This Week’s Highlights

• While it is true there is Russian and Chinese disinformation pushing various narratives regarding COVID-19, foreign state actors are often merely curating messages that we Americans created, write Profs. Darren L. Linvill and Patrick Warren. For instance, the persistent theory that COVID-19 was created by scientists (it wasn't) and escaped a lab in China (it didn't). This theory did not spring forth from a St. Petersburg troll farm or a GRU bunker in Moscow. According to Linvill and Warren’s research, the first English-language tweet suggesting this theory was on Jan. 20. It came from an anonymous conservative American woman who, in her profile, claims to love Jesus, her family, her country, her freedom and her guns.
• Because of mutual mistrust and incompatible positions on what to include in a follow-on agreement, New START will probably expire without a replacement, argues former NNSA administrator Linton Brooks. The era of Russian-American treaty-based strategic arms control as we know it is coming to an end. We can delay that outcome, though we likely cannot prevent it. But by thinking through the consequences, Brooks writes, we can minimize the harm to our overall relations and to international stability.  
• The Trump administration is designating the Russian Imperial Movement, an ultranationalist group based in Russia as a terrorist organization, according to officials, the New York Times reports. It is the first time the U.S. government will apply the label to a white supremacist group.
• For the time being, the creation of a Russo-Chinese military alliance isn’t a viable idea, and cooperation between China and Russia in the Arctic is exclusively economic, writes Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. While cooperating with China more and more closely, Russia remains careful as to the scope and terms of this cooperation. Trenin argues that Moscow is trying to protect its sovereignty: as a general principle, as well as with regard to the Arctic.
• No country or institution—not the United States, China, Russia, the U.N. or the EU—has stepped up to craft a response that would provide a template for cooperative action and preventive measures for the health security crises of the future that are sure to come, writes Prof. Elizabeth Wishnick. Instead, Wishnick argues, the Chinese leadership, Putin’s government, the Trump administration and others seek to assign blame to deflect attention from their own domestic shortfalls.
• Because of the nature of their oil fields, Russia and Saudi Arabia are able to produce oil at costs much lower than most other countries, writes Daniel Yergin, vice chair of IHS Markit. Among the hardest hit is U.S. shale oil, according to Yergin, and as a consequence, the United States will likely have to give up share in the global market, to others’ gain. Prof. Nikolas K. Gvosdev writes that the U.S. needs to convince the Saudis to reduce production, and either get the Russians to do the same or increase more sanctions on the Russian energy industry in order to push prices back up while creating market conditions for U.S. producers to survive and to not lose further market share, especially in Europe.

 

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.

Pandemic:

“Yes, Russia Spreads Coronavirus Lies. But They Were Made in America,” Darren L. Linvill and Patrick Warren, The Washington Post, 04.02.20: The authors, associate professors at Clemson University, write:

• “While it is true there is Russian and Chinese disinformation pushing various narratives regarding COVID-19, foreign state actors are often merely curating messages that we Americans created. Instead of making stories up from whole cloth, foreign adversaries take the misinformation we give them and launder it into disinformation.”
• “Take, for instance, the persistent theory that COVID-19 was created by scientists (it wasn't) and escaped a lab in China (it didn't). This theory did not spring forth from a St. Petersburg troll farm or a GRU bunker in Moscow. According to our research, the first English-language tweet suggesting this theory was on Jan. 20. It came from an anonymous conservative American woman.”
• “Foreign actors are, of course, capable of creating their own false narratives and fake news, and this is particularly true when it comes to public health issues. … In 2015 the Russian IRA changed tactics … In accordance with their new strategy, they stopped making up lies and began telling people how to think and feel about existing stories … It turns out the latter is both more efficient and more effective. Telling people what they want to hear rather than what you want to peddle can be far more persuasive.”
• “The same continues to be true with coronavirus disinformation. In our research, we have found multiple networks of fake accounts—one of which we can attribute to Russia—that use conversations about coronavirus as a tool for political attacks. … It's not just our hashtags and memes that fuel foreign disinformation, however. Conspiracy-peddling websites such as Naturalnews.com and Alex Jones's Infowars.com … have both discussed the Chinese lab origin theory of COVID-19 among other fearmongering stories related to the virus.”
• “We have to address our own culpability in the problems that are fomented by disinformation. At a time when most news and information people digest is socially mediated, we need to create citizens and platforms that are more resilient to lies and more accepting of facts.”

“Masked Diplomacy: Xi and Putin Seek Advantage and Cover From the Pandemic,” Elizabeth Wishnick, PONARS Eurasia, 04.01.20: The author, a professor of political science at Montclair State University, writes:

• “China is not alone in spreading disinformation about the origins of the pandemic. According to an EU report, Russia has been doing this as well, in keeping with its ongoing efforts to sow distrust in Europe and the United States.”
• “Experts claim that Russia has suspiciously few reported cases of COVID-19. There may be some underreporting in Russia, but other countries on China’s northern and western borders thus far have relatively few cases compared to other countries.”
• “Some analysts project that COVID-19 is likely to undermine the Sino-Russian partnership—in the Russian media, as in the White House, some refer to the pandemic as the ‘Chinese coronavirus.’ Nonetheless, even on the pandemic response we see a familiar pattern in Sino-Russian relations: mutual support by Xi and Putin.”
• “Rather than portending a new Chinese effort at global and regional leadership, COVID-19 reveals its absence and shows how poorly equipped global architecture is for 21st-century threats. No country or institution—not the United States, China, Russia, the U.N. or the EU—has stepped up to craft a … response that would provide a template for cooperative action and preventive measures for the health security crises of the future that are sure to come. Instead, the Chinese leadership, Putin’s government, the Trump administration and others seek to assign blame to deflect attention from their own domestic shortfalls.”
• “It is democracies in Asia like South Korea and Taiwan who are to be emulated, as their strategies to contain COVID-19 proved effective as well as commensurate with democratic ideals of transparency and accountability.”

