Russia Analytical Report, Feb. 4-11, 2019
NB: Next week’s Russia Analytical Report will appear on Tuesday, Feb. 19, instead of Monday, Feb. 18, because of the U.S. Presidents' Day holiday.
This Week’s Highlights:
- If the U.S. decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty is not based on military necessity, as indicated by recent U.S. military commanders’ assessments, then there is need for an urgent debate about why now is the time to kill the deal, writes Nuclear Crisis Group director Jon Wolfsthal.
- If Trump continues to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal and abandons New START, the New York Times editorial board writes, Congress should freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons
- It’s possible that a U.S. decision to withdraw from Afghanistan could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Russia to work together on a solution to stabilize Afghanistan, the New York Times editorial board writes, as nearly two decades of terrorist attacks have shown that terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy force that can be defeated.
- In Putin’s eyes, Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko’s cynicism and willingness to negotiate behind the scenes make her a good potential partner despite her anti-Russia rhetoric, writes journalist Konstantin Skorkin.
- One can hardly see Russia attacking Montenegro or North Macedonia, writes Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, arguing that the U.S. needs to consider what it gets out of allying with an increasing number of small members primarily interested in using NATO membership as a step on the way to EU accession.
- Putin is showing barely concealed frustration with the passivity of his core voters, writes Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Most Russians celebrated Russia’s foreign interventions in Crimea and in Syria from a safe distance, but Putin now wants more active public support as he prepares for the end of his fourth term in 2024, he doesn’t know quite where to find it, Baunov writes.
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security:
“Revitalizing Nuclear Security in an Era of Uncertainty,” Matthew Bunn, Nickolas Roth and William H. Tobey, Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, January 2019: The authors, a professor of the practice at Harvard Kennedy School, a research associate with the project and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, write:
- “Few tasks could be more important than keeping nuclear weapons and their essential ingredients out of terrorist hands. The world community has made substantial progress in improving security for such stocks since the early 1990s, including through the nuclear security summits in 2010-2016.”
- “The risk that terrorists could get and use a nuclear bomb … remains very real. Sabotage of major nuclear facilities or dispersal of radioactive material in a disruptive ‘dirty bomb’ also remain real risks.”
- “The United States and Russia once had extensive cooperation on security for nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials, including military-purpose stocks, but that cooperation is almost entirely suspended.”
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- No significant commentary.
Iran and its nuclear program:
- No significant commentary.
New Cold War/Sabre Rattling:
“The ‘new Cold War’ with China is way overblown. Here’s why,” Joshua Shifrinson, The Washington Post/Monkey Cage, 02.08.19: The author, an assistant professor of international relations, writes:
- “Is a new Cold War looming—or already present—between the United States and China? Many analysts argue that a combination of geopolitics, ideology and competing visions of ‘global order’ are driving the two countries toward emulating the Soviet-U.S. rivalry … But such concerns are overblown.”
- “The historical backdrops of the two relationships are very different. When the Cold War began, the U.S.-Soviet relationship was fragile and tenuous. … Since the 1970s, diplomatic interactions, institutional ties and economic flows [between China and the U.S.] have all exploded.
- “Geography and powers’ nuclear postures suggest East Asia is more stable than Cold War-era Europe … Though an arms race may be emerging, U.S. and Chinese nuclear postures are not nearly as large or threatening: Arsenals remain far below the size and scope witnessed in the Cold War, and are kept at a lower state of alert.”
- “[Additionally,] [t]he Cold War had just two major powers … [and] [i]deology plays less of a role in U.S.-Chinese relations.”
NATO-Russia relations:
“Trump Doesn’t Need North Macedonia in NATO. Letting a small country with a puny defense budget join the military alliance serves no purpose,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 02.07.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:
- “It’s hard, if not impossible, to make any kind of geo-strategic case for North Macedonia’s NATO membership. The country didn’t play a major role in the Balkans conflict. It is tiny, landlocked and resource-poor. … It’s interested in a NATO membership less as a security guarantee than as a de facto prerequisite for EU membership. All the former-communist EU members joined NATO before the bloc.”
- “One can hardly see Russia, or anyone else, attacking Montenegro or North Macedonia. … It doesn’t necessarily make sense for the alliance to welcome new members simply because Russia doesn’t want them to join: The Kremlin is, on principle, against any kind of NATO expansion.”
