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 have long challenged the Biden-Harris Administration’s unwise position on restricting Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons against targets within Russian territory. If North Korean troops attack Ukraine from Russian territory, Ukraine should be permitted to use American weapons to…

An article about the autocratic path of the Georgian regime that not only speaks about electoral fraud and importance of democracy, but also doesn't shy from concluding that Western support is necessary, if the democratic forces in Georgia are to stand any chance against a…

Cautiously optimistic about Moldovan election tomorrow. Lots of unknowns, including Russian operations through the Șor network and parts of the Orthodox clergy. But the key will be turnout, especially in the diaspora.

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September 25, 2024
Prof. Popova Co-Authors Op-Ed with Ian Garner About “Russians At War” TIFF Controversy in The National Post

Russians At War, a documentary by Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, has triggered a lively debate about art, propaganda, freedom of expression and Russian intelligence operations abroad. Trofimova has claimed she spent several months filming Russian forces in occupied Ukraine without official permission to show a hitherto hidden side of the war. The film’s creators and some reviewers have argued that this is a daring and heart-wrenching anti-war film about Russian soldiers who fight through a quasi-apocalyptic landscape destroyed by persons unknown, and perish without ever knowing what they are fighting for. These ordinary men fall victim to a dehumanizing war that resulted — in the director’s own words — from a “failure of diplomacy.”

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September 13, 2024
Prof. Popova Receives 2024 SHRC Insight Development Grant

Professor Popova has received a two-year Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) research grant, totaling $69,763.00, for her new project, “We’ll Fix The Country!”: Foreign Educated Reformers in Eastern European Democracies”.

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September 8, 2024
Professor Popova Joins Stanford Law School’s Neukom Center for the Rule of Law as a Non-Residential Fellow

Established in 2022, the Neukom Center opens its doors at a critical time, when numerous studies, including from The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, reveal a decline in the rule of law around the world. The interdisciplinary Center is a home for research, teaching, collaboration, public discourse, policy labs, and practical initiatives, all of which share a common goal: to reverse global trends toward autocracy and turn the tide toward accessible, impartial justice and open government.

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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.