The war on Ukraine, which the Russian Federation launched in February 2022, has continued nearly 4 years at the end of 2025 and there are no significant progress of ceasefire talks between both sides, started by mediation of U.S. Donald Trump Administration from the beginning of that year. Many political leaders, journalists and commentators in Europe, United States and Japan have insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to obtain the whole territory of Ukraine and even would invade North Atlantic Treaty Organization（NATO）member states in Europe if they could not stop Russian military actions inside of Ukraine.

The author, as former Moscow Bureau Chief correspondent of a Japanese news agency, who had spent almost two and half years in Russia after the military operation against Ukraine began, has different view: Putin’s main target is prevention of Ukraine’s entry to NATO, not the occupation of Ukraine’s land. Until the beginning of full-scale attack on Ukraine Putin repeatedly insisted that enlargement of NATO to the eastern direction was a serious threat to national security and sovereignty for Russia, therefore totally unacceptable. It is obvious that Russia’s annexation of 4 oblasts in eastern and southern Ukraine in September 2022 was an emergency response, triggered by unexpected defeats of Russian Army on the front-line, and not prepared enough. But Putin especially emphasized his willingness to help Russian-speaking citizens in Donbas region when he tried to get approval by the Russian Senate for sending army troops to Ukraine’s territory, therefore, it caused confusion among domestic and foreign observers on the real reason and purpose of the aggression. The Russian President aimed for regime change of Ukraine by a preemptive strike, although his attempt ended in failure.

For most Russian citizens the full-scale attack on a neighboring country was shocking. Although 70–80% of respondents have approved military action in Ukraine according to several public opinion polls, they don’t support Putin’s war unquestioningly: they just cannot expect defeat of their own homeland and are willing to end the war as soon as possible. For example, series of arson fires on draft offices in Moscow and other regions happened just after beginning of military operation as protest against decision by leadership, and in presidential election held in March 2024, co-founder of liberal Yabloko Party, Grigory Yavlinsky and former parliamentarian Boris Nadezhdin, openly opposing military actions, sought to participate in the campaign and gathered 1.3 million and 105 thousand voter’s signatures for each in advance, although they did not run in the end.

Putin has carefully controlled this extended war on the most-close neighboring state in the post-soviet area and will not accept a ceasefire agreement without written guarantee of Ukraine’s neutrality and not-joining NATO in future. If NATO’s side merely tries to bring Ukraine to NATO’s framework and ignore Russia’s concern, it can’t be ruled out to escalate military tension between both sides on an unexpected scale. Now the International community should make an effort to find a way to stop the military actions on the battlefield and avoid many more victims in this unproductive war.

Russia’s war efforts during the Russo-Ukrainian War can be divided into two spheres. One is the group of policies, such as security, Global South discourse, the intention to utilize military tensions for socioeconomic modernization and streamlining state administration centered on Putin’s lifelong monarchization, which the Russian government had deliberated well before the war. In this sphere we find tangible continuity from the pre-war period. Another sphere, such as actual combat and advances in military technology, has been characterized by the government’s ad hoc response to the highly volatile situation. This paper focuses on security policy as an example demonstrating the continuity from the pre-war period and actual combat and innovation of military technology as examples of the Russian government’s situational response.

As for the security, the Trump administration’s belief that “a unipolar world is impoverishing America” provided Russia with a tailwind. However, the Putin regime’s anti-liberalism is fundamentally nativist and self-defensive, bearing little connection to its hardline policy toward Ukraine. If the regime is fighting the Russia-Ukraine war as part of its anti-Western general strategy, why doesn’t it scale back its attacks on Ukraine to maintain good relations with Trump? The Putin regime has committed deliberate violation of international law through territorial annexation only against Ukraine. It continues to reject the annexation of South Ossetia despite the wishes of its residents, and Western speculation that “if the situation on the southern front improves, it might do something on Transnistria” has also proved to be unfounded. Like it or not, the Putin regime’s policy toward Ukraine exists within a specific context and should not be conflated with Russia’s overall security policy.

