Andrei Soldatov
@andreisoldatov.bsky.social
Author of The Compatriots, The Red Web, The New Nobility, Senior Fellow at CEPA, King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, editor of http://Agentura.ru telegram: http://t.me/agenturaru
Kremlin Throttles the Internet | "The Kremlin’s incessant, restrictive attack on the Internet has apparently scored some successes in limiting the population’s usage." @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan https://cepa.org/article/kremlin-throttles-the-internet/
Kremlin Throttles the Internet
The Kremlin’s incessant, restrictive attack on the Internet has apparently scored some successes in limiting the population's usage.
cepa.org
Russia’s Spies: Smear Recycling | "Intelligence agency obsessions can seem eccentric from a distance, but they map the mind and the game theory of the Kremlin’s security elite." Irina Borogan and @andreisoldatov.bsky.social https://cepa.org/article/russias-spies-smear-recycling/
Russia’s Spies: Smear Recycling
Intelligence agency obsessions can seem eccentric from a distance, but they map the mind and the game theory of the Kremlin’s security elite.
cepa.org
Putin’s Kulturkampf | "The Russian despotism has done everything possible to shut down information sharing, but culture retains a power beyond its reach." Irina Borogan and @andreisoldatov.bsky.social https://cepa.org/article/putins-kulturkampf/
Putin’s Kulturkampf
The Russian despotism has done everything possible to shut down information sharing, but film and culture retain a power beyond its reach.
cepa.org
My pessimistic take on the increasingly popular assumption that Putin's regime is on the verge of defeat—or collapse—in @observeruk.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/interna...
Putin’s Russia will not be defeated from outside. Revolut...
Western sanctions and weapons have failed to end the war in Ukraine, but offering incentives to powerful figures in the military and security services could tip the balance
observer.co.uk
Russia’s Influence Game | “The Kremlin’s efforts to show it’s an accepted member of the global community require enormous work by every arm of the regime.” Irina Borogan and @andreisoldatov.bsky.social cepa.org/article/russias-influence-game-church-state-and-espionage/
Russia's Influence Game: Church, State, and Espionage
The Kremlin's efforts to show it's an accepted member of the global community require enormous work by every arm of the regime.
cepa.org
Russian Foreboding as Putin Marks Victory Day | "Russians were told to expect a defining speech from Putin, but got only the same old messages and a sense that the Kremlin has lost direction." Irina Borogan & @andreisoldatov.bsky.social cepa.org/article/russ...
Russian Foreboding as Putin Marks Victory Day
Russians were told to expect a defining speech from Putin, but got only the same old messages and that the Kremlin has lost direction.
cepa.org
Some time ago I was invited to speak at a debate at The Oxford Union on the motion: “This House Would Rather go to War with Russia than Lose Ukraine.” I accepted and was due to speak for the motion. THREAD 1/4
Putin’s Censors Lashed by Popular Rage | “Russians are willing to tolerate a lot, but there’s a limit. As the country’s internet regulators are discovering.” @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan
Putin's Censors Lashed by Popular Rage
Russians are willing to tolerate a lot, but there's a limit. As the country's internet regulators are discovering.
cepa.org
Putin’s Censors Lashed by Popular Rage | "Russians are willing to tolerate a lot, but there’s a limit. As the country’s internet regulators are discovering." @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan
Putin’s Censors Lashed by Popular Rage
Russians are willing to tolerate a lot, but there’s a limit. As the country’s internet regulators are discovering.
cepa.org
The Disastrous Paradox of Russian Fear | Putin and his coercive security services have created a problem among ordinary Russians that has no easy solution. Irina Borogan and @andreisoldatov.bsky.social https://cepa.org/article/the-disastrous-paradox-of-russian-fear/
The Disastrous Paradox of Russian Fear
Putin and his coercive security services have created a problem among ordinary Russians that has no easy solution.
cepa.org
Moscow’s Plasticine Man Comes to Washington? | “The members of the delegation are not a channel to the Kremlin — it is a conversation with people who neither shape its decisions nor have meaningful access to them.” @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan
Moscow's Plasticine Man Comes to Washington
The Russian parliamentarians now arriving in the US have very little influence back home. Their trip has another purpose.
cepa.org
This article in El País is must reading, and they've posted it in English translation. "Borogan and Soldatov have a deep understanding of the thinking of the silovichi, the elite of the Russian security forces. Founders of the Agentura website, they revealed Putin’s mass video surveillance in 2012
The journalist sentenced to four years for investigating Russian espionage: ‘They are trying to silence me, but I will continue working’
Andrei Soldatov and his colleague Irina Borogan say that the Kremlin’s intelligence services believe they are in an eternal war against the West
english.elpais.com
“From the FSB’s perspective, they can’t afford even a 1-percent chance that these people could one day undermine Russia’s political stability.” @andreisoldatov.bsky.social https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-spy-recruit-pressure/
How Russian spies recruit, pressure and run their informants
A leaked cache of messages and recordings offers rare insight into Moscow’s efforts to infiltrate opposition groups in Europe.
politico.eu
How does a system sustained by propaganda and fear evolve — and endure? A conversation with on The Orwellians Podcast about Our Dear Friends in Moscow. m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kp7...
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan - Our Dear Friends in Moscow
YouTube video by The Orwellians Podcast
m.youtube.com
Moscow’s Plasticine Man Comes to Washington Our latest for @cepa.org on the Russian delegation invited by the U.S. Congress for talks, with Irina Borogan. cepa.org/article/mosc...
