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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US Sanctions Against Russia: What You Need to Know

Cyrus Newlin and Jeffrey Mankoff October 31, 2018 Recommended Reads
While Washington clearly intends to continue using sanctions as a primary means of confronting Russia, it is less apparent what the various sanctions imposed since 2012 have done to change Russian behavior.
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New Sanctions Won’t Hurt Russia

Andrey Movchan September 26, 2018 Recommended Reads
Moscow's foreign currency reserves are at an all-time high, and the falling value of the ruble has actually been a boon for Russia's state budget.
article

The Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism

Kevin Rudd September 16, 2018 Recommended Reads
As democratic capitalism begins to show signs of sickness, on offer are other modes of governance, including Russian nationalism and China's model of authoritarian capitalism.
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Is the US Using Sanctions Too Aggressively?

Peter Harrell September 11, 2018 Recommended Reads
As the scope and complexity of sanctions grow, their costs and unintended impacts do, too.
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How to Interfere in a Foreign Election

Stephen Kinzer August 19, 2018 Recommended Reads
Despite Yeltsin's unpopularity, Washington saw him as easy to control, and so, U.S. resources were thrown behind a Russian presidential candidate.
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The August War, Ten Years On: A Retrospective on the Russo-Georgian War

Michael Kofman August 17, 2018 Recommended Reads
In 2008, Moscow demonstrated the will and ability to actively contest the U.S. vision for European security, veto NATO expansion in its neighborhood and challenge Washington’s design for a normative international order where small states can determine their own affairs independent of the interests of great powers.
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The Helsinki Summit: A Good Idea Turns Bad

George Beebe July 19, 2018 Recommended Reads
Expectations for the Helsinki summit were low, but the U.S. and Russia still managed to sail their listing bilateral ship directly into the rocks of the Russian cyber-meddling controversy.
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Musings … ‘Russiagate’ Hysteria

Jack Matlock June 02, 2018 Recommended Reads
Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has become increasingly accepted as "fact" by both the media and Congress. This is not the most important aspect of that election.
podcast

Of Armaments and Armenia

Center for Strategic and International Studies May 08, 2018 Partner Posts
In this episode of Russian Roulette, CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program expert Olga Oliker sits down with military analyst Leonid Nersisyan to discuss a wide range of subjects from the state of military analysis in Russia to the future of U.S.-Russia arms control, plus a current affairs segment on the latest political developments in Armenia.
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'Blame Russia' Is Getting Old

Benjamin