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.
event summary

Russian Cyber Operations: 2017 and Beyond

RM Staff February 08, 2017 RM Exclusives
As Russian cyber-ops continue to grab headlines and defy easy explanation, eminent experts David Sanger, Fiona Hill and Ben Buchanan shed light on some of the murkier parts of this unfolding story.
event summary

Russia and the U.S. Election: Assessing Moscow’s Actions and America’s Responses

RM Staff January 27, 2017 Partner Posts
How should Washington respond to alleged Russian hacking? What is it trying to accomplish and what is the cost/benefit of each response? Experts convened by the Center for the National Interest weigh in.
event summary

Keys, Hurdles, Strategies: US-Russia Relations Under Trump

RM staff January 20, 2017 RM Exclusives
Whither U.S.-Russia relations under Trump? Three top experts weigh in with a look at national interests, obstacles to rapprochement and the new president’s emerging strategy.
white paper

Russia and Cyber Operations: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next U.S. Administration

Ben Buchanan and Michael Sulmeyer December 13, 2016 Partner Posts
Highly potent Russia-linked cyber operations indicate that the U.S. will face an increasingly sophisticated and increasingly aggressive Russian cyber force, one that the incoming U.S. presidential administration should address as a key concern.
multimedia

25 Years After the Collapse of the Soviet Union: What Comes Next?

RM staff December 08, 2016 RM Exclusives
Graham Allison, Niall Ferguson, Mary Elise Sarotte and Arne Westad consider the fall of the USSR as “applied history,” pondering what went right, what went wrong and what policymakers can learn.
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.
white paper

The Role of Sanctions in US-Russian Relations

Richard Nephew and Andrew S. Weiss July 11, 2016 Recommended Reads
Sanctions are a critical tool in persuading Russia to change its Ukraine policy. But the West’s overreliance on them risks undercutting their long-term effectiveness.
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.
white paper

The Future of US-Russian Arms Control

Steven Pifer February 26, 2016
Objectively, prospects for further U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions in the near term are not bright.
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.
research paper

The Sino-Russian Gas Partnership

Morena Skalamera November 01, 2014 Recommended Reads
Putin seeks to show the world and the Russian people that he has alternative friends to the East, but the incentives leading to the mega deal were in place much earlier.
research paper

What Happened to the Soviet Superpower’s Nuclear Arsenal? Clues for the Nuclear Security Summit

Graham Allison March 01, 2012 Recommended Reads
Graham Allison considers what clues we can extract from successfully denuclearizing 14 post-Soviet states, and how those clues can inform our non-proliferation and nuclear security efforts in the future.
Refine & Filter

By Section

By Topic

By Country

By Regions

By Groups

By Genre