This Week’s Highlights

• The controversy over alleged Russia bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan has underscored once again that the United States has an attitude about Russia, but not a policy, write Profs. Thomas Graham Jr. and Matthew Rojanksy. They propose three principles that should guide U.S. Russia policy: First, a relationship aimed principally at military competition runs too great a risk of nuclear catastrophe. Second, to reduce risks, the United States and Russia have to find ways to constrain their competition. Third, as the competition unfolds, Washington needs to leave open space for cooperation of two sorts: Cooperation to define boundaries that will produce safer competition, such as arms control, or rules of the road for cyberspace, and cooperation to bring other states to the table to deal with a narrow range of urgent and critical transnational challenges.
• Earlier this month in the United Nations Security Council, the world saw a preview of what Russian and Chinese global “leadership” looks like: a world order where the most vulnerable suffer for the political gains of those at the top, writes U.S. Sen. James Risch. Twice, Russia and China vetoed U.N. resolutions which would have ensured that lifesaving humanitarian aid could reach millions of suffering Syrians through vital border crossings. No truly great power would behave in this way, Risch writes. Going forward, the United States, the rest of the U.N. Security Council, private aid groups and other United Nations agencies need to increase the pressure on Russia and China.
• The relationship between Russia and China can be best described as an entente—a basic agreement between Moscow and Beijing on a host of issues, writes Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. These range from a general worldview to respecting each party's interests to active cooperation on a wide range of issues to friendly consultations. Washington will not be able to turn the U.S.-China-Russia triangle to its favor, as it managed to do in the 1970s, Trenin argues. As things stand now, there is simply nothing Washington can offer Moscow to turn it against Beijing. For the foreseeable future, Russian-Chinese relations are likely to be closer, and more productive than Russian-American ones. This is not based on emotions, Trenin writes, but on national interests.
• Prof. Angela Stent writes, will there be a Putin 5.0? Putin has not yet committed to running for another term in 2024. The immediate goal of the constitutional referendum was to end internecine power struggles focused on succession, and, for now, these have subsided, Stent writes. This has strengthened Putin’s hand. Public opinion polls show that the Russian public wants change. Putin may not be a lame duck, but it is not clear that Russians would support another 16 years of his rule.
• The latest Ukrainian opinion polls show that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has lost his main advantage: his popularity with the public, writes journalist Konstantin Skorkin. For the first time, fewer people said they supported him than did not. There are many objective reasons for the decline in his ratings, Skorkin writes. Zelenskiy has been landed with the unprecedented global crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic, and his can only try to save the country from a default instead of delivering economic growth. There was a window of opportunity for Zelenskiy at the beginning of his term, when he could have used his enormous popularity to sever the Gordian knot of the peace process for eastern Ukraine. Without a clear plan of action, Skorkin writes, the time of reckoning has now come, and Zelenskiy must pay for his unsuccessful improvisation.

 

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.

New Cold War/saber rattling:

“We Must Respond Forcefully to Russia and the Taliban,” John W. Nicholson, The Washington Post, 07.13.20: The author, former commander of U.S. and NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan, writes:

• “In late 2017, when I was commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, an Afghan governor … came to my headquarters in Kabul. He brought a small cache of weapons that he said had been provided to the Taliban by Russian operatives coming across the northern border from Tajikistan. This marked a significant change from the pre-2014 days of cooperation with the Russians.”
• “Unfortunately, support to the Taliban fit into what U.S. intelligence showed was a pattern of increasing Russian malign activity, which included cooperation with the Taliban and disinformation tactics aimed at undermining U.S. and NATO legitimacy, jeopardizing prospects for peace and endangering our troops.”
• “Russia provided small arms, ammunition and money with the intention of sustaining the Taliban in the fight and gaining influence ahead of the anticipated withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. While this assistance did not significantly alter the tactical balance on the battlefield, it helped the Taliban inflict more casualties on Afghan security forces and increased the danger to their U.S. and coalition advisers. … I concluded at the time that the Russian assistance was calibrated. For instance, they refused to provide the Taliban with antiaircraft missiles. However, we recognized the potential for escalation and expanded efforts to monitor the Russian-Taliban collaboration and the growth of Russian activity in Central Asia.”
• “If U.S. intelligence agencies determine that Russia put bounties on American and coalition lives, we must respond forcefully, publicly and in ways that will drive home to the Russians and the Taliban that there is a price to pay for these actions.”
• “First, the highest levels of the U.S. government and NATO should condemn these actions … Second, the United States should suspend the proposed withdrawal of U.S. forces from Germany. … Third, the United States should pause further troop withdrawals from Afghanistan until the Taliban meet the conditions stipulated in the peace agreement.”

