Neither Vladimir Putin nor the war in Ukraine will last forever. What political order is likely to follow, and what would it mean for Russia, Ukraine and the West?

Leonid Gozman, a longtime Russian opposition politician and political psychologist, will examine the scenarios that may unfold. A Ukrainian defeat, he argues, would likely produce a new war almost immediately. The end of Putin’s rule poses its own risks, and the transition could prove more dangerous than the present. Yet Gozman contends that a post-Putin Russia would probably be better for its citizens and the international community, even if members of Putin’s circle remain in power.

That transition, he suggests, may open a narrow window for Russia to resume a path of normal political and economic development. This discussion will consider what such a path would require, what forces could close it, and what role domestic actors and Western governments might play in shaping the outcome.

The event will be moderated by Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and Satre Family Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Stanford affiliates are invited to attend in person, and all others may join online via Zoom; registration is required.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Leonid Gozman was the former president of the Union of Right Forces and former co-chairman of the Right Cause Party (2008–2011). From 2008 to 2013, he served as director of humanitarian projects at RUSNANO, a state-owned enterprise that commercializes innovations in nanotechnology, and from 1999 to 2008, he was executive board member and representative for governmental and NGO relations at Unified Energy System of Russia (RAO UES). An active participant in Russia’s democratic movement who has served as political advisor to Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar, he is also the author of eight books and is a lecturer at Moscow State University. He was previously a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and professor of psychology and Russian area studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and was a visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC.

How has Russia sustained its confrontation with the West since 2022, and at what cost? In her new book, Hanna Notte argues the Kremlin is waging a war not only on Ukraine but over the global order itself.

Notte traces how Russia adapted after the invasion. It worked around sanctions, built new partnerships, cultivated support across the Global South and tried to deepen divisions within Western democracies. Her account combines policy analysis with field reporting from more than a dozen countries and interviews with officials, facilitators and ordinary people drawn into Russia's agenda.

The book also examines the domestic consequences. Notte finds that Putin's focus on confronting the West has distorted Russia's economy and moved the country from a tacit dictatorship toward a full one. She suggests Putin may outlast the West, but has gambled Russia's future in the process.

Satre Family Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, Kathryn Stoner will moderate the discussion, which will cover Russian statecraft, the durability of autocratic regimes under pressure and what Russia's strategy means for the U.S., Europe and the Global South. Audience Q&A will follow.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hanna Notte is the Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. She is also a senior associate (non-resident) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and with the Kennan Institute. Notte's expertise is in Russia's foreign and security policy. She holds a doctorate and Master's degree in international relations from Oxford University and a BA in social and political sciences from Cambridge University. During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting researcher with the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Carnegie Moscow Center. Based in Berlin, she regularly writes for outlets such as the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and ZEIT, among others.

The Simon Fraser University School for International Studies, the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies at SFU, and the Program on Arab Reform and Development at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law invite you to a talk by Hossam El-Hamalawy, Maher Hamoud, and Waleed Salem, in discussion with Hesham Sallam.

In-Person: SFU Harbour Centre, room 2270 (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC)
Online: Via Zoom

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist and scholar-activist based in Germany. His work focuses on Egypt’s military, security services, political economy, and counterrevolution. He publishes State & Barracks, a weekly newsletter examining the nexus of military power, money, and the state in Egypt. It features reporting, analysis, and military history, usually published twice a week.

Maher Hamoud is a lecturer and researcher in Political Economy of Development. He received his PhD in Political Sciences at Ghent University in 2017, Department of Conflict and Development Studies, where he also held a postdoctoral position until January 2022. He received his MA in Economic Development at the American University in Cairo in 2009. He was also the editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based Daily News Egypt. Within the domain of political economy of development, his current research focuses on the intersectionality between development politics, value chains, industrialisation, and international trade with and within the Global South.

Waleed Salem is an Egyptian scholar and journalist. He writes about authoritarian politics, comparative judicial politics, and the politics of the Arab Gulf states. Waleed earned his PhD in political science from the University of Washington with a dissertation entitled "Seeing Like a Court: Judicial Agency in Autocratic Regimes and Transition Politics – The Case of Egypt." His previous research affiliations, alongside the University of Washington, include the International Relations Department at the Central European University in Vienna, the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo, and the Centre d'études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales (CEDEJ), also in Cairo. His journalistic work appeared in Nature magazine, The New Atlantis, New Lines Magazine, and Al Jazeera, among others.