- “If the U.S. really wants to get its European partners to spend 2 percent or more of their GDP on defense, that goal won’t ever be accomplished by accepting more countries that don’t.”
“Macedonia Joining NATO Is Self-Inflicted Defeat for Russia,” Maxim Samorukov, Carnegie Moscow Center/The Moscow Times, 02.08.19: The author, deputy editor at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:
- “The Prespa agreement on changing Macedonia’s name to North Macedonia was signed by the governments of both Greece and Macedonia. Yet Russia still continued to criticize the deal as unacceptable, on the basis that it angered nationalists in both countries.”
- “Moscow’s ostentatious hostility meant the West blamed any difficulties over Macedonia on Kremlin machinations, and it resolved not to give up under any circumstances, because the stakes had suddenly grown from a small peripheral Balkans state to defeat in the geopolitical standoff with Russia. And it was Russia that raised these stakes.”
- “The results of Russia’s involvement in the Macedonian settlement are woeful. Greece, which didn’t expel any Russian diplomats even after the international scandal that followed the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, has now expelled two. The Macedonian government sees Russia as an enemy, while the Macedonian opposition … continues to support Macedonia’s entry into NATO. The country will join the alliance far more quickly than people there could ever have dreamt not so long ago. … Russia’s attempt to resist the inevitable has only hastened its advance, while adding a dash of international humiliation for Russia and damaging its interests in the region.”
Missile defense:
- No significant commentary.
Nuclear arms control:
“Killing the INF Treaty was a Gift to Russia,” Jon Wolfsthal, The National Interest, 02.07.19: The author, director of the Nuclear Crisis Group, writes:
- “The United States has claimed since 2013 … that Russia illegally tested land-based cruise missiles with ranges of 500 kilometers. … [T]he U.S. military has not stated that the deployments put it at a strategic disadvantage to Russia or that the deployment requires the United States to pursue a comparable capability.”
- “If the decision to get out of the INF Treaty is not based on military necessity, then there is an urgent debate that should be conducted about why now is an apposite time to kill the deal and whether the United States has gone about it in the right manner. If the goal of the United States is to both keep pressure on Russia … and to ensure that Russia is seen as being the party responsible for the demise of the INF Treaty … then it is clear the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw now is a fundamental mistake.”
- “Russia, for its part, has in the span of a year admitted the existence of the 9m729 missile that it claimed previously did not exist and offered to display it for American inspectors. … [This move] gives the impression that Russia is willing to work to save the treaty … [R]ejecting the offer out of hand allows Russia to claim the high ground … The result will likely be divisions within NATO about the decision to withdraw and skepticism about what happens next.”
- “Russia will likely keep its system, America will lose the ability to pressure them over its violations and America and its allies won’t get any comparable system for their arsenals. … What America will get is a reduced ability to control the growing military competition with Russia, and lose one of the best means it has for easing the danger of crisis escalation with Moscow.”
“Russia may have violated the INF Treaty. Here’s how the United States appears to have done the same,” Theodore A. Postol, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 02.07.19: The author, a professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy, writes:
- “It is clear that the detection ranges of the Aegis radars at the Polish site are too short, and the interceptors too slow, for them to shoot down what the United States insists are their targets: long-range missiles fired by Iran. … [I]t would be reasonable for foreign military planners and political leaders to wonder why the U.S. made a decision to base them [the Aegis systems] in Eastern Europe.”
- “The Trump administration’s stated reason for threatening to withdraw from the INF is the Russian development of the SSC-8 cruise missile … [T]he SSC-8 appears to have characteristics very similar to those of the U.S. Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile. The Tomahawk can readily be stored at and launched from the Aegis site in Romania and, once it is completed, the Polish installation.”
- “The Russians have repeatedly insisted that these dual-capability, Aegis-ashore installations constitute a violation of the offensive weapons range limitations set forth in the INF Treaty. The American government argues that the Aegis-ashore installations pose no threat to Russia because computer software in the Polish and Romanian installations is not compatible with the launch of cruise missiles. … To argue that the Aegis ashore system is not programmed to launch cruise missiles is no different than arguing that a workstation computer cannot read flash drives or information from video cameras.”