Regarding actual combat, the disagreements between the U.S. forces inclined to concentrate troops for military performances, and the Ukrainian forces inclined to disperse them in pursuit of media impact, served as a lifeline for the Russian forces during the first and second years of the war when the US and Ukraine held the operational initiative. This disagreement between the U.S. and Ukrainian forces persisted into the third year of the war, when the massive deployment of drones by the Russian Army shifted the operational initiative to Russia.

This paper presents a personal fieldwork record of repeated visits to Russia―mainly Saint Petersburg―from February 2020 to September 2025. Halted by COVID-19 border closures in March 2020 and further restricted after the 2022 Special Military Operation, research resumed in January 2022. Drawing solely on the author’s observations, photographs, and contemporaneous notes, it offers a necessarily subjective, non-comprehensive account. Chronologically organized into four periods:（1）2020 lockdown to return,（2）July–September 2022 early war phase,（3）2023–2024 adaptation and shifting patriotism,（4）2025 pragmatic realism. Supplementary insights from Moscow, the Far East, and 2023–2024 Central Asia visits are included. All photos by the author.

This paper analyzes how the business environment for Western companies, especially Japanese and European firms operating in Russia, has transformed after the Russian military aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 and examines the implications for their future business.

Although economic sanctions against Russia had existed in various forms including the field of trade, finance and investment since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, their scope remained relatively narrow compared with current measures imposed after 2022. Therefore, Western companies continued investing in Russia during that period, largely because they perceived strong market potential.

Since 2022, while the categories of sanctions generally remained the same, their severity expanded significantly. Measures included the exclusion of certain Russian financial institutions from SWIFT, restrictions on energy-related transactions, and the introduction of “secondary sanctions” targeting third-country entities engaged with sanctioned Russian counterparts. Russia also responded with its own countermeasures: tighter foreign exchange controls, the legalization of parallel imports, and the temporary state administration of corporate asset. These developments sharply worsened the business environment for Western firms and made market exit difficult. Moreover, a new so-called “reputational risk” became a key factor in corporate decision-making regarding continued operations in Russia after 2022.

Despite these challenges, the actual rate of withdrawal was limited. Surveys indicate that as of December 2022, only about 20 percent of Western companies had exited the Russian market, and by 2025 membership in Japanese and European business associations in Russia had declined by roughly 30 percent compared with 2022. Several factors explain this relatively low exit rate: expectations regarding the scale and long-term potential of the Russian market, the considerable assets already invested, the high costs associated with withdrawal, and new institutional barriers imposed by the Russian government.

Since 2022, perceptions of the Russian market have increasingly diverged between European and Japanese companies. Business sentiment among European firms improved, supported by Russia’s short-term economic recovery, while Japanese firms were still cautious, complying with the self-imposed restrictions and corporate guidelines.

These trends suggest that the fundamental attractiveness to the potential and prospect of the Russian market is gradually being eroded. Therefore, business of Western companies in Russia is expected to be stagnant for the foreseeable future.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has shaken international norms and divided the world community into antagonistic groups. In this conflict, Europe has largely united against Russia but responses in Asia show differences of national interests, strategic calculations, and historical pathways and interactions. China and India retain their “strategic partnership” with Russia while cautiously avoiding direct confrontation with the West, while many other Asian countries have adopted a wait and see approach.

Japan and South Korea, both close allies of the United States, have imposed sanctions on Russia, but these differ in scope and intensity. Since 2022, Japan’s sanctions have been stronger, in line with the rest of the G7, while South Korea is merely a formal participant. This paper analyzes the discourse and realities of Korea’s policy toward Russia after the 2022 invasion, partly through a comparison with Japan. The study consists of two parts: qualitative-contextual and quantitative-econometric analyses. The latter focuses on text-mining media discourses, particularly on the political background of “conservative” and “progressive” perspectives.

Some Korean sanctions appear as tough as those imposed by Japan, including export controls and the exclusion of Russian banks from the SWIFT global payment system. However, a key difference is the continued Korean business presence in the Russian market. Most Korean companies, including Hyundai, Kia and others, operate in Russia.

