If you’re looking at a list of America’s top 10 experts on Russia, chances are, Andrew S. Weiss will be on that list. His inclusion is a consequence of his significant work in both government and the thinktank world, where Weiss has greatly contributed to our understanding of Russian and Eastern European political affairs, both in a historic and contemporary sense.

After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Columbia University, Weiss began to work in policy positions at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. In 1998, he joined the National Security Council’s staff, advising on Russia policy. In the 2000s, Weiss was named director of RAND’s Center on Russia and Eurasia. Since 2013, Weiss has led a team of world-renowned experts on Russia, Ukraine and the surrounding region at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). He also oversaw the Carnegie Moscow Center, Russia’s leading independent Western-style think tank, which the Kremlin closed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Weiss is currently the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at CEIP, where he continues to oversee research on Russia and Eurasia.

What follows is a compilation of Weiss’ insights on Russia as its policies relate to vital U.S. domestic, regional and global interests since 2013. For example, during the Trump administration in 2019, Weiss observed that Russia’s largely successful challenges to the U.S.-led world order had actually been accomplished at relatively low cost and risk: “While it is true that American and European sanctions since 2014 have done lasting damage to the Russian economy, the dirty secret is that much of the most disruptive Russian behavior is done cheaply. Since 2015, the Kremlin has mounted a global campaign of election meddling, cybersecurity attacks and military muscle flexing.” On the subject of Russia’s strategic vision, a year before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Weiss argued that “the quality of the Kremlin’s strategic thinking is hampered by numerous blind spots. Strategic hostility toward and fear of the West often lead to impulsive behavior like the 2014 annexation of Crimea.” In November of 2021—three months before Russia invaded Ukraine—Weiss and his co-author Eugene Rumer explained why Putin’s obsession with Ukraine might well lead to an all-out assault with the goal of capturing so-called left-bank Ukraine and Kyiv, and permanently abrogating Ukraine’s sovereignty.

A through line in Weiss’ views is that Putin has directed great resources—resources that have and will continue to diminish Russia’s long-term security and prosperity—to “make Russia great again,” while under the influence of what the Carnegie expert sees as Putin’s distorted view of Russian and world history. In Putin’s view, according to Weiss, Russia must be acknowledged as a great power on par with the Soviet Union, or at least modern day France and Britain. Weiss’ understanding of Putin’s psychology touches on Putin’s vulnerability to “emotional” decision making, as seen in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the escalation to all-out war in Ukraine in 2022. Despite Putin’s stated position on Russia’s security, these actions in Ukraine—and the massive resources invested since 2022, in particular—both expanded NATO and unified the EU, and they have hurt Russia’s prosperity independent of the long-term effect of punitive sanctions, according to Weiss. Additionally, Russia continues to suffer from domestic problems that have been neglected in favor of advancing Putin’s vision of Russia’s destiny, such as its demographic crisis (too few Russian babies being born) and its diminished human capital as the Kremlin asserts total control of political, social and economic narratives within Russia, according to Weiss. In terms of the great power status Putin claims Russia deserves, Weiss points out it, too, has suffered: where the Soviets once viewed China as backward, Weiss argues that Russia now occupies a subordinate position in the relationship, one which Putin has publicly accepted, but which nevertheless puts the vision of Russia’s great destiny further out of reach.

Quotes are divided into categories that match Russia Matters’ news and analysis digests. Entries are arranged in chronological order.
 

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• Russia’s strategic and to a somewhat lesser extent nonstrategic nuclear weapons are the crown jewels in the Russian armed forces. They will for the foreseeable future threaten the United States and its NATO allies on the alliance’s eastern flank, as well as preserve Russia’s status as an equal nuclear power to the United States… It is difficult to make progress on nonproliferation problems without continued U.S.-Russian cooperation… Russia and the United States have common interests in preventing other countries from joining the nuclear club and in preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• It’s simply not the case, if Trump’s hands were not tied on Russia, that he and Putin could magically work together to solve the Korea crisis. (Reuters, 01.17.18)
• Upwards of 10,000 North Korean troops are now expected to be at the front, either fighting in Kursk or potentially moving into Ukraine proper. The number of North Korean soldiers is probably less important than the impact this is going to have on Ukrainian morale, a sense that Russia just keeps throwing one thing after another at them and being able to escalate. (PBS News, 03.13.25)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• That cherry-picking approach has dampened the administration’s willingness to apply more pressure on Putin, say, by providing lethal military assistance to the Ukrainians. The fear has been that the Russians might retaliate by escalating the fighting inside Ukraine or by withholding cooperation in areas where their cooperation is a must-have such as the Iran nuclear negotiation, the fight against ISIL, and an IMF/EU/U.S. emergency financial package for Kyiv. (Albright Stonebridge Group, 01.26.15)
• For quite some time the United States has been pushing the Russians to make sure that these missiles (S-300) don’t go to Iran, and the main reason is the fear that they would help Iran defend nuclear sites against possible military strikes carried out either by the United States, Israel, or some of our allies in the region… We’re in this awkward position of having basically treated Russia like an outcast and now the Russians are saying ‘well, you know, you want to treat us like an outcast, we’re gonna go our own way’… Basically what Putin has done is he has authorized the Russian government to go ahead with the transfer [of S-300s to Iran]. (KCRW, 04.13.15)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

• There's a horrible humanitarian tragedy unfolding across Ukraine, and then there's a remarkable story of resistance, both from the Ukrainian military and from average people who've taken up arms to defend their country… I think we're going to see the conflict begin to morph and resemble the Bosnian War of the 1990s, but on a much vaster scale. So the people who are listening to your program today should be prepared for this conflict to go on and, unfortunately, for the humanitarian toll and the suffering of civilians to go—to continue into the coming months, if not years. (NPR, 03.29.22)
• There's a lot of familiar talking points coming out of the Kremlin. The idea that this horrible humanitarian disaster that's unfolding in the city of Mariupol is somehow being inflicted by Ukrainian fighters on their own people is just not—is not credible. (PBS, 03.28.22)
• They're (Putin, Gerasimov, and Shoigu) complicit in the horrible criminality and atrocities that Russian forces have brought to Ukraine. Their, I think, de facto position right now is hang together or we're going to hang separately. (NPR, 06.29.23)