“Dictators Are Using the Virus to Tighten Their Grip on Power,” Joshua Kurlantzick, The Washington Post, 04.05.20: The author, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

• “[A]uthoritarians often take advantage of emergencies … to consolidate power. These catastrophes spark fear, bolster the public desire for a strong governing hand and lead people to rally around their leaders. Russia experts say Vladimir Putin used the war in Chechnya to grab greater power … Putin's government has used the virus to bolster its surveillance systems in Moscow, installing more facial-recognition tools to maintain quarantines—tools that could also be deployed to anticipate public rallies. And Putin got his compliant legislature to end term limits, possibly allowing him to serve into the 2030s, as most of Russia was distracted by the spreading virus.”
• “A contagion on the scale of the coronavirus, however, may offer authoritarians a greater opportunity than any event short of war. It has no borders, and the sense of panic it creates is broader than that after a terrorist attack.”
• “Indeed, from the Philippines to Hungary, autocratic leaders in many nations are using the coronavirus to enhance their powers—to put in place new rules that will be hard to overturn even if the coronavirus is defeated. Many of the new powers have no clear end date.”
• “If scientists devise a coronavirus vaccine or treatment, it would provide a clear, obvious endpoint to the panic and fear, a signal that a leader's powers should be curtailed. In the meantime, the maneuvers by men like Hun Sen, Orban and Duterte will keep their countries backsliding further from democracy.”

“The US and Russia Should Work Together to Defeat the Coronavirus,” Kirill Dmitriev, CNBC, 04.06.20: The author, chief executive officer of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, writes:

• “During World War II, American and Russian soldiers fought side by side against a common enemy. We achieved victory together. Who can forget the images of allied soldiers embracing each other on the banks of the Elbe on April 25, 1945, nearly 75 years ago?”
• “Just as our grandfathers stood shoulder to shoulder to defend our values and secure peace for future generations, now our countries must show unity and leadership to win the war against the coronavirus.”
• “The coronavirus challenge can be best addressed through a coordinated global response, including a close partnership between the U.S. and Russia.”
• “The time has come to improve relations by focusing our efforts on three areas: (1) jointly fighting the coronavirus, (2) reducing the impact of the inevitable global economic recession and (3) developing a platform for future cooperation in confronting terrorism, nuclear proliferation and climate change.”

“Coronavirus: Is Europe Losing Italy?” Miles Johnson, Sam Fleming and Guy Chazan, Financial Times, 04.06.20: The authors, journalists for the news outlet, write:

• “As Italy faces its most severe crisis since the second World War, with more than 15,000 deaths from coronavirus and its economy on course to suffer the deepest recession in its modern history, there is a rising feeling among even its pro-European elite that the country is being abandoned by its neighbors.”
• “There are already signs that Italian faith in the EU has been damaged. In a survey conducted last month by Tecnè, 67 percent of respondents said they believed being part of the union was a disadvantage for their country, up from 47 percent in November 2018.”
• “Donald Tusk, the former European Council president, told the FT the situation today was much more worrying than during the euro crisis—both politically and economically. … He says the EU’s assistance for Italy and other hard-hit countries is vastly more substantial than that from China and Russia, but he warns that ‘in politics perception can be more important than fact.’”

“America's Coronavirus Response Has Been a Disaster. We Must Know Why,” Daniel R. DePetris, The National Interest, 04.01.20: The author, a columnist at the Washington Examiner, writes:

• “Once the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control, the U.S. Congress should establish a national commission (along the lines of the 9/11 Commission) with a mission statement to get to the truth of the matter. … There is no beating around the bush: the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus epidemic is a steaming pile of incompetence, neglect and ineptitude. … And there is plenty of blame to go around.”
• “When approached by the intelligence community in January and February about the threat the coronavirus posed to the country, President Donald Trump’s first inclination was to dismiss the virus as akin to the common cold. … Trump only started paying attention when the stock market plummeted 10,000 points and businesses started laying off workers. By the time he prohibited travel into the United States from China (later extending the ban to Europe), the virus was already burrowed in some of America’s largest cities.”
• “The Centers for Disease Control, responsible for flagging a pandemic to the federal government before it becomes a national catastrophe, was unable to produce an accurate coronavirus testing kit early on. … All the while, the limited medical supplies in the National Strategic Stockpile forced the federal government to essentially compete with individual states on the open market for gear. … Doctors, nurses and medical professionals on the front-lines have paid dearly for all of these mistakes, sometimes with their own lives.”
• “The truth of the matter, however, is that fault doesn’t fall on any one individual or government agency. The story of the coronavirus pandemic is … a story about how the entire United States … were all caught with their pants down. It’s also a story about systemic failure and poor judgment every step of the way. Nobody is immune, not even the U.S. Congress, which has treated public health as a second-tier priority.”
• “The American people deserve and are in fact entitled to the absolute truth about why the government’s response was so jumbled.”