“There’s No Sign the US Is Leaving the Middle East Soon. And That’s a Good Thing,” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 07.17.20: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “Analysts talk frequently about the ‘post-American’ era in the Middle East, but U.S. forces remain, in reduced numbers, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria—and there's no sign they're coming home by Election Day, as President Trump had hoped.”
• “The durability of the American presence in the region is a plus, if you share my view that it reduces instability and checks U.S. adversaries there. But for Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on pulling out U.S. troops, it's undoubtedly frustrating. …
• “McKenzie [Gen. Kenneth ‘Frank’ McKenzie Jr., the Central Command head] said he's continuing to investigate intelligence reports that Russia offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. and coalition troops.”
• “One rationale for keeping U.S. forces in the region is to check Iran, which McKenzie said ‘still has the clear aspirational role of ejecting the U.S.’ But after Iranian proxy strikes in Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia—and brazen attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf—Tehran is now ‘recalculating,’ McKenzie said. He described the current unsteady balance as ‘contested deterrence.’”
• “One reason it's so hard for the United States to leave this region is that there's always a new crisis. That may be happening again with the recent attacks on Iran's centrifuges at Natanz and missile-testing sites. Iran blames Israel, and at some point, said McKenzie, ‘my experience with Iran tells me they will respond.’ My takeaway from McKenzie's survey of the region: The recipe for a sustainable U.S. presence in the Middle East is small numbers, low casualties, good partners and adversaries who frighten their neighbors.”

“How the Media Mangled the ‘Russian Invasion’ of the Trump Administration,” Ted Galen Carpenter, The National Interest, 07.14.20: The author, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute, writes:

• “The willingness of the press to circulate any account that puts Russia in a bad light has not diminished with the collapse of the Russia-Trump collusion narrative. The latest incident began when the New York Times published a front-page article on June 28, based on an anonymous source within the intelligence community, that Moscow had put a bounty on the lives of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.”
• “As with so many other inflammatory news accounts dealing with Russia, serious doubts about the accuracy of this one developed almost immediately. Just days later, an unnamed intelligence official told CBS reporter Catherine Herridge that the information about the alleged bounties was uncorroborated.” 
• “The media should not have ignored or blithely dismissed the bounty allegation, but far too many members ran enthusiastically with a story based on extremely thin evidence, questionable sourcing, and equally questionable logic. Once again, they seemed to believe the worst about Russia’s behavior and Trump’s reaction to it because they had long ago mentally programmed themselves to believe such horror stories without doubt or reservation.”
• “The assessment by Alan MacLeod of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is devastatingly accurate. With regard to the bounty story, he concluded, ‘evidence-free claims from nameless spies became fact’ in most media accounts. Instead of sober, restrained inquiries from a skeptical, probing press, readers and viewers were treated to yet another installment of over-the-top anti-Russia diatribes. That treatment had the effect, whether intended or unintended, of promoting even more hawkish policies toward Moscow and undermining the already much-delayed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It was a biased, unprofessional performance that should do nothing to restore the public’s confidence in the media’s already tattered credibility.”

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant developments.

Impact of the pandemic:

“The Pandemic Should Kill Regime Change Forever: If the United States can’t stop a virus at home, there’s no reason to think it should ever try running another country,” Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 07.08.20: The author, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, writes:

• “A few weeks ago, I tweeted the following: ‘A country that cannot convince its own citizens to wear masks to halt a pandemic has no business toppling foreign governments and trying to remake whole societies that it barely understands.’”
• “Much of the blame belongs squarely to U.S. President Donald Trump, whose head-in-the-sand belief that the virus would just disappear—'like a miracle’—delayed the U.S. response by at least a month and allowed the virus to spread far more widely. Since then, the administration’s chaotic and inconsistent response—and especially Trump’s own refusal to wear a mask himself or to use his bully pulpit to unite the country—has made things infinitely worse.”
• “Even with a different president, however, the U.S. response might have fallen well short of what was needed. From the beginning, a chorus of right-wing pundits and politicians downplayed the danger, and not all of them—such as the New York Times’ Bret Stephens—did so out of a sense of fealty to Trump.”
• “Instead of knowledge, the U.S. right has fetishized liberty as its defining theme (unless you’re a woman and want an abortion, of course), and encouraged its followers to see most elements of government authority as inherently suspect.”
• “Dealing with COVID-19 would not have been easy under the best of circumstances, but the central task is still a damn sight easier than trying to create stable and effective democracies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or other countries in the wake of U.S.-led regime change. And that’s why a country that cannot persuade its own citizens to wear a mask should not begin to think that it can get people in some foreign country to remake their whole society according to its dictates.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Arms control:

