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.
On May 9—the Victory Day—the majority of top-level visitors will come to Moscow from the non-Western countries. Russia’s quest for acceptance in or by the West is finally over, and its foreign policy will require a new identity and new orientation.
The Sino-Russian entente—with its unstated, but transparent goal of reducing U.S. global dominance—is easily the most important result of the Ukraine crisis and the preceding deterioration of Russian-Western relations. The West needs to take this seriously.
President Putin’s decision to lift the ban on the transfer of the S-300 air defense system to Iran signals a new departure for Moscow’s policy in the Middle East.
Moscow, Washington, and Beijing hold dissimilar and sometimes opposing views on several security issues, including ballistic missile defense, strategic conventional weapons, and the INF Treaty.
The Ukraine crisis has made Europeans see Greek foreign policy as particularly threatening and divisive. In reality, Greece is simply acting in line with its long-standing political traditions. The question of European unity still lies in the hands of Brussels and Berlin.
To avoid a dangerous meltdown in Ukraine, the West must lean hard on Kiev in support of economic and political reform.
Russia’s problems with Crimea and Crimea’s problems with Russia will only continue to grow.
The Western approach to Russia is predicated on the supposition that continued pressure on the country will cause Vladimir Putin’s regime to make concessions or even crumble. However, this is far from the truth.
It would be advisable for the presidents of Russia and the United States to make joint decisions to abandon the concept of launch-on-warning strikes based on the information provided by early-warning systems as well as refrain from conducting the respective exercises of the countries’ strategic nuclear forces.
Putin and his policy attract sympathizers in Europe from both far left and far right. However, Russian ideologists have such a poor idea of who supports them overseas that they failed to assemble and present a convincing contingent of supporters, only embarrassing themselves in the end.