Russians

• It added that the admission of Finland into Nato and Sweden’s application meant the treaty was dead.
• The CFE treaty had aimed to reduce the opportunity for either side to launch a rapid offensive against the other.
• In fact, the US never ratified the treaty and Moscow and Washington have exchanged angry words, each accusing the other of undermining the NTBT.
• This has helped nobody – activity in both the US and Russia has escalated tensions over nuclear testing.

Aggressive stance

• Moscow’s increasingly aggressive stance will certainly add to concerns for the Baltic states and Poland.
• With a significant number of ethnic Russians as part of their populations, the risks of civil unrest leading to an escalation is rather high.

• But the Russians would need to be more competent and capable in their military adventures than they have been shown to be in Ukraine.
• The likelihood of a Russian attack is small, but Putin likes to keep his options open.
• He is also an experienced propagandist and will use whatever levers he has to try and prise Nato’s members apart.

Kenton White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Now it seems the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) is on the way out of government.
• Although PiS came away with the highest percentage of votes (35.38%), a coalition of opposition parties looks more likely to end up in power.
• The Civic Coalition (KO), an alliance of centre-right parties led by former European Council president Donald Tusk, has secured 157 seats in parliament.

The return of Donald Tusk

• Tusk has vowed to turn back towards European Union partners and for Poland to keep pace with them on social issues, such as by introducing same-sex marriage.
• Women, who have seen their rights to abortion care ultimately vanish under PiS, can be hopeful of a shift back towards liberalisation under a Tusk administration.
• Tusk has said PiS has “dehumanised” too many people during its time in power.
• As Tusk himself put it: “It’s the end of the evil times”.

The demise of PiS

• The PiS years have been characterised by a gradual dismantling of Poland’s liberal democratic order.
• Donald Tusk and KO have won because Poles did not want to become an electoral autocracy, as forecast in the event of an unprecedented third term for PiS.
• PiS attempted to push immigration up the agenda during the campaign rather than tackling these issues head on.

Not quite a done deal…

• Andrzej Duda, president of the Polish Republic (and a PiS member), needs to decide who should form a government.
• Following established tradition, his first choice will be PiS because it was the most voted for party, even if it doesn’t have a majority.
• If Duda fails to find a government after three attempts, he will have to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.

• Additional checks: Each jurisdiction will run checks on each application with the Financial Intelligence Unit of its respective country.
• The guidelines aim to increase the efficacy of the program's due diligence process while also streamlining communication between the government, agents, and investors.
• It is a complex matter that takes into account the future value of money, inflation, and currency fluctuation, among other factors.
• Savory & Partners' Founder and CEO Jeremy Savory shares his views on recent developments in the Caribbean programs and the future of the Citizenship by Investment industry.

• This is because Russian history has swung back and forth between chaos and autocracy, which have become mutually reinforcing symptoms of the same historical condition.
• Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has come to symbolise a new cycle of this history taking place in Russia today.
• Whether or not Prigozhin may have exposed Putin’s vulnerabilities, history suggests that what is to come could well be worse.
• By referencing the smuta Putin was reminding Russians of the profound dangers of dissent – and of his mandate to suppress it.

The gathering of the lands

• The campaign, begun under his predecessor Ivan III (“Ivan the Great”), is known as the “Gathering of the Lands”.
• Ever since, Russian leaders have perpetuated the idea that Russia must dominate its peripheral lands as a defensive act of national survival.
• The terror he wrought on his people, economy and lands through years of war and repression sowed the seeds for the smuta to come.

Boris Godunov

• Boris Godunov was inspired by a period of crisis that forms the bedrock of Russia’s national mythology.
• Pushkin’s play tells the story of Boris Godunov, a Russian nobleman who came to power at the end of the 16th century during the “Time of Troubles”, the first period of smuta – a succession crisis that began in 1598 with the death of Tsar Fyodor I, the last of Russia’s founding Rurikid dynasty.
• When Fyodor died childless with no appointed heir, his brother-in-law Boris seized the throne, becoming Russia’s first non-Rurikid Tsar.
• Pushkin’s play ends as Boris, haggard in the face of increasing dissent, dies as a result of foul play.

Smuta

• Otrepyev was crowned Tsar Dmitry I, but his reign lasted less than a year.
• Over the following eight years a brutal struggle for sovereignty took hold.
• The smuta thus ended with the founding of a new autocratic bloodline that would rule and expand the Russian Empire for the next 300 years.
• It has been used to justify the absolutism and revanchism of Russian leaders from Tsars through to Soviet Commissars and modern-day politicians.

Divine right

• Russian Tsars were legitimised by the myth of divine right, meaning their power and authority as “Guardian of Holy Russia” was derived from God, rather than the Russian people.
• The General Secretary of the Communist Party was vested by the laws of History to lead Russians and their Soviet comrades along the true path to their glorious future.
• Putin has made it his spiritual mission to shield the Russia from the chaos of democratic and liberal freedoms.
• Read more:
  'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech

The roots of Russian silence

• All he asked for in return was “unity”, which in Russian is a byword for passivity and acquiescence.
• The passivity of the Russian people often baffles the Western world, particularly in response to the war in Ukraine, which is being waged in their name.
• Pushkin describes the narod – the Russian people – as “obedient to the suggestion of the moment, deaf and indifferent to the actual truth, a beast that feeds upon fables”.
• The truth is that the Russian ruler’s prerogative as tsar-batiushka or “Father Tsar” can only hold sway over an acquiescent, even infantilised realm.
• An old question arises: will the Russian people remain silent?