Russia Analytical Report, Feb. 22-March 1, 2021
This Week’s Highlights
- Investing military might with self-righteous moralism has not only produced one policy failure after another, but it has also tarnished the very ideals conscripted into power politics, argues Stephen Wertheim of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Biden should bring home many of the troops scattered across the globe and thereby disentangle the United States from regional disputes, Wertheim writes. From there, Biden should wind down the war on terror, build peace with North Korea and tell the Pentagon that ''great power competition'' will not be the organizing principle of relations with China and Russia.
- Washington cannot return to a pre-October 2019 position of retaining control over the entirety of Syria’s northeast; therefore, the United States must lock Moscow into some sort of agreement that limits its options and binds Russia into a process that Washington can help guide, writes Aaron Stein, director of research at FPRI. Negotiating with Moscow is Washington’s best option, he argues.
- Trying to kill the Nord Stream 2 project when it is 90 percent complete risks rupturing relations with Europe's most powerful nation, which must be at the center of any democratic alliance to combat autocracy, argues The Washington Post’s editorial board. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reportedly looking for ways to mitigate the pipeline problem, perhaps through guarantees to Ukraine.
- The challenge from a resurgent Russia can be addressed through a combination of force and inducement, writes Dimitri Simes of the Center for the National Interest. Inducement alone will not be enough, but force and coercion without inducement and dialogue are unlikely to work either, according to Simes, and they have the potential to bring about the end of history, not in a triumphalist fashion, but rather in the form of the end of human civilization.
- America’s ability to deter and contain a revisionist Kremlin will be more effective and less expensive if Washington does it together with allies, writes John Herbst, director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. The most important task here is to strengthen NATO’s presence in its southeast quadrant. Greater cooperation with the EU is also essential to ensure a more effective sanctions policy. These measures, Herbst writes, are not meant as a substitute for dialogue with the Kremlin that would advance America’s interests.
- The new Biden administration would do well to recognize the increasingly diminishing returns to each new sanctions action against Russia and also recognize that sanctions have affected the internal political economy of Russia in unforeseen ways not necessarily favorable to U.S. foreign policy, writes Daniel P. Ahn, former chief economist at the U.S. State Department. Instead of simply adding to the quantity of sanctions, Ahn writes, the Biden administration should focus on improving their quality by considering their potential consequences. A sanctions target would likely see significant economic harm only if it is dependent upon key Western inputs for which substitutes are difficult to find, according to Ahn.
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security:
- No significant developments.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- No significant developments.
Iran and its nuclear program:
- No significant developments.
Great Power rivalry/New Cold War/saber rattling:
“America Is Not ‘Back.’ And Americans Should Not Want It to Be,” Stephen Wertheim, New York Times, 02.24.21. The author, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:
- “Unless President Biden challenges the fundamental premises of U.S. foreign policy, he will repeat the mistakes of his predecessors, but in a more competitive world.”
- “Investing military might with self-righteous moralism has not only produced one policy failure after another, it has also tarnished the very ideals conscripted into power politics. In crusading to spread American-style freedom, presidents have put the credibility of liberal democracy on the line. When their campaigns failed abroad, a segment of Americans turned to strongman rule at home. Possibly Mr. Trump, with his bottomless performances of cruelty, could become president only after previous leaders treated fundamental issues of power and justice with superficial moralizing and left others to pay the price.”
- “After Mr. Trump, Americans must not be content for their country to do bad things for better reasons. America is not ‘'back,’' and we should not want it to be. President Biden should break firmly with the pre-Trump status quo. He has wisely ordered an audit of America's military footprint, and he should use it to bring home many of the roughly 200,000 troops scattered across the globe and thereby disentangle the United States from regional disputes. In May, he can become the president who ends America's war in Afghanistan, honoring the United States' agreement to withdraw. From there, he should wind down the war on terror, build peace with North Korea rather than naïvely trying to denuclearize it and tell the Pentagon that 'great power competition' will not be the organizing principle of relations with China and Russia.”
- “Only then can he make good on his commitment to orchestrate cooperation against the world's foremost threats, such as pandemic disease and climate change, and invest in the American people where they live and work. The task for Mr. Biden, and a new generation, is not to restore American leadership of the world but rather to lead America to a new place in the world.”
“The end of Cold War thinking,” Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post, 02.26.21. The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:
- “On Feb. 22, 1946, a junior Foreign Service officer sitting in the American Embassy in Moscow sent home a dispatch. George Kennan, the U.S. diplomat, surely did not know then that his 8,000-word ‘Long Telegram’ … would 75 years later still be seen as perhaps the foundational text of the Cold War.”
- “Last month, the Atlantic Council published what it dubbed the ‘Longer Telegram,’ a treatise attributed to an anonymous former senior official, which called for a comprehensive strategy to counter China … The U.S. goal, the report concludes, should be a scenario where the United States and its close allies ‘continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power’ by the middle of this century. Moreover, hard-line Xi would be ‘replaced by a more moderate party leadership’ and there would be signs that the Chinese public was ready for a more liberalized political system.”
- “China represents ‘a type of strategic challenge that the U.S. has never faced before, a peer competitor that competes across all the dimensions of power,’ said Thomas Graham, a former White House adviser on Russian affairs … ‘The world is no longer bipolar,’ Graham told Today's WorldView … ‘And alternatives to American hegemony—or leadership, as Biden would have it—are not obviously worse.’”