“After COVID-19, We Will Need a Postmortem,” David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 03.31.20: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “When America has recovered from the coronavirus crisis and people are back to work, Rep. Adam B. Schiff thinks Congress should consider a 9/11-style independent commission to examine why the nation was so unprepared for the pandemic.”
• “The National Security Council staff, led by deputy Matthew Pottinger, a Chinese-speaking former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Beijing, was aggressive. The first interagency meeting on the Wuhan outbreak took place Jan. 14, and the first NSC deputies committee meeting on Jan. 27, according to a senior administration official. What accounts for the failure to translate this concern into action?”
• “One explosive issue in any inquiry would be whether Trump discounted intelligence warnings because of concerns about the impact of the virus on his reelection campaign.”
• “The coronavirus pandemic has some eerie similarities to 9/11. Trump certainly didn't cause the virus, any more than President George W. Bush plotted Osama bin Laden's attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And Trump's NSC laudably tried to ring the alarm. But did the White House ‘connect the dots’ and take action that could have reduced the coronavirus damage?”

New Cold War/saber rattling:

“Russia's Nuclear Weapons in a Multipolar World: Guarantors of Sovereignty, Great Power Status and More,” Anya Loukianova Fink and Olga Oliker, Daedalus, Spring 2020: The authors, a research analyst at CNA and the director of the Europe and Central Asia Program at the International Crisis Group, write:

• “At a time of technological and political change in the international security environment, Russia continues to view nuclear weapons as guarantors of peace and security among great powers. … Nuclear weapons also assure Russia's own great-power status and mitigate uncertainty in an emerging multipolar order.”
• “In a world where the United States pursues improved missile defense capabilities and appears to reject mutual vulnerability as a stabilizing factor, Moscow views its modernized nuclear arsenal as essential to deter Washington from a possible attack on Russia or coercive threats against it.”
• “Some elites in Russia would like to preserve existing arms control arrangements or negotiate new ones to mitigate a weakening infrastructure of strategic stability. At the same time, however, they seem skeptical that the United States is willing to compromise or deal with Russia as an equal. Meanwhile, multilateral arms control appears to be too complex a proposition for the time being.”
• “As the international system evolves and new alignments take shape, Russian priorities may as well. To be sure, Russia's status and its ability to defend its sovereignty will almost certainly continue to be based in its position as a nuclear-weapon state. However, other capabilities in its statecraft toolkit—from economic to ‘soft’ and political–are bound to grow in importance. Meanwhile, nuclear threats from new sources may shift whom Russia seeks to deter, and how. Important factors could include the evolution of more independent European nuclear policies as the United States steps back from the region. Russia's relationship with China, whose arsenal it currently insists is not a threat, could also shift.”

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“The End of Arms Control?” Linton Brooks, Daedalus, Spring 2020: The author, former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, writes:

• “For almost half a century, the United States and the Soviet Union/Russian Federation have used arms control treaties to help regulate their nuclear relationship. … U.S.-Russian bilateral nuclear arms control is about to collapse. Because of mutual mistrust and incompatible positions on what to include in a follow-on agreement, New START will probably expire without a replacement.”
• “But the need to prevent nuclear war will remain. The United States should: Adopt a broader concept of arms control as including all forms of cooperative effort to prevent nuclear war. … Extend New START to preserve the transparency benefits and provide time to determine what comes next. Make the extension contingent on Russian agreement to deal with U.S. concerns on nonstrategic nuclear weapons and incorporation of new, novel Russian strategic systems. Be prepared to withdraw if Russia fails to follow through. … Conduct a formal assessment of the actual consequences of the demise of treaty-based arms control and how those consequences might be mitigated, drawing in part on the ideas presented above. Follow this internal examination with dialogue with Russia on mitigation of such consequences. … Whether or not the United States elects to continue formal treaties, seek a separate dialogue with Russia on crisis management and the prevention of escalation, considering actions in all war-fighting domains including space and cyberspace.”
• “The era of Russian-American treaty-based strategic arms control as we know it is coming to an end. We can delay that outcome, though we likely cannot prevent it. But by thinking through the consequences, we can minimize the harm to our overall relations and to international stability. We should begin that thinking now.”

Counter-terrorism:

“US Prepares to Sanction Russian Nationalist Group as a Terrorist Organization,” Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman, New York Times, 04.06.20: The authors, journalists with the news outlet, write:

• “The Trump administration is expected to announce on [April 6] that it is designating an ultranationalist group based in Russia as a terrorist organization, according to officials. It is the first time the government will apply the label to a white supremacist group.
• “The State Department's designation for the organization, the Russian Imperial Movement, sets up the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control to block any American property or assets belonging to the group. It will also bar Americans from financial dealings with the organization and make it easier to ban its members from traveling to the United States.”
• “The United States is also designating three of the group's leaders—Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov—as individual terrorists who will face similar sanctions, the officials said. … The Russian Imperial Movement is not considered to be sponsored by the Russian government, officials said, although President Vladimir V. Putin has tolerated its activities and it has helped advance the Russian government's external goals by recruiting Russian fighters to aid pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.”
• “The group has also helped support neo-Nazi organizations in Scandinavia, which dovetails with the Russian government's broader pattern of trying to stoke internal divisions, including along racial lines, and sow chaos in Western democracies. … In 2017, the Russian Imperial Movement came up at a trial in Sweden of three men who were accused of plotting bomb attacks targeting asylum seekers. Prosecutors said two of the defendants had traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend 11 days of paramilitary training at a camp operated by the group, fueling their radicalization.”

