Analysis

This listing contains all the analytical materials posted on the Russia Matters website. These include: RM Exclusives, commissioned by Russia Matters exclusively for this website; Recommended Reads, deemed particularly noteworthy by our editorial team; Partner Posts, originally published by our partners elsewhere; and Future Policy Leaders, pieces by promising young scholars and policy thinkers. Content can be filtered by genre and subject-specific criteria and is updated often. Gradually we will be adding older Recommended Reads and Partner Posts dating back as far as 2011.
explainer

The Collapsing Russian Defense Budget and Other Fairy Tales

Michael Kofman May 22, 2018 RM Exclusives
Recent reports claiming Russia slashed defense spending by 20 percent from 2016 to 2017 are wrong, the author argues. They stem from a government decision to pay down old debt, not actual cuts to spending.
report

Measuring National Power: Is Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Decline?

Simon Saradzhyan and Nabi Abdullaev May 04, 2018 RM Exclusives
Russia’s standing in the world—both real and perceived—has a profound impact on U.S. security and policies, as well as on Moscow's actions. This report offers a unique quantitative stocktaking of Russia’s national power.
multimedia

Video: What's Next for US-Russia Relations?

Kennan Institute April 05, 2018 Partner Posts
With the recent expulsion of U.S., European and Russia diplomats, the crisis in U.S.-Russian relations continues to escalate. Is there any sign of a thaw in the relationship in the near future?
multimedia

Video: Six More Years of Putin?

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) March 14, 2018 Partner Posts
In the days before Russia's presidential election, several experts sat down to unpack Russian attitudes, Russian politics and Russian interests regarding the vote and what it might mean for the U.S.
report

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard

Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton December 12, 2017 Recommended Reads
Newly declassified documents lend credence to claims that Western leaders repeatedly reassured their Soviet counterparts in the early 1990s that NATO would not budge "one inch eastward."
report

Entanglement: Chinese and Russian Perspectives on Non-nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Risks

James M. Acton, Alexey Arbatov, Vladimir Dvorkin, Petr Topychkanov, Tong Zhao and Li Bin November 08, 2017 Recommended Reads
A new report offers Russian, Chinese and U.S. assessments of the growing risk of military conflicts going nuclear.
multimedia

How US Policy Contributed to the Rise of President Vladimir Putin

Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey October 26, 2017 Partner Posts
In this talk, veteran journalist Vladimir Pozner argues that the U.S.-Russia relationship is as bad now as it was during the height of the Cold War, if not worse.
explainer

25 Years of Nuclear Security Cooperation by the US, Russia and Other Newly Independent States: A Timeline

Mariana Budjeryn, Simon Saradzhyan and William Tobey June 16, 2017 RM Exclusives
At a time when the U.S. and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union still saw each other as mortal enemies, they found the courage, creativity and capacity for trust to work together in the name of preventing nuclear catastrophe.
report

Lessons from Russia's Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine

Michael Kofman, Katya Migacheva, Brian Nichiporuk, Andrew Radin, Olesya Tkacheva and Jenny Oberholtzer May 01, 2017 Recommended Reads
Russia's military operation in 2014 to annex Crimea was a decisive and competent use of military force, while its campaign in the eastern part of Ukraine was ineffectually implemented but achieved its aim: political fragmentation of the country.
explainer

Russian Defense Spending: Tricky Math

Olga Oliker April 26, 2017 RM Exclusives
With Russia flexing its military muscle, analysts are increasingly interested in how much Moscow is spending on weapons. This explainer lays out the factors that make those numbers hard to crunch.
report

Russia's Military: Assessment, Strategy and Threat

Alexander Golts and Michael Kofman June 24, 2016 Partner Posts
A report providing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the Russian armed forces in the context of Russia’s reemergence on the geopolitical stage.
column

Why Arming Kiev is a Really, Really Bad Idea

Stephen M. Walt February 09, 2015
Arming Ukraine will simply intensify the conflict and add to the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
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