“Saving Space From ‘Star Wars’-Style Misperceptions,” Charles Powell, War on the Rocks, 07.14.20: The author, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, writes:

• “If policymakers imagine space to be the same kind of warfighting domain as its terrestrial counterparts, the sustainability of space as a commons is at risk. In a world where space wars imitate Star Wars, orbital debris poses an existential threat to the future of space development. Now is the time for the United States to seriously consider arms control measures for anti-satellite weapons that generate orbital debris.”
• “Russia and China continue to circulate the draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, but it conveniently excludes dangerous debris-generating weapons launched from the ground developed by both countries. Russia’s recent reckless and aggressive maneuvers and weapons testing undermine its messaging on this matter. China’s anti-satellite test still remains the largest single-event source of debris in orbit.”
• “To date, the Trump administration seems to be unwilling to take any step other than normative development. As Aaron Bateman persuasively argued, developing robust norms in space is essential. Earlier anemic responses to the Indian anti-satellite test undermined global space security and conceded an opportunity to promote space norms. There is progress underway: The Trump administration’s new Artemis Accords offer a renewed opportunity to cultivate norms by tying behavior to access to U.S. space infrastructure.”
• “But merely developing norms is not enough. If we know that a certain class of weapons not only fundamentally threatens the sustainable development of space and its enduring benefits to humanity, but also provides dubious strategic value, what does it say about us if we do not work to remove such weapons from use?”

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

“With a UN Veto, Russia and China Add to Syria’s Misery,” James Risch, New York Times, 07.20.20: The author, a U.S. senator, writes:

• “Earlier this month in the United Nations Security Council, the world saw a preview of what Russian and Chinese global ‘leadership’ looks like: a world order where the most vulnerable suffer for the political gains of those at the top. Twice, Russia and China vetoed U.N. resolutions which would have ensured that lifesaving humanitarian aid could reach millions of suffering Syrians through vital border crossings.”
• “This nefarious alliance within the Security Council is depriving millions of innocent civilians, including children, of essential food, medicine and care, all in the interest of solidifying the so-called legitimacy of the murderous regime of Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad. No truly great power would behave in this way.”
• “Going forward, the United States, the rest of the U.N. Security Council, private aid groups and other United Nations agencies need to increase the pressure on Russia and China. The world needs to know who is responsible for cutting off this lifesaving assistance to the Syrian people. This is not a confrontation between the United States and Russia and China. It is the entire world versus Russia and China.”
• “In 12 months, when the Syria border-crossing resolution comes up for renewal again, Russia and China will almost assuredly again be on the wrong side of humanity. These actions highlight the attitude of China and Russia on the international stage, where callous indifference toward the rest of humanity is the trademark of their foreign policy. It is imperative that we push back against this behavior now. If we do not, we will repeat this same fight for years to come. For the sake of the Syrian people, and the rest of the world, we must not let them win.”

Cyber security:

“Is Russia Really Trying to Steal Coronavirus Secrets?” George Beebe, The National Interest, 07.17.20: The author, vice president and director of studies at the Center for the National Interest, writes:

• “The story broke this week, when the British government issued a statement backed by U.S. and Canadian officials claiming that a group of hackers thought to be directed by Russian intelligence has targeted Western organizations involved in COVID-19 vaccine research and development.”
• “These statements beg some important questions. Does using cyber espionage ‘to answer intelligence questions about the pandemic,’ as the British report phrased it, constitute malicious and despicable behavior? If so, it would be surprising indeed if Western cyber spies were not guilty of much the same thing.”
• “If espionage alone is not enough to constitute malice, does one cross that line when the goal … is to steal intellectual property and gain an unfair advantage in the race to create a vaccine? Such competitive chicanery is certainly objectionable … But it would not be unusual in the rough and tumble intersection between the worlds of business and international relations.”
• “Or do such intrusions only become truly despicable when their goal is to impede or disrupt important research, frustrating Western efforts to prevent and treat COVID-19? Such an intention … would constitute a genuine security threat to citizens of the target countries, if not to the entire world. The British report implies such destructive intent … but it offers no evidentiary basis for distinguishing between intelligence gathering, IP theft and malicious sabotage.”
• “The problem lies not so much in the shortcomings of the British report as it does in the nature of modern cyber technology itself. For those on the receiving end of digital intrusions, it can be difficult to distinguish between operations meant to grab sensitive information and those intended to prepare for cyber sabotage. … One thing should be clear amidst the uncertainty, however: there is little chance that Moscow and Beijing will play by our preferred rules in this new era of great power competition if we refuse to engage with them over what the rules of the game should be.”