Conflict in Syria:

“Turkey Must Take Care to Not Cross Russia's Red Lines in Syria: Experts believe that any cease-fire agreement in Idlib will be temporary at best,” Michael Peck, The National Interest, 04.06.20: The author, a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum, writes:

• “‘It is understood that the Russian military will intervene on behalf of the Syrian regime if the regime’s stability and survival is in question,’ says Michael Kofman, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses thinktank, and an expert on the Russian military. ‘But it is not going to intervene on behalf of Syrian forces in Idlib. Russia doesn’t need Idlib.’”
• “However, experts believe that any cease-fire agreement in Idlib will be temporary at best. ‘Ultimately, the Russians will back the Syrian government’s desire to reclaim those territories,’ predicts Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. ‘But in the meanwhile, Putin is happy to kick that can down the road while Syria swallows and digests territory which the opposition had controlled.’”

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

Elections interference:

“US-Russian Non-Interference Pact: Quod Licet Roosevelt, Non Licet Trump?,” Simon Saradzhyan, Russia Matters, 04.01.20: The author, founding director of Russia Matters, writes:

• “Russian leaders … have offered a solution [to the problem of Russian attempts to influence America’s domestic politics] themselves: Russia and the U.S. should sign a deal that would commit them to refrain from interference in each other’s domestic elections and other affairs. In fact, the Kremlin has reportedly made such a proposal to the Trump administration twice, suggesting that it be based on a deal that the U.S. and Soviet Russia struck in the 1930s.”
• “[H]istoric non-compliance, exacerbated by Russian actors’ behavior during the 2016 presidential campaign … may have played a role in the Trump administration’s decision to reject Putin’s offer both times. U.S. diplomats may have also objected to such a deal … American foreign policy experts not working for the U.S. government feel freer not only to ponder the idea of a non-interference pact, but to also call for some sort of arrangement in that vein.”
• “Perhaps these discussions could start on the 1.5 track, as Charap and Timofeev suggest, and first focus on agreeing on definitions of interference and other key terms, per Mankoff’s and Kortunov’s suggestion. If they are successful in agreeing on definitions, U.S. and Russian experts can then, perhaps, proceed to exchange non-papers on what should be included into a ‘non-interference deal.’”
• “I would, however, propose an important caveat. In my view, the negotiators would have to focus on a narrow agreement that would prevent only governmental/government-funded interference, which would have to be clearly defined, without extending any such pacts to the non-governmental sector. … When deciding on content, the two sides can draw from the language of already existing documents.
• “Importantly, whatever language the two governments agree upon (if any), I would caution them against putting it into a treaty, if only because it would have to be ratified by both countries’ parliaments and, given views on Russia in the U.S. Congress, I don’t think such a treaty would stand a chance. Instead, a bilateral executive agreement or even a joint declaration could be the first fruit of such discussions.”

Energy exports from CIS:

“A Pandemic and a Price War Have Together Brought Energy Markets to a Crisis,” Daniel Yergin, Foreign Affairs, 04.02.20: The author, vice chair of IHS Markit, writes:

• “Oil prices are already down two-thirds since the beginning of 2020 and still falling. The decline in global consumption in April alone will be seven times bigger than the biggest quarterly decline following the 2008–9 financial crisis. In areas that lack access to storage and markets, the price of a barrel of oil could fall to zero.”
• “This crash will create turmoil for oil-exporting countries and add to the turbulence of financial markets. It will also add another layer of complexity to an already fraught geopolitical situation … The nature and sheer scale of the current collapse and the geopolitical wrangling it has prompted present unique challenges for the United States and its energy sector—challenges that will have significant consequences for the U.S. economy and U.S. foreign policy in an already perilous moment.”
• “Even as demand craters, oil will still flow out of wells; if it doesn’t go to consumers, it has to go somewhere—and that means into storage, primarily tankage spread around the world. On a country-by-country basis, IHS Markit calculates that virtually every available gallon of storage space in the world will be full by late April or early May. When that happens, two things will result: prices will plummet and producers will shut down wells because they cannot dispose of the oil.”
• “Because of the nature of their oil fields, Russia and Saudi Arabia are able to produce oil at costs much lower than most other countries. In those other, higher-cost countries, when the price that a barrel will fetch is lower than the costs of operating the well, a company can’t afford to continue pumping without losing money on every barrel. At that point, a company will close the well temporarily. Among the hardest hit is U.S. shale oil. As a consequence, the United States will likely have to give up share in the global market, to others’ gain.”   

