What explains the variation between and within Europe's political parties over how to respond to Russia's international aggression and domestic illiberalism? We examine this question using a unique dataset of votes on 1140 resolutions and amendments that explicitly target Russia in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) between 2007-2021. We argue that Putin's portrayal of Russia as a defender of traditional family values against liberal egalitarianism, especially against LGBT rights, contributes to divisions between and within Europe's parties. Consistent with this argument, we find that women and parliamentarians who express support for LGBT rights have become less likely to support Russia compared to other members of their national parties. However, this applies mostly to female MPs within culturally liberal parties and only becomes apparent after Putin's culturally conservative turn. In addition, parties with more women in leadership become less likely to support Russia. We identify these effects using national party fixed effects and by matching on observables. We discuss the implications for understanding European responses to Russia as well as the literature on gender, foreign policy, and legislative behavior.

Under what conditions do individuals withdraw support from dominant parties in nondemocratic regimes? Employing an original panel survey, we measure the same individuals’ support for Russia’s dominant party first at the peak of its dominance in 2008 and again shortly after it suffered a cascading defection of regime supporters in 2011–2. This allows us uniquely to explore the microfoundations of theories of regime defection cascades, generally supporting the argument that they involve complex “informational” as well as “reputational” processes. Accordingly, we find that early and eager movers in such a cascade tend to come from less socially vulnerable segments of the population, to have less need to rely on other people for interpreting events, to believe the regime has lower levels of popular support, and to come from more heterogeneous communities. We find little role for mass media (including social media) or democratizing zeal in driving Russia’s 2011–2 regime defection cascade.The u variables are from the 2007-2008 survey and the v variables from the 2001-2012 survey. The file I’m sending you is an additive merger, i.e., it includes all cases and all variables from the two variables, merged by case (respondent). The panel is embedded in the larger data set, i.e., respondents who were interviewed both times. Other respondents were either interviewed in the first survey and not re-interviewed in the second, or alternatively not interviewed the first time but interviewed in the second survey.