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.
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Russian Women in the Face of War Against Ukraine

Egle E. Murauskaite March 26, 2024 Partner Posts
Russia’s war against Ukraine has revealed stories about the heroic resistance efforts of Ukrainian women, but comparable stories have been entirely lacking on Russia’s side.
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Not Built for Purpose: The Russian Military’s Ill-Fated Force Design

Michael Kofman and Rob Lee June 02, 2022 Recommended Reads
Force structure reveals a great deal about a military and its assumptions of what wars it plans to fight and how it plans to fight them.
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The Russian Military’s People Problem

Dara Massicot May 18, 2022 Recommended Reads
The culture of indifference to its personnel fundamentally compromises the Russian military’s efficacy, no matter how extensively it has been modernized.
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Putin’s Invasion Was Immoral but Not Irrational

Mark F. Cancian May 10, 2022 Recommended Reads
Evaluating Putin’s decision requires capturing what was known at the time, not what became evident later.
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How Silent Assent Made Bucha Possible

Andrei Kolesnikov April 07, 2022 Recommended Reads
Those who approve or stay silent bear, at the very least, collective responsibility for what is happening in their own country and what the state is doing.
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Does the Collective Security Treaty Organization Have a Future?

Kirill Krivosheev July 09, 2021 Partner Posts
The CSTO still has a chance to prove itself—if it can demonstrate effective and coordinated work after the impending withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
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Russia-Ukraine War Alert: What’s Behind It and What Lies Ahead?

Dmitri Trenin April 13, 2021 Recommended Reads
Going overkill in terms of military maneuvers on the Ukrainian border now may avoid the need to do terrible things at a later point.