“The Real Impact of Dirt-Cheap Oil Prices: Low energy prices also may have the impact that years of US sanctions and pressure have not,” Nikolas K. Gvosdev, The National Interest, 04.01.20: The author, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), writes:

• “Low energy prices may have the impact that years of U.S. sanctions and pressure have not. They may have the ability to seriously erode the bases of power of less-than-friendly governments, such as those led by Venezuela to Iran. … Low oil prices—especially below budgetary break-even points—also impact Russia’s ability to fund its defense spending and its interventions around the world while creating additional strains on a domestic economy already coping with Western sanctions.”
• “But low energy prices also have negative implications for the United States. At a certain point, U.S. domestic hydrocarbon production is negatively impacted, eroding the hard-won energy self-sufficiency which has freed the United States from excessive dependence on imports. More importantly, the growth in U.S. energy production also enabled the United States to compete, notably with Russia, for supplying energy to key allies in Europe and Asia. With prices now at a historic low, American energy becomes too expensive to produce.”
• “All of this occurs at a time when there is an unprecedented strain not only in the U.S.-Russia relationship but also in the Washington-Riyadh accord. … [D]eputy national security adviser Victoria Coates needs to convince the Saudis to reduce production, and either get the Russians to do the same or increase more sanctions on the Russian energy industry in order to push prices back up while creating market conditions for U.S. producers to survive and to not lose further market share, especially in Europe.”
• “It remains to be seen whether the Saudis will now turn to Washington, or whether the Saudis and the Russians will decide to give their romance a second chance.”

“The Trump-Russia Showdown Over Oil,” Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, 04.01.20: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “The question now is what, if anything, America should do to defend an important domestic industry from a hostile foreign power with a political agenda. For those Democrats who continue to think Mr. Trump is Mr. Putin's puppet and fracking is a sin against Gaia, the answer seems clear: If Moscow kills the U.S. fracking industry, it will be doing America and the planet a favor. An administration-backed proposal to support U.S. production by adding 77 million barrels of oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a cost of $3 billion didn't make it into the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, as Democrats denounced what they saw as a bailout for big oil.”
• “This issue isn't going away. Antifrackers will have to think more seriously about the place of energy in U.S. foreign policy. Concerns about climate change and the other environmental drawbacks associated with fracking have their place in that discussion, but so too does the geopolitical importance of the American energy boom. Do we want a world in which countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia rig markets in their favor and use their oil wealth to shape the course of world events? Do we want to be tied indefinitely to Middle Eastern oil suppliers whose values and interests are often opposed to ours?”

“Why the Oil Price Shock Is Nothing to Celebrate: Lower revenues exacerbate the damage for poorer producer nations,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 04.05.20: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The collapse in prices will not deliver much of a boost to rich economies. The fall below $20, the lowest level since 2002, reflects a plunge in demand as the U.S. and much of Europe went into lockdown and economic activity ground to a halt. There is no boost in spending power from cheaper oil when few are still burning it.”
• “Big importing—and populous—nations such as India and China will benefit, with cheaper oil potentially ameliorating some damage from coronavirus. Others, like Nigeria, will be hit twice: via a public health emergency and economically, as the price of its main export drops.”
• “Both Saudi Arabia and Russia appear to have badly miscalculated. … Neither country could have predicted such a fall in demand. Coronavirus has spread much more rapidly than expected and the lockdowns that democratic governments have launched in response have cut demand for the world’s most important energy source. Attempts to force U.S. shale producers out of the market will work only in the short term. … Few expect Russia’s struggling economy to be able to cope with such low prices for an extended period.”
• “There are growing signs of an acknowledgement of the need for coordinated cuts but markets will need clarity before prices stabilize. An extended period of volatility may accelerate debate about the merits of a shift away from oil to cleaner fuels. But in the meantime, it is hardly what a struggling global economy needs.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Iran Is Reeling From the Coronavirus. How Has the US Responded? With Sanctions,” Stephen Kinzer, The Boston Globe, 04.03.20: The author, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, writes:

• “As Iran became a global center of the pandemic now sweeping the world, how did the proudly compassionate United States respond? By announcing a new round of economic sanctions aimed at closing loopholes that might allow Iran to sell some of its oil. Iran is already the most heavily sanctioned country in history. Now it will have even less money to buy or make respirators, face masks and other desperately needed medical equipment.”
• “In the Western Hemisphere, few major countries face as great a potential disaster as Venezuela. … The United States reacted … with a bizarre decision to indict the president of Venezuela as a drug trafficker and offer $15 million to anyone who will deliver him to us. … Even in the best of times, the American policy of using ‘maximum pressure’ to cripple unfriendly countries was cruel and self-defeating. Today it is more so than ever.
• “For American politicians, imposing sanctions is a beloved pastime. … They embody the fantasy that coercive pressure alone can make countries submit to America's will. Long experience, notably with 60 years of fruitless American sanctions on Cuba, has proved the fallacy of that argument. Yet Washington continues to lay on the punishment.”
• “This pandemic gives us a chance to test a new approach to countries we consider enemies—not just Iran and Venezuela, but Russia, Syria, Cuba and even North Korea. The United States is so pitifully unprepared that we have little to offer in the way of material aid. We could, however, ease sanctions.” 
• “In the face of a humanitarian crisis, the United States should try suspending sanctions rather than intensifying them. A post-pandemic world should also be a post-sanctions world.”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Analysts Fear the Economic Impact of Russia’s April Coronavirus Shutdown Will Be Catastrophic,” Jake Cordell and Stanislav Zakharkin, The Moscow Times, 04.02.20: The authors, reporters for the news outlet, writes:

