This was Russia today Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Howdy, folks. Today, I reviewed a new article by scholar Mikhail Troitskiy about the Putin regime’s use of disinformation against a subsection of Russia’s own elites. Yes, that’s right — we’re sipping straight from the VIP fountain of Russian propaganda. Keep reading for news about a custody fight over the suspected DHL bomb-plot mastermind and about NATO’s race against the clock in the event of a Russian invasion. If you’re enjoying the newsletter’s new approach (or want to complain), please let me know. Yours, Kevin.

Scholar Mikhail Troitskiy explains how Putin tricked Russia’s ‘globalized elites’ into thinking he’d never unleash a full-scale war on Ukraine

Mikhail Troitskiy, a visiting professor at Tufts University, recently wrote an article arguing that the Putin regime strategically lied to Russia’s own “globalized elites” to lock them into supporting the full-scale war in Ukraine. Managing Multiple Audiences: Dual-Track Signals and the Silencing of Russia’s Globalized Elites Before the Invasion of Ukraine appeared last month in Post-Soviet Affairs. Troitskiy writes that Vladimir Putin adopted a “dual-track signaling strategy,” falsely reassuring globalized elites that he wouldn’t go to war while simultaneously “stoking aggressive and revanchist fervor among segments of the Russian public and nationalist elite groups” whom he’d need to enlist in the invasion. In other words, the Kremlin singled out Russia’s likeliest opponents of the war and targeted them with “misperception-induced demobilization.”

Troitskiy divides Russia’s “globalized elites” into three tiers: (1) “top representatives” in government (i.e., “system liberals”), (2) entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, select cultural and intellectual elites, and technocrats, and (3) the possibly millions of Russians with “various forms of financial, professional, personal, or intellectual exposure to the West.” He points out that the lowest (and, by far, the biggest) tier of globalized elites sustained “immediate, nontrivial losses” (for example, because European authorities froze their assets, even though they themselves weren’t sanctioned) — all without access to the compensation the Kremlin often extends to oligarchs, top officials, and business executives. In prewar high politics, Russia’s globalized elites had “technocrat” officials (“few in number yet structurally important”) to counter the hawkish siloviki in Putin’s inner circle. The technocrats’ indispensability in managing the economy was considered a crucial multiplier.

“Putin has been careful not to antagonize influential elite factions and preserve elite continuity,” Troitskiy writes, arguing that Russia’s president balanced his “loud mobilization narrative” ahead of February 2022 with a “quiet insider reassurance track” that fooled anti-war globalized elites until it was too late. A “key technique” in this deception was “maintaining credible forums that elites trusted,” such as Echo of Moscow, TV Rain, Novaya Gazeta, the Carnegie Moscow Center, and the Valdai Discussion Club. Casting some of the country’s leading liberal journalists and intellectuals as unwitting tools of the Kremlin, Troitskiy says Putin allowed these institutions to operate to dupe globalized elites into believing that Russia’s leadership conformed to their idea of “pragmatic.” Once the full-scale invasion was underway, “these channels were shut or repurposed, as the need for reassurance vanished.” 

Today, “the era of dual-track ambiguity in Russia is over,” and we’re left with “overt suppression” and “coercive equilibrium.”

Troitskiy also dissects some of Vladimir Putin’s “message coding,” describing how the president sent various “insider-facing cues” (for example, Pushkin references with loosely pro-European spin) that gestured toward continued global engagement, even as he outwardly (and, as it turns out, more honestly) incited nationalist-patriotic fervor. Globalized elites’ assumptions that (1) “Putin’s nationalism was performative,” and (2) “a large-scale attack on Ukraine would be irrational” were themselves grounded in various precedents where the president pulled back from the brink, such as halting Russia’s advance into Georgia in 2008, signing the Minsk agreements with Ukraine, and continuing to invest vast sums of money and resources into Russia’s internationalization. (Hawkish elites suffered their own misperceptions, Troitskiy points out, in their assumption that the West wouldn’t bankroll and bolster Ukraine’s defense.) 