- “The routine US reliance on misleading claims about missile defense systems … contributes to an environment in which foreign powers … rightly do not trust the word of U.S. political and military leaders. This avoidance of factual reality has contributed to the impending demise of the INF. … Refusing to acknowledge reality is a poor strategy for enhancing U.S. or Russian security and pursuing the sort of arms control that makes nuclear war less likely.”
“Preserving Strategic Stability Amid US-Russian Confrontation,” Vladimir Dvorkin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 02.08.19: The author, a chief researcher at the Center for International Security at the Institute of Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, writes:
- “Strategic stability is in a state of crisis. … Russian leaders believe that meaningful strategic arms control in the future has to be multilateral.
- “In 2013, Moscow responded skeptically to an Obama administration proposal to reduce strategic offensive weapons by one-third below the level agreed to in New START; Russia stated, in effect, that the two parties’ capacities for further bilateral nuclear reductions would be exhausted after New START’s provisions were implemented.”
- “China and … other emergent nuclear-armed countries have traditionally maintained that multilateral nuclear arms control agreements will only be possible after Russia and the United States reduce their arsenals to the size of other nuclear powers. Additionally, any such agreement … would have to take into account the number of Russian and U.S. weapons on heavy bombers as well as nonstrategic nuclear weapons. These conditions are highly unlikely to be met for the foreseeable future.”
- “The crisis befalling strategic stability between Russia and the United States can and should be avoided, assuming that Moscow and Washington can muster the political will to pursue four mutually reinforcing steps. Renew New START. … Avoid exaggerating the supposed destabilizing effects of certain security factors. … Hold regular talks on strategic stability. … Abandon launch-on-warning nuclear strategies.”
“No Winner in a New Arms Race,” Editorial Board, New York Times, 02.10.19: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:
- “If Mr. Trump continues to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal and abandons the strategic arms accord, Congress should freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons.”
- “Outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race … or abandoning an arms control regime that has helped forestall nuclear war for decades, is a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners.”
“To Understand the INF Treaty’s Demise, Look to the US Republican Party,” Lincoln Pigman, RUSI, 02.08.19: The author, a master’s student in Oxford University’s Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, writes:
- “Republicans, in the White House as well as in Congress, have evidently decided that the costs of arms control outweigh the benefits … Some of the U.S.’s closest allies fear that the INF Treaty’s demise holds grave consequences for European security as well as global strategic stability—as do Democrats in Congress, despite their present stance on Russia. (Two-thirds of American voters, and more than half of Republicans, also oppose withdrawal from the INF Treaty.)”
“Trump is igniting a perilous new nuclear arms race,” Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post, 02.05.19: The author, editor and publisher of the Nation magazine, writes:
- “[T]he United States should revive a bolder disarmament initiative, engaging both Russia and China in discussions on deep reductions in nuclear arsenals, and using that agreement to build momentum against proliferation. This is the time to push for inspections, information exchange, arbitration and agreement—not for blowing up the treaty. Similarly, the answer to Chinese exclusion is inviting Beijing to join the nonproliferation ranks.”
- “The INF Treaty has been a cornerstone of U.S.-Russian arms control for three decades. … We are already in a dangerous period of increasing tensions between the United States and Russia. Adding a new nuclear arms race is the last thing either country or the world needs.”
Counter-terrorism:
- No significant commentary.
Conflict in Syria:
- No significant commentary.
Cyber security:
- No significant commentary.
Elections interference:
- No significant commentary.
Energy exports from CIS:
- No significant commentary.
U.S.-Russian economic ties:
- No significant commentary.
U.S.-Russian relations in general:
“End the War in Afghanistan,” Editorial Board, New York Times, 02.03.19: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:
- “It is time to face the cruel truth that at best, the war is deadlocked, and at worst, it is hopeless. … Walking away from a war is not a strategy. But an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces can be organized and executed before the year is out and more lives are lost to a lost cause.”
- “It’s possible that a decision to withdraw could prompt the Afghans, the Taliban and regional players like Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China to work together on a cooperative solution to stabilize Afghanistan and deny terrorists a regional base. Such a solution that preserves some of the civil society gains that the Afghans have made, while keeping the country free of international terrorists, is in the interests of all those parties.”
- “Nearly two decades of terrorist attacks … have shown the obvious: that terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy force that can be defeated, and it knows no borders. It can be thwarted in certain instances, but it cannot be ended outright.”
