Welcome to Professor Maria Popova's hub for research, teaching, and public outreach on issues related to democracy, corruption, and the rule of law in Europe. Prof. Popova's current research focuses on the Russo-Ukrainian war and Ukraine's road to EU accession.

In February 2022, Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian cities, and tanks rolled towards Kyiv to end Ukrainian independent statehood. President Zelensky declined a Western evacuation offer and Ukrainians rallied to defend their country. What are the roots of this war, which has upended the international legal order and brought back the spectre of nuclear escalation? How did these supposedly “brotherly peoples” become each other’s worst nightmare?
In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel explain how since 1991 Russia and Ukraine diverged politically, ending up on a collision course. Russia slid back into authoritarianism and imperialism, while Ukraine consolidated a competitive political system and pro-European identity. As Ukraine built a democratic nation-state, Russia refused to accept it and came to see it as an “anti-Russia” project. After political and economic pressure proved ineffective, and even counterproductive, Putin went to war to force Ukraine back into the fold of the “Russian world.” Ukraine resisted, determined to pursue European integration as a sovereign state. These irreconcilable goals, rather than geopolitical wrangling between Russia and the West over NATO expansion, are – the authors argue – essential to understanding Russia’s war on Ukraine.


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I’d like to hear Trump, or anyone, give an example of Putin caring about the Russian people. Not some dumb patriotic speech, but deeds. Repression, exile, sending them into a meaningless war, making Russia a pariah, etc. He’s a mafia boss with collaborators and expendable slaves.

I resent so much every foreigner yapping about “Ukraine Nazi problem”, calling us a corrupt failed state while Ukrainians have been managing to fend off the attacks of one of the biggest armies in the world *for years*. Meanwhile a “beacon of democracy” looks like this:

I was thinking about this young Russian woman in a T-shirt "massacre in Bucha: we can repeat" and came to an uncomfortable conclusion. I'm afraid that the entire ideology of the "beautiful Russia of the future" will be built around the idea of revanche. This appearance is a…

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bluesky

Another day, another article in the Western media that peddles tropes that are beneficial to russia. A double whammy in this case: 1) russia is too mighty to lose; 2) poor ordinary russians; we should empathize with them and pity them

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— Maria Popova (@popovaprof.bsky.social) Dec 6, 2024 at 9:13 PM

In other news, Ru continues trying to conquer Ukraine because Ukraine refuses to surrender peacefully. Why is our media exposing readers to Pu’s propaganda and self-serving narratives directly and uncritically?

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— Maria Popova (@popovaprof.bsky.social) Nov 21, 2024 at 5:39 PM

The author copies made it to Canada too! Our book with @oxanashevel.bsky.social is out! If you want to order it from Polity, it's available here and code 20POL will get you 20% off: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

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— Maria Popova (@popovaprof.bsky.social) Nov 17, 2023 at 4:31 PM

         

January 21, 2025
Professors Popova & Shevel: Pushing Back Against John Mearsheimer’s Views on Ukraine

Professors Maria Popova & Oxana Shevel spoke to UkeTube Podcast host William Szuch about how pushing back against John Mearshimer’s arguments, which are “disconnected from past and immediate history”, motivated the authors to write Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States.

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December 18, 2024
Prof. Popova Publishes Op-Ed in Journal of Democracy, “Is Ukraine Too Corrupt to Join the EU?”

Ukraine has faced a long and difficult path to the European Union. Since 2014, the year of the EuroMaidan Revolution, the country has made massive reforms across sectors, improving its rule of law, state capacity, and democratic governance to court the European community. In recent years, geopolitics has hastened the process: When Ukraine applied for EU membership on the fourth day of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, candidate status was quickly granted. Brussels conditioned its offer to open negotiations on a set of reforms, which Ukraine managed to satisfy even while at war. In late 2023, the European Council greenlit accession talks, which began in June 2024. But the end of the journey remains out of sight. While negotiations are proceeding and both parties seem optimistic, one obstacle looms above all others: Ukraine’s reputation for rampant corruption.

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December 5, 2024
Prof. Popova Publishes New Article in Policy Options, “Russia’s Propaganda Machine is Running Roughshod in Canada”

Along with Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist, professor at Dalhousie University, and current Independent Senator for Nova Scotia, as well as Ian Garner, an Assistant Professor at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw, Poland, Professor Popova claims that Canadians feel. The authors further claim how Anastasia Trofimova’s contentious film, Russians At War, suggests that Ukraine was at fault for the war; through doing so subtly, the authors further argue how this film is a classic example of how Russian disinformation enters civil discourse. Uncertainty around its release is symptomatic of the murky world of Russian propaganda spreading in the West — and how Canadians especially remain unaware of its occurrence.

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Maria Popova (PhD, Harvard) is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University and Scientific Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal. Her work explores rule of law and democracy in Eastern Europe. Her first book Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies, which won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies book prize in 2013, examines the weaponization of law to manipulate elections and control the media in Russia and Ukraine. Her recent articles have focused on judicial and anticorruption reform in post-Maidan Ukraine, the politics of anticorruption campaigns in Eastern Europe, conspiracies, and illiberalism. Her new book (co-authored with Oxana Shevel), on the roots of the Russo-Ukrainian war, entitled “Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States” is now available from Polity Press.
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Prof. Maria Popova
McGill University
855 Sherbrooke Ouest
Montréal, Quebec
H3A 2T7
Canada

Copyright © 2023 Alex O'Neill.