Guests: Pavel Baev, a senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo. He writes about contemporary Russia for the Eurasian Daily Monitor. His most recent article is Putin’s Disappearing Act May Be Sign of a Leadership Crisis. Pietro Shakarian, graduate student at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan. He has written widely on Russia and the former Soviet space and maintains his own blog Reconsidering Russia and the Former Soviet Union. He is the editor of The Red Flag at Ararat by Aghavnie Yeghenian and two forthcoming republications Transcaucasia (1854) by Baron August von Haxthausen and Journey to Ararat (1846) by Friedrich Parrot.