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.
Russian television has thrived for months on a diet of victories in Syria. Now that the time has come to spin the news of a withdrawal, the argument is being deployed that it is best to avoid a second Afghanistan. Better still, the exit is being presented as another case of Russia outsmarting the United States.
Numerous clever tricks and a slew of political parties loyal to Russia’s government now ensure the “right” election result long before any votes are cast. And this means that the election count can be shown to be fair, and at the same time managed by individuals who are widely trusted and respected.
The assassination one year ago of the man who was once Russia’s brightest liberal hope did not, as many wished, change the course of the country’s politics. But it did mark a moment of irreversible change for the country’s liberal minority.
Serious economic reforms cannot be implemented unless Russia’s political atmosphere and institutions grow more supportive of individual freedom.
The Western political establishment is hostile to Russia. This makes it all the more important to demonstrate that the Western religious establishment is more sympathetic. Regardless of Putin’s aims, the meeting between Pope and Patriarch has become a landmark event in the history of Christianity.
The Russian system is in a crisis whose outcome is uncertain. But social protest is unlikely to deliver change. Change is more likely to come about through modernization from above.
Truck drivers have staged the biggest anti-government protest in Russia since 2012. But the logic of their discontent is one they are so far unprepared to accept: that the whole political system is at fault.
The real cost of Russia’s current isolation will be felt in the long term: the country will miss opportunities for growth and will continue to stagnate.
Sino-Russian digital cooperation is robust and mature. This relationship is much broader than a simple alliance of conspiracy-minded governments seeking to protect their citizens from hostile forces.
The strikes by Russian truckers are a new challenge for the Kremlin and represent a breach of the government’s social contract with its citizens. But the regime has learned how to deal with these protests and how to stop them from becoming politicized.