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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Look, you can be sober and even skeptical about Syria’s future without being an asshole to people who are emerging from decades in regime dungeons, returning to homes and being reunited with their families for the first time in years. This isn’t about you and never was.

Roger Waters 😭
George Galloway 😭
Tulsi Gabbard 😭
Hinckle 😭
Claire Daly 😭
Mick Wallace 😭
Jeremy Corbyn 😭
Partsan Girl 😭
Scott Ritter 😭
Glenn Greenwald 😭
Chomsky 😭
Dmitry Medvedev 🥴
Assad ✈️
Darth 😤
Ukraine 🤣

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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

         

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
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Copyright © 2023 Alex O'Neill.