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 Origins and Efficacy of the Price Cap on Russian Oil

Benjamin H. Harris September 14, 2023 RM Exclusives
The price cap on Russian oil is achieving its goals of lowering Russian revenue while preserving global supply.
policy brief

Advancing in Adversity: Ukraine’s Battlefield Technologies and Lessons for the U.S.

Grace Jones, Janet Egan and Eric Rosenbach July 31, 2023 Partner Posts
Ukraine’s use of modified commercial aerial and naval drones, new satellite and artificial intelligence capabilities and social media has given Ukraine an edge which has implications for current and future conflicts.
policy brief

How Have Sanctions Impacted Russia?

Maria Demertzis, Benjamin Hilgenstock, Ben McWilliams, Elina Ribakova and Simone Tagliapietra October 26, 2022 Recommended Reads
This paper assesses both the immediate economic impact and the likely longer-term impact of sanctions on the Russian economy.
podcast

What the Experts Got Wrong (and Right) About Russian Military Power

Christopher Dougherty, Gian Gentile, Michael Kofman, Dara Massicot and Ryan Evans May 30, 2022 Recommended Reads
It is now widely understood that many observers, in advance of this war, over-estimated Russian military performance and underestimated Ukrainian military performance.
article

Russia's Discouraging Demographics Shouldn't Change US Approach

Alexandra Vacroux December 21, 2021 RM Exclusives
The possibility that Russia might have fewer people and a smaller economy will not negate the fact that it is a nuclear superpower with unfriendly intent. What Russia becomes is less important than what Russia is willing to do.
article

US-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue: Purpose, Progress, Challenges and Opportunities

Leonor Tomero December 15, 2021 RM Exclusives
A serious and good-faith dialogue with Russia about the risks to strategic stability is necessary to understand the changing nature of those risks and the direction new arms races may take and to reduce the risk of unintended escalation.
podcast

Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France and the United States

PONARS Eurasia September 01, 2021 Partner Posts
Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France and the United States.
article

The HMS Defender Incident: What Happened and What Are the Political Ramifications?

Dmitry Gorenburg July 01, 2021 RM Exclusives
Inadvertent escalation poses the greatest risk of a political confrontation between Russia and NATO resulting in armed conflict, and as long as one or both sides believe that it is beneficial to use their military forces to make political points, we should expect more incidents of this type to take place.
article

Potential Fruits of the Biden-Putin Summit

Simon Saradzhyan June 04, 2021 RM Exclusives
At the Putin-Biden summit, both sides will likely be looking for low-hanging fruits—issues they can easily agree upon that stand to advance U.S. and Russian interests with minimal concessions. In our latest exclusive, Simon Saradzhyan considers low-hanging fruits, like scientific cooperation, and more ambitious topics, such as rules of the road in the cyber domain.
multimedia

Navalny and Next: Possibilities, Prognosis and Perceptions in Russia

Sean's Russia Blog March 27, 2021 Partner Posts
Sean Guillory moderates a roundtable discussion with Ilya Budraitskis, Svetlana Erpyleva, and Greg Yudin on Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition and the prospects of political pluralism in Russian society.
article

Five Years After Russia Declared Victory in Syria: What Has Been Won?

Thomas Schaffner March 18, 2021 RM Exclusives
Has the intervention paid off or has Obama’s 2015 prediction that the operation would end in a “quagmire” for Russia come true? An assessment of some key costs and benefits generated by Russia’s intervention in Syria.
column

We Need to Have a Talk About Alexei Navalny

Terrell Jermaine Starr March 01, 2021 Recommended Reads
If Navalny is serious about challenging the current regime, Russians—and the outside world—have a right to know precisely whom we’re dealing with.
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