Elections interference:

“Countering Russian and Chinese Influence Activities,” Cyrus Newlin, Heather A. Conley, Amy Searight and Tim Kostelancik, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 07.15.20: The authors of the report write:

• “Chinese and Russian influence activities that seek to exploit democratic vulnerabilities in order to manipulate policies, politics and societies are on the rise. Yet the impact of these malign influence activities has been muted thus far and determined largely by political, social and economic features of the target countries themselves. Societal cohesion and political consensus are among the most important features that inoculate democratic polities against the impact of malign influence, and actions taken by governments to counter interference and disinformation efforts can play an important role in mitigating the impact. Diversified economic relations can also reduce vulnerabilities to Russian and Chinese malign influence.”
• “China and Russia exploit the asymmetry of democratic systems … Democracies have unique vulnerabilities to malign influence activities, but they also have unique and durable strengths. … In the near term, it may be more important for democracies to redouble their efforts to build up their strengths than to reduce their vulnerabilities.”
• “China and Russia continue to adapt and refine their efforts by leveraging new technologies and techniques to exploit democratic vulnerabilities, and they are learning from each other. Evidence from China’s diplomatic response to the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that Beijing is emulating Russian tactics in the information space, including creating fake social media accounts, spreading misleading reports and conspiracy theories.”
• “But … democracies under threat from malign influence can also learn from one another. … Increasing this cooperation, finding common approaches to countering malign influence activities, reducing societal polarization and strengthening democratic institutions are the best ways to ensure that Chinese and Russian influence activities continue to fall short of their goals.”

“Newly Declassified Documents Suggest FBI Was Wary by Early 2017 of Steele Dossier,” Alan Cullison, Wall Street Journal, 07.19.20: The author, a reporter for the news outlet, writes:

• “A Senate committee released newly declassified documents that showed the Federal Bureau of Investigation was wary in early 2017 of a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that helped stir a narrative, later debunked, that the Trump campaign had close ties to Russian intelligence. … The documents … included FBI notes from three days of interviews with a primary source of Mr. Steele who cast doubt on some of the dossier's contents.”
• “[F]ormer high-level FBI agent, Peter Strzok, … wrote that Mr. Steele himself ‘may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.'’ Reacting to a New York Times report in February 2017 … Mr. Strzok wrote in the margins of a printed copy of the article that ‘we are unaware of any Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.’”
• “The Senate Judiciary Committee … released the documents online as part of the panel's review of the origins of the FBI inquiry that became special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation … Democrats said Mr. Graham's document release was politically motivated. … The Justice Department's inspector general found that the opening of the Russia probe in July 2016 … was justified. Mr. Mueller's team extracted guilty pleas or convictions against a half-dozen former aides to Mr. Trump for lying to investigators or separate financial crimes unrelated to any allegations in the dossier.”
• “Notes of Mr. Strzok, as well as the interview with Mr. Steele's source, suggest that the FBI knew the limitations in Mr. Steele's reporting, which alleged that Russia had been cultivating Mr. Trump for years with financial enticements and leverage over the president in the form of sex tapes.”
• “In the interview with the FBI agents, Mr. Steele's primary contractor described a network of subsources inside Russia … While he attributed salient episodes of the dossier to one or another of his sources, he said he did not recall or didn't know where some of the episodes came from. The contractor said he couldn't vouch for some of the information told to him by his sources in Russia.”