- “If efforts to deal with international terrorism are to be sustainable indefinitely, they need to rely principally on intelligence and interdiction, diplomacy and development—not war without aim or end.”
“The US president’s deal with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska should teach policymakers a sharp lesson,” Peter E. Harrell, Foreign Policy, 02.05.19: The author, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, writes:
- “The Trump administration’s decision … to lift sanctions on several companies owned by the influential Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, has proven controversial. …U.S. officials in the executive branch and Congress should draw at least three major lessons from the fight over lifting sanctions on Deripaska’s companies.”
- “First, the U.S. government needs better sanctions tools to target large, globally integrated companies. …. [I]f the United States wants to impose sanctions on companies like Rusal, … [it] need[s] more effective, scalpel-like tools capable of imposing sharp costs while minimizing collateral damage.”
- “[T]he United States should [also] generally only remove sanctions on companies if they and their owners take steps to alter the behavior that prompted the sanctions in the first place, rather than agreeing to lift sanctions on companies largely in response to corporate shell games.”
- “The final lesson … is that the United States needs a Russia sanctions strategy. … Given the multiple threats Moscow poses to the United States and its friends and allies … Washington needs to develop and deploy a comprehensive, tough and sequenced sanctions strategy that begins to push back meaningfully on Moscow’s growing economy and expanding energy exports.”
II. Russia’s relations with other countries
Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:
“Russia’s Game in the Balkans,” Paul Stronski and Annie Himes, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 02.06.19: The authors, fellows in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, write:
- “Moscow’s willingness and ability to aggravate and prolong political instability in select Balkan countries appears geared toward undermining, or at least delaying, their prospects for integration into the European Union and [NATO].”
- “Moscow does not necessarily seek, nor would it be able, to assert itself as the preeminent power in Southeastern Europe, where it competes for influence not only with the West but also with China, Turkey and even Persian Gulf states.”
- “Russian government officials visit the Balkans frequently, promising increased trade and investment, yet Russia produces little of what the region needs beyond energy, does not manufacture consumer goods that most Balkan shoppers want and often fails to deliver on its promises of loans or investment. Furthermore, Russian hard power frequently undercuts its soft power efforts.”
- “To counter Russian malign influence in the region, the United States and Europe can engage in several efforts that would be welcomed by most Balkan states. Demonstrate commitment to the region. … Avoid zero-sum rhetoric when it comes to the Balkans. … Help states shore up resilience and awareness of Russian malign activity.”
“Russian-Venezuelan Relations at a Crossroads,” Vladimir Rouvinski, Wilson Center, 02.05.19: The author, director of the Center for Inter-Disciplinary Studies at Icesi University in Colombia, writes:
- “The future of Venezuela is uncertain. Russian leaders understand the implications of increased unpredictability in that South American nation … Rosneft is not in a position to continue subsidizing the Maduro regime much longer.”
- “At the same time, Venezuela has many sympathizers among the Russian political elite. Many of these Russian elites see distinct causes for Venezuela’s problems—linking the political crisis to external influences and the economic crisis to a mere lack of experience and knowledge.”
- “[T]he government of Nicolás Maduro seems fully willing to cooperate with Moscow, recognizing that support from Moscow might be the government’s last, best chance to remain in power. Yet Moscow is also preparing for less positive scenarios. From this perspective, it is quite indicative that current Russian official statements strongly condemn the United States and link the worsening of the domestic situation in Venezuela to the actions of the United States and its allies.”
- “While Venezuela may no longer be quite as useful as a political symbol of restored Russian greatness, Moscow cannot afford for it to turn into a symbol of one of Putin’s greatest failures in the international arena.”
China:
- No significant commentary.
Ukraine:
“Putin’s Game Plan in Ukraine,” Konstantin Skorkin, Foreign Affairs, 02.07.19: The author, a freelance journalist based in Russia, writes:
- “Moscow views Ukraine’s upcoming presidential elections in late March as an opportunity to change the political course in Kiev. … At the moment, one of the front-runners for the presidency is Yulia Tymoshenko … The Kremlin treats her more favorably than it does the incumbent president, despite the fact that she publicly criticizes Poroshenko’s policy toward Russia as insufficiently rigorous. … In Putin’s eyes, Tymoshenko’s cynicism and willingness to negotiate behind the scenes make her a good potential partner despite her anti-Russia rhetoric.”