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

• Mr. Putin’s highly personalized, profoundly erratic approach to governing and waging a deadly war in the heart of Europe suggests that the Ukraine crisis may be even more dangerous than most Western governments are comfortable admitting. (Wall Street Journal, 02.20.15)
• A careful review of the Russian leader’s record with respect to Ukraine suggests that almost all of the requisite components and justifications for military intervention are either in—or moving into—place. (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• At the same time, there's a definite concentration of their military activity on the Donbas. And as the Ukrainian military intelligence chief announced on Sunday, there's an attempt to basically create a North Korea-South Korea formal division of the country. (NPR, 03.29.22)
• And at the end of the day, the problem for Vladimir Putin is he simply can't accept an independent (Ukraine) on his borders. The immediate challenge for the Ukrainians is that the Russians, by virtue of geographical proximity, by virtue of where their military forces are concentrated, have the ability to cut off Ukrainian troops that are operating in the Donbas. (NPR, 03.29.22)
• The problem is, is that the both sides are in a war of attrition, as Secretary Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Milley indicated the other day. This is a grueling, long-term battle. And I think there's been a notion circulating in the world that somehow both sides are going to get exhausted and then, based on that, there will be a pause. (PBS, 07.21.22)
• We're seeing today an indication that Russia is prepared to dip into its arsenal to attack what they claim are military targets. And as we see from Jason's reporting, they're not military targets. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• From my standpoint, the [Trump] administration needs to understand that there are two big drivers of Russian actions in Ukraine. At the time the war began, Putin was being an opportunist and really thought that he could replicate the Taliban’s success and engineer a takeover of Ukraine where the government would be decapitated, the military wouldn’t fight and the world would have to adjust to new facts on the ground. That clearly didn’t happen. And since then, the Russians haven’t totally given up on those goals. (Carnegie Endowment, 02.27.25)
• [The Russians have] been trying to grind down Ukraine and wait out the United States and our Western partners. There’s been a sense of confidence on the Russian side for the past twelve-plus months that things are cutting their way. … There’s been questions of whether the war is sustainable for the United States and Europe, practically, in terms of the kinds of unbelievable military support we’ve provided to the Ukrainians, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. And there’s dynamics on the ground, where Russia, just by leveraging mass and singularity of purpose, has been able to show that time is not necessarily on Ukraine’s side. (Carnegie Endowment, 02.27.25)
• Russia has been winning on the battlefield for the past year. That's unfortunate. U.S. ability to sustain military support for Ukraine at the previous levels is going to be very difficult. So the question is, is, what's the next phase? And it shouldn't be ramming a cease-fire deal laden with conditions down Ukraine's throat. That would be a big mistake. (PBS News, 03.13.25)
• Ukraine needs more people at the front. They probably need hundreds of thousands more soldiers, particularly in the infantry, which means the people who are right up at the line. So the Ukrainians are averaging about 5- to 6,000 new men being recruited every month. They need to be about five times higher than that… The problem is that the level of dysfunction inside the Ukrainian government about how to handle conscription has made that deficit really challenging to close. (PBS News, 03.13.25)

Military aid to Ukraine:

• We have also seen the beginnings of insurgency-type actions in areas where the Russians are dominant, like in Kherson oblast. So I think you're likely to see the administration giving Ukraine—Ukraine's government and the people of Ukraine the tools they need and the support they need to defend themselves against this invasion. (PBS, 07.21.22)
• So the most important thing, I think, that the Ukrainians and friends of Ukraine are going to be looking for from the next [U.S. presidential] administration is a sense of continued commitment and then, I think, to show that we're ramping up especially our defense industrial base… We need to keep the Ukrainians in the fight, and we need to show Putin he's wrong about being able to outlast us. (NPR, 11.03.24)
• The question of what happens to U.S. support has been looming over everything. Europe doesn’t have the resources or unity to backfill. … It doesn’t have the intelligence capability crucial to the lethality of the Ukrainian campaign. (Washington Post, 02.28.25)

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

• While the elites initially cheered Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, they know that the war is costing Russia dearly and that all of the Kremlin’s options to resolve the crisis are unpalatable to Putin and his war cabinet. (Carnegie, 09.08.15)
• I think that the real damage that's been done to the Russian economy is largely the significant correction in global commodities and energy prices. But there's no doubt that liquidity has dried up for Russian corporate names, there's no doubt that this has put the Russian economy in a basically sort of state of suspended animation. And that Putin's main tool is going to be budget cutbacks, tax hikes and playing whack-a-mole as various interest groups come to him looking for financial support. (Carnegie, 09.24.15).
• Sanctions may have forced Russia to take a more accommodating posture vis-à-vis Ukraine and its relationship with the EU, but it is highly unlikely that they could change Russia’s perception of its right to pursue its interests within the borders of the former Soviet Union and to maintain a buffer against NATO. (Carnegie, 07.11.16)
• The most serious unintended consequence from U.S. sanctions against Russia could be a gradual erosion of U.S. sanctions capabilities over the next few decades. Sanctions against Russia for its activities in eastern Ukraine appear to be a prudent response to a security challenge, and one that minimizes the risk of military confrontation. (Carnegie, 07.11.16)
• The collapse of oil prices that began in 2014 hit the Russian economy hard, as did the sanctions the West applied in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine that same year. (Foreign Affairs, 02.13.17)
• While it is true that American and European sanctions since 2014 have done lasting damage to the Russian economy, the dirty secret is that much of the most disruptive Russian behavior is done cheaply. Since 2015, the Kremlin has mounted a global campaign of election meddling, cybersecurity attacks, and military muscle flexing. (The Hill, 04.17.19)
• Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the sanctions program has significantly altered the Kremlin’s risk appetite for activity beyond Ukraine. (Carnegie, 04.03.19)
• Well, President Biden was pretty clear on this, that the United States and our European partners have put unprecedented economic pressure on the Russian government as a result of its aggression against Ukraine. We have seen a war that has cost Russia dearly in terms of the number of people killed and wounded. There is not a lot left in the toolkit, frankly, in terms of further economic sanctions that are going to make Vladimir Putin cry uncle. (PBS, 02.16.24)