“‘Shadow State’ by Luke Harding—the Long Hand of the Kremlin,” David Bond, Financial Times, 07.16.20: In this book review, the news outlet’s Brexit editor and deputy U.K. news editor writes:

• “Four years after Moscow launched its hack-and-leak operation against Hillary Clinton and deployed an army of internet trolls to spread disinformation and to boost the Trump campaign, can Vladimir Putin and his network of spies play the same tune twice? This is the central question posed by Luke Harding in ‘Shadow State.’”
• “The conclusion he reaches is that under Trump, the U.S. has become ‘uniquely vulnerable’ to the disinformation techniques that are part of Moscow’s hybrid warfare methods, aimed at sowing chaos and division among Washington and its Western allies without having to engage in direct military confrontation.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“New Sanctions Challenge the Tenuous Ties Between America and Russia: Peaceful coexistence remains an imperative, no matter how unsavory Putin’s regime might be,” Thomas Graham Jr. and Matthew Rojansky, The National Interest, 07.13.20: The authors, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of the Kennan Institute, write:

• “The controversy over alleged Russia bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan has underscored once again that the United States has an attitude about Russia, but not a policy.”
• “Russia is not going to go away. … [I]t remains a great power with a vast nuclear arsenal, the world’s richest endowment of natural resources and an unbending will to defend its national interests. Despite many shortcomings, we should remember, Russians defeated both Napoleon and Hitler, who grossly underestimated their resilience.”
• “The starting point for a U.S. strategy should be to recognize that America and Russia are great-power competitors. … Even if Putin’s eventual successor is more democratically inclined, it does not follow that Russia will embrace a worldview more favorable to the United States.”
• “America’s task is not to replace enmity toward Russia with a partnership … It is to manage the current competition in ways that protect vital U.S. interests while minimizing risks and costs, and allowing space for selective cooperation. Three principles should guide our policy. First, a relationship aimed principally at military competition runs too great a risk of nuclear catastrophe. … Second, to reduce risks, the United States and Russia have to find ways to constrain their competition. … Third, as the competition unfolds, Washington needs to leave open space for cooperation of two sorts. More prevalent will be cooperation to define boundaries that will produce safer competition, such as arms control, or rules of the road for cyberspace. At the same time, the two countries will still need to cooperate and bring other states to the table, to deal with a narrow range of urgent and critical transnational challenges.”
• “The best hope of sanctions influencing Russia to change its behavior is if they are joined by skillful diplomacy to rally U.S. allies and partners and to engage Russia in serious, direct dialogue. In this light, restoring diplomatic channels of communication that were severed after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in 2014 should now be a priority. … One final step is essential. The United States needs to put its own house in order.”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Do Black Lives Matter in Russia?” Peter Rutland and Andrei Kazantsev, PONARS Eurasia, 07.13.20: The authors, a professor at Wesleyan University and a professor at the Higher School of Economics, write:

• “The killing of George Floyd triggered thousands of protests around the world, from the toppling of former slave owner statues in Bristol, England to demonstrations by Aboriginal rights activists in Alice Springs, Australia. However, no such empathetic protests could be seen in Russian cities.”
• “Why have Russian liberals been slow to support and emulate BLM? It is widely recognized that Russian society was traumatized by the experiences of the 1990s … Against that background, it is not surprising that Russians view scenes of looting with alarm, as academic Sergei Medvedev explained in a June 6 Facebook post. What was surprising was that half of the responses to his post—presumably from his liberal friends —were highly critical of the BLM protests.”
• “Russian liberals remain committed to the language of universal human rights and are disdainful of identity politics (the struggle for rights of marginalized minority groups). For some, the attacks on property were reminiscent of Soviet anti-capitalist propaganda. But racial prejudice is also regrettably a factor.”
• “The whole question of the extent of racism in Russian society is complex, and its historical trajectory is quite different from the rest of Europe or the United States. As Marlene Laruelle points out, Russia has more of a tradition of ethnic/racial mixing than segregation, and the main division in social interactions is between Russians and people from Central Asia and the Caucasus.”
• “For both liberals and conservatives in Russia, both identity and world view are powerfully shaped by attitude toward the United States. This helps explain why BLM has had such a strong impact on political debates in Russia. For pro-Kremlin figures, it was quite easy to incorporate BLM into their narrative, using it to criticize structural racism in America while at the same time echoing racist attitudes. For the reasons outlined above, this was much more challenging for Russian liberals.” 

“Putin 5.0?” Angela Stent, Brookings Institution, 07.14.20: The author, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and a professor at Georgetown University, writes:

• “On July 1, Russia finished a weeklong period of voting in a referendum on 200 amendments to the 1993 Yeltsin constitution.”
• “The most important amendment is the one that resets Putin’s electoral clock … The question of what comes after Putin has been answered, at least for now. It is Putin. But what would a Putin 5.0 or 6.0 term look like? So far, the new constitution promises more of the same, with an increasingly aging leadership. Indeed, some are already likening it to the late Brezhnev era—domestic stagnation coupled with foreign policy activism.”
• “But will there be a Putin 5.0? Putin has not yet committed to running for another term in 2024. The immediate goal of the constitutional referendum was to end internecine power struggles focused on succession, and, for now, these have subsided. This has strengthened Putin’s hand.”
• “Public opinion polls show that the Russian public wants change. Putin may not be a lame duck, but it is not clear that Russians would support another 16 years of his rule. As has been the case throughout Russian history, things appear to be stable until suddenly they are not. Putin likes to surprise, as was clear from his hastily-arranged constitutional referendum. But he himself could face unanticipated challenges to his plan to stay in power indefinitely.”

