Please join the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program for a conversation with Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist specializing in lawmaking and bureaucratic behavior, and Maksim Kurnikov, a Russian journalist and head of the independent Echo online radio. Daniel Drezner, Distinguished Professor of International Politics at Fletcher and co-director of the program, will moderate the conversation.

They will discuss the current state of the political regime in Russia as reflected in governmental statistics, official rhetoric, normative changes, polling results, and media consumption data. The talk will focus on the challenges and opportunities facing analysts and their ability to access Russian data despite the attempts of the Putin regime to contain information, routinely falsify data, and stifle or subvert public discussion. 

The event is open to the public. Please register via the Google Form to attend the event in person or virtually. Refreshments will be served. We will provide you with the Zoom details in your confirmation email message.

	Maxsim Kurnikov is a Russian journalist and media manager, head of the independent Echo online radio, and leading editor of Bild, the German media organization. He worked at Moscow-based independent radio station Ekho Moskvy from 2008 to 2022. In March 2022, the radio station was closed down by the Russian authorities. He now works in Berlin. He founded an independent media outlet that still works for an audience inside Russia.
	Daniel Drezner is Distinguished Professor of International Politics, a nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Co-Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School. Prior to joining Fletcher, he taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has previously held positions with Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and he has received fellowships from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard University. He has written seven books, including All Politics is Global (2009) and Theories of International Politics and Zombies (2011), and edited three others, including The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence (2021). He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals as well as in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Foreign Affairs, and has been a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and The Washington Post. He received his B.A. in political economy from Williams College and an M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.
	Ekaterina Schulmann is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. She is a political scientist specializing in the decision-making and bureaucratic behavior of modern authoritarian regimes with particular emphasis on Russia. Schulmann teaches political science as an associate professor at the Maqsut Narikbayev KAZGUU University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Prior to joining Carnegie, Schulmann was a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Before 2022, she was an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka) and a senior lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and head of its Center for Legislative Studies. Schulman’s YouTube channel has over one million subscribers. Since 2017, she has hosted Status, a popular weekly online program. Following the closure of Moscow-based independent radio station Ekho Moskvy in March 2022, the program has continued, thanks to a collaboration involving the Russian platform of Bild, the German media organization, and Zhivoy Gvozd’, the successor to Ekho Moskvy.