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.
Amid a coronavirus pandemic and looming global economic crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suddenly revealed how he intends to remain in power beyond 2024, when what should be his final term in office ends. In doing so, Putin seems to have bet – not incorrectly – that there is simply no one who can stop him.
Falling oil prices leave no chance Russia’s GDP will grow in 2020—a bleak prospect for both ordinary people and once optimistic investors.
Putin, a man torn by conflicting impulses, has opted for stability in moving to stay on as president after 2024. In doing so, he surprised the elite and even some in the presidential administration, deceiving those around him—though not the public—with his talk of changes in leadership and overhauling Russia’s political system. His real intentions are impossible to know, but his priority is clear: keeping his options open.
Chinese investment in Russia’s Far East is precisely what it should be given the current level of the region’s development. Most of the Far East is more focused on obtaining subsidies from Moscow than foreign investment.
A new Russian state is taking shape that is unashamedly authoritarian in design. If Russia ever wants to return to the European model, it will have to dismantle the entire political legacy that this regime has built.
Having dismissed his young government, President Zelensky risks joining the ranks of Ukraine’s failed reformers. The reshuffle is being seen as a victory for business as usual and oligarchic interests.
The outbreak of coronavirus in China has exposed the weak spots of the country’s Big Brother system. It turns out that China’s extensive network of facial recognition cameras is useless in the face of a simple surgical mask.
Carnegie’s Alex Gabuev and The Financial Times’ Asia editor Jamil Anderlini discuss coronavirus, the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, and the geopolitical dynamics in Asia-Pacific.
Those looking at Russia’s foreign relations would soon discover that the country is essentially a loner. It is not part of any international large family, whether Europe, the Atlantic community or the West. Asians do not recognize Russia as Asian, either.
There is little reason to expect that the far-right Alternative for Germany party will become a leading political force. Yet the political landscape will inevitably take on a different form, as Merkel-era centrism gives way to growing ideological polarization.
Russia’s relations with the West are not about to get any better.
The 2024 election will be one in which the generation of “Putin’s children,” those who have made their careers and profited from the twenty years of Putin’s presidency, face a serious challenge to keep the assets they have acquired.
The extreme sentences handed down to defendants in what is being called the “Network Case” is an ominous sign.
The main task of Putin’s economic policy is to collect as much in taxes as possible. This is why the man who successfully transformed the Federal Tax Service is now head of the government.
Arsen Avakov has survived Ukraine’s change of regime. President Zelensky needs him because of his links to the dark side of the Ukrainian deep state, against which the president’s young reformers are often powerless. The omnipotent minister is prepared to put aside his personal ambition to become the regime’s informal mainstay.
A row over energy prices is a sign that Belarus and Russia are set to have a cooler and more pragmatic relationship. Over the next few years, Minsk is likely to build a more balanced relationship with the West and Moscow, like that of Armenia or Kazakhstan.
President Putin has embarked on a renewal of Russia’s ruling regime to make sure it weathers the political transition of 2024 and to preserve his personal power-base. The elite can be divided into five distinct groups, two of which, the “protectors” and “technocrats” may end up in a fierce ideological fight.
While broadly perceived as a blow to the EU and its values, Brexit will actually benefit a future democratic Russia. Britain’s exit will create a new model of Europeanness, in which a country can strive to achieve European standards without EU membership. That is a niche Russia can fill.
The Russian public’s appetite for change has increased considerably in the past two years, according to a new poll by the Carnegie Moscow Center and the Levada Center. What kind of change do people want, and what are they prepared to do about it?
The U.S.-Iran crisis of January 2020 did not lead to a major war in the Middle East, but it did reveal a number of new trends reshaping the world order.