- “‘A durable cohabitation between the United States and China will require each to accept the reality of the other's resilience,’ wrote Ali Wyne, a senior analyst of the Eurasia Group … ‘The Biden administration, then, has a compelling opportunity to advance a confident, forward-looking vision of America's role in the world—one in which strategic competition with China is an important element, but not the overarching determinant.’”
“Mr. Biden's crucial alliance,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 02.24.21. The news outlet’s editorial board writes:
- “The ‘galvanizing mission’ of the democracies, he [Biden] argued [in an address to the Munich Security Conference], must be to prevail in this struggle with Russia, China and other dictatorships. That will require a close partnership. …
- “As Mr. Biden tacitly recognized, constructing the transatlantic democratic coalition may not be easy. The European Union recently concluded a major trade deal with China despite hints from the incoming Biden administration that it hold off. France is among several governments pushing for detente … with the regime of Vladimir Putin. … [M]any Europeans clearly have doubts about whether Mr. Trump's ‘America First’ policies are gone for good.”
- “In the end, Mr. Putin and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping may advance Mr. Biden's cause. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went out of his way to rebuff and humiliate the European Union's foreign policy chief when the E.U. official visited Moscow this month. And intense criticism of the E.U.-China deal … might have prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel's declaration in Munich that ‘as transatlantic partners and democracies, we must do something to counter’ China's ‘global clout.’”
- “For now, the Biden administration deserves credit for matching its rhetoric with some adept opening moves with the Europeans. … Last week, the administration dropped the Trump administration's self-defeating attempt to unilaterally force the restoration of U.N. sanctions on Iran.”
- “The State Department also quietly passed last week on applying sanctions to additional companies building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline … [T]rying to kill the project when it is 90 percent complete risks rupturing relations with Europe's most powerful nation … Mr. Blinken is reportedly looking for ways to mitigate the pipeline problem, perhaps through guarantees to Ukraine. That is an approach that rightly keeps the new administration focused on the bigger challenge Mr. Biden described.”
NATO-Russia relations:
- No significant developments.
Missile defense:
- No significant developments.
Nuclear arms control:
“Enough Already: No New ICBMs,” Daryl G. Kimball , Arms Control Today, March 2021. The author, executive director of the Arms Control Association, writes:
- “President Joe Biden entered office with a deep knowledge of the dangers of nuclear weapons and the arms race. During the campaign, he said the United States ‘does not need new nuclear weapons’ and ‘will work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our reliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons.’”
- “Biden can start by directing his team to put on hold the Pentagon’s scheme to develop, test and deploy beginning in 2029 a new fleet of 400 land-based, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). … The new weapon—the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD)—is just one part of the staggeringly expensive plan left over from the Trump era to replace and upgrade the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal at a projected cost of upward of $1.5 trillion over the next quarter century.”
- “The U.S. Air Force wants you to believe that ICBMs are needed to act as a warhead ‘sponge’ that requires Russia to expend a large portion of its nuclear inventory in a potential all-out war scenario. This is important, the argument goes, because it would give the United States a numerical advantage in second-strike strategic forces.”
- “Such arguments do not hold up. Why would Russia or China deliberately launch a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear first strike against U.S. ICBM fields if, as is the case, this would assure their own annihilation? With or without ICBMs, the United States could still launch a devastating nuclear retaliatory strike.”
- “The reality is that United States can deter and, if necessary, respond to nuclear attack without the 400 nuclear warheads atop its 400 ICBMs. Today, the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal is at least one-third larger than necessary to deter a nuclear attack. Accordingly, Washington can reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads from roughly 1,400 today to 1,000 or fewer, as validated by a 2013 Pentagon review, and challenge Russia to do the same.”
Counter-terrorism:
- No significant developments.
Conflict in Syria:
“Talking to Russia: A Plan for Syria,” Aaron Stein, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), 02.24.21. The author, director of research at FPRI, writes:
- “Washington cannot return to a pre-October 2019 position of retaining control over the entirety of Syria’s northeast. Therefore, the United States must lock Moscow into some sort of agreement that limits its options and binds Russia into a process that Washington can help guide. … This agreement would … serve as a starting point to reach agreement on a post-American Syria, where Washington is certainly going to retain counter-terrorism interests, but may explore pursuing those with its presence based in Iraq.”
- “This process will, without question, require some U.S. trade-offs. … At the end of this process, Washington will have formalized two areas where it would overfly with unmanned aircraft to hunt for extremists, undercut a key point of Russian leverage with the SDF through the promotion of a formal ceasefire with the regime and anchor U.S. efforts in Syria to its presence in Iraq.”
- “The broader risks, of course, are that the Russians will not be satisfied with this agreement and push for more or that the regime will eventually grow tired of talks with the SDF and threaten to invade its territory. In this case, however, Washington can free ride on the back of the regime’s overarching weakness and its preoccupation with Idlib … [W]hile Idlib remains a point of contention between Ankara and Moscow and between the regime and the opposition, the SDF has more leverage to extract concessions that would benefit its security in the longer term.”
- “Negotiating with Moscow is Washington’s best option. Russia can enforce bilateral agreements, and, consequently, any such outcome further commits Russian forces to a conflict that it will have to manage for the foreseeable future. Russian forces, therefore, will remain in Syria, spending finite resources in ways that are less threatening to the United States than if they were used elsewhere in Europe or in the Mediterranean basin. … It is not perfect, but such action could enable broader U.S. interests without sacrificing everything achieved during the war against the Islamic State.”