Ukraine-related negotiations:

• And at no point in this war, starting in 2014, have the Russians ever negotiated in good faith. So there are calls from various Western leaders and others around the world saying, oh, let's talk to Putin. Let's find out what he wants, maybe give him something, and he'll back off. I think that's a fallacious idea. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• The Ukrainians would want and would support a clean ceasefire where there are no preconditions. It's just the fighting stops… That would favor the Ukrainians because there would be no restrictions on the Western ability to resupply them and help them create a new military that would be able to deter future Russian aggression. [In contrast,] the Russians are pressing for a big ceasefire that would include caps on the size of Ukraine's military. It would impose strict limits on Western cooperation with Ukraine, and it would close the door to Ukraine's membership in NATO… The Russians have been very good at dangling opportunities in front of the Trump administration. Maybe we should resume strategic nuclear arms control discussions. Maybe the United States and Russia can work together to stabilize global oil markets… The price, of course, would be for the United States to curtail the support we've been providing to Ukraine. The Russians have a great expression: The only free cheese is in a mousetrap. (NPR, 02.20.25)
• [A ceasefire on Russia’s terms has become more possible] because Ukraine is going to be worried that its relationship with the United States is in tatters and they better find a way to get the best deal they can before Russia’s advantages become even more stark for them. (Washington Post, 02.28.25)
• I think Vladimir Putin is going out of his way not to taunt the West, he's trying to look reasonable. He's trying to avoid irritating Donald Trump, who's obviously invested his own personal prestige in trying to bring about the cease-fire. (PBS News, 03.13.25)
• Donald Trump … [is] in a tearing hurry… The real challenge is, you can't go into a negotiation without leverage… and you can't look like you want the deal more than the other side wants it. And so, instead of throwing cold water on this extensive relationship that the United States has with Ukraine and with Europe, the United States should be trying to find ways to demonstrate to Putin that he can't wait us out and that the longer this war goes on, the worse it's going to be for him. It's not clear yet that the administration has figured out that they… they can exploit that leverage and they can also enable Ukraine's lethality to hold at risk things inside Russia that Putin cares very much about. (PBS News, 03.13.25)
• There's no indication at this point that Donald Trump, even if he's frustrated by Vladimir Putin's slow walking, intends to put serious pressure on Russia. (NPR, 05.09.25)

Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

• The communication lines between Western governments and Moscow are in a parlous state. The government in Moscow views what has happened over the weekend as reflecting either at best something that the West is closing its eyes to bad developments in Kiev, or at worst something that Western governments have basically organized and abetted to seek geopolitical advantage over Russia. (Carnegie, 02.27.14)
• In recent years, Russia and the West have been heading toward something that looks a lot like a second Cold War. This confrontation may lack the geo-political and ideological scope of the first, but it still carries a high risk of actual conflict. (Foreign Affairs, 02.13.17)
• The Kremlin’s image-makers must have been delighted when U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration elevated Russia alongside China to the ranks of the United States’ great power competitors. (Carnegie, 09.09.20)
• The small circle of men who rule Russia demand to be recognized as leaders of a great power—mostly on the strength of its past, not its present. Russia’s rebuilt military tools have been on display in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, and even farther afield. (Carnegie, 09.09.20)
• The Kremlin’s actions point to a major fault in its strategy toward Europe. Its efforts to deepen and capitalize on what in reality are long-standing differences between the leaders of core Europe and Washington are likely to prove shortsighted and backfire… What is missing from the Kremlin’s analysis of the current state of affairs is much self-awareness about how its recent behavior is potentially creating an epochal moment comparable to the events of 2014 in Ukraine. The Navalny attack and the crisis in Belarus have stripped away, practically overnight, the credibility of voices in Europe that traditionally advocate on behalf of preserving the status quo. (Carnegie, 09.24.20)
• Within Russia, discussion about great power competition is remarkably thin, especially compared to the robust exchanges that animate Western officials and experts. Instead, the Kremlin has clung to an emotionally charged worldview that blinkers it to opportunities and dangers alike… The quality of the Kremlin’s strategic thinking is hampered by numerous blind spots. Strategic hostility toward and fear of the West often lead to impulsive behavior like the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Since China is not a threat to the current regime, there is little incentive to think through the implications of its expanded global role… It just so happens that Russian leaders have a ready-made solution to this problem—the international system should be governed by a select grouping of great powers. Working under the aegis of the UN Security Council (UNSC), these states should negotiate the rules by which all countries would live by. Central to this vision is the principle of non-interference in each other’s—read: Russia’s—internal affairs and respect for designated spheres of influence. (Carnegie, 05.27.21)
• The Kremlin’s quest for stature and clout on the world stage is never far removed from its decisionmaking—if anything, these wider ambitions propel its opportunism and attempts to seize upon the self-inflicted mistakes of other powers, especially the United States. At the same time, the Kremlin does not trouble itself with conditionality on its military assistance, respect for human rights, or the protection of delicate regional balances—principles that the U.S. and major European players have long embraced yet not always observed in practice. (Carnegie, 08.31.21)
• But there is one major piece of unfinished business that is still missing from Putin’s roster of accomplishments if he is to consolidate his reputation as the leader who returned Russia to its former greatness. That piece of unfinished business is the restoration of Russia’s dominion over key parts of its historic empire. No item on that agenda is more important—or more pivotal—than the return of Ukraine to the fold. For the Russian president and his team, the restoration of the Slavic heartland of the former empire—in some form, not necessarily as the USSR 2.0—is not just geopolitical. It is also generational, strategic and personal. (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• Russia's foreign minister has now indicated that, because the West has come to Ukraine's rescue and provided significant military assistance, Russia now needs to seize even more territory and basically annex parts of Ukraine itself, Ukraine proper, that were not part of the source of war and tension in the 2014–2015 period. (PBS, 07.21.22)
• When Vladimir Putin says he's at war with the West, I think we need to take him at his word. (PBS, 08.01.24)
• That's what's truly unprecedented about today's news (prisoner exchange). It's a multidimensional problem that wasn't just negotiated between the United States and Russia. The German role was absolutely critical because, as you pointed out, that was the key demand from the Russian side. So without the German support, this deal would not have come together. And then you had lesser roles played by our allies. (PBS, 08.01.24)
• Since the dawn of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the Kremlin has dreamed of pushing America out of its role as the cornerstone of European security. Putin surely is savvy enough to pounce on any openings provided by the new administration. (New York Times, 02.16.25)
• We've seen the Russians try to lay waste to Ukraine's economy and destroy its energy grid. We've seen them conduct a large-scale sabotage campaign, including targeted killings and assassinations in various parts of Europe. And then obviously, we see Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. (PBS News, 03.13.25)
• [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was one of the] biggest foreign policy blunders of all-time, besides the U.S. in Iraq. … The war on Ukraine was [Putin’s] fait accompli attempt to create facts on the ground. (Washington University Student Life, 03.27.25)