• “Russia could be heading for its deepest recession in a generation with millions of workers set to lose their jobs, economists have warned, in a stark assessment of the economic costs of the coronavirus outbreak, and Russia’s response to the pandemic.”
• “‘Given such a long prolongation of the current off-work time and multi-year low oil prices, there is a mounting risk that Russia’s GDP fall in 2020 could hit double-digit territory,’ said economist Vladimir Miklashevsky. … Before the extension of the nationwide holiday, Audit Chamber chief Alexei Kudrin told the president that Russia’s economy would fall by between 3 and 5 percent this year, even if it takes a moderate hit from the coronavirus.”
• “Such a slump could be a disaster for businesses and millions of workers across the country—especially without any signs of a large-scale stimulus package from the Kremlin. … Other economists said the fallout might not be so drastic—but that Russia was still on course to suffer a recession.”
• “Economists have routinely highlighted that the Russian government has plenty of firepower to fight the crisis. It has $150 billion—worth almost 10 percent of its economy—in its national wealth fund, and extremely low public debt. However, even as job losses start to mount amid daily warnings of mass business closures and layoffs, the Kremlin has been reluctant to launch a meaningful package of support.”
• “Chris Weafer of Macro Advisory said he believes the Kremlin’s strategy is to keep the burden of supporting workers and paying wages on employers, rather than having to use state resources. He added that this is why Putin has classified the lockdown as an ‘extended vacation.’”

“Coronavirus Will Pass, But Moscow's Mass Surveillance Is Here to Stay: Laws that, on the face of it, keep people safe can change the fabric of society,” Andrei Soldatov, The Moscow Times, 04.03.20: The author, a Russian investigative journalist and Russian security services expert, writes:

• “After a slow and hesitant start, the Kremlin has taken drastic measures to battle the coronavirus. … Given a free hand by Putin, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin started by introducing an almost complete lockdown in the capital. To enforce it, he decided to enlist a whole range of high-tech solutions.”
• “The rules the Moscow government is trying out on Muscovites are here to stay to some degree, for a very long time. At least that’s what history has taught us.”
• “In his excellent book ‘The Edge of the World. How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are,’ British historian Michael Pye lists the effects of the plague on medieval Europe, including the introduction of papers without which nobody could move … The pioneer of introducing these anti-plague rules was, Pye claims, the city of Edinburgh, not the king. In other words, they were all the initiative of local city authorities, whose populace was frightened by the disease, and then they were picked up and adopted all over the country. Will it be Moscow this time?”

“The Putin Constitution,” William E. Pomeranz, Wilson Center, 03.30.30: The author, deputy director of the Kennan Institute, writes:

• “Putin's actual reforms are both implicit and direct. To begin with, he has upgraded the status of ethnic Russians within the country by referring to the Russian language as the language of the state-forming people. Such a statement will invariably alienate the country's non-Russian inhabitants (more than 20 percent of the population). It further represents a clear retreat from the 1993 constitution's appeal to the multinational peoples of the Russian Federation.”
• “The amendments also have indirectly undermined the first principle articulated in Article 2 of the Russian constitution, namely, that the individual rights and freedoms shall be of supreme value. Instead, the amendments significantly expand the role of social rights to include a minimum wage, pension guarantees and a single, socially oriented state policy in culture, science, health policy and so on. No similar provisions were introduced to reinforce the supremacy of individual rights.”
• “The inclusion of god, traditional family values … and prohibitions against criticism of the Russian people in the defense of the fatherland reflect how Putin's patriotic conservatism has been de facto incorporated into Russia's founding law. … The reforms also weaken the judiciary, most notably by allowing the president to initiate the removal of Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, appellate or cassation judges. Local self-government suffers a similar decrease in power.”
• “By contrast, the amendments largely restore the procuracy's supervisory powers over the legal system, including supervision over the observance of the constitution and its laws. … Finally, at the top of Russia's legal hierarchy once again sits the Russian president.”
• “Putin now owns the constitution. … He optimistically hopes that this new edition of Russia's founding law will serve future generations of Russians for not just twenty but fifty years. That would make it the longest-running constitution in Russian history. Through these reforms, however, Putin has shown the precarious and transient nature of the country's highest law. Russia will require yet another constitution if it ever wants to reclaim its status as an emerging democracy.”

“Putin Ducks Tough Coronavirus Decisions as Aides Step Up,” Henry Foy and Max Seddon, Financial Times, 04.04.20: The authors, the Moscow bureau chief and a Moscow correspondent for the news outlet, write:

• “When it comes to containing coronavirus, the Kremlin has a solid plan: Russia’s president Vladimir Putin promises everyone a month-long holiday; regional governors have to come up with painful restriction measures to then keep people in their homes.”
• “As the coronavirus pandemic presents Mr. Putin with arguably the greatest challenge of his 20-year rule, the typically hands-on president has been conspicuous by his absence.”
• “Mr. Putin’s low profile stems from a reluctance to take responsibility for potentially unpopular measures, according to a former senior Kremlin official, who said the president initially sought to delegate them to [Russian Prime Minister] Mr. Mishustin.”
• “Mr. Mishustin, however, was himself reluctant to introduce stricter measures earlier, prompting Mr. Putin to act through [Moscow Mayor] Mr. Sobyanin.”

“As Russia Battles the Coronavirus Crisis, Why Is Putin So Absent?” Ilya Klishin, The Moscow Times, 03.31.30: The author, former digital director of New York-based Russian-language RTVI channel, writes:

• “The Russian president—who, until only recently, had so deftly guided world events to his liking and was poised to bend the constitution to his will—has now just up and disappeared.”
• “Putin addressed the nation only once during the pandemic—in an odd speech last week.”
• “Then, after his muddled televised address, Putin vanished. Is he holed up somewhere in the mountains near the Black Sea or ensconced at his residence on the Volga? Who knows? It isn't just that Putin has taken a less active role in managing the crisis—he has disappeared altogether.”
• “Aside from the brief Russian-Georgian War in 2008, this is the first time in 20 years that Putin has not personally managed a major national crisis.”

