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.
report

A Roadmap for US-Russia Relations

Edited by Andrey Kortunov and Olga Oliker August 01, 2017 Partner Posts
This report by the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program and the Russian International Affairs Council looks at the troubled state of the U.S.-Russia relationship and recommends areas of potential cooperation.
article

The US Sanctions Bill Is a Win for Russia

Angela Stent July 28, 2017 Recommended Reads
The EU may rethink its own sanctions regime if the U.S. sanctions bill moves forward. This, of course, would be good news for the Kremlin.
article

To Punish Putin, Economic Sanctions Are Unlikely to Do the Trick

Eduardo Porter July 25, 2017 Recommended Reads
Ambitious sanctions aimed at powerful countries with autocratic governments have a poor track record of success.
article

Why Forecasts of a Chinese Takeover of the Russian Far East Are Just Dramatic Myth

Alexander Gabuev and Maria Repnikova July 14, 2017 Recommended Reads
Reports of mounting tensions between Moscow and Beijing are not rooted in ground realities but on faulty assumptions about China-Russia relations.
article

How the Sanctions Are Helping Putin

Andrey Movchan March 28, 2017 Recommended Reads
Tougher sanctions could have brought Russia down in months. Instead, Putin has gained leverage in domestic politics and Russian oligarchs have founded new monopolies.
issue brief

The Soviet Collapse and Its Lessons for Modern Russia: Gaidar Revisited

Simon Saradzhyan December 22, 2016 RM Exclusives
Twenty-five years ago the USSR fell apart. One of Soviet Russia’s first market reformers analyzed why. His findings point to big challenges ahead for today’s Russia.
article

Russia’s False Dawn

Robert Kahn July 18, 2016 Recommended Reads
While there has been a new sense of optimism about the Russian economy, poor structural polices and deficit constraints suggest that it may have a limited capacity to respond to future shocks.
white paper

The Role of Sanctions in US-Russian Relations

Richard Nephew and Andrew S. Weiss July 11, 2016 Recommended Reads
Sanctions are a critical tool in persuading Russia to change its Ukraine policy. But the West’s overreliance on them risks undercutting their long-term effectiveness.
article

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.
report

Russia's Medium-Term Economic Prospects

Keith Crane, Shanthi Nataraj, Patrick B. Johnston and Gursel Rafig oglu Aliyev June 22, 2016 Partner Posts
Without major policy changes, the Russian economy will grow slowly in the medium term, even if world market prices for oil rebound sharply by the end of the decade. However, there is much that the Russian government could do internally to accelerate growth.
article

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.
article

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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