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.
Clues from Russian Views

The World According to Patrushev

Simon Saradzhyan and Angelina Flood October 07, 2022 RM Exclusives
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, often comes up when discussion turns to possible Putin successors. Check out our compilation for some of his views on issues that impact important U.S. interests.
article

War With Ukraine as Other Means to Speed Up Reversal of Russia’s ‘Civilizational Choice’

Simon Saradzhyan August 12, 2022 RM Exclusives
One overlooked aim of the war in Ukraine is Putin's attempt to speed up a clean break from a “declining” West, so that Russia can blossom as a separate civilization in alignment with the “great civilization” of a “rising” China.
Clues from Russian Views

Could Russia Use the Nuclear Option?

Pyotr Topychkanov May 16, 2022
The threat of a nuclear strike on Ukraine is being hotly discussed in the media and social networks. But there are reasons to be both skeptical and wary of this threat.
survey

Survey: What Would a Le Pen Presidency Mean for France’s Policy Toward Russia?

RM Staff April 20, 2022 RM Exclusives
The nationalist firebrand who has recently "put water in her vodka" and considerably toned down her anti-EU rhetoric is well known for cultivating warm ties with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
article

The Global War on Chechnya: What Does 9/11 Teach Us About Counterterrorism Cooperation With Russia?

Paul Kolbe October 13, 2021 RM Exclusives
Mutual interest in fighting terrorism simply cannot counter all the negatives in current U.S.-Russian relations to serve as a basis for improved overall bilateral ties.
multimedia

Twenty Years After: How Terrorism and the World have Changed Since 9/11

Center for the National Interest September 09, 2021 Partner Posts
Graham T. Allison, Paul Pillar and Jessica Stern discuss how the United States should deal with terrorism in the aftermath of its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and with friends and rivals abroad to secure vital security interests today.
article

Russia, the United States and the Counterrevolutionaries: A Trilateral Chess Match in the Middle East

Jon Hoffman July 21, 2021 RM Exclusives
Russia's return to the Middle East must be assessed from the perspective of regional actors, namely how they seek to use competition between Moscow and Washington for their own strategic benefit, our latest exclusive argues.
article

Want a Green Future? Let Nord Stream Go.

Stephen G. Gross May 06, 2021 Recommended Reads
U.S. sanctions against Germany over Nord Stream 2 would undermine diplomatic climate change efforts.
primer

Russia’s Impact on US National Interests: Preventing Terrorist Attacks on US Homeland and Assets Abroad

George Beebe April 13, 2021 RM Exclusives
Russia has shown it can help the U.S. on counterterrorism a great deal. Adversarial relations notwithstanding, there is more the two sides can do in terms of sharing both intelligence and expertise.
article

Five Years After Russia Declared Victory in Syria: What Has Been Won?

Thomas Schaffner March 18, 2021 RM Exclusives
Has the intervention paid off or has Obama’s 2015 prediction that the operation would end in a “quagmire” for Russia come true? An assessment of some key costs and benefits generated by Russia’s intervention in Syria.
article

Rebuttal: Ukraine Is Emerging as Critical Node for White-Supremacy Extremists

Mollie Saltskog and Colin P. Clarke September 24, 2020 RM Exclusives
The authors argue that the transnational threat of violent right-wing extremism emanating from the conflict in eastern Ukraine has not waned, even as the number of ultranationalist foreign fighters there has.
explainer

Who ‘Defeated’ ISIS? An Analysis of US and Russian Contributions

Domitilla Sagramoso May 06, 2020 RM Exclusives
There can be little doubt that the U.S. and its allies played a much bigger role in subduing the terror group than Russia. But ISIS has plenty of life in it yet and any alleged victory is fragile.
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