous members of the FSB also rank among top management at many leading Russian businesses! At the same time, the organization itself has been given an increasingly broader prerogative: it played a critical role in the "anti-terrorist operation" which helped put down the revolt in Chechnya; it boasts its own intelligence services; and its often paranoid vision of the world heavily influences decisions in the Kremlin. Andrei Soldatov, the world's leading specialist on the FSB, looks behind the shady and complex workings of this self-contained state within a state. Adapted from the source document.

L'auteur retrace à grands traits l'histoire du nationalisme russe en montrant qu'il a su survivre pendant la période soviétique en s'y adaptant. Aujourd'hui, une vague nationaliste est en train de submerger la Russie et exalte la fierté du passé russe, y compris la période soviétique. Une de ses branches s'accommode du régime poutinien qui la tolère ; une autre, plus radicale, le combat au nom de la pureté de l'ethnie russe menacée, s'avère résolument xénophobe et professe la haine inter-ethnique.