- “But Tymoshenko is not the only serious contender. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comic actor and young populist, announced last month that he will also seek the presidency, injecting a degree of chance and unpredictability into the election. Zelenskiy took the lead in January polls and could well find himself in a second-round runoff with Tymoshenko. He has declared that he is ready to start direct negotiations with Russia to end the conflict, and both his personal and his business background make him a likely favorite among Russian speakers in the country’s southeast.”
- “As Russians and Ukrainians tire of the constant tension between their countries, the calls for reconciliation will grow. … Until the two countries reconcile, they will continue to find sources of conflict all around them, whether in elections to parliament or in the Sea of Azov.”
“He Played by the Rules of Putin’s Russia, Until He Didn’t: The Story of a Murder. When the Russian politician Denis Voronenkov was gunned down in Ukraine, officials blamed the Kremlin. The truth was more complicated,” Sarah A. Topol, New York Times Magazine, 02.05.19: The author, a contributing writer for the magazine, writes:
- “[Denis] Voronenkov was en route … to meet Ilya Ponomarev, another former member of Russia’s Parliament now living in Ukraine, [when he was shot]. … [T]he killer was identified as Pavlo Parshov—a 28-year-old far-right Ukrainian nationalist.”
- “Voronenkov had rubbed shoulders with President Vladimir Putin’s closest associates. … Russia, painted as a grotesque demon by commentators in Ukraine and the West, was darker still in Voronenkov’s telling. … Since 2016, Ukraine had experienced a surge of unexplained deaths … and Kiev had come to feel like a city of assassins in waiting. Ukraine immediately blamed Moscow for all the murders, but none were definitively linked to the Kremlin; most remain unsolved.”
- “Nearly everyone said Voronenkov was not the man he claimed to be. With uncanny regularity, they compared him to a fictional character in satirical Russian literature named Ostap Bender, a charlatan … Voronenkov’s tale, to those who know contemporary Russia, illuminated the chaos of Putin’s sistema: the personal rivalries, criminals, elites, crooks and clans trying to keep from running afoul of the country’s ever-shifting red lines … [I]n January, a Russian journalist confirmed that Voronenkov was the second Russian lawmaker to testify in the Yanukovych treason case.”
- “In September 2017, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office held a news conference to announce the results of its investigation. … Under F.S.B. direction, they explained, Vladimir Tyurin … hired three Ukrainian radicals through his criminal network … Lutsenko repeatedly held up Voronenkov as a valuable witness in the Yanukovych trial. … The story of Denis Voronenkov is … a story of the chaos at the heart of the sistema, the Darwinian chaos Voronenkov himself exploited, mastered and was ultimately felled by. The ambiguity bred by such bedlam now stood in the way of us ever really understanding who or what was truly responsible for his death.”
“Ukraine’s Civil War: Would Accepting This Terminology Help Resolve the Conflict?,” Jesse Driscoll, PONARS Eurasia, February 2019: The author, an associate professor of political science, writes:
- “Since Ukraine is the site of both an invasion … and a civil war … there is no academic consensus on what to call the crisis in Ukraine. Russians usually call it a civil war. Representatives of the U.S. government emphasize the invasion.”
- “Invasion and civil war are not mutually exclusive terms in academic parlance. … [E]schewing the term civil war forecloses promising diplomatic avenues for settlement. If the convention of calling Ukraine a civil war was adopted, an ‘elections first, military drawdown later’ sequencing of the Minsk Accords could emerge as a pragmatic resolution path even if Crimea’s final status remains disputed.”
- “Several present-day underlying factors—the conventional nature of warfighting, common understandings of harms associated with a permanently frozen conflict in Eastern Europe and … the persistent absence of anti-civilian atrocities by either side—bolster the theory that permanent resolution is not yet out of reach.”
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
- No significant commentary.
III. Russia’s domestic policies
Domestic politics, economy and energy:
“Russia’s Economic Growth Looks Too Good to Be True. Under a new top statistician, recent data have been much more optimistic. That doesn’t make them correct,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 02.05.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:
- “Russia’s official statistics agency is displaying a feverish optimism under its new boss, Pavel Malkov … On Monday, the agency reported that in 2018, the country’s economy grew the fastest since 2012. Coming on top of a recent data revision that eliminated the 2016 recession, the recent numbers seem increasingly fishy, including to some government economists.”
