The Naked Pravda
Канал маалыматтары
The Naked Pravda
Meduza’s English-language podcast, The Naked Pravda highlights how our top reporting intersects with the wider research and expertise that exists about Russia. The broader context of Meduza’s in-depth, original journalism isn’t always clear, which is where this show comes in. Here you’ll hear from t...
Жаңы эпизоддор
176 эпизод
Four scenarios for the next chapter in Russia’s war against Ukraine
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now passed the three-and-a-half-year mark, and there is still no end in sight. The Trump administration’s...
Here’s what you do when Russia won’t stay out of your airspace
In recent weeks, Estonia, Poland, and Romania have reported breaches of their airspace by Russian aircraft. Just this week, Norway revealed that Russi...
Joshua Yaffa explains how Donald Trump got NATO to pay up
On June 25, NATO leaders agreed at their annual summit on a goal of spending five percent of their gross domestic product on defense, more than doubli...
Pulitzer-winner Benjamin Nathans on the Soviet dissident movement’s ‘many lives’
Historian Benjamin Nathans joins The Naked Pravda to discuss his new book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissiden...
Everyday politics in Russia with Jeremy Morris
Anthropologist Jeremy Morris joins The Naked Pravda to discuss his latest book, Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance (Bloomsbury...
Jill Dougherty’s Russia
The Naked Pravda interviews journalist and author Jill Dougherty about her new memoir, My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin, where she recounts he...
The banking scandal that broke Russia’s anti-Kremlin opposition
Last month, as another 30 days of war passed in Ukraine, Russian activists, economists, and politicians in the exiled anti-Kremlin opposition spent mu...
Moldova’s knife-edge election and E.U. referendum
On October 20, Moldovans cast their ballots in both a presidential election and a constitutional referendum — and the results shocked many.
In t...
How Russian propaganda and ordinary Americans build ‘bespoke realities’
Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake wh...
North Korea's role in the Ukraine War
In the past few days, both the Zelensky administration in Kyiv and South Korea’s national spy agency have said that they believe North Korea has decid...
Breaking down Russia's 2025 war budget
The Russian government’s new draft budget for 2025 through 2027 was introduced to the State Duma this week in its first reading. The state’s proposed...
The North Caucasian clan warfare behind a deadly dispute at Wildberries, ‘Russia’s Amazon’
Wildberries founder and CEO Tatyana Kim (who recently restored her maiden name) has been having a hell of a time shaking loose her husband, Vladislav...
America's expanding crackdown on RT and Moscow's covert influence operations
Last month, the FBI raided the homes of Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of American foreign policy, and Dimitri Sim...
Iranian ballistic missiles have entered the Ukraine War chat
The Pentagon says it’s confirmed that Iran has given “a number of close-range ballistic missiles to Russia.” While Washington isn’t sure exactly how m...
The science of Russian Internet censorship and surveillance
Russia’s federal censor has been throttling YouTube playback speeds for the last month or so, just like it slowed Twitter data transfer speeds back in...
Russian conscripts and Ukraine's Kursk offensive
It’s been almost two weeks since the Ukrainian Armed Forces smashed through Russia’s border defenses in the Kursk region and began a surprise offensiv...
The long-term economic effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the West has imposed over 16,000 sanctions on Russia, intending to cripple the economy driving...
How can Ukraine hold the line against Russia?
It’s a tense moment for Ukraine. The optimism that followed Ukraine’s early successes on the battlefield in 2022 started to fade last summer as its co...
Kazakhstan's landmark murder trial
For the past two months, millions of Kazakhstanis have been glued to their screens, witnessing a landmark moment in the nation’s history: a murder tri...
‘The American faith’: Why Russia targets evangelicals in Ukraine
Historically, Ukraine has been home to people of a variety of faiths and religious denominations, and it’s been exceptionally “open to receiving a wid...
Corruption and co-optation in Russia’s autocracy
It’s strange days recently at Russia’s Defense Ministry. Amid the replacement of the agency’s head, police have brought large-scale bribery charges ag...
How Russian disinformation really threatens the USA
The leadup to voting this November will renew fears in the United States about Russian malign influence. That means more paranoia from politicians, mo...
Returning to the talks that could have ended the war in Ukraine
Over the past few weeks, many in the think-tank community have argued about the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in the first two months of the fu...
How Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov dies
According to a new investigation from Novaya Gazeta Europe, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov was diagnosed with pancreatic necrosis in 2019 and isn’t...
Migration and discrimination in Putin’s Russia
It’s no secret that the economies of Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan rely heavily on labor migration to stay afloa...
The evolution of the Russian FSB
Look at almost any recent major news story from Russia, and you’ll find the Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB. Having failed to preven...
Daniel Roher and Julia Ioffe remember the Navalnys
It’s been seven weeks since a local branch of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service published a brief news post about the death of opposition leader A...
How terrorism’s geopolitics brought tragedy to Moscow
It’s been a little more than a week since a group of armed men walked into a concert hall just outside Moscow and gunned down dozens of defenseless pe...
Is Europe preparing for a wider Russian invasion?
For decades, NATO’s European members have depended on the U.S. to bolster their defense. Perhaps nowhere is this reliance more acutely felt than in th...
Politico’s Alex Ward on Biden’s Russia and Ukraine policy
U.S. President Joe Biden took less than two minutes to bring up Russia in his 2024 State of the Union address. “If anybody in this room thinks Putin w...
The Russian space nukes scare
Last month, there was a sudden panic in the United States when House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner issued a statement warning of a “serious nation...
Christopher Miller on how war came to Ukraine
To mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s ongoing campaign to seize more territory, Meduza sat down with the author...
The death of Alexey Navalny
Meduza reports on opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s death in prison and speaks to experts about his legacy and the political science behind autocrats...
Yandex’s restructuring and the future of Kremlin tech control
After a year and a half of negotiations, Yandex founder Arkady Volozh and the company’s foreign shareholders have reached a deal to part ways with Yan...
How Russia targets its critics abroad in wartime
The Russian government has a message for its citizens living in exile: nowhere is safe for you. For years, it’s made this threat clear by subjecting i...
How doomed presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin rallied antiwar Russians
Boris Nadezhdin’s surname has its root in the Russian word for “hope,” and he’s inspired just that in tens of thousands of voters as the politician wi...
Why hasn’t the West seized Russia’s frozen sovereign assets?
The U.S. government is reportedly becoming more “assertive” about backing the confiscation of roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets...
The evolution of Russia’s combat recruitment
The Naked Pravda explores how Russia’s mobilization drive is pressuring society and capturing men for the invasion of Ukraine. This episode features P...
Memories of Russia
In a special holiday departure from The Naked Pravda’s usual coverage of Russian politics and news, Meduza in English’s social media editor Ned Garvey...
Growing up German in Soviet Kazakhstan, with Lena Wolf
Answering the question “Where are you from?” has never come easily for Lena Wolf. As the descendents of 18th-century German settlers living in Soviet...