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

• Russia now has China as an endorser of the egregious and inflammatory position that Putin has staked out on Ukraine. (New Yorker, 02.07.22)
• The Russians for the longest time were condescending in their view of China as an uninteresting rural society. Now China looks at Russia and says, ‘What are you good for?’ China’s ambitions do not run through Moscow… It uses Russia as a cat’s paw to disrupt the U.S. pivot to Asia. The fact that we have to keep coming back to Putin, as the neighborhood bully, is beneficial to China. (New Yorker, 02.07.22)
• The bold assertions in the joint statement follow deepening military ties between the two nations in the past decade. (New Yorker, 02.07.22)

Missile defense:

• Unfortunately, the cooperative part of Russia’s new message on missile defense has been marred by ominous threats from both members of the ruling tandem to initiate a new arms race if Russia’s proposal for sectoral missile defense is rejected by the United States and NATO. Quick to raise concerns about the impact that U.S. missile defense could have on Russia’s national security, Putin and Medvedev are overstating the county’s ability to respond given the high-profile test failures involving the next generation of Russia’s strategic weapons systems and the defense complex’s limited production capacity. This makes it implausible that a new system could be tested and ready for deployment by the end of the decade. (The Moscow Times, 01.26.11)
• It solves precisely the wrong problem. The real problem we face is, how are we going to deal with threats as nuclear weapons proliferate and less stable countries like North Korea and Iran mature. (Missile defense) should remain a question of what technology do we need to protect the homeland. It should not be conceived as a tool for thwarting Russia’s military potential or a source of leverage over Russia’s foreign policy. (Politico, 08.09.13)

Nuclear arms:

• In the strategic realm, the United States and Russia each worry about the nuclear doctrines, force postures, and modernization plans of the other. While it may not be promising unless the political atmosphere improves, it might be more prudent, productive, and necessary to shift the focus of U.S.-Russian arms control away from further reductions in nuclear arsenals to discussions of strategic stability and other measures to reduce the risk of an unintended conflict. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• On the New START question, we have, I think, a real requirement, as the two leading nuclear powers, which is something Trump alluded to, to deal with our relationship in a constructive fashion, and to try to address the fact that this important arms control treaty is expiring in 2021. (PBS, 07.20.18)
• The US-Russian agenda is basically barren. This is a meeting without any real clear purpose. There’s no set of issues that only can be decided at the presidential level. The Russians will love the photo op. They’ll be able to demonstrate to the world that, ‘See, the US really wants a better relationship with Russia.’ (The World, 12.10.19)
• The Biden administration certainly will not ignore Russia. Top figures have already made clear that their strategy will prioritize closer U.S./EU coordination on pushing back against the Kremlin’s behavior and shoring up NATO’s military capabilities and the credibility of deterrence while leaving political space for cooperation on issues like arms control. (Carnegie, 03.09.21)
• The problem is, of course, that such [nuclear] declaratory policy is highly elastic, in that, if Putin sees what in his eyes is an existential threat coming out of the war in Ukraine, he can turn things around and come up with a justification himself. (PBS, 03.28.22)
• And the reason why Western leaders have been on edge about this is, in the immediate aftermath of Putin's launch of the war on February 24, he cited unfriendly actions by NATO countries, including the imposition of economic sanctions, as justification for raising the alert level of Russia's nuclear forces. He wasn't pointing to anything specific as providing that justification. And that, I think, sort of made people in various Western capitals nervous that Putin was getting a little bit overanxious to wave his nuclear saber. The problem is, would Russia potentially try to use either chemical, nuclear or biological weapons as a way of upending the dynamic on the battlefield? And I don't think that concern has gone away by any stretch. There's still a lot of worry about that in Western governments. (PBS, 03.28.22)
• The scenarios for Russia to use nuclear weapons, though, I think, are much more tied to something related to his personal survival or the survival of the Russian government, rather than a way to kind of flip the script on the battlefield. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• Or the destruction of the Russian state, yeah. I think those are the main scenarios that would require, in Putin's mind, the use of nuclear weapons. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• The danger when it comes to nuclear weapons—and this is a theme that starts on literally on Page 1 of the book—is this level of emotionalism and impulsivity that Putin has displayed at key moments in his life. This is a man whose emotions have often gotten the best of him. I saw this firsthand at the White House, and it's part of why leaders like Joe Biden have to take seriously the threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. (WWNO, 11.08.22)
• And I think that's why the nuclear saber-rattling is so concerning right now, because we don't know, if he's cornered, what's he going to do? (PBS, 11.25.22)   

Counter-terrorism:

• Part of the attraction of ISIL seems to be its ideology, and so we've seen radicals from all around the world descend on Syria to fight and to be part of the jihad. There are a significant number of fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The numbers are not exact, but it's probably in the low thousands. (NPR, 06.30.16)
• We should bear in mind that much of the flow of foreign fighters from the former Soviet Union in Dutch Syria is actually gone from Russia to Syria. So what you would most likely see is people tend to be radicalized inside Russia where they're working as migrant workers, and then they somehow find their way to Syria as foreign fighters.(NPR, 06.30.16)
• The Russian approach to counterterrorism has largely focused on basically treating all young men who are socioeconomically dispossessed or who may be religious Muslims as potential terrorist suspects. They've taken a kind of blunt force approach to the problem, which is very different than the way most western governments target terrorist groups. (NPR, 06.30.16)
• Without much success, the Russian government tried to justify its actions in Chechnya as part of a crackdown on global terrorism. (PBS, 07.20.18)

