Maria Snegovaya

How the Past and Present Will Shape Russia's Future | Global Conference 2025

Julia Ioffe, Eric Green, Pavel Khodorkovsky, Maria Snegovaya, Daniel Treisman, Leonid Volkov

Panelists projecting a five to twenty-year timeline for regime change emphasize that Russia's highly personalistic structure and emerging oligarch class will likely delay democratization until after Vladimir Putin's natural exit. Concurrently, the Russian economy has demonstrated surprising resilience through sanctions evasion and deepening ties with China, fostering a militarized society poised for prolonged attrition in Ukraine despite long-term stagnation risks. The discussion concludes that the post-Putin transition will likely result in a turbulent, non-democratic power struggle rather than an immediate liberal shift, while offering comparative lessons on the necessity of active civil society to safeguard democratic norms elsewhere.