There are several possible explanations for South Korea’s “soft” attitude: First, there may be some distrust of international norms. In Korean discourse, traditional international norms such as state sovereignty serve as a “tool of politics” and are not necessarily universal. This attitude is shaped by European indifference to Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century.

Second, historical discourse of Korea as a small nation surrounded by great empires is critical. In the imperial period, Northeast Asia was invaded by the great powers in search of colonies. Russia hindered imperial Japan’s advance by supporting Korea. There remains a lingering impression of Russia as a “white knight.”

However, the main reason for South Korea’s hesitation to adopt sanctions against Russia must be the existence of North Korea. When Korean newspapers report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 2022 to 2025, as our text mining reveals, most of the discourse on the war treats it as a variable in relations with North Korea. Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea in 2024 and the military deal―ammunition and soldiers for Russia and high-tech support for North Korea―clarified this. In response, the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration announced it was reconsidering sanctions levels against Russia and its military aid policy for Ukraine.

However, the newly “progressive” President Lee Jae-Myung and the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump could open the door to reconciliation with Putin in the near future. This paper sheds light on policy transformations since 2022 based on econometric analysis, and develops a hypothesis regarding the future orientation of South Korean sanctions.

This article re-examines late-Soviet Moscow Conceptualism as a current that cultivated gestures analogous to extraction, rather than as a practice that merely represented energy resources. Against approaches that center on oil imagery in post-Soviet art―exemplified by Maria Engström’s discussion of “oil aesthetics” and its genealogy from Timur Novikov―the article argues that the disappearance of the heroic extractor from representation does not eliminate the question of the artist’s body. If the Brezhnev era is reused as a symbolic resource by artists’ gesture, then the embodied work must also be considered. From this point, the paper proposes three emphases:（1）the artist’s body can function as a stratum that accumulates authority;（2）records, images, and even schemes can become fossil-like resources that act back on the body; and（3）the long duration of Moscow Conceptualist practice makes temporal exposure―sedimentation, deformation, and return―central to analysis.

Section 2 argues holiness and stratified corporeality through works by Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, beginning with Closed Fish Exhibition（1990）and the recurring motif Neftyanka. The paper tracks how a presumed image of offshore extraction is displaced into an emptied container, thereby binding public projects to bodily presence and consumption. It then reads Makarevich’s paired works Cross of St. Ignatius and Stratographic Structures（1976）as staging a relation in which a luminous, holy image is supported by a consuming, sedimentary underside, framing the individual face as a material layer that bears ideological and religious illumination.

Sections 3–4 clarify how bureaucracy and governance enter the problem not through a direct model of power, but through a mediated figure: the angel. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of the parallel between celestial and earthly bureaucracy, the article recounts Andrei Monastyrski’s religious episode and angelic visions, and situates the procedural organization of Collective Actions（Коллективные действия）alongside Viktor Tupitsyn’s later critique of Moscow Conceptualism as “hydraulic” and as a paradoxical sentinel of stagnation in an oil-based irrigation society. The article then turns to Monastyrski’s writings, focusing on the diagrammatic model that overlays an “expositional sign-field”（state plane）with a “demonstrational sign-field”（art plane）and on the concept of “empty action” as an entry point for external contexts.

Section 5 follows the later shift toward the excavation of memory and affect through actions that literalize burial, drilling, and retrieval: Slogan-86（1986），Library（1996），and Archaeology of Light（1995），where drilling becomes entangled with visceral response. It also reads Wall Newspaper（2004）as a montage of encyclopedic and fictional materials that evokes fossil-like revival and links excavation to bodily imagery, and culminates with Kashchei the Immortal of Collective Actions（2015），where a nail used in the action triggers a participant’s personal loss-memory, showing how accumulated contexts can pierce the schematic planes and release affect. In conclusion, the article characterizes a movement from an early mode close to a Kabakovian transparency toward the state plane to a slower work of digging through sedimented authority in the body, where the past is not simply operated but borne, and where resources are at stake beyond representational models.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia in the Republic of Moldova has been drawing a lot of attention from the mass media. The majority of mass media define Gagauzia as a “pro-Russian territorial entity” that may contain the potential to transform into the “Second Donbas” under the aim of political destabilization of Moldova by Russia. Once Gagauzia, unlike Transnistria, has received a positive evaluation, that would not be a major obstacle to the EU integration process of Moldova. In recent years, because Bashkan（governor of Gagauzia）has several possibilities to be an executive member of the Moldovan parliament and government, some researchers have given a negative remark to Gagauzia as a “Trojan Horse” through which Russia might exercise political influence to establish pro-Russian forces in Moldova.