“Making Sense of Russia's Illiberalism,” Marlene Laruelle, Journal of Democracy, Volume 31, Number 3, July 2020: The author, a research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, writes:

• “While Russia is seen as the leader of the global illiberal trend, scholarship on the Putin regime itself remains focused on other concepts, such as authoritarianism, patronalism and (to a lesser extent) populism. In discussions of Russia’s foreign policy, illiberalism comes up mainly as a feature of the Kremlin’s toolkit for asymmetric war, especially its disinformation operations.”
• “It is a mistake, however, to view the promotion of illiberalism as merely a cynical political ploy by the Putin regime. In fact, for Russian elites and for a large part of the population, illiberalism supplies an appealing framework for making sense of the world. It is, for many Russians, a genuine producer of common sense.”
• “There are at least three reasons to view illiberalism as meaning-making in Russia. First, it existed in Russian society before being coopted by the regime and gradually ‘étatized.’ …  Second, there exists a lively school of contemporary Russian thought arguing that the country’s future can be secured only by embracing the illiberal project. For the thinkers be-hind this school—known collectively as the ‘Young Conservatives’ (mladokonservativy)—illiberalism is no backward-looking ideology but rather an engine of revolutionary dynamism, uniquely capable of powering rebellion against the global liberal status quo. … Third, illiberalism is fundamental to Russia’s perception of the liberal world order and the country’s place within that order.”

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:

“US Remains on the Sidelines in Libya's Conflict as Russia Extends Its Reach,” Sudarsan Raghavan and Missy Ryan, The Washington Post, 07.17.20: The authors of this report write:

• “An absence of U.S. leadership in Libya has allowed a dangerous international confrontation to deepen, analysts say, as a spiraling proxy war stokes threats to American economic and security interests and provides Russia a platform to expand its clout in the Mediterranean.”
• “The U.S. position on the margins of the conflict—complicated by uncertainty about which side Washington supports—takes on new significance as Russia, Turkey and now possibly Egypt pour weapons and fighters into a combustible battle.”
• “‘The U.S. is essentially out of the game. The Libyans are unable to make their own decisions, entirely dependent on foreign actors,’ a Western diplomat said. ‘There is total drift.’”
• “‘At the end of the day, you have Russians on the ground,’ said Emadeddin Badi, a Libya expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. ‘So unless you are willing to put in the effort, that's not going to change. … Russia will keep getting stronger and stronger.’”

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

“China-Russia Relationship Model for Major Powers,” Dmitri Trenin, Global Times, 07.15.20: The author, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “[The] Chinese … strategy for their country's continued rise was set within a system still dominated by the U.S. China used all the advantages that system had to offer and decidedly shunned confrontation. … But Washington has changed the game completely. As a result, China's policy will have to be reassessed, so that a new strategy can be developed to deal with the reality of confrontation. This is a challenge to China's leadership, pushing it toward becoming a global geopolitical actor, not just a geoeconomic one.”
• “The coming bipolarity will not necessarily be bloc-based … Many U.S. allies around the world—Europeans, above all—value their economic links to China and fear no military threat from Beijing.”
• “Russia is China's close partner. The relationship can be best described as an entente—a basic agreement between Moscow and Beijing on a host of issues. … The Sino-Russian relationship is based on a combination of reassurance and flexibility. Neither China nor Russia has reasons to fear a stab in the back. Both Russia and China are free to pursue their own national interests as they see fit. This is a model relationship between two major powers.”
• “Washington will not be able to turn the U.S.-China-Russia triangle to its favor … As things stand now, there is simply nothing Washington can offer Moscow to turn it against Beijing. … For the foreseeable future, Russian-Chinese relations are likely to be closer, and more productive than Russian-American ones. This is not based on emotions, but on national interests. …The China-U.S. confrontation will last a long while. In the end, the U.S. will not defeat China. And China will not replace the U.S. as the global hegemonic power either.”