“Having Won Syria’s War, al-Assad Is Mired in Economic Woes,” Hwaida Saad and Ben Hubbard, New York Times, 02.23.21. The authors, Beirut bureau chief for the news outlet and a reporter, write:
- “As the 10-year anniversary of Syria’s civil war looms, Mr. al-Assad’s most immediate threats are not the rebel factions and foreign powers that still control large swaths of the country. Instead, it is the crushing economic crisis that has hobbled the reconstruction of destroyed cities, impoverished the population and left a growing number of Syrians struggling to get enough food.”
- “Syria’s economy is worse than at any time since the war began in 2011. This month, the Syrian pound reached an all-time low against the dollar on the black market, decimating the value of salaries and rocketing up the cost of imports. Food prices have more than doubled in the last year. The World Food Program warned this month that 60 percent of Syrians, or 12.4 million people, were at risk of going hungry, the highest number ever recorded.”
- “Russia has continued to provide substantial military aid to Syria but limited humanitarian assistance. ‘The socio-economic situation in Syria today is extremely difficult,’ Alexander Efimov, the Russian ambassador to Syria, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti this month. But sending support was ‘very difficult,’ he said because Russia, too, was suffering from the pandemic and Western sanctions.”
“Don’t rely on Moscow to help with ‘reconciliation’ in Syria’s Daraa province,” Jomana Qaddour and Abdulrahman al-Masri, Atlantic Council, 02.23.21. The authors, a nonresident senior fellow and a nonresident fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs, write:
- “Daraa, Syria’s southern province, is an anomalous government-held territory. Unlike the regime’s other reconciliation deals struck in 2017-2018, Damascus and Russia agreed with rebel and local leaders to permit local control in exchange for opposition forces disbanding their forces, surrendering heavy weapons and permitting a limited return of state-provided services.”
- “Despite over 425 recorded violent incidents in Daraa since 2018, the deal loosely held. However, it began to crumble in the second half of 2020.”
- “The regime and Russia’s advances in Daraa are unsurprising. Unable to make rapid military advances in northwest or northeast Syria, Russia is swiftly attempting to progress its two overall goals in the country: assisting the Bashar al-Assad regime in reasserting control over all of Syria while claiming to international audiences—particularly Israel and Jordan—that Moscow can still guarantee their security interests. Both Syrians and the international community must not fall for this. Any deal Russia strikes in Syria’s south will be volatile and temporary, given that resolving underlying conditions are impossible under the regime and Russia’s direction.”
- “Furthermore, the regime’s continued harassment, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and assassinations will maintain the preconditions for a future eruption. Syria’s overall deteriorating living conditions, combined with complications specific to Daraa, leave open the possibility that the southern province could devolve into renewed clashes. Under these conditions, neither Jordan nor Israel—nor any other actor with serious security concerns at stake—should depend on Russia to permanently guarantee southern Syria’s relative quiet. If precedent is any indicator, Russia is both unwilling and unable to maintain these assurances indefinitely.”
Cyber security:
“Retracing Missteps and Searching for Answers After Russian Cyberattack,” David E. Sanger, New York Times, 02.23.21. The author, a White House and national security correspondent for the news outlet, writes:
- “With President Biden's aides struggling to find innovative ways to retaliate against Russia for the most sophisticated hacking of government and corporations in history, key senators and corporate executives warned on Tuesday [Feb. 23] that the 'scope and scale' of the operation were unclear, and that the attack might still be continuing.”
- “Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, told the Senate Intelligence Committee … 'Right now, the attacker'—which appears to be the SVR, one of Russia's main intelligence agencies—'is the only one who knows the entirety of what they did.'”
- “'It could have been exponentially worse,' [said] Sen. Mark Warner … In fact, it may prove to be worse. … Anne Neuberger, President Biden's new national security adviser for cyber and emerging threats, said the White House was preparing a comprehensive response because of 'the ability of this to become disruptive.' She was referring to the possibility that the same access that gave the Russians the ability to steal data could, in the next phase of an operation, enable them to alter or destroy it.”
- “Mr. Biden's aides are contemplating a range of responses … Those options, according to officials … included using cybertools to reveal or freeze assets secretly held by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, exposure of his links to oligarchs or technological moves to break through Russian censorship to help dissidents communicate to the Russian people at a moment of political protest.”
- “Mr. Biden's coming actions appear likely to include executive orders on improving the resiliency of government agencies and companies to attacks and proposals for mandatory disclosure of hackings. Many of the companies that lost data to the Russians have not admitted to it … But the subtext of much of the testimony was that Russia's intelligence services might have laced American networks with 'backdoor' access. And that possibility—just the fear of it—could constrain the kind of punishment that Mr. Biden metes out.”
Elections interference:
- No significant developments.
Energy exports from CIS:
“Germany Will Never Back Down on Its Russian Pipeline: If it looks like Berlin is colluding with Moscow, that’s because it is,” Jeremy Stern, Foreign Policy, 02.25.21. The author, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, writes:
- “What unites the White House and Senate is confidence that, somehow or other, the United States will eventually prevail, and Germany will back down [on Nord Stream II]. At this point, as one former National Security Council official recently put it, ‘It’s just a matter of who gets the credit.’”
