Atlantic Council: Understanding Russia's Domestic Political Landscape

Please join the Atlantic Council for an event entitled Understanding Russia’s Domestic Political Landscape, on Friday, November 16, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Atlantic Council headquarters (1030 15th Street NW, 12th Floor, West Tower Elevators, Washington, DC 20005).

Several months after the presidential elections in Russia, Putin’s approval ratings have declined significantly. The unpopular pension reform along with a number of new proposed taxes have caused growing frustrations among the Russian population. Regional gubernatorial races that were expected to be easy wins for the ruling United Russia party instead resulted in the number of unexpected victories of alternative political forces.

At this event the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the Free Russia Foundation will host Mark Feygin, Maria Snegovaya, and Ivan Tyutrin for a discussion on the state of Russia’s current domestic politics. The panel discussion will be moderated by Ambassador John Herbst.

Bios

Mark Feygin is a former Russian lawyer and politician. He has served as an attorney for Pussy Riot, Nadya Savchenko, Crimean Tatars, including Ilmi Umerov and Roman Sushchenko, as well as other political prisoners and targets. Mr. Feygin was disbarred in April 2018. In the 1990s, Mark Feygin was one of the leaders of the democratic movement in Samara city and co-chairman of the regional organization of the movement Democratic Russia. He served as a deputy of the State Duma from January 1994 to December 1995 and was the vice mayor of Samara. In 2006 Mr. Feygin joined Mikhail Kasyanov's People's Democratic Union party. From 2010 to 2013, he was a member of Solidarnost, a Russian liberal democratic political movement. He is a member of the standing committee of the Forum of Free Russia and an author of several publications on municipal law and local governance in Russia.

Maria Snegovaya is an adjunct fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a PhD candidate at Columbia University focusing on the sources of support for the populist parties in the Eastern and Central Europe. Ms. Snegovaya’s main research interests also include Russia's domestic and foreign policy, Ukraine's domestic situation, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Ms. Snegovaya is the author of several reports and studies, including “Policy Memo: Justifying a Counter-Cyclical US-Russia Policy (the Case of Energy Dependence)” for The Harriman Institute; “Stifling the Public Sphere: Media and Civil Society: Russia” for the National Endowment for Democracy; and “Putin’s Information Warfare in Ukraine. Soviet Origins of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare. Analytical Report” for The Institute for the Study of War. Her publications have appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and The National Interest, among other places. Ms. Snegovaya holds an MA and MPhil in Political Science from Columbia University and a BA in Economics and Finance from Higher School of Economics.

Ivan Tyutrin is a member of the standing committee of the Forum of Free Russia and a long-term colleague of Garry Kasparov. In March 2016, together with Garry Kasparov, he established the Forum of Free Russia in Vilnius, the largest opposition platform outside Russia. Mr. Tyutrin was elected an executive secretary of the Forum at the first meeting of the standing committee. Since 2005, Mr. Tyutrin has been a member of Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front, where he has occupied various leadership positions. In 2010-2012, he was an executive director of Solidarnost, a Russian liberal democratic political movement. He fled Russia in December 2012.

John Herbst is the director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. Ambassador Herbst served for thirty-one years as a foreign service officer in the US Department of State, retiring at the rank of career minister. He was the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006. Prior to his ambassadorship in Ukraine, he was the ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2000 to 2003. Ambassador Herbst previously served as US consul general in Jerusalem; principal deputy to the ambassador-at-large for the Newly Independent States; director of the Office of Independent States and Commonwealth Affairs; director of regional affairs in the Near East Bureau; and at the embassies in Tel Aviv, Moscow, and Saudi Arabia. He most recently served as director of the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University. He has received two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards, the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award, the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Distinguished Civilian Service Award. Ambassador Herbst’s writings on stability operations, Central Asia, Ukraine, and Russia are widely published.