The Dekleptocracy Project
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Field notes from the research desk.

Short essays on what we are seeing in Russia's supply chains, the firms still selling to Moscow, and the soft underbellies a patient analyst can find without leaving a desk.

The Quiet Battle Against Russia's Shadow Fleet
The Dekleptocracy Project

The Quiet Battle Against Russia's Shadow Fleet

Our research analyst Mitchell Polman, writing at CEPA, on the flag-by-flag campaign forcing Russia's tankers under the price cap.

Ukraine's strikes on tankers make headlines. The quieter campaign is diplomatic — stripping flags of convenience from the shadow fleet so every sanctioned tanker sails under Russian colors, inside the price cap. DKP's Mitchell Polman maps it at CEPA's Europe's Edge.

RussiaShadow FleetSanctionsFlags of Convenience
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Beware Russia's Fake Parties
The Dekleptocracy Project

Beware Russia's Fake Parties

Yabloko is banned. The “opposition” the Kremlin lets you see is the opposition the Kremlin built.

Russia's high court just banned the only anti-war party. The more revealing story is the one polling second: New People, a party built to capture dissent, dress up election commissions, and dupe foreigners. Here is how to spot the species.

RussiaElectionsFake PartiesInfluence Operations
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Russia can't make the binder its rocket fuel needs
The Dekleptocracy Project

Russia can't make the binder its rocket fuel needs

Russian solid rocket fuel depends on cellulose acetate that Russia cannot produce. The contracts insist on French-origin material from a plant that shut down in 2020.

The Perm Powder Plant needs imported cellulose acetate to bind its solid rocket fuel, and its contracts specify French material from a Cerdia plant that closed in 2020. The shipments came from Kingsport, Tennessee instead, until they stopped in July 2022 and a Chinese supplier took over.

RussiaChemicalsMissilesSupply Chain
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Russian-Chinese AI Chip Production Cooperation
The Dekleptocracy Project

Russian-Chinese AI Chip Production Cooperation

Baikal's new AI chips won't catch NVIDIA. What the announcement really reveals is a Russian bet on Chinese fabs.

Russia's Baikal Electronics says it will take on NVIDIA in the AI-accelerator market. It can't. But the chips it is promising would be made in China, subsidizing Chinese AI chipmaking — and a six-year-old chip design is still good enough to pilot a suicide drone.

RussiaChinaSemiconductorsDrones
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Why Putin moved Patrushev to a body almost no one has heard of
The Dekleptocracy Project

Why Putin moved Patrushev to a body almost no one has heard of

Russia's biggest long-term vulnerability isn't tanks or microchips. It's ships.

Patrushev wasn't sidelined. He was reassigned to the problem the Kremlin now treats as existential — a shipbuilding industry that cannot supply its own oil-export fleet.

RussiaShadow FleetSanctionsShipbuilding
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