- “That the German government views Nord Stream 2 as a matter of survival, that it is committed to completing it at all costs and that any conceivable ‘deal’ will likely involve the United States, not Germany, blinking first, does not seem to have occurred to many in Washington. But no amount of U.S. sanctions will convince Merkel to risk letting Putin turn off the spigots in an election year. No U.S. concessions on tariffs or NATO commitments will persuade her to undercut the profits and solvency of German industry. No amount of U.S.-EU solidarity will induce her to allow the impression of a veto over German economic sovereignty. She will not risk voter abandonment of her party, even if it means bequeathing a broken system to her successor. She has left Biden, and herself, no options.”
- “We should therefore expect Germany to stick to its guns, perhaps with token promises to Washington on China and military spending, and some cosmetic recompense for Ukraine. If and when the pipeline is completed, there will be cries of concern from Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, perhaps alluding to the return of Russo-German collusion, circa 1938. Whether that’s fair or accurate will be up for debate. Who is to blame, will not.”
“The Polar Bear Paradox,” Walter Russell Mead, The Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, 02.23.21. The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:
- “Paradoxically, as climate change assumes a more prominent place on the international agenda, climate activists will lose influence over climate policy. … Geopolitics and greed will get in the way. Greens see climate change as an existential threat to all humanity against which every country should unite. That is not how the world works. Countries inevitably see even the most urgent global problems through the lens of their own interests.”
- “Countries don't look at the climate problem with the same urgency or in the same way. … Russia likes to sell oil and gas, wants the Arctic to become a major shipping route, and … doesn't worry that Siberia will grow too warm. … Germany is locked into high-cost energy policies by domestic politics and the facts of geography.”
- “The U.S. is so rich in cheap oil and gas that climate policy is a heavy political lift … In New Delhi, no government can accept international agreements that slow India's economic rise. … Many Brazilians believe that the development of the Amazon basin is essential to their national future and won't accept international limits on their activities there.”
- “Westerners don't need to bribe Beijing into environmentalism with political or economic concessions. China has more to fear from climate change than any other great power. … Reducing China's dependence on imported fuel eases Beijing's fear that American sea power could cut it off from necessary resources in the event of a major crisis. China stands to benefit from a shift to electric cars and has invested heavily in solar panel and battery technology. … Yet this green zeal comes with ‘Chinese characteristics,’ to use Deng Xiaoping's phrase. China's booming solar-power industry is heavily coal-dependent and based in Xinjiang.”
“Will Anything Stop Putin’s Pet Project?” Chris Miller, New York Times, 02.25.21. The author, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, writes:
- “So why does Germany want the [Nord Stream 2] pipeline? Supporters in Berlin make two arguments. First, they say it will provide gas to replace coal and nuclear power, which Germany is phasing out. Second, they argue that buying gas from Russia will moderate the Kremlin’s foreign policy. Neither argument is especially compelling.”
- “It may simply be that Ms. Merkel—who this month again ruled out junking the project—has clung to her pipeline for so long that it is now impossible to give it up.”
- “That puts Berlin at odds with the United States, which has already slapped financial sanctions on companies helping to build Nord Stream 2, arguing that the pipeline rewards Russia and deepens Europe’s reliance on Russian gas. In large part because it has no effect on their constituents, Nord Stream 2 is a rare bipartisan issue among members of Congress. Imposing sanctions allows American legislators to sound tough on Mr. Putin at little cost.”
- “Underneath the heated assertions and veiled threats lies the mundane reality that Russia’s ability to use gas as a tool of political pressure is already much diminished—something the completion of Nord Stream 2 would do little to change. But canceling the project as punishment for Mr. Navalny’s treatment is unlikely to achieve much, either. He is clearly a threat the Kremlin wishes to vanquish, at some cost.”
- “The clamor over Nord Stream 2 shows, more than anything, a simple truth: When it comes to dealing with Russia, there are very few good options.”
U.S.-Russian economic ties:
- No significant developments.
U.S.-Russian relations in general:
“Resisting Russia: At some point in the next generation, the Kremlin will realize that the United States is not its principal national security challenge,” John Herbst, The National Interest, 02.28.21. The author, director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, writes:
- “President Joe Biden’s first order of business is to repair our relationship with allies, friends and partners. … Our ability to deter and contain a revisionist Kremlin will be more effective and less expensive if we do it together with our allies in NATO, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. The most important task here is to strengthen NATO’s presence in its southeast quadrant.”
- “Greater cooperation with the EU is also essential to ensure a more effective sanctions policy. … Our sanctions policy … requires three additional elements. … Our interests would be well served if we doubled military assistance for Ukraine.”
- “We also need to establish an effective deterrent policy to Kremlin cyber operations and interference in our internal politics and elections. … [W]e should send a private message to Moscow that cyber and disinformation operations will have a cost. … As for disinformation operations or electoral interference, we should play on Kremlin vulnerabilities.”
- “These measures are not meant as a substitute for dialogue with the Kremlin. It is the precondition for a sensible dialogue that advances our interests. The new team should certainly reach out to Moscow and seek early talks at the secretary of state or national security advisor level. … A largely cooperative relationship with Moscow does not require a change in the current authoritarian political system. The objective here is to assure the Kremlin leadership that the aim of our policy is not to topple them. Still, we must retain the right to criticize (and more) anti-democratic activity and human rights abuses.”
