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.
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Is Russia's Economy Doomed to Collapse?

Sergey Aleksashenko July 01, 2016 Recommended Reads
While the primitive structure of the Russian economy and Putin’s pro-market economic doctrine will prevent economic chaos, the Russian economy remains in need of significant political reforms in order to be competitive and attractive in the long run.
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Twilight of the Petrostate

Petr Aven, Vladimir Nazarov, Samvel Lazaryan May 17, 2016 Recommended Reads
Only those countries that embrace modernization and carry it further than they did in the previous oil downcycle can hope not be relegated to a historical footnote. Now is the time for petrostates to awaken from their long oil dream and choose between the first and the third worlds.
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Russia’s Master Plan to Seize the Arctic

Vladislav Inozemtsev May 02, 2016 Recommended Reads
For now, the Northern Sea Route remains a bluff, like, in general, all of Russia’s plans to develop the Arctic.
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Can the US-Russia Plutonium Disposition Agreement Be Saved?

Pavel Podvig April 28, 2016
Scrapping the U.S.-Russian deal to dispose of weapon-grade plutonium would mean a long-term setback for nuclear nonproliferation efforts. But current tensions make a compromise ever more elusive.
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Explaining Russia’s New Normal

Chris Weafer September 11, 2015 Recommended Reads
More than just maturation or growth, "new normal" represents fundamental change in how an economy is managed, and it has practical implications for how businesses and investors look at opportunities and risk in Russia's changing economy.
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Russia and the Menace of Unreality

Peter Pomerantsev September 09, 2014 Recommended Reads
Russian state information apparatuses achieve their goals not by constructing a widely accepted version of the "truth", but instead by disrupting Western narratives at home and abroad.
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When All You Have Is a Hammer: Strategic Nuclear Forces and the Ukraine Crisis

Andrew Szarejko and Kingston Reif May 09, 2014
While an American response is needed to Russian aggression in Ukraine, it should not include the expansion or acceleration of nuclear facilities in Central and Eastern Europe.
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A Chinese Marshall Plan for Central Asia?

Temuri Yakobashvili October 16, 2013 Recommended Reads
Chinese economic and development policy in Central Asia is reminiscent of the U.S. Marshall Plan, possibly edging out Russia as the dominant foreign influence in the region.
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MAD About You: It's Time to Turn Mutually Assured Destruction Into Mutually Assured Stability

Ellen Tauscher and Igor Ivanov June 14, 2013 Recommended Reads
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin must agree to move away from traditional doctrines of nuclear policy.
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Time to Change America's Atomic Arsenal

Tom Nichols March 14, 2013 Recommended Reads
The U.S. should adopt a minimum deterrence policy by substantially reducing its nuclear arsenal. Modern nations fear any use of nuclear weapons, so giant stockpiles are "overkill."
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Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia

Yegor Gaidar November 02, 2007 Recommended Reads
Soviet nostalgia is misplaced, and could lead Russian authorities down a path of economic disaster if current policy does not change.
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