Defense and aerospace:

“Russia’s Defense Industry: Between Political Significance and Economic Inefficiency,” Pavel Luzhin, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), 04.03.20: The author, an expert on Russia’s politics, defense affairs and global security, writes:

• “The Russian Federation’s defense industry provides the authoritarian regime with military power that is used for maintaining its domestic and foreign legitimacy. The industry’s top-management is a major part of Russia’s governing establishment.”
• “Nevertheless, the industry suffers from economic inefficiency, lack of human capital and advanced technologies and governmental over-regulation. These challenges are enhanced by confrontation with the West and efforts to maintain the stability of the regime, which spur Russia’s leaders to rely on economic protectionism and self-isolation.”
• “This trend means that Russia’s political system will rely more on its military power than on diplomacy to achieve foreign policy goals. The Kremlin wants military power to be permanently maintained and developed. The defense industry has bolstered Russia’s relatively high status in international affairs for now, but there is no guarantee that the industry can sustain this trajectory, given the vast problems it faces.”

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:

“Red Lines and Red Tape—How the UK Should Deal With Russia,” Emily Ferris, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 04.03.20: The author, a research fellow in the International Security Studies department at RUSI, writes:

• “The U.K. must assume that Russia will change neither its domestic political order nor its foreign policies in the coming years. U.K. policy must therefore operate in a framework that manages existing threats, prevents and counters future ones and avoids a further deterioration in relations or, worse still, a major confrontation.”
• “There is support across the British government for keeping doors open with Russia, even though critical intelligence-sharing on terrorism and cultural links—such as the British Council’s operations in Russia—remain restricted.”
• “Against this backdrop, the U.K.’s current approach could be based on five pillars: Identifying areas of engagement. … Anticipating regional flashpoints … Understanding Russia’s place in ‘Global Britain’ … Investment in the UK’s Russia capabilities and cultural diplomacy … Diversifying regional private sector opportunities.”

“Ten Years After the Smolensk Air Disaster, Political Scars Remain,” James Shotter and Henry Foy, Financial Times, 04.03.20: The authors, the Frankfurt correspondent and the Moscow bureau chief for the news outlet, write:

• “At first, Marcin Wierzchowski didn’t realize anything was wrong. Waiting with other Polish officials on a chilly airfield near Smolensk one morning in April 2010, he heard the distinctive whoosh of the Tupolev Tu-154 air force jet bringing President Lech Kaczynski and a host of other state officials to the Russian city. Then there was silence. The Tu-154 never came into view. Instead, in thick fog, it crashed into woodland short of the airfield, killing Kaczynski and all 95 others on board.”
• “Ten years on, the disaster has left other lasting scars. It hardened bitter partisan divisions between liberals and conservatives in Poland that continue to shape the country’s politics. And it cast Russia, for centuries Poland’s most dangerous and disruptive neighbor, as Warsaw’s untrustworthy adversary once more, scuppering a tentative detente with Moscow and plunging Poland back into a deep suspicion of the Kremlin that has only strengthened in the decade since the crash.”
• “Both the Polish and the Russian official investigations blamed human errors in thick fog, which led to the plane diverging from the correct approach path, clipping a tree with its left wing and, fatally stricken, careering into the scrubland. In cockpit recordings obtained by Polish media, the Tupolev’s systems can be heard repeatedly warning the pilots to pull up for the final 25 seconds of the flight. Officials from PiS, however, dismiss these reports as false and claim they were influenced by the Kremlin.”

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

“Russia and China in the Arctic: Cooperation, Competition and Consequences,” Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 03.31.30: The author, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “The Russian leadership views the ‘Arctic zone of the Russian Federation’ (the official description of an area covering 9 million square kilometers that makes up 40 percent of the entire Arctic space) as a strategic resource base. Russia has essential security interests in the region.”
• “Beijing’s official narrative presents China’s Arctic interests as mostly related to environmental issues, scientific research, navigation and the surveying and development of natural resources. … Russian and Chinese interests in the Arctic are very different in both scope and nature. China has much greater economic, financial and technological resources than Russia, and the gap is growing.” 
• “For the time being, the creation of a Russo-Chinese military alliance isn’t a viable idea, and cooperation between China and Russia in the Arctic is exclusively economic. … While cooperating with China more and more closely, Russia remains careful as to the scope and terms of this cooperation. Moscow is trying to protect its sovereignty: as a general principle, as well as with regard to the Arctic. Russia’s strategy is aimed at strengthening its position, mainly through developing its own capabilities … Moscow is trying to develop as many external partnerships as possible, which should ideally balance one another, in order to avoid excessive dependence on one major partner.”
• “The Russian concept of a Greater Eurasia requires a maritime dimension … Russian officials are skeptical about the concept of an Indo-Pacific region. Moscow considers it an American geopolitical construct, similar to that of the Greater Middle East. Moreover, it is believed to be anti-Chinese and partly anti-Russian.”
• “Moscow might wish to consider the maritime dimension of its own Greater Eurasia concept. Its core idea could be a Murmansk–Mumbai connection, extending the Northern Sea Route all the way to the Indian Ocean via the Pacific. In that way, Russia’s development of the Arctic could be more closely linked to cooperation with Asian countries. China would of course need to be part of it, but it would not have to be Moscow’s only partner.”