- “At some point in the next generation, the Kremlin will realize that the United States is not its principal national security challenge. The United States has no designs on Russia’s territorial integrity or sovereignty. Moscow’s principal challenge is China. … The United States and Russia are natural partners in dealing with a rising, revisionist China. The same principles that we cite in defense of Ukraine against Russia … we would cite to defend Russia against China.”
“Getting Serious About Russia: The future of U.S.-Russia relations is largely America’s choice,” Dimitri K. Simes, The National Interest, 02.25.21. The author, president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, writes:
- “Russia is a determined adversary of the United States … Regardless [of] its intentions, Russia remains an important country for America, and by one essential criterion, the most important county: it is the only nation capable of physically destroying the United States.”
- “If the United States chooses to act assertively in pursuit of its fundamental interests but with restraint when such interests are not at stake, it could contain any potential Russian aggression. Washington can establish a climate that allows for limited partnership: first and foremost, to avoid a military conflict, and second, to avoid pushing Russia into China’s arms.”
- “The United States and its allies must acknowledge that for the Russian government and elite, there is no issue more sensitive and more fundamental than their ability to remain in power, without foreign interference.”
- “The new Western conventional wisdom assumes that the root cause of Russian aggression is the very nature of Putin’s oppressive regime, which requires an external enemy. In Russia’s consumer-oriented, middle-class-minded society, however, the government benefits more from emphasizing prosperity at home and partnership with the West. … The Russian political elite, on the other hand, assume that they were naïve in the past about Western intentions and are determined to pursue their interests at home and abroad, regardless of foreign condemnation and pressure.”
- “Still, the challenge from a resurgent Russia should not be over-dramatized or oversimplified. Like most challenges in history, it can be addressed through a combination of force and inducement. Inducement alone will not be enough, but force and coercion without inducement and dialogue are unlikely to work either—and they have the potential to bring about the end of history, not in a triumphalist fashion, but rather in the form of the end of human civilization.”
“The Real Russia ‘Reset’: Reassessing US Sanctions Policy Against Russia,” Daniel P. Ahn, Russia Matters, 02.25.21. The author, previously the chief economist at the U.S. State Department and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, writes:
- “My co-author Dr. Rodney Ludema … and I track over 500 [Russian] firms sanctioned [by the U.S.] either directly or indirectly … We find that the sanctioned firms have been hit very hard relative to their non-sanctioned peers, on average losing a quarter of their operating revenue. A simple aggregation of observed lost revenue would amount to roughly $95 billion, or 4.2 percent of Russia’s pre-sanctions 2013 GDP.”
- “Furthermore, this number … may actually be an underestimate due to the endogenous response of the Russian government to ‘shield’ certain strategically valuable companies, primarily in the finance, defense and technology space … [This shielding] raises the overall cost to about $180 billion, or 8 percent of Russia’s pre-sanctions GDP, significantly larger than previous estimates.”
- “The shielding also explains why the Russian government has remained so intransigent despite the heavy economic toll of sanctions: By shifting the burden away from the sanctions target and ultimately onto the Russian taxpayer, the Putin regime can not only dilute the impact away from sensitive and strategic sectors but also, by shoring up elites, binds them even more tightly to the regime. Of course, the Russian people have paid for this with excoriating inflation, lower living standards and poorer quality public services, but the regime remains resilient.”
- “Today, the Russian economy looks quite different than it did in 2014, when the targeted sanctions largely began: The country’s economic institutions are credible; macroeconomic vulnerabilities are low; buffers such as foreign currency and gold reserves have been expanded from a $300 billion low in 2015 to over $400 billion currently; and, in my view, the Russian economy seems much less reliant on Western capital services.”
- “The new Biden administration would do well to recognize the increasingly diminishing returns to each new sanctions action against Russia and also recognize that sanctions have affected the internal political economy of Russia in unforeseen ways not necessarily favorable to U.S. foreign policy. … A sanctions target would likely see significant economic harm only if it is dependent upon key Western inputs for which substitutes are difficult to find.”
II. Russia’s domestic policies
Domestic politics, economy and energy:
“I called up my would-be killer. He didn't want to talk,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post, 02.23.21. The author, a Russian democracy activist, politician, author and filmmaker, writes:
- “No language has the words to describe what it's like to speak with someone who may have tried to kill you. This month … I called one of them on the phone. He hung up as soon as he heard my name, but for a few seconds, I listened to the voice of the man whose job, it appears, is to physically eliminate people like myself, opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
- Poisoning has been a favored method of silencing dissenters by Soviet and Russian security services for decades. Its main advantage is plausible deniability. Every time another political opponent, independent journalist, anti-corruption activist or defector falls mysteriously ill, the authorities deny responsibility and offer alternative ‘diagnoses.’ Navalny allegedly suffered from ‘low blood sugar’ and problems with his digestion. In my case, they claimed I took the wrong medicine and drank too much alcohol.”
- “Of course, poisoning leaves a small chance that the victim will survive, as both Navalny and I managed to do. (There are many others who were less fortunate.) The Putin regime does sometimes resort to more obvious methods. When opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down near the Kremlin in February 2015, it didn't take long to figure out that the convicted gunman (a serving Interior Ministry officer) had a direct link to Putin's entourage.”
- “For years, world leaders turned a blind eye to Kremlin officials and oligarchs who used Western institutions to launder money looted from the Russian people. It's time to put a stop to this. … No one is asking the West to interfere in Russian politics. But the least it can do is stop enabling a regime that represses, murders and steals from its own people.”
