Professor Irina Busygina is a Visiting Scholar and independent researcher at Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She worked as Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science and International Relations (Higher School of Economics at Saint Petersburg, Russia) and headed the Center for Comparative Governance Studies. Her research interests include comparative federalism and decentralization, Russian domestic and foreign policy, Russia-EU relations. Her latest publications include “Center-regional relations in Russia”. In: Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society. Ed. by Graeme Gill. UK: Routledge, 2023; “Ready to Protest? Explaining Protest Potential in Russian Regional Capitals.” Regional and Federal Studies published online January 2023; “Pandemic Decentralization: COVID-19 and Principal–Agent Relations in Russia.” Problems of Post-Communism, Published online: 14 Sep 2022; “Russia, Post-Soviet Integration, and the EAEU: The Balance between Domination and Cooperation”, Problems of Post-Communism, 2021. Published online September 1; Russia-EU Relations and the Common Neighbourhood: Coercion Versus Authority. UK: Routledge, 2018.