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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Mixed Messages on Trump’s Missile Defense Review

Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen January 17, 2019 Recommended Reads
Despite the document’s assertion that “Missile Defenses are Stabilizing,” the Missile Defense Review promotes a posture that is anything but.
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Gangster Geopolitics: The Kremlin’s Use of Criminals as Assets Abroad

Mark Galeotti January 17, 2019 RM Exclusives
Since the worsening of relations with the West in 2014, the Kremlin has increasingly adopted a “mobilization state” approach, turning to any available foreign-policy levers. Gangsters are no exception.
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With Russia and the US, Nuclear Risks Never Go Out of Vogue

Jon B. Wolfsthal November 08, 2018 RM Exclusives
Thirty-five years after Able Archer, the lack of sustained, high-level engagement with Russia risks once again putting America and its allies at unnecessary risk of a nuclear conflict no one wants or even expects.
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NATO’s Trident Juncture Exercise as a Deterrence Signal to Russia

Dmitry Gorenburg November 01, 2018 RM Exclusives
The military lessons for the exercise’s participants promise to be significant, while the immediate political impact will be minor. Russia’s main worry? A permanent U.S. troop deployment in eastern Europe.
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Putin Deepens Confusion About Russian Nuclear Policy

Abigail Stowe-Thurston, Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen October 25, 2018 RM Exclusives
Rather than strengthening deterrence, ambiguity surrounding U.S. and Russian nuclear thresholds is causing both sides to make dangerous assumptions about one another’s intentions.
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Vostok-2018: Russia and China Signal Growing Military Cooperation

Michael Kofman September 10, 2018 RM Exclusives
This year’s strategic military exercise demonstrates both that Russia is still a power in Asia and that it will work with China to offset threats from Washington.
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How to Interfere in a Foreign Election

Stephen Kinzer August 19, 2018 Recommended Reads
Despite Yeltsin's unpopularity, Washington saw him as easy to control, and so, U.S. resources were thrown behind a Russian presidential candidate.
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The August War, Ten Years On: A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgian War

Michael Kofman August 17, 2018 Recommended Reads
In 2008, Moscow demonstrated the will and ability to actively contest the U.S. vision for European security, veto NATO expansion in its neighborhood and challenge Washington’s design for a normative international order where small states can determine their own affairs independent of the interests of great powers.
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The Helsinki Summit: A Good Idea Turns Bad

George Beebe July 19, 2018 Recommended Reads
Expectations for the Helsinki summit were low, but the U.S. and Russia still managed to sail their listing bilateral ship directly into the rocks of the Russian cyber-meddling controversy.
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Musings … ‘Russiagate’ Hysteria

Jack Matlock June 02, 2018 Recommended Reads
Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has become increasingly accepted as "fact" by both the media and Congress. This is not the most important aspect of that election.
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'Blame Russia' Is Getting Old

Benjamin Haddad March 14, 2018 Recommended Reads
Although voters worldwide have been giving voice to their dissatisfaction with political elites, those elites keep trying to explain away the explosion of populism as a product of Russian interference.
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From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Delusion (and Back?)

Simon Saradzhyan March 12, 2018 Recommended Reads
If U.S. and Russian decision-makers do not just profess but also genuinely believe in the continuing decline and pending collapse of each other’s countries, then chances are they will act more assertively against each other.
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