“Navalny’s ‘Cancellation’ is Problematic, But Also Reveals the Pitfalls of His Elevation,” Jeremy Morris, The Moscow Times, 02.25.21. The author, an associate professor in global studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, writes:
- “Amnesty International’s hurried and confused revocation of Navalny’s status as ‘prisoner of conscience’ because of what they call his past ‘advocacy of hatred’ has shocked many, but more importantly it shows the powerful role of new media — specifically journalists and contributors associated with RT. It now appears that a semi-concerted campaign to draw attention outside Russia to racist and inflammatory comments made by Navalny quite some time ago had an effect on Amnesty’s decision.”
- “Immediate fallout aside, the case brings into focus long-standing debates about the outsized role western NGOs play in how Russia is perceived, and whether the retreat of the U.S. as a global hegemon has the effect of rendering ‘liberal’ ideas of human rights less credible.”
- “With Navalny, Amnesty is faced with what law scholar Diana Hortsch calls a ‘rights conflict.’ If Navalny’s past is seen as racist and nationalist, that conflicts with Amnesty’s agenda to protect ethnic and religious rights. This in turn is a function of Amnesty’s very broad—one might uncharitably say sprawling— human rights agenda. After all, human rights are, in the end, just norms and moral principles to describe time- and place-specific standards of human behavior.”
- “His ‘cancellation,’ makes Amnesty look like fools on all fronts. Does holding views you find reprehensible mean a person can’t be a prisoner of conscience? Are powerful international rights organizations so easily prey to targeted actions supported directly or indirectly by the Russian state? Whatever one thinks of Navalny, his cancellation looks all the more farcically self-regarding on the part of western institutions given that his past has little or no relevance to the many social and political grievances his campaign symbolizes.”
“Russia after Putin: How to rebuild the state,” Anders Åslund and Leonid Gozman, Atlantic Council, 02.24.21. Åslund, a resident senior fellow in the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, and Gozman, former director of humanitarian projects at RUSNANO, write:
- “We do not know when and how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will end, but there are signs that it is struggling. … We need to start discussing now how a new state should be built on the ruins of the old system. … The new government’s first action should be to release all political prisoners and to establish all elementary freedoms of speech, media, assembly, organization and religion. … It should dissolve the Federal Security Service (FSB) … and dismiss all its employees and form a new judicial system, courts as well as the general prosecutor’s office. … Russia should abandon its presidential system and hold early founding elections at all levels soon after a democratic breakthrough.”
- “It has left Russia isolated, subject to massive international sanctions, and unable to attract foreign investment or talent. It has nearly rendered Russia a rogue state. As a consequence, Russia has been forced to maintain larger currency reserves and less foreign debt than would be economically rational, while compelling it to high military expenditures.”
- “Putin’s policies run counter to Russia’s real national interests—to protect the security and welfare of its citizens, or to maintain peace and security at a reasonable cost and to pursue economically beneficial integration.”
- “Thus, Russia after Putin needs to reverse its foreign policy. Rather than wasting trust and money on a range of regional conflicts and mercenary warfare in a variety of countries, post-Putin Russia should try to settle these conflicts and establish good relations with most countries. … Economically, Russia should engage with developed economies in Europe, North America, and Asia.”
- “Our optimistic conclusion is that Russia may look forward to a great future of freedom, rule of law, private enterprise and rising economic welfare as soon as the obsolete despotism of Putin has been eliminated.”
“Their only offense is believing in God,” Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 03.01.21. The news outlet's editorial board writes:
- “Last week a 69-year-old woman, Valentina Baranovskaya, and her 46-year-old son, Roman Baranovsky, were sentenced to two and six years in prison, respectively, in the Siberian region of Khakassia. Their offense? They belong to Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian denomination that is nonviolent, eschews subservience to the state, refuses military service, does not vote and views God as the only true leader. In a 2017 ruling, Russia's Supreme Court outlawed the faith as ‘extremist,’ and adherents have been mercilessly persecuted ever since.”
- “Today in Russia and Crimea, there are 199 criminal cases against 440 believers, of whom 52 are in prison, the most since the 2017 ruling. Twenty-seven are under house arrest. Since the court liquidated all the group's legal entities in Russia, 1,327 homes of Jehovah's Witnesses have been raided by the authorities, in many cases after their phones and their meetings were wiretapped.”
- “This is the behavior of a police state. The persecution of Ms. Baranovskaya and her fellow believers is not different from that meted out to ‘enemies of the people’ under Stalin. Just as during the Great Terror, when there is a knock on the door, these nonviolent religious worshipers must feel a ravine open at their feet. Perhaps Mr. Putin could explain to them why, decades after Soviet communism died, its cruel practice of tormenting people for their beliefs is being repeated.”
“How the Kremlin’s Years of Conspiracy Spreading Are Biting Back. For decades Russia has been involved in the circulation of conspiracy theories. Now very few Russians believe in Covid-19,” Ilya Yablokov, The Moscow Times, 03.01.21. The author, a lecturer on Russian media and politics at the University of Leeds, writes:
- “A whopping 64 percent of Russians believe that the coronavirus was invented in a lab, while just 23 percent believe it appeared naturally. Some 62 percent are not willing to get a Sputnik V jab, and 69 percent are not afraid of catching the virus. These astonishing results were released by Russia’s leading independent pollster the Levada Center today.”