Conflict in Syria:

• Weiss argues that Russia’s position on Syrian intervention has several origins: worries about the precedent created by a possible U.S. intervention, Russia’s greater sympathy for Shia Muslims, and concerns about Syria’s possible collapse and the shockwaves such an event would create. (Carnegie, 09.06.13)
• I have no doubt that there's great sense of celebration inside Assad's inner circle, and frankly in Tehran, but I don't think the Russian people were prepared for any of this. This has all been thrown at them with maybe two or three weeks' notice. It plays to Putin's domestic agenda, which is to say Russia is a big, great power, it can thrust itself into the international stage at its own—a time of its own liking and a place of its choosing, but there's no one I think at home who is really enthusiastic about this whole activity. (PBS, 09.30.15)
• The Russians are definitely more active in the region than they have been in decades, and that Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia see Russia as a useful friend, the center of gravity for the international system is still the United States, and Russia is not in a position to replace Washington in the Middle East and North Africa. (Carnegie, 09.18.15)
• “I think we will see Putin use his U.N. appearance to flesh out the idea of this grand coalition, which somehow is going to include Assad, and he will marry that with a diplomatic initiative to promote a political solution.” (Voice of America, 09.27.15)
• I’m also concerned that Putin has plowed ahead and started engaging in so-called kinetic activity in the very complicated battlefield that is Syria without having a serious conversation about de-confliction with the Pentagon or other members of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition. (POLITICO, 10.01.15)
• The question is, have the Russians thought two or three moves ahead?” Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said. “This to me looks suspiciously like what happened in Ukraine, where what seemed like a good idea, a very pressurized decision by the Russians to unleash aggression against Ukraine, has backfired quite badly. (The Hill, 11.16.15)
• [On Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria] The Kremlin is of two minds when it comes to Trump: It hates the unpredictability and lack of coordination coming out of this White House but totally loves the chaos Trump is unleashing… Anything that damages America’s alliances and image of a steadfast, reliable partner is a net win for Moscow. (Washington Post, 12.20.18)
• The war in Syria demonstrated that limited forms of U.S.-Russian cooperation, particularly to minimize the risk of inadvertent escalation or accidents, were possible since they required relatively little trust or political capital. (Carnegie, 03.20.19)

Cyber security/AI:

• [On Russian hacking] I think they were shocked at the effects of their hacking activity, just like bin Laden was surprised at the devastation he caused on 9/11. (Los Angeles World Affairs Council, undated)
• [On Trump campaign collusion with Russia prior to the U.S. presidential election of 2016, and U.S. retaliation] We have the sharpest stones, but we live in the glassiest house. (Los Angeles World Affairs Council, undated)
• Establishing deterrents for a country like Russia to deter it from conducting offensive cyber-operations against the United States is practically an impossible task. (PBS, 12.30.16)
• Whether that deters Russia is an entirely different question. Russia has shown repeatedly that it's not embarrassed, that it really doesn't care what the outside world thinks. It's not clear that this effort today will change that. But it certainly pours a tremendous amount of scorn on Russia's GRU, military intelligence efforts. (PBS, 10.04.18)
• Against the backdrop of unraveling Cold War–era arms control agreements, which focused primarily on nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia are developing and deploying new cyber, space, and advanced conventional capabilities. They are certain to be highly destabilizing to the U.S.-Russia strategic balance. (Carnegie, 09.09.20)
• Russia’s actions represent an escalating global trend of digital censorship and suppression. (Carnegie, 09.23.21)

Energy exports from CIS:

• No country of Russia’s size is as dependent as [Russia] is on the extraction of natural resources, particularly hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbon revenues have amounted to around 50% of total government revenues for many of the years between 2006 and 2016. Russia’s exports are dominated by natural resources to an even greater extent; all finished manufactured goods were less than 10% of the total. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)

Climate change:

• To be updated.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• To be updated.

U.S.-Russia relations in general:

• Moscow is willing to cooperate on some matters, such as Afghanistan and counterterrorism, but at the same time continues to be critical of U.S. policies that are seen as an irritant by the Kremlin. (Carnegie, 06.25.13)
• Today, U.S.-Russian relations are in deep crisis due to the Kremlin’s welcome mat for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and a lengthening list of disagreements. (Democracy, 09.02.13)
• If you remember, the past three years have been a real down point in U.S.-Russia relations. And as a result of the severe deterioration in U.S.-Russia relations, the Kremlin has authorized any number of lines of effort. So we have seen cyber-attacks in Europe. We have seen support for populist parties, including Marine Le Pen in France, financial support, political support. We have seen cyber-intrusions against U.S. allies. We have seen overt military intimidation. We have Russian jets trying to barrel-roll U.S. military planes over the Baltics. (PBS, 07.29.16)
• U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. The fault lines between the United States and Russia reflect major differences in interests and values. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine have upended the post–Cold War security environment in Europe. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• For the past twenty-five years, U.S.-Russian relations have alternated between high expectations and bitter disappointments. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have each in turn attempted a breakthrough with Russia only to see the relationship unravel by the end of their terms. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• The U.S.-Russian relationship is broken, and it cannot be repaired quickly or easily. Improved personal ties between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin may be useful, but they are not enough. The Trump administration needs to temper expectations about breakthroughs or grand bargains with Moscow. Instead, the focus should be on managing a volatile relationship with an increasingly emboldened and unpredictable Russian leadership. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• Since 1991, the relationship between the United States and Russia has alternated between high expectations and bitter disappointments. The Obama administration’s experience of dealing with Russia fit the pattern established by its predecessors over the course of the previous two decades. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• Trump inherited a ruptured U.S.-Russian relationship, the culmination of more than 25 years of alternating hopes and disappointments. (Foreign Affairs, 02.13.17)
• Reduced tensions with Russia would no doubt help further many of the United States’ political and security priorities. But policymakers must keep in mind that the abiding goal should be to advance U.S. interests, support U.S. allies across the world, and uphold U.S. principles—not to improve relations with Russia for their own sake. (Foreign Affairs, 02.13.17)
• Aside from Trump, it is hard to imagine a leader who would accede to Moscow’s reasserting control over independent states that were once part of the Russian and Soviet empires. (Carnegie, 09.09.20)
• Biden’s campaign rhetoric about making Russia pay a price for misdeeds—like its interference in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, the attempted assassination of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, and the SolarWinds cyber intrusion—fostered expectations of worsening U.S.-Russian relations even as officials in Washington emphasized the overriding importance of dealing with China. (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• The divisions in U.S. domestic politics appear to the Kremlin as signs of weakness. They reinforce perceptions in Kremlin circles that the United States is now in inexorable decline, a narrative that is embraced and propagated by Russian officials, media, and analysts. (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• In Putin’s eyes, the toppling of unpopular governments around the world since the early 2000s, including in Ukraine, has often been the handiwork of the United States government. (Foreign Policy, 11.05.22)
• We don't know for sure what Vladimir Putin's thinking [about Russia’s future relationship with the U.S.], and I'm not going to try to do any mind reading here. But we do know what the U.S. president [Trump] is thinking. And he's been remarkably consistent going back to his first moments as a candidate in 2016. He has portrayed U.S.-Russia relations as an end in themselves. He thinks that getting along with Russia can be an end in itself. … And then the justification for that shifts over time. Right now, the Russians are suggesting maybe they won't work as closely with China. Maybe they can help the United States deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program. I'm abundantly skeptical that there's a "there" there. (PBS News, 03.13.25)