“Russia Loosens Its Belt. Russia’s foreign minister bowed out of China’s high-level Belt and Road meeting. Is Moscow finally signaling its discontent over the initiative?” Ankur Shah, Foreign Policy, 07.16.20: The author, a writer focused on China and Russia, writes:

• “Last month, China held a virtual conference on the Belt and Road Initiative. Hosted by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the high-level meeting was, in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping, ‘an opportunity to discuss a collective response to COVID-19, advance Belt and Road cooperation, and strengthen international solidarity.’ …But one face was noticeably missing: Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister.”

• “Moscow’s unwillingness to even put in a proper appearance at the latest forum suggests a subtle change in approach: It no longer feels obliged to bow before Beijing’s Belt and Road. This leaves China in a difficult position. As Beijing continues to roll out infrastructure and investment in Russia’s backyard and undermine its influence in the former Soviet Union, it needs, at the very least, tacit acceptance of the initiative from Russia. The last thing China wants is any hint of backlash from Russia over the Belt and Road, especially at a time when so many of its other partners are pushing back against the initiative. Any step back from Moscow also reveals to the United States and Europe a vulnerability in an otherwise maturing Sino-Russian entente.”
• “The strategic ties that do exist between the two countries exist almost entirely outside the Belt and Road framework—in spite of the branding to the contrary.”
• “Russia’s public distancing from the Belt and Road program comes at a time when the initiative is already suffering major setbacks. A recent survey by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs found that 20 percent of Belt and Road projects have been ‘seriously affected’ by the global pandemic, with a further 30 to 40 percent ‘somewhat affected.’”

“Does China-US Confrontation Meet Russia’s Interests?” Andrey Kortunov, Global Times, 07.17.20: The author, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, writes:

• “Many in Russia believe that a protracted U.S.-China confrontation meets Russia's foreign policy interests since this confrontation raises the importance of Moscow for Beijing and makes China more interested in further strengthening its strategic partnership with Russia. This might be true to some extent, but the Russian-Chinese cooperation should have its own foundation, not a common enemy. Besides, an unmitigated U.S.-Chinese confrontation contains multiple military, geopolitical and economic risks for Russia - ranging from a devastating global recession, which would severely damage the fragile Russian economy, to a large-scale military conflict, which Russia might be dragged into against its will.”
• “At the same time, Moscow cannot be an ‘honest broker’ between Beijing and Washington since U.S.-Russian relations today are hardly better than U.S.-Chinese relations are. … The next couple of years will be a bumpy road for U.S., for China and for the rest of us.”

Ukraine:

“Ukraine’s Unpopular Populist: What Next for Zelenskiy?” Konstantin Skorkin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.17.20: The author, an independent journalist based in Moscow, writes:

• “The latest Ukrainian opinion polls show that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has lost his main advantage: his popularity with the public. For the first time, fewer people said they supported him than did not. The old elites have been waiting for this moment ever since Zelenskiy’s landslide victory last year.”
• “There are many objective reasons for the decline in his ratings, in addition to disappointment resulting from overly high expectations. … Zelenskiy has been landed with the unprecedented global crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic. Zelenskiy’s team can’t deliver the economic growth it promised, and instead can only try to save the country from a default. GDP had already fallen by 5.9 percent by May this year.”
• “Polls show that Ukrainians consider the main achievement of Zelenskiy’s first year in power to be the release of Ukrainian prisoners by Russia last fall, but this has now largely been forgotten because no breakthrough has been made in Donbas peace talks, and the bombardments continue. The promise of peace—Zelenskiy’s main campaign pledge—remains unfulfilled because of the president’s unrealistic strategy and the unwillingness of Ukrainian society to make painful compromises.”
• “There was a window of opportunity for Zelenskiy at the beginning of his term, when he could have used his enormous popularity to sever the Gordian knot of the peace process by either withdrawing from the Minsk agreements or implementing their political conditions. He could have de facto recognized Ukraine’s defeat and thrown everything into domestic reform, risking a new revolution. But the president chose to draw out the conflict in hope of a miracle, which quickly led to people losing faith in Zelenskiy as their leader.”