One of Troitskiy’s key conclusions is that “silence is not consent in autocracies” if it can be manufactured. He argues that the Kremlin lulled Russia’s globalized elites into a “false collective belief” that the president “wouldn’t go too far.” For regimes like Putin’s, these disinformation campaigns against their own elites “hollow out deliberation at the top,” starving leaders of the feedback that often prevents major blunders. Addressing Western governments, Troitskiy warns that authoritarian leaders’ ability to render elites “not just powerless but unaware” significantly limits “external leverage via elite channels” — the kind Europe and the U.S. have sought through sanctions and intelligence releases.

The Archive Collection: Nothing can stop Meduza from releasing anniversary merch — even if we have to make it ourselves. Check out our latest drop now!

We have a new tradition here at Meduza: every year on our birthday, we update the merch in our online store, Magaz. In 2025, we turned 11 — and despite the considerable challenges we’ve faced this year, we’ve found a pretty original way to bring you a new collection. Here’s a look at the latest clothing and accessories you can buy to rep Meduza and support our work.

News you don’t want to miss today

🕵️ Russia and West lobby Azerbaijan for custody of suspected bomb plot operative 💥

Intelligence services across Europe and Russia are battling for custody of Yaroslav Mikhailov, a Russian national accused of helping coordinate incendiary parcels that ignited at DHL cargo hubs across Europe in 2024. He fled on false documents to Azerbaijan, where he isn’t jailed but is reportedly under surveillance and not allowed to leave the country.

• The operative: Mikhailov, 37, is accused of helping specify the design of time-set magnesium devices and directing low-level recruits across Europe. Western officials call him the most important GRU-linked proxy still at large.
• The plot: In July 2024, packages containing flammable compounds slipped through Lithuania and ignited at cargo depots in Germany, Poland, and England. U.S. and European officials say the scheme appeared to be a “test run” for similar devices on transatlantic cargo routes.
• The standoff: Poland, backed by Britain, Ukraine, and Lithuania, wants Mikhailov extradited on terrorism charges. Russian intelligence chiefs are lobbying Baku to send him home instead — partly to avoid disclosures in a European trial — as Azerbaijan distances itself from Moscow after a deadly Russian downing of an Azerbaijani passenger jet last year. | The Washington Post

🪖 Europe’s decentralized infrastructure hinders NATO’s mobilization 🛤️

Europe’s crumbling bridges, narrow tunnels, mismatched rail systems, and dense peacetime bureaucracy continue to slow NATO’s ability to shift large forces from western ports to the alliance’s eastern flank. E.U. officials estimate it would currently take around 45 days to move a full army toward countries bordering Russia or Ukraine.

• The challenge: Europe’s mismatched rail gauges, collapsing bridges, tight tunnels, and mandatory peacetime customs and labor rules all slow the movement of tanks and other heavy equipment from west to east.
• The cost of delays: In 2022, France had to reroute Leclerc tanks by sea after Germany rejected them as too heavy, echoing an earlier incident at a Polish railway station where the turrets of U.S. Bradleys were ripped off by a platform roof.
• The goal: E.U. and NATO officials are pushing for a “military Schengen” and prioritizing 500 key infrastructure upgrades to shorten the current 45-day deployment timeline to as little as five or even three days. | Financial Times

🇵🇱 Poland links railway sabotage to two Ukrainians working for Russia’s FSB | Poland says two Ukrainian nationals working with Russia’s FSB sabotaged key railway lines near the Ukrainian border, leading to heightened security alerts and diplomatic efforts to extradite the suspects from Belarus.

🫗 Amid record spending on the war, millions in Russia still lack clean drinking water | Russia’s chronic water-infrastructure failures — worsened by pollution, aging pipes, climate-driven flooding, and underfunding — have left roughly 16 million people without safe drinking water, even as the Kremlin pours record sums into the war in Ukraine.

📺 Meet Nomad TV, the new Russian propaganda channel launching in Kyrgyzstan | Russia-linked media figures are launching a new “local” TV channel in Kyrgyzstan called Nomad TV, which analysts say is a Kremlin-backed effort to spread pro-Russian narratives under the guise of domestic journalism and reclaim influence in Central Asia.

🎓 Russian university fires long-time American studies scholar amid online attacks on his family | A longtime American studies professor in Arkhangelsk was fired after more than 30 years of teaching, amid signs that an online harassment campaign targeting his family’s liberal politics helped prompt university administrators to push him out on dubious grounds.

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