ABOUT THE DISCUSSANT

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

Citizenship is conventionally understood as a source of rights and protection. It is also a source of dependency: states retain distinctive authority over passports, legal identities, civil status, and mobility that citizens need even when they live abroad. Under authoritarianism, these dependencies become instruments of political control. The study introduces extraterritorial authoritarian citizenship, a continuing relationship in which emigrants depend on origin-state institutions whose provision of nominally universal rights is politically conditional. It generates latent leverage: the capacity to impose costs without exercising it against anyone in particular. Emigrants may curb dissent even when never targeted, and transnational repression activates leverage already at work. Using a four-wave panel survey of 4,000+ Russian emigrants in over 100 countries and 500+ interviews, the authors show that what emigrants fear is the open-ended legal and administrative reach of the origin state rather than targeted violence, that this fear suppresses contentious activism specifically, and that only the protection of another state reduces it. (In collaboration with Emil Kamalov and Karolina Nugumanova).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ivetta Sergeeva specializes in comparative social science, focusing on political behavior, civil society, citizenship and migration. In her research, she employs a mixed-methods approach, emphasizing surveys, statistical modeling, experiments, and interviews. Apart from her research skills, she has eight years of experience supervising projects in civil society and human rights organizations within the challenging context of contemporary Russia.

Under what conditions do pro-democracy global actors support domestic opposition actors resisting democratic backsliding, and when does such support shape public opinion? This book project develops a theory of international rhetorical pressure that examines both the supply and demand of foreign engagement in backsliding contexts. On the supply side, it argues that international actors' public attention to democratic developments abroad is shaped by both domestic political developments and geopolitical ties. On the demand side, it suggests that foreign statements can shape public opinion toward pro-democracy movements. Drawing on an original dataset of US Secretary of State speeches, survey experiments, and elite interviews, the project shows that geopolitical interests often shape when international actors publicly address democracy abroad, but that when they do, foreign messages can meaningfully shape public opinion. The project highlights the increasingly international nature of backsliding and both the opportunities and challenges international engagement creates for domestic opposition actors.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Benjamin Yoel is the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Benjamin studies democratic backsliding, nonviolent resistance, authoritarian politics, and the role of international factors in the context of regime change. He is particularly interested in understanding when and how international actors can help or hurt domestic opposition movements defend democracy. His book project examines the supply and demand-side of international rhetorical pressure in the context of democratic backsliding and opposition to it. Benjamin's other work examines mass public support for democratic backsliding, public willingness to support retaliatory measures by democratic governments against former backsliding leaders, and the broader challenges facing pro-democracy actors in an increasingly illiberal international system. His research has been published in Nature, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and American Politics Research. He received his PhD in Political Science from Michigan State University and BA and MA degrees from Reichman University.

As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds on and debate intensifies over how to end it, what could push the conflict into a more dangerous phase of escalation? This talk examines how the Putin regime’s domestic political imperatives shape when Moscow absorbs setbacks and when it escalates. It argues that Russian behavior reflects a “pressure-cooker” dynamic: external geopolitical constraints favor restraint, while battlefield failures, war weariness, and pressure from hardliners can gradually raise the domestic costs of inaction. The result is prolonged restraint punctuated by abrupt escalation across conventional, gray-zone, and nuclear domains. Counterintuitively, the greatest danger may arise before a domestic crisis fully materializes — when wartime exhaustion or the political and economic strains of a ceasefire loom, but the Putin regime still retains the capacity to act coherently. This argument has direct implications for Western efforts to manage escalation and negotiate an end to the war without inadvertently increasing Moscow’s incentives for risk-taking.

Aleksandar Matovski is an Associate Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on the impact of domestic politics on the durability and strategic behavior of authoritarian regimes, with a regional emphasis on Europe and the former Soviet Union. Matovski holds a PhD and MA in Government from Cornell University, an MA in War Studies from King’s College London, and a BA in Law from Saints Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje. Prior to his academic career, he was National Security Advisor in the Government of North Macedonia and Political and Military Advisor in the North Macedonian Ministry of Defense. 

The war in Ukraine is in its 5th year, and casualties continue to mount. How did we get here? And how does this war end? This presentation and discussion will cover the latest military developments, as well as a review of the economic and political factors that will determine how strong Ukraine, Russia, and Europe will be going into negotiations.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Alexandra Vacroux is Vice President for Strategic Engagement at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). Her scholarly work has focused on Russia, and heavily on the war against Ukraine. Before moving to Ukraine in 2024, she served as Executive Director at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. Her dissertation considered informal institutions and corruption in Russia’s pharmaceutical markets and emerged from her experience living in Moscow from 1992 to 2004.

Yevhenii Malik is a former Marine Infantry sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a veteran of the Ukraine War. He has extensive frontline experience, including in the 2022 battle for Mariupol. From April 2022 to September 2024, he endured captivity in Russia. Malik is an advocate for Ukraine’s armed forces and veterans and is responsible for undergraduate national security and defense programs at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).