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Editors: Ilan Berman and Eleanor Pugh
IN RUSSIA, THE STATE SUPERCEDES JUSTICE
The role of Russia's justice system is, first and foremost, to shore up the strength and legitimacy of the state, the country's top legal official has said. In recent comments before the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko argued that "strengthening the state" has become the paramount priority for his Ministry. "In the past, we always said the top priority was protecting the rights and lawful interests [of citizens], followed by upholding the rule of law, and only then, third, came strengthening statehood," Chuychenko said. "But everything happening now... shows that strengthening statehood probably shouldn't be left in third place." That's because, according to him, "[a] weak state can't guarantee citizens' rights or uphold the rule of law." (Meduza, May 20, 2025)
ACTIVE MEASURES, MODERNIZED
Chances are, you’ve never heard of PRAVFOND. But a new expose by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has detailed how the state-backed Russian organization has, under the guise of advancing human rights, "spent years advancing the Kremlin's geopolitical agenda across the world — including by funding the legal defense of alleged spies, criminals, and propagandists." The "Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Abroad," as PRAVFOND is formally known, has operated since 2012 "with the stated goal of defending the rights of Russians abroad." Ostensibly, such support should take the form, primarily, of legal assistance for Russian citizens who have run afoul of the law in foreign countries. But leaked documents acquired by the OCCRP have laid bare how the Kremlin has used PRAVFOND as a tool to shore up its asymmetric influence around the world.
The documents, the OCCRP details, "show that Pravfond awarded well over 1,000 grants worth millions of dollars to people and organizations across the world over the course of about a decade." They "also reveal how Pravfond collaborated with Russian intelligence agents to oppose a Lithuanian prosecution of former Soviet officials and military officers accused of committing war crimes during the country's struggle for independence from the Soviet Union."
Nor is legal aid the organization's only remit. "Pravfond also funds propaganda and influence operations. It has paid to produce a Lithuanian history textbook that justifies the Soviet occupation of the country, funded pro-Russian Telegram channels, and paid for a Baltic-focused news site to publish hundreds of pro-Russian articles." (OCCRP, May 21, 2025)
RUSSIA'S DIMINISHING ADVANTAGE
For much of this year, Russia's military has been advancing in Ukraine, buoyed by battlefield successes and waning U.S. support for Kyiv. But, officials say, Russia's capabilities are beginning to erode, and the country could face significant shortages of both manpower and materiel by next year. A recent Defense Intelligence Agency assessment detailed that the conflict "probably will continue to slowly trend in Russia’s favor through 2025," unless Western nations step up their support for Ukraine or some sort of negotiated settlement is struck. However, the agency notes, Russia's advances "continue to come at the expense of high personnel and equipment losses." Moreover, those gains are "slowing" amid mounting costs.
Since the start of the conflict in February of 2022, the DIA estimates that Moscow "lost at least 10,000 ground combat vehicles, including more than 3,000 tanks, as well as nearly 250 aircraft and helicopters and more than 10 naval vessels." And over the past year, Russia has conquered less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory, while some 1,500 Russian soldiers are either killed or wounded daily. Russia's total casualties are now, by some estimates, more than 1,000,000. (Washington Post, May 24, 2025)
INTO UNCHARTED DEMOGRAPHIC TERRITORY
For years, observers have tracked Russia's protracted demographic decline – and watched as the Kremlin has tried in vain to alter the downward spiral of the national population. The true state of Russia's demographic problems, however, has become harder to discern. That's because, writes Paul Goble in his Window on Eurasia blog, "[t]he Russian government's state statistical arm has stopped publishing almost all demographic data which shows the country in crisis and not on the mend as Vladimir Putin insists." Specifically, Russia's state statistics agency, ROSSTAT, "drops all data on births and deaths, marriages and divorces and statistics for developments in the regions" in its latest monthly report.
The dearth of available information, Goble says, relates to the war in Ukraine, and the Russian government's worries about "releasing data that analysts could use to determine Russian losses in that war and that call into question Putin's upbeat claims about increases in births and life expectancy." Even so, "this month's cutback in the data Rosstat releases is the largest so far and will seriously compromise efforts to accurately report what is happening to the Russian population." (Window on Eurasia, May 18, 2025)
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