II. Russia’s domestic developments, history and personalities:

• Weiss says that contrary to popular perception, Vladimir Putin is not a “Soviet retread,” but a pragmatic figure capable of cutting deals. (Carnegie, 09.12.13)
• The most authoritative description of Russia’s peculiar style of rule can be found in an unusual place: a little-known academic essay by the Harvard medieval historian Edward L. Keenan, originally prepared for the State Department in the mid-1970s. Professor Keenan’s vivid account of the conspiracies, secrecy and power politics of the Muscovite czarist court will be readily recognizable to viewers of “Game of Thrones.” Most important, Professor Keenan punctures the myth of an all-powerful czar. He explains how a system dominated by elite groups of boyars (the top rung of the aristocracy and the forebears of today’s oligarchs) and bureaucrats, who imposed constraints on the country’s ruler, became so entrenched in the political culture. (The New York Times, 12.30.13)
• The Kremlin’s reluctance for a long time to abandon entirely the remnants of the democratic legacy of the 1990s can probably be attributed largely to its desire to sustain its engagement with the West, which required maintaining some semblance of democratic governance. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• Following Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the regime has retooled the sources of its legitimacy. It has fostered a fortress mentality, mobilizing the public to defend Russia against foreign adversaries and mounting an unrelenting search for Western-backed fifth columnists. The apparent spur-of-the-moment decision to annex Crimea transformed the Russian domestic political landscape overnight, propelling Putin to unprecedented levels of popularity. And in Syria, the Kremlin has capitalized on its intervention to highlight Russia’s return to global prominence. (Foreign Affairs, 02.13.17)
• There are a lot of young people who are no longer tuning into state television who get their news through their mobile devices and social media, and there’s a sort of irreverence that comes through in these demonstrations… But broadly speaking, the Russian elite are consolidated at the moment (2017 protests). They’ve rallied around the flag in the wake of the war in Crimea and tensions with the United States. Typically in Russia, problems emerge when the elite is disunified and we just haven’t seen that yet. (KRCW, 06.12.17)
• When Gorbachev came into power in 1985, the Soviet Union was a formidable multinational empire. It had had—it had an enormous external empire in Eastern Europe. And by the time he left office, the Soviet Union was no more and the countries of Central Europe were independent. (PBS, 08.30.22)
• But if you look back at some of the things he (Gorbachev) said about Putin earlier on, I'm particularly struck by a comment he made in 2011, where he compared Putin, who, at that point, was thinking of coming back into the Kremlin, in 2011, with an African dictator who had held onto power too much—for too long. (PBS, 08.30.22)
• Part of the answer surely lies in Putin’s conviction that the abiding goal of Western policy toward Russia is regime change. Unfortunately for us, the dangers that Putin has unleashed are no laughing matter. And they are all the more reason to sharpen our understanding of who Putin actually is and how the world has reached this dangerous juncture. (Foreign Policy, 11.05.22)
• So, the overall history of trauma for people of his generation, we shouldn't underestimate it. But what we shouldn't forget is the level of opportunism and the extent to which Putin twists things around about Russia's history, particularly the relationship with Ukraine, in ways that are entirely self-serving and that basically allow him to justify the course he's taken Russia down. (PBS, 11.25.22)
• The Yeltsin family was worried about its safety, and they wanted to find a loyal person who would make sure that they didn't face any accountability for their ill-gotten gains during Boris Yeltsin's tumultuous presidency. And they plucked this person from obscurity who they thought would live up to an unwritten understanding to protect them. And that is indeed what Vladimir Putin did. (PBS, 11.25.22)
• There are parts of [Putin’s] behavior where he doesn't behave entirely rationally. And I think that's why the nuclear saber-rattling is so concerning right now, because we don't know, if he's cornered, what's he going to do? And so there's this funny scene in the book ["Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin"] when he's a kid chasing rats around the corridors of his dilapidated apartment building, and he corners a rat with a stick, and he's trying to chase this rat out. And the rat jumps on him, and Putin learns this important lesson, basically, don't corner a rat. And the story itself is kind of ambiguous, because, as a kid, Putin backed off. He sort of got the point that he was cornered. Now that Putin's been in power for 20 years, and he is this important figure on the global stage, we just don't know where he will back off. (PBS, 11.25.22)
• One, Russia is not a democracy. Vladimir Putin is not running for reelection. Two, the things that keep him in power are his willingness to knock heads, the amount of sort of coercive, repressive power, which hasn't really been tapped that much in this crisis, and then lastly, the passivity, inertia and fear that are prevalent throughout the entire society but are concentrated in part in the Russian elite. So the idea that someone's going to rise up against him or throw their loyalty to Prigozhin, all of that, to me, seems rather far-fetched. (NPR, 06.29.23)
• The Russian elite have adapted and gotten in line. And I think after this incident (the Wagner mutiny), which was truly destabilizing and raised a lot of questions about who's in charge and, you know, who allowed a person with a catering background to assemble an off-the-books army over the past decade, all of those kinds of questions and the sorting out are going to be big focus for Vladimir Putin. (NPR, 06.29.23)
• The Russian opposition, such as it was, largely has fled the country in the wake of Russia's unprovoked and full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost exactly two years ago. And the movement was under intense pressure from the Russian authorities even in the months and years leading up to the attempted assassination of Alexei Navalny in the summer of 2020. (PBS, 02.16.24)
• You have a country that is largely aging and, as I said earlier, sitting on the sidelines politically. People have gotten used to things that simply should not be acceptable, atrocities on the streets of major Ukrainian cities and towns, unprovoked aggression against a neighboring country that was not looking for trouble. (PBS, 02.16.24)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russia is a country run by its national security apparatus. That apparatus is sprawling and basically sucks up about 26% or so of the entire state budget. (NPR, 06.29.23)
• And the Russian military leadership has underperformed dramatically throughout this war. The two people who Prigozhin has centered his attacks on—the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the commander of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov—are widely hated, including within those organizations. (NPR, 06.29.23)

