Lilia Shevtsova has a new piece published in Foreign Policy, examining why Western policymakers and intellectuals have suddenly decided to go soft and play along with Russian authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin:

Western intellectuals are even more prone to the Kremlin’s enticements than the politicians. They battle for the honor of taking part in the Valdai Club — a series of regularly arranged meetings with Russian leaders. At these meetings, prominent attendees have been known to put preapproved questions to the Russians, playing the latter part in the Kremlin-orchestrated show. “Mister prime minister … you are a democrat!” exclaimed a leading French intellectual at the meeting with Putin when he was still president. “You are really a liberal!” declared a well-known German expert at the meeting with Medvedev.