Analysis

This listing contains all the analytical materials posted on the Russia Matters website. These include: RM Exclusives, commissioned by Russia Matters exclusively for this website; Recommended Reads, deemed particularly noteworthy by our editorial team; Partner Posts, originally published by our partners elsewhere; and Future Policy Leaders, pieces by promising young scholars and policy thinkers. Content can be filtered by genre and subject-specific criteria and is updated often. Gradually we will be adding older Recommended Reads and Partner Posts dating back as far as 2011.
issue brief

When Does Vladimir Putin’s Russia Send In Troops?

Simon Saradzhyan August 07, 2018 RM Exclusives
Examining Putin’s three military interventions abroad, the author sees a pattern in which two conditions must be present for Russia to intervene with force: a threat to its vital interests and a reasonable chance of success.
research paper

China-Russia Relations: Same Bed, Different Dreams? Why Converging Interests Are Unlikely to Lead to a Full-Fledged Alliance

Simon Saradzhyan and Ali Wyne June 07, 2018 RM Exclusives
China and Russia’s shared interests have brought them closer together, but growing disparities between the two make a formal alliance unlikely, unless two conditions emerge—including a weakened, isolated Russia.
explainer

The Collapsing Russian Defense Budget and Other Fairy Tales

Michael Kofman May 22, 2018 RM Exclusives
Recent reports claiming Russia slashed defense spending by 20 percent from 2016 to 2017 are wrong, the author argues. They stem from a government decision to pay down old debt, not actual cuts to spending.
explainer

Russia and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Laying Out the Publicly Available Evidence

David Filipov, Kevin Doyle and Natasha Yefimova-Trilling April 06, 2018 RM Exclusives
Americans’ opinions about allegations of “Russiagate” are often split along party lines—in part because the publicly available evidence has come in forms that leave room for doubt. Here we try to present it as systematically as possible. Newly updated!
research paper

Russian Strategists Debate Preemption as Defense Against NATO Surprise Attack

Alexander Velez-Green March 14, 2018 RM Exclusives
Russian leaders have long debated what to do in the face of a NATO surprise attack. One group of military strategists believes that, in the near future, defensive operations alone will not suffice.
explainer

25 Years of Nuclear Security Cooperation by the US, Russia and Other Newly Independent States: A Timeline

Mariana Budjeryn, Simon Saradzhyan and William Tobey June 16, 2017 RM Exclusives
At a time when the U.S. and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union still saw each other as mortal enemies, they found the courage, creativity and capacity for trust to work together in the name of preventing nuclear catastrophe.
explainer

Russian Defense Spending: Tricky Math

Olga Oliker April 26, 2017 RM Exclusives
With Russia flexing its military muscle, analysts are increasingly interested in how much Moscow is spending on weapons. This explainer lays out the factors that make those numbers hard to crunch.
explainer

For Russia and America, Election Interference Is Nothing New: 25 Stories

Arjun Kapur and Simon Saradzhyan March 22, 2017 RM Exclusives
As headlines scream about Russia’s “unprecedented” interference in U.S. politics, it’s helpful to get some historical perspective on how often countries try to tinker with each other’s elections.
research paper

Illusions vs. Reality: Twenty-Five Years of US Policy Toward Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia

Eugene Rumer, Richard Sokolsky, Paul Stronski and Andrew S. Weiss February 09, 2017 Recommended Reads
Long-standing disagreements on national security interests and policies will make repairing the U.S.-Russian relationship challenging.
research paper

Wargaming NATO's Defense of the Baltics

David A. Shlapak and Michael Johnson August 23, 2016 Recommended Reads
The games’ findings are unambiguous: At present NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members; fortunately, changing that will not require Herculean effort.
research paper

Deal or No Deal: Did the US Promise Russia No NATO Expansion?

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson May 05, 2016 Recommended Reads
New archival materials show that U.S. officials did indeed offer the Soviets informal assurances of NATO's non-expansion in 1990, while keeping open the possibility of expansion and seeking to maximize U.S. power in post-Cold War Europe.
research paper

Russia’s Breakout From the Post-Cold War System

Dmitri Trenin December 22, 2014 Recommended Reads
In 2014, Russia broke out of the post–Cold War order and openly challenged the U.S.-led international system.
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