Security, law enforcement, justice and emergencies:

• Russia has long struggled to overcome the constraints imposed by the country’s chronic inability to retain talent in support of homegrown innovation and R&D. That reality may consign it to a follower role in the technological realm. Russia’s global activism continues to lean heavily on tried-and-true tactics and capabilities that are popping up more frequently in a variety of far-flung venues. The blatant and often sloppy nature of such efforts suggests the Russian leadership believes that even adverse publicity helps strengthen Moscow’s claim to the status of a global power… Hence, Russia’s small AI/machine learning research field and its structurally challenged tech sector may matter less than its durable criminal and intelligence/military sectors, which have proven capable of funding a large and dangerous cyber/influence enterprise that continually develops or incorporates new techniques and patterns of activity. These actors will help determine the balance between the assimilation of increasingly sophisticated and destabilizing technologies and the continued reliance on tried-and-true tactics. (Carnegie, 04.29.21)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

Russia’s external policies and relations with “far abroad” countries:

• We’re talking about harassment and efforts by the Russians to undermine the United States- and NATO-led military effort [in Afghanistan]. What we’ve seen in recent days is the Russians trying to build a diplomatic profile on Afghanistan that circumvents what the U.S.-led effort is about and circumvents the government of Afghanistan itself... They’re building bridges to the Taliban, the radical group which ruled Afghanistan before the U.S. military intervention in 2001. And they’re trying to legitimize the Taliban. (WBUR, 02.15.17)
• Russian voices, fingerprints and footsteps have been showing up over much of the Middle East and Europe, parts of Africa and even in Latin America. (Wall Street Journal, 08.04.17)
• Elsewhere in the Middle East, Moscow has used arms sales, disinformation, intelligence operations, diplomatic footwork and plain old hard power to further its agenda. In recent weeks, Mr. Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—who has taken a decidedly autocratic turn and distanced his country from its NATO allies—have reportedly been finalizing a $2.5 billion deal for Turkey to purchase an advanced Russian S-400 air-defense system. (Wall Street Journal, 08.04.17)
• Russia’s renewed activism isn’t about dictating events in particular corners of the world. It is about exploiting opportunities to undermine and hollow out the U.S.-led international order, with its norms of economic openness, democratic accountability and the rule of law. The thread connecting Russia’s agenda, from Turkey to Nicaragua to South Africa, is its aim of pulling as many international actors as possible away from the rules-based institutions and security arrangements that the U.S. has worked so diligently to build over the past several generations. Mr. Putin is betting that he can rewrite the rules of world politics to his advantage. It is the job of American leaders and strategists to show him that he is mistaken. (Wall Street Journal, 08.04.17)
• At first glance, Russia’s prospects for securing a foothold in South Africa looked quite promising. Zuma, a Soviet-trained intelligence operative, ascended to the presidency under a cloud of corruption allegations. The Kremlin had successfully leveraged such situations elsewhere in the world. Over time, Zuma backed away from South Africa’s Mandela-era, Western-leaning foreign policy framework in favor of a more anti-Western, heavily conspiratorial view of the international system. (To be sure, such views have deep roots in the ANC even though they are strongly contested.) Zuma’s foreign policy aligned rather nicely with Russian positions on many issues, including the conflicts in Libya and Syria, as well as the threat allegedly posed by so-called color revolutions and the hidden hand of self-interested Western powers. But the Kremlin overplayed its hand. Its pursuit of a massive, nontransparent nuclear deal mobilized South African civil society and Zuma’s political opponents. Instead of anchoring Moscow’s relationship with Pretoria, the nuclear deal demonstrated Russia’s limited reach and lack of appeal as a partner to a country resilient in terms of democratic governance, strong civil society organizations, press freedoms, and political competition. Another unintended consequence was the impression that the failed nuclear deal was all there was to the South Africa-Russia relationship. This exposed Russia’s limited—at best—tool kit for long-range projection of its power and influence. (Carnegie, 12.16.19)
• In war-wracked states like Syria and Libya, Moscow has adroitly deployed military forces and engaged with actors that are off-limits to Westerners, thus positioning itself as a significant power broker. In Egypt and Algeria, it has pursued arms deals that are unencumbered by human rights conditions. Russia’s economic footprint is expanding in fields ranging from infrastructure to tourism to energy, contributing, in some instances, to the region’s cronyism and corruption. At the same time, a closer look at Russian activism reveals that its ability to shape events in the Middle East is far more modest than is commonly assumed. Russia has neither the tools nor the willingness to tackle the region’s deep-seated socioeconomic and governance problems. In Syria, the limits of the Kremlin’s military commitment have been exposed amid clashes with other powerful, outside players and a hardening stalemate on the ground. For now, Moscow is simply not in a position to achieve its desired military or political outcomes absent a significant investment of new resources. (Carnegie, 08.31.21)
• Today, Russia’s agile and enterprising foreign policy may come as a surprise, but it should not be seen as a latter-day manifestation of the Soviet Union’s global ambitions. The Kremlin has been seizing opportunities and filling vacuums—in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere—where it has capitalized on a combination of confusion, other players’ mistakes, and little U.S. involvement. (Carnegie, 09.09.20)
• Russian foreign policy has been growing more assertive in regions that the Kremlin largely neglected in the years after the Cold War—most notably, the Middle East, Northeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Europe is another story: it has always been too important for the Kremlin to ignore. It is the historical benchmark for Moscow’s great power ambitions, a vital market for Russia’s hydrocarbons, and a place for Russian elites to park their families and wealth… To be sure, Russian foreign policy across Europe is multidimensional and multifaceted. Yet the Kremlin’s relationships with Italy and Austria shine a spotlight on how Europe’s domestic troubles have opened many doors for the Kremlin. (Carnegie, 02.27.20)
• That dilemma highlights why commercial considerations, not national security, will continue to dominate the contours of the [Gulf Cooperation Council] GCC states’ relationship with Moscow. (Carnegie, 10.05.22)
• The Kremlin’s ties with Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expanded steadily following the launch of OPEC Plus’s oil production arrangement in 2016 and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s historic first visit to Moscow in October 2017. (Carnegie, 10.05.22)
• It would be an exaggeration to conclude that Russia and regional players are actually positioning themselves for the Kremlin to become a leading provider of security in the Persian Gulf, let alone supplant the United States. Carnegie, 10.05.22)
• Russian help often backfires. In Burkina Faso and Mali, for example, military-led governments have killed scores of civilians and engaged in horrific human rights abuses, sometimes with the help of Russian mercenaries. (Foreign Affairs, 07.09.24)
• A string of coups across Africa since 2020 has allowed Moscow to strengthen its position on the continent, even as it funnels vast military and economic resources into the war in Ukraine. Russia’s increased military, political, and economic presence in a diverse array of countries that now includes Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Sudan also flies in the face of expectations expressed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said in June 2023 that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine had ‘diminished Russian influence on every continent.’ (Foreign Affairs, 07.09.24)