“For Now, China Has Forgiven Russia for Rebuffing It Over the Coronavirus,” Ankur Shah, Foreign Policy, 04.01.20: The author, a British Indian writer focused on China and Russia, writes:

• “China has even begun to direct aid to those who have slighted the country in recent months. Russia made China and its citizens (and, sometimes, anyone who looked Chinese) the primary targets in the battle to contain the coronavirus. Not only did China turn out to be the wrong target, but the move endangered the Kremlin’s most reliable strategic alliance.”
• “China’s lifeline to Russia won’t be limited to medical assistance. As Russia’s economy falters amid the escalating pandemic, trade with China will become even more important to cities like Khabarovsk along the Russo-Chinese border.”
• “The flow of aid from China to Russia suggests Beijing has forgiven its ally—at least for now. But the long-term consequences of the coronavirus crisis for their partnership are less clear. When a Russian reporter asked China’s ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, to comment on Russia’s assistance to China at the beginning of the pandemic, he said Russian support had been ‘sincere, timely, solid and comprehensive.’ Diplomatic niceties aside, China is unlikely to forget that its most important strategic partner cannot be relied on in times of need.”

Ukraine:

“To Russia With Love. The Majority of Crimeans Are Still Glad for Their Annexation,” John O'Loughlin, Gerard Toal and Kristin M. Bakke, Foreign Affairs, 04.03.20: The authors, professors of politics and international affairs, write:

• “From our survey data (collected by Levada), it is possible to compare how Crimeans saw their future in December 2014 and how they perceived it five years later. Interviewees were asked if they expected to be better off after two years.”
• “Russians in Crimea harbored high hopes in 2014 (93 percent expected to be better off in two years), but they were somewhat less hopeful in 2019 (down to 71 percent). … The proportion of Tatars who indicated that they thought being part of Russia would make them better off rose from 50 percent in 2014 to 81 percent in 2019. … Ukrainians in Crimea remained generally optimistic: 75 percent indicated they expected to be better off in 2014, close to the 72 percent who did so in 2019.”
• “Despite the everyday logistical difficulties involved in breaking away from Ukraine, support for the exit remains undiminished. Approval of the outcome of the March 2014 referendum was still very high among Russians (84 percent) and Ukrainians (77 percent) in December 2019, both unchanged from 2014. Surprisingly, the levels of support for the annexation grew among Tatars, up from 21 percent in 2014 to 52 percent in 2019, although this latter number is about 25 to 30 points lower than for the peninsula’s other residents.”
• “These survey results should not be interpreted as a refutation of the image of Crimea that Ukrainian activists and advocacy groups present in the West. Recent testimony before Congress painted a grim picture of ‘life under occupation’ in Crimea.”
• “But when Ukrainian activists and Western politicians claim that the residents of Crimea are ‘living under occupation,’ they mistake the experience of some for the experience of all. The majority of Crimeans do not experience Russian rule as oppressive, alien or unwelcome. Instead, based on the evidence of our surveys, they are reasonably happy to be living in Putin’s Russia.”

“Veto on Peace/Veto on War: President Zelenskiy’s Donbass Imbroglio,” Sergiy Kudelia, PONARS Eurasia, April 2020: The author, an associate professor of political science at Baylor University, writes:

• “The share of respondents who believed that the new authorities were unsuccessful in their attempts to achieve a cessation of hostilities in Donbass increased from 44 percent in November 2019 to 70 percent in February 2020. This shift in public opinion coincided with greater clarity on Zelenskiy’s bargaining position, which has gained increasing resemblance to that of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. This raises the likelihood of a continued diplomatic stalemate over Donbass and prolonged low-intensity warfare along the contact line.”
• “Persistently strong majority support for accommodation over Donbass within Ukrainian society should serve as a powerful incentive for Zelenskiy to broaden his bargaining range well beyond what the hardline opposition dictates. This requires forceful articulation of the new parameters of a compromise and cross-regional mobilization of the president’s voter base on its behalf. His docile acquiescence to the status quo, by contrast, would mean that Zelenskiy’s legacy on the principal issue for Ukraine’s future will ultimately be defined by the very people he once ridiculed so well.”

“March Was a Roller Coaster Month for Ukraine,” Steven Pifer, Brookings Institution/ Stanford CISAC, 04.06.20: The author, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, writes:

• “Ukrainians rode a wild roller coaster in March. … President Volodymyr Zelenskiy began the month by firing the prime minister and reshuffling the cabinet, prompting concern that oligarchs were reasserting their influence. … COVID-19 and its dire economic implications, however, refocused attention.”
• “At the end of the month, the Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) passed on first reading legislation key to securing low-interest credits from the International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile, controversy flared over the Donbass. A March 11 agreement reached by Zelenskiy’s chief of staff broke a long-standing Ukrainian position by giving status to the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’—the parts of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbass occupied by Russian and Russian proxy forces. It is unclear if Kyiv will go forward with the agreement.”
• “As he nears the end of his first year as president, Zelenskiy, who came to the office a political neophyte, is finding just how difficult governing—for real, not in a television comedy show—can be.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.