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An Expedition to Prison: Why Philosopher Nikolay Zyuzev Was Sentenced to Seven Years

The Supreme Court of the Komi Republic has sentenced philosopher Nikolay Zyuzev to seven years in a strict-regime penal colony on treason charges. Zyuzev, who holds both Russian and Canadian citizenship, is one of the best-known scholars of the legacy of the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin. He left Russia after the war began, but in the summer of 2025 he returned to his native village in Komi [a republic in northwestern Russia — T-invariant], where he was arrested. According to the FSB, the scholar was training leaders of national liberation movements among Russia’s small Indigenous peoples and receiving funding for his project from foreign organizations. T-invariant looks at what Zyuzev worked on, why he kept coming back to Russia, and what his friends and colleagues make of the treason charges.

Winter is coming. Why has the FSB reclassified research on the Russian North as working for foreign intelligence?

Doctor of Medical Sciences Alexey Dudarev spent 25 years as the lead author of regular monitoring reports on pollution in the Arctic originating from Russia. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, official participation by Russian scientists in the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) working group of the international Arctic Council was paused, but contacts resumed in 2025 — something Maria Zakharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry announced enthusiastically. The joy was short-lived: less than a year later, the FSB arrested Dudarev, and the new five-year Arctic pollution monitoring report will likely be released without up-to-date Russian data — for the first time since 1991.

Walks with Leviathan. How Cautious Criticism of the Authorities Led Boris Kagarlitsky to Prison

Two years ago, on February 13, 2024, the Appellate Military Court toughened the sentence of publicist, sociologist, and political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky. The scholar, accused of “public calls for terrorism” (in a YouTube video discussing the explosion of the Crimean Bridge), had his previously imposed fine replaced with five years in a general-regime correctional colony. T-invariant explains why one of the most prominent left-wing intellectuals was not left at liberty and why even careful criticism of the authorities in today’s Russia often ends in a prison term.

Acing Drones 101: Enticing Top University Students to Join the New UAV Forces for Big Money

The Russian Ministry of Defense has started urging students at Russian universities to work as drone operators. But to do so, they must first sign a military service contract. Students are promised lump-sum payments of five million rubles and the option to terminate the contract after just one year. A T-invariant correspondent investigated whether the Defense Ministry’s promises can be trusted.

A Talented Student on Treason Charges: How the FSB Uses Torture to Turn a Gifted Mathematician into a Dangerous Criminal

22-year-old mathematician Leonid Katz, a graduate of the “Intellectual” school for gifted children and holder of a bachelor’s degree from the Higher School of Economics, has been arrested on treason charges. For the previous two months he was subjected to so-called carousel arrests. Katz is accused of making donations to a charitable fund that assists Ukrainian children. After his detention, he was tortured — T-invariant learned this from two sources.

“Not an Enemy, but a Friend of the People”: The Trial of a Kurchatov Institute Employee

The Gatchina District Court has resumed hearings in the case of Dmitry Bogmut, a technician at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute named after B.P. Konstantinov (part of the Kurchatov Institute). After the onset of the war in Ukraine, Bogmut posted anti-war videos in a private thread on a forum with only a dozen users. He has been held in a pre-trial detention center for a year and a half and faces up to ten years in prison. Court hearings are regularly attended by a crowd of men in camouflage, seemingly organized as “extras”, identified as “Donbas volunteers.” Meanwhile, the names of activists supporting Bogmut have been publicly disclosed by state news agencies, leading to threats against them.