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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January 19, 2024
Profs. Popova & Shevel Take Part in Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study Post-Doc Workshop, "Regional Dimension of Ukraine's Resilience and Post-War Reconstruction"

January 19th, 2024 The Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute. (Source: Facebook) This workshop was spearheaded by Postdoctoral Researcher at Universität Bremen, and current Associate Junior Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study (HWS-IAS) in Delmenhorst, Germany, Dr. Ekaterina Paustyan. For more information on Dr. Paustyan, click here. "Regional resilience has become a key factor underpinning Ukraine’s survival […]

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December 25, 2023
CBC News "The National" Feature: "Navalny Has Been Found"

Alexei Navalny, the jailed critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been found at a penal colony in Siberia normally reserved for the most serious offenders. Navalny had been missing for several weeks. Professor Popova provides a brief expert's perspective on how the West mistakenly believes that a replacement for Putin is near.

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December 7, 2023
"Authors Oxana Shevel and Maria Popova Write the History of Ukraine-Russia Relations"

“Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States” by Maria Popova, Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, and Oxana Shevel, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, is the first study to attempt an analysis of both sides of the conflict in one volume. In six chapters and just under 300 pages, Popova and Shevel argue that the full-scale war is the result of “an escalatory cycle between Russian imperialism and Ukraine’s commitment to its independent statehood that started in the wake of the USSR’s dissolution in December 1991.”

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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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