“Flight MH17 Crashed Six Years Ago. Ukrainians Have Very Different Views on Who's to Blame,” Gerard Toal, John O'Loughlin and Kristin M. Bakke, The Washington Post, 07.16.20: The authors of the article write:

• “We noted a jump in the number of respondents in Crimea who say they never heard of MH17. … Nearly 40 percent of the respondents in southeast Ukraine said it was ‘hard to say’ who was to blame—again, another jump over the 2014 survey.”
• “A large number of respondents in the Ukrainian government-controlled Donbas also gave a ‘hard to say’ answer—a sign that respondents in the region, the area closest to the actual site of the tragedy, did not want to answer the question. Other data in 2019 from the enumerators showed half of the respondents in this region were ‘generally uncomfortable with the questions in the survey’ compared with less than 15 percent in the Western region.”
• “We observed many respondents in Crimea continued to hold Russia and the Donbas militants blameless. By contrast, one in five respondents in southeast Ukraine still blamed the Russian military for the MH17 downing, though fewer respondents blamed Russia and the Donbas militants in 2019. Only in west and central Ukraine did a majority of respondents hold the Russian military responsible for MH17's destruction.”

• “What the results show, we believe, are some respondents avoiding a sensitive question. In Crimea, respondents declared ignorance of the MH17 incident while in southeast Ukraine and in government-controlled Donbas respondents said it was ‘hard to say’ who was to blame. Among other regions, blame attribution follows established patterns. The leading theory among residents of Crimea holds Ukraine's military responsible while the leading theory among residents in the west and center of Ukraine holds the Russian military responsible.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“New Fighting Brings Three-year Armenian-Azerbaijani Truce to an End,” Laurence Broers, Chatham House, 07.16.20: The author, an associate fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, writes:

• “Although the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is focused on the Line of Contact around Nagorny Karabakh, a new—and significant—outbreak of violence has happened some 300 kilometers away on high ground along the de jure Armenia-Azerbaijan border.”
• “How the fighting began remains unclear. … Unclear boundaries in highland terrain may have played a role. Although referred to as the international border, the de jure boundary between Armenia and Azerbaijan … is not clearly demarcated in many areas and does not coincide with lines of actual control.”
• “Each new round of Armenian-Azerbaijani fighting serves as an audit of the various restraining factors preventing a larger war. A Russian-Euro-Atlantic-Iranian consensus on proactively containing any new Armenian-Azerbaijani war appears to still hold, although senior-level attention from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo trailed that of his counterparts.”
• “Russia acted quickly to offer mediation, reflecting the reality that any large-scale Armenia-Azerbaijan war would test Russia’s extended deterrence guarantees to Armenia. As in April 2016, Turkey has been vigorous in its support of Azerbaijan, raising concerns in Armenia and drawing oblique warnings from Russia. On the other hand, the CSTO … dithered, initially calling then postponing a meeting citing the need for more time to study the situation.”
• “Unprecedented spontaneous demonstrations in Baku called for war with Armenia, broke into the Azerbaijani parliament and, in some cases, articulated anti-government slogans. In the absence of reliable polling, such protests cannot be taken as evidence of a popular consensus in favor of war. But they do underline the importance of the conflict as the one issue in Azerbaijan where open protest is accepted as legitimate and cannot easily be dispersed. As losses over the past week are counted, the dismissal of the foreign minister may not be sufficient to quell public anger.”

“Hostilities Escalate Between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” Max Seddon, Financial Times, 07.09.20: The author, Financial Times’ Moscow correspondent, writes:

• “One of the world’s longest-running territorial disputes in the Caucasus Mountains has erupted anew after 20 people died last week in fighting on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The skirmishes began about 300km north of the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh on July 12 and prompted tens of thousands of protesters to storm Baku’s parliament in anger and demand a return to full-on war. The fighting died down after two days before shelling resumed.”
• “‘There is no one capable of deterrence or restraint,’ said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, a think-tank in Yerevan. ‘The real question is less about international mediation and much more about how far Armenia and Azerbaijan want to continue this escalation. Armenia now feels compelled to respond, and we are in a tit-for-tat situation that is spiraling out of control.’”
• “About 30,000 pro-war protesters clashed with police in downtown Baku after a soldier’s funeral on Tuesday, demanding that Azerbaijan abandon negotiations entirely and move to open war with Armenia.”
• “The unexpected outpouring of pro-war sentiment presents an unusual challenge for Mr. Aliyev, whose government is normally quick to stifle dissent and prevent public rallies. On Tuesday, however, police stood by before some protesters broke into the parliament building, chanting ‘End the quarantine and start the war!’”
• “‘A lot of public opinion is more radical than the government can be,’ said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ‘Aliyev’s riding a tiger—he’s providing this bellicose rhetoric, which he probably doesn’t really believe in, but it sets the public mood.’”