However, we should not easily generalize the political orientation of the Gagauzia government and the minds of local Gagauz people as “pro-Russian.” It is expected that their outwardly “pro-Russian” sentiment has been gradually formed, as they have been experiencing political, social, and economic turmoil after the collapse of the USSR. This paper analyzes:（1）how the Gagauzia political orientation, which seems like “pro-Russian,” has emerged, facing severe political and social realities;（2）whether it is correct to identify the orientation as truly “pro-Russian.” The first part of the paper traces Bashkan elections. The elections are quite effective in grasping urgent political-social issues at that time and internal-external standpoints of Bashkan candidates because smoldering discontent was rising to the surface, especially during election campaigns. The second and third parts extract inner and outer factors that have had a grave impact on the political decision and orientation of Gagauzia and the Gagauz people.

In the Sakha Republic, located within Russia’s Arctic zone, oil and gas production is increasing rapidly thanks to their exports to China. Sakha thus serves as a prime example demonstrating how Arctic oil and gas development significantly contributes to Russia’s federal budget. Among the Russian Arctic regions, Sakha was a region with high public service costs and substantial transfers（subsidies）from the federal budget. As oil and gas production increased, Sakha dramatically transformed from a major recipient of such transfers to a significant contributor to the federal budget, becoming a donor region. The authors analyzed Sakha Republic’s finances and its relationship with the federal budget in detail in Yokogawa and Tabata（2025）．

Meanwhile, in 2022, war broke out with Ukraine, and a wartime regime has persisted in Russia since then. While numerous studies address Russia’s deteriorating fiscal situation under this regime, little analysis exists on regional finances or federal-regional relations. Therefore, this paper examines changes in Sakha’s wartime finances from 2022 to 2024. This paper can be positioned as a case study on federal-regional fiscal relations in wartime Russia.

This paper analyzes tax revenues in the Sakha Republic, the relationship between the republic’s finances and federal finances, and the structure of the republic’s finances（revenues, balance, expenditures）．The results revealed the following points:

First, while tax revenues in Sakha increased alongside rising oil production, since 2022, payments to the federal budget have grown at a faster rate than the republic’s tax revenue growth. The main reason is that all oil extraction tax revenues are sent to the federal budget. This trend of increasing the proportion of regional tax revenues paid to the federal budget is observed not only in Sakha, but also across Russia as a whole.

Second, in contrast to the increase in payments to the federal budget, fiscal transfers from the federal budget to Sakha have been reduced. Consequently, Sakha’s role as a contributor to the federal budget―where payments exceed transfers received―has grown. Notably, the trend of reduced fiscal transfers from the federal budget has also been observed across Russia since 2022.

Third, despite the decline in tax revenues and fiscal transfers, the fiscal balances of regions, including Sakha, have remained relatively balanced without extreme deterioration. Regional finances in Russia during wartime are in a state of “shrinking equilibrium.”

Fourth, in Sakha, while the overall scale of expenditures is being restrained, defense-related spending has increased sharply since 2022, although its share is still small. Conversely, other expenditures related to the regional economy and residents’ livelihoods, such as expenditures on social policy, regional economy, and education, tend to be cut back.

Russia is currently raising corporate and personal income taxes. It is highly likely that the burden on citizens will increase, and public services will shrink in the future, meaning citizens will likely bear the brunt of the war even more.