Ukraine:

• Putin’s attachment to Ukraine often takes on emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical overtones. His pronouncements don’t align with reality, let alone with how Ukraine is viewed by most Western or Russian observers… Some analysts have suggested that the Kremlin could stage a rapid military onslaught to break the back of the Ukrainian military and force it to retreat behind the Dnieper River. This would position the Kremlin to control what is commonly referred to as “left-bank Ukraine,” including the historic part of Kyiv, which in Putin’s estimation makes up an inalienable part of the great Russian state. Presumably, the Kremlin might even try to install a puppet government in Kyiv and declare it “mission accomplished.” (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• All roads in the Ukraine crisis lead back to one man: Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, our ability to understand just what is driving him or what he actually wants to achieve is far weaker than it should be. A big part of the problem is that Putin has retreated into a war cabinet that, by design, lacks connectivity to the outside world. (Carnegie, 11.12.21)
• Can you come up with enough of a stable environment where Russia can conduct a referendum? They did that in 2014 in Crimea, but that was not a war zone. What's going on in Southern Ukraine, which would be this land bridge that Russia has wanted for a long time to connect mother Russia to Crimea, as well as what's been going on in Donbass, is a very heavily fought-over, very dangerous area. (PBS, 03.28.22)
• Russia has now basically tried to excuse what it's about to do, which is carve up the territory of a neighboring country, and blame it on the West. This is classic Russian blame-shifting. But annexation, if it happens, is a major escalatory move. (PBS, 03.28.22)
• So by virtue of what Russia did in 2014 by annexing Crimea and then invading parts of the Donbas and occupying them since 2014, Putin basically changed Ukraine's trajectory, it changed the outlook of its people and it basically made it impossible for a pro-Russian leadership ever to hold sway in Kyiv. And that's the buzz saw that Vladimir Putin walked into on February 24. (NPR, 03.29.22)
• In the most recent instance, both President Putin and former president, now adviser Dmitry Medvedev have emphasized that they want regime change in Kyiv. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• It definitely demonstrates that they still want President Zelenskyy out. And they want a structurally deferential Ukraine to replace the current government of Ukraine, which is obviously independent. (NPR, 10.10.22)
• [Putin’s] lost Ukraine three times, in 2004 during the Orange Revolution, 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity, and now most spectacularly and horribly in this horrible war. And the question is, why is it so important to him? What is it? And I think it comes back to the illiteracy about history, a sense that, as he's written… that Russians and Ukrainians are somehow the same (PBS, 11.25.22).
• It was their [Ukrainians’] vote in 1991 in a referendum that was the death knell for the Soviet Union. And, then again, they came out on the streets to defend their freedom and their independence. And now we see them fighting for their country, in incredible, brave and very dangerous circumstances. And Putin keeps thinking, oh, it's all just an act. There's no real country here. (PBS, 11.25.22)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• The two approaches to the states of the former Soviet Union—Russia’s geopolitical orientation and the West’s largely values-based policy—have defined the standoff between Russia and the West throughout the entire post–Cold War period. The standoff eventually culminated in the annexation of Crimea and the undeclared Russian war against Ukraine, leading in turn to the present crisis in European security. (Carnegie, 02.09.17)
• Nearly all of the post-Soviet countries have a lot of heartburn about looking to Putin as a benevolent security guarantor. Left to their own devices, none of these countries really wants to be back under the Kremlin's wing. (NPR, 05.02.22)
• The Kazakh authorities are now showing that they don't support what's happening in Ukraine. They're sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and they're indicating that they fully support Ukraine's sovereignty and independence. So if that's what a loyal vassal looks like, it's not exactly what Vladimir Putin was hoping for. (NPR, 05.02.22)

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the individual quoted. Photo is a screenshot from a Carnegie Endowment video.