Moscow’s Plasticine Man Comes to Washington
The Russian parliamentarians now arriving in the US have very little influence back home. Their trip has another purpose.
cepa.org
"Russia's leaders and security services remember 1991 and they remember what happened to Russia and what happened to them when Moscow stopped a big war in Afghanistan: the country collapsed," @andreisoldatov.bsky.social
'Great crackdown': Russia tightens the screws on the internet
Office workers toiling with blocked internet. Teenagers continually forced to switch VPNs. Taxi drivers struggling to find their way around Moscow without online navigation.
reuters.com
How does one face power — and adapt to it? A French-language review of Our Dear Friends in Moscow on Palingénésie. palingenesie.com/our-dear-fri...
« Our Dear Friends in Moscow » - PALINGENESIE
Deux journalistes russes d'investigation témoignent de plus de deux décennies aux prises avec le pouvoir en Russie.
palingenesie.com
✍🏼 Commentary by KCSI Visiting Fellow @andreisoldatov.bsky.social featured in an article by @theguardian.com on concerns raised over ex-Putin interpreter’s key role in monitoring Hungary vote. 👉🏼 Full article and Andrei’s comments: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
Concerns raised over ex-Putin interpreter’s key role in monitoring Hungary vote
Daria Boyarskaya coordinating OSCE mission overseeing vote in which pro-Moscow Viktor Orbán could lose power
theguardian.com
De Russische Doema staat op het punt een wet aan te nemen die de inzet van de strijdkrachten buiten het grondgebied mogelijk maakt om 🇷🇺 burgers te bevrijden die door buitenlandse rechtbanken - zoals het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag - worden vastgehouden. Via @andreisoldatov.bsky.social
Russia Plans an Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Russia's war against international law reaches beyond words and now includes the use of military special forces on foreign soil.
cepa.org
Russia Plans an Invasion of the Body Snatchers | The Kremlin’s war against international law reaches beyond mere words and now includes the use of heavily armed military squads operating on foreign soil. @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan
Russia Plans an Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Russia's war against international law reaches beyond words and now includes the use of military special forces on foreign soil.
cepa.org
So many great books this month! Especially Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez--I will be recommending that to everyone forever. #BookSky
"In the face of what looks like a permanent war, they have chosen adaptation, internalisation and, ultimately, isolation." @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/22/russia-cultural-liberal-elite-putin
The strategy of Russia’s liberal elite is clear: make your peace with Putin. This is how they survive | Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
As the fourth anniversary looms of Russia’s war on Ukraine, those close to the Kremlin prosper while others merely strive to escape the worst repression, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Ir...
theguardian.com
Russia’s Paranoid Despot and His Secret Police | "Putin and his spies share the very dark assumption that a lost war would cause the collapse of the state, the country, and the agencies themselves." @andreisoldatov.bsky.social and Irina Borogan
Russia's Paranoid Despot and His Secret Police
Putin's secret police organizations are among a small band of winners from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
cepa.org
The strategy of Russia’s liberal elite is clear: make your peace with Putin. It’s how they survive | Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
The strategy of Russia’s liberal elite is clear: make your peace with Putin. It’s how they survive | Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
As the fourth anniversary looms of Russia’s war on Ukraine, those close to the Kremlin prosper while others merely strive to escape the worst repression, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
theguardian.com
Four years into the war, the strategy of Russia’s liberal elite is clear: make your peace with Putin — Irina Borogan and I in @theguardian.com , drawing on themes from our book Our Dear Friends in Moscow. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The strategy of Russia’s liberal elite is clear: make your peace with Putin. This is how they survive | Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
As the fourth anniversary looms of Russia’s war on Ukraine, those close to the Kremlin prosper while others merely strive to escape the worst repression, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Ir...
theguardian.com
The UK Parliament’s Joint Human Rights Committee has published its report on transnational repression, an increasingly urgent issue in Europe. Our article, “The Russian way in transnational repression” (via @kcsi.uk), is included in the “read more” section. lordslibrary.parliament.uk/transnationa...
Transnational repression in the UK: Joint Committee on Human Rights report
In the UK, the term transnational repression is widely accepted to refer to instances of intimidation, violence and harassment by a state against people in another state. Evidence has suggested that v...
lordslibrary.parliament.uk
The UK Parliament’s Joint Human Rights Committee has published its report on transnational repression, an increasingly urgent issue in Europe. Our article, “The Russian way in transnational repression” (via @kcsi.uk), is included in the “read more” section. lordslibrary.parliament.uk/transnationa...
Transnational repression in the UK: Joint Committee on Human Rights report
In the UK, the term transnational repression is widely accepted to refer to instances of intimidation, violence and harassment by a state against people in another state. Evidence has suggested that v...
lordslibrary.parliament.uk
Here's my video from frozen Kyiv. Temperatures in Ukraine have risen - it's -1C today, with a lot of slush! - but are forecast to drop again this week. Air raid sirens and Russian attacks continue. The Kremlin had targeted *every* power plant, with most hit many times www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxIT...
Ukrainians forced to be imaginative to keep warm amid energy blackout
YouTube video by Guardian News
youtube.com
The Russian authorities have designated our website, Agentura.ru, a “foreign agent.” Our mission hasn’t changed since its launch in Sept 2000: to shed light on Russia’s secret services — as I told @nytimes back then. We’ll keep doing it. www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/t...