- “Rosstat released 2018 growth data: 2.3 percent for the year. That beat every one of the 36 forecasts tracked by Bloomberg. The highest of those was 2.1 percent, and it was an outlier; 1.7 percent was the consensus. The likely reason is a jump in Rosstat’s estimate of the increase in construction activity. … The jump fixed an earlier incongruity in Russian statistics: Rosstat had reported a large increase in investment in the third quarter of the year that didn’t quite dovetail with stagnating construction.”
- “On Jan. 2, Alexei Kudrin, who heads Russia’s budget watchdog … tweeted that Russia’s GDP likely increased by 1.5 percent in 2018. Even after Rosstat released its optimistic estimate … another prominent government economist, Andrei Klepach of the state development bank VEB, also estimated the 2018 economic expansion at 1.5 percent.”
“Putin Wants to Dissolve the Russian People and Elect Another. The Russian president was a man of the common people—until the common people started making demands,” Alexander Baunov, Foreign Policy, 02.06.19: The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:
- “Over the last decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin has … sought to shore up his legitimacy with the support of a conservative base in Russia’s towns and villages. … These voters suited him well when all he wanted was continuity. But the Russian president now wants a more active public support as he prepares for the coming transition that will mark the end of his fourth term in 2024—and he doesn’t know quite where to find it.”
- “Putin continually paints a picture of Russia as a land full of hardworking, uncomplaining, loyal citizens. … The trouble for Putin is that fewer and fewer Russians actually fit that stereotype. And increasingly he is getting into fights with real Russians who want to complain about government policies.”
- “Most of the Russian economy is now under control of the state, which means more precisely under the control of friends of Putin, businessmen close to the Kremlin, and patriotic managers taking a hit from Western sanctions. The notion of bleeding them to give back more to the ordinary worker is simply not an option for those in power.”
- “Putin and his team want ordinary Russians to share the burden in this challenging period—to make sacrifices for the government, not make new demands of it. … What they don’t like to admit is that most Russians enjoyed their moment of Crimea euphoria while comfortably seated on their sofas. … Putin is now looking to a new constituency to support him, an ‘active minority’ of volunteer citizens ready to back him as his final term draws to a close. But does this constituency really exist in large numbers? And if he finds them, what will they ask for in return? Whatever the answer, it’s probably not stability.”
“Crimea, Russia Has Come Full Circle at Great Cost,” Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center/Moscow Times, 02.06.19: The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:
- “Vladimir Putin’s approval rating began sliding in January 2019. Having hovered at 66 percent in the last three months of 2018, it fell to 64 percent last month. … What’s significant is that his rating has not been this low since January 2014, when it stood at 63 percent.”
- “Putin is no longer the symbol of the nation he once was. He is a living person who bears responsibility for what is happening in the country as much as any other senior official. With this in mind, it’s worth keeping a close eye on his approval rating.”
“Senator’s Arrest Exposes Cannibalization of Russia’s Power Vertical,” Tatyana Stanovaya, Carnegie Moscow Center, 02.06.19: The author, founder and CEO of a political analysis firm, writes:
- “The recent arrest of Rauf Arashukov, a senator in the Federation Council—the upper chamber of the Russian parliament—on suspicion of ordering contract killings apparently came as a complete shock not only to the senator himself, but to all of Russia’s political establishment. The situation is reminiscent of the equally unexpected arrest on corruption charges of Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev in 2016.”
- “If in previous years the siloviki mostly moved against politicians on a regional scale, in the last couple of years, even federal figures have become vulnerable … The difference between the latest arrest and that of Ulyukayev is that this time the blow fell simultaneously on a multitude of political institutes, structures and influence groups, while the real victor will be the Federal Security Service.”
- “The arrest of Arashukov has further increased the vulnerability of key institutes of political power, which are losing their sacred, elite status. … The powerful, monolithic and robust state that Putin has been building since … 2000 is now devouring itself from within … The president, having focused too much of his attention on geopolitics, has opened the floodgates for the de-Putinization of the power vertical, creating a situation in which virtually no one except the head of state remains protected by the system’s legitimacy.”
Defense and aerospace:
- No significant commentary.
Security, law-enforcement and justice:
- No significant commentary.