This website is 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.
2014 was a year of crisis. Ebola, ISIS, and Donbas are now part of the global lexicon. Eurasia Outlook experts weigh in on how crises on Russia’s periphery affected the country, and what these developments mean for Moscow in 2015.
Eurasia Outlook asked its experts to reflect on the dramatic events of 2014 and to share their predictions for Russia's future and for its role on the global stage going forward.
The Ukraine crisis has had an increasingly negative effect on Russia’s relations with Belarus and Kazakhstan, its closest allies and partners in the Customs Union and Eurasian Union.
After the initial shock the Ukrainian crisis brought, Central Asian states have gradually come to the conclusion that they should continue dealing with Russia. Still, none of these states are prepared to be totally controlled by Russia.
The crisis presents Putin with an opportunity to tighten his grip on business, to see who is loyal and who is not, to pick winners and losers, to decide who will receive state support and whose assets should be “redistributed”.
In 2014, Russia broke out of the post–Cold War order and openly challenged the U.S.-led international system. Moscow’s new course is laid down first and foremost by President Vladimir Putin, but it also reflects the rising power of Russian nationalism.
Ukraine may be heading not toward federalization or decentralization, but feudalization. To avoid this, the focus should not only be on central, macro-level reforms but also on building civil society to make those larger reforms sustainable.
In the new ideological cleavage that has opened up between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Western countries, one idea divides them like no other: the meaning of regime change.
U.S. foreign policy in a more difficult, intrusive world.
The financial troubles of the ruble represent the most striking and dangerous strategic challenge facing the Russian state since the conflict in Ukraine began.