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.
debate

Debate: Is US Support for Ukraine Costing ‘Peanuts’ or Too Much?

Yana Demeshko March 30, 2023 RM Exclusives
Western policymakers are asking themselves whether the billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv have been well spent. Two analysts offer opposing assessments in a debate co-hosted by Russia Matters.
article

What’s Missing from Mearsheimer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War

Joe Cirincione July 29, 2022 RM Exclusives
To make the facts fit his assessment, he must disregard Russia’s own pronouncements, its brutality and the security imperatives of its neighbors.
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

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.
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.
debate

The Future of Russia

Thomas Graham, George Beebe, Steven Pifer and Michael McFaul March 01, 2021 Recommended Reads
In this four-part debate, Thomas Graham, George Beebe, Steven Pifer and Michael McFaul discuss the future of Russia and drivers of possible change.
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.
column

The Curious Case of ‘Russian Lives Matter’

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon July 11, 2020 Recommended Reads
In Moscow, the Kremlin attacks U.S. racism while the liberal opposition ignores it, or worse.
article

Russia and Collective Security: Why CSTO Is No Match for Warsaw Pact

Dmitry Gorenburg May 27, 2020 RM Exclusives
The CSTO is too organizationally weak and insufficiently integrated to serve as a capability multiplier for its members, and the weakness of other member states' military forces make them of limited value to Russia as military allies.
article

Russian Power Under Putin: Up and Down and Flatline

Andrew Kuchins August 22, 2018 RM Exclusives
While Moscow’s military power has grown considerably, Putin has not created the conditions crucial for sustained economic growth and the development of new commercial technologies.
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.
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