This is a legacy website featuring a collection of work by the Carnegie Endowment’s global network of scholars on topics including Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and the post-Soviet states. This site is a product of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C. For more recent work by Carnegie scholars in this field, please visit Carnegie Politika.
Moscow has demonstrated its strong determination to follow its own path on the world scene and build its own economic, political, and military base.
An overview of the five most pressing issues in the Arctic reveals that a number of factors in the region may help mitigate and regulate competition and promote cooperation.
The continuing crisis over Ukraine has significantly hardened Western official and media attitudes toward Russia. However, with Washington leading the charge and NATO back in the saddle, the European Union is taking a back seat.
Russia’s economic, political and strategic environment in the West is fast deteriorating. One obvious way to respond to this is to reach out to Asia and the Pacific.
Moscow has long been unhappy about some of the rules of the game set after the end of the Cold War, such as the West’s dominance, but now it feels strong and confident enough to challenge them.
The West’s sanctions will be damaging to Russia and its people. However, standing up to Western pressure is likely to become the main feature of a newborn Russian patriotism and the central element of national consolidation.
Putin sees himself as repairing the damage done a quarter century ago by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He is challenging not only the 1991 geopolitical arrangements but an entire world order in which only the United States has the right to decide what is right and what is wrong.
From the perspective of Putin and his associates, Ukraine is a red line and the West, in the form of NATO, was crossing it.
The Crimea referendum, in which the people of the region have massively voted to join Russia, marks a watershed in Russia’s foreign policy: Russia has stopped walking backward and has made a step forward. As for Ukraine, it will be for the foreseeable future a geopolitical battleground.
A second Cold War is emerging because of the mistakes that were made by both Russia and the West at the end of the first Cold War and during the inter-Cold War period.