- “For experts who have observed the way the pandemic developed in Russia and the state’s response to it this is hardly breaking news. Throughout 2020, Russians demonstrated a steady lack of belief in the existence of Covid-19 and showed distrust toward the vaccines created by Russian scientists. In my view, there are two reasons for this gloomy state of affairs—the global power of social media which transcends borders and languages and the Russian state’s decades of spreading anti-Western conspiracy theories.”
- “In critical political situations, Putin and his entourage used conspiracy theories to call for support from the Russian people.”
- “As we know from research, if a person believes in one conspiracy theory, there’s a great chance they will believe in another one, even if it’s contradictory to the first.”
- “Even if many people in Russia support Vladimir Putin as a leader, they are also unhappy with the state institutions they deal with on a daily basis, be they concerned with education, health or the legal system. These are the institutions that have the biggest influence on people’s wellbeing, and they know they are crooked, poorly managed and unable to produce expert knowledge. What helps Russians to survive under these circumstances is the centuries-long reliability on informal networks and distancing from the state that cannot bring anything good.”
Defense and aerospace:
- No significant developments.
Security, law-enforcement and justice:
- No significant developments.
III. Russia’s relations with other countries
Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:
“EU-Russia Relations: What Went Wrong?” Fyodor Lukyanov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 02.26.21. The author, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine and chairman of the Presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, writes:
- “The evolution of EU-Russia relations from the hopeful dawn of the early 1990s to the despairing sunset of the 2010s is one of the most revealing episodes in the history of the post-Cold War global transformation. Ever since the idea of a formalized community consisting of Europe and Russia lost its relevance … the relationship’s original principles have been meaningless.”
- “The attempt at institutional partnership represented the culmination of about 200 years of efforts by a school of thought in Russia to Westernize the country. For the first time, the Westernizers saw an opportunity to qualitatively change the nature of Russia’s relations with the West. That opportunity turned out to be a treacherous one. Russia’s Westernizers never intended for their country to formally submit to Europe’s rules and regulations, even as they pushed for modernization, active cooperation with Europe, and emulation of its ways. Yet that was precisely what Europe asked of Russia after 1992.”
- “Today, the two sides find themselves deeply irritated with each other, and their political relations effectively nonexistent.”
- “As things stand, Europe’s objections primarily relate to the violation of democratic norms, rights and freedoms inside Russia, which the EU maintains it cannot tolerate. … But that logic has long had no place in Russia’s relations with the EU. … Everything has changed, from Russia and Europe to the West and the wider world. The liberal world order is no more.”
- “When it comes to EU-Russia relations, then, the old framework is not just obsolete, it may even prove harmful. … Once the EU and Russia are ready … a new framework awaits: one promising a new boost to EU-Russia cooperation on the understanding that a formal community consisting of the two is not an outcome worth pursuing.”
“At the mercy of foreign powers. Libyans ousted a dictator, but an ensuing civil war has drawn in Russia, Turkey and others with a thirst for control,” Sudarsan Raghavan, Souad Mekhennet, Greg Miller and Missy Ryan, The Washington Post, 02.27.21. The authors of the article write:
- “There are now at least 20,000 mercenaries in Libya, including fighters and military advisers from Russia, Syria, Chad, Turkey and Sudan.”
- “Almost 10 years after the country's political idealists spurned offers of Western help to build a democracy, the country's warring sides have turned to the world's autocrats to help them hold power militarily.”
- “Russia and Turkey, the two dominant players in Libya, are now jockeying for shares of the country's oil and gas riches, long-term access to military bases and influence over the shape of any future government. If those ambitions go unmet, Russia and Turkey are in position to effectively split the country in two, turning the front lines of Libya's conflict into a permanent partition. … Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was remarkably transparent in December when he declared that Moscow was now entitled to help determine the war's outcome. … Even if Biden is inclined to try to fix his predecessors' mistakes, … U.S. leverage and options will be limited.”
- “Russia's intervention is both audacious and cautious, advancing its aims in the region without committing official Russian troops. … The approach shields President Vladimir Putin from the political fallout that would accompany battlefield losses by the Russian military or dead soldiers in distant war zones. It also enables Putin to claim … that Russia itself is not involved in the Libyan conflict or in violation of the arms embargo.”
- “Nearly all of the Russian fighters in Libya are contractors with the Wagner Group, though U.N. documents … indicate that other Russian private military companies are also involved. … U.S. military officials estimate that there are now at least 2,000 Wagner mercenaries in Libya, and that the organization has recruited, trained and imported an additional several thousand fighters from Syria.”
China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?
“Not-So-Hidden Dragon: China Reveals Its Claws in Central Asian Security,” Raffaello Pantucci, Carnegie Moscow Center, 02.25.21. The author, an associate fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King's College, London, writes:
- “China has long had a security footprint in Central Asia. What is new, however, is Beijing’s increased willingness to demonstratively flex its muscle in the region. … The most obvious recent example of this … occurred in December last year in Kabul, when … Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, had arrested a cell of about ten Chinese nationals at various locations … the principal Afghan accusation appears to have been that the cell was establishing contacts with extremist networks and trying to build an artificial Uighur cell to draw in militant Uighurs of concern to China in Afghanistan.”
- “The other notable point about China’s security engagement with the region is that it is done for the most part by People’s Armed Police (PAP) forces, rather than the People’s Liberation Army. … The appearance of PAP at the forefront of engagement with Central Asia highlights the degree to which China sees the security issues in those countries as inextricably tied to domestic security concerns. … Central Asia has also become a conduit through which China has increasingly sought to target its perceived dissident Uighur community.”
- “Rather than relying on local law enforcement agencies or passing on responsibility for security to Russia, China is stepping forward with its own forces to deal with its own concerns. Locals are still expected to do their bit, but China is now establishing a footprint that will allow it to deal with matters as it would like fit in Central Asia.”
- “Beijing’s rise as a security actor in Central Asia is not aimed at displacing Russia from its perceived sphere of influence … but rather at guaranteeing Chinese interests. In many ways, it’s not a surprising move. … It is, however, a change in China’s external behavior.”
Ukraine:
“Why Russia Is Unmoved by Kyiv's Sanctions Against Putin's Friend,” Maxim Samorukov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 02.24.21. The author, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center and deputy editor of Carnegie.ru, writes:
- “In the space of just a few days, Russia and Ukraine have escalated their sleepy stalemate in Donbas to the brink of a new war. As the Ukrainian authorities announced sanctions against pro-Russian politicians and media, Moscow responded with harsh criticism and state propagandists called on the government to annex the Donbas separatist republics. The acrimonious exchange immediately resulted in new peaks in the number of ceasefire violations.”
- “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s actions are in sharp contrast with the peacemaker image that he cultivated in the early months of his presidency. On February 2, he closed down three pro-Russian TV channels, accusing their owner of financing Donbas separatists. This was followed on February 19 by a barrage of sanctions against a number of Ukrainian and Russian individuals and companies. … The most notorious name on the sanctions list was Viktor Medvedchuk.”
- “Russia’s response to the Ukrainian sanctions was sharply worded but less emotional than might have been expected.”
- “The Minsk peace process aimed at ending the Donbas conflict is most probably dead, having been in tatters long before the current crisis.”
- “However, even this grim reality does not necessarily mean the imminent renewal of a full-scale war in Donbas. The Kremlin has never believed that Ukraine has much agency in the conflict, and deems the current escalation to have been instigated by the new team in Washington. It also holds France and Germany partly responsible for failing to rein in Ukraine. … Moscow’s harsh statements on its readiness to protect the separatist republics are not so much a threat to take revenge for the Ukrainian sanctions as an attempt to deter Kyiv from trying to solve the Donbas conflict by force. … A more likely course of action from Moscow is to gradually entrench the status quo.”
Belarus:
- No significant developments.
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
“The West just lost Georgia,” Ani Chkhikvadze, The Washington Post, 02.25.21. The author, a reporter at Voice of America, writes:
- “On Tuesday, Georgia once again stumbled on its Western path, as police forces stormed the main opposition party's headquarters and arrested its leader, Nika Melia.”
- “The United States and its European allies have been warning the current Georgian government to stick by the rules of democratic fair play. Now any such sense of restraint on the part of the authorities has fallen away. This is a clear signal that Georgia is taking a sharp turn away from its declared aspirations to become a member of the Euro-Atlantic community. The arrest of the leader of the opposition United National Movement means Washington's staunchest ally in the region is sliding toward authoritarianism.”
- “Democracies, history has shown, do not die overnight—instead, they slowly stagnate and decline. President Biden himself said that ‘democratic progress is under assault’ around the world. This will be a test for the new administration. If Washington fails to stop allies like Georgia from sliding into authoritarianism, how can the United States succeed in bigger countries such as Russia or Turkey?”
- “In Tbilisi, many hope that the Biden administration will take a more active role, as the president himself has pledged. As Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying, ‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.’ Those concerned about the future of Georgia's democracy are hoping that the time has come to do so.”
“The Politics of Defeat: How Will the Crisis in Armenia End?” Kirill Krivosheev, Carnegie Moscow Center, 03.01.21. The author, a journalist with Kommersant, writes:
- “What seemed like a day of reckoning finally came on February 25, when Armenian generals signed a collective letter calling for Pashinyan’s departure. Yet that had no effect either: even after that démarche, Pashinyan was able to bring supporters to the streets.”
- “One popular theory in Armenia is that the generals spoke out against Pashinyan at the behest of Moscow, presumed to be incensed by the prime minister’s criticism of its weapons. However … Moscow’s statements suggest that the Kremlin will stay out of the Armenian crisis provided that the November 9, 2020, ceasefire agreement remains in effect—and there are no reasons to doubt that it will. The Kremlin is coming to see Armenia the way it sees Kyrgyzstan and Abkhazia: the situation may be in flux, but there is no threat of politicians unacceptable to Moscow ascending to power.”
- “Even if the opposition succeeds in getting Pashinyan out of office, it won’t be able to change the results of the second Karabakh war—not only because of geopolitical circumstances but also because the Armenian people don’t want to be at war anymore.”
- “Polls show that only 31 percent of Armenians favor trying to win back territories lost in the war. Twenty-eight percent are willing to accept ‘stabilization within the framework of existing borders,’ and another 3 percent would be prepared to give up Stepanakert, capital of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic controlled by Armenians, just to end the conflict.”
- “At a time like this, it is better to remain in the opposition than to jeopardize one’s ratings in the halls of power. The opposition would prefer for Pashinyan to do the heavy lifting. The Armenian people can likely sense this lack of real alternative, which is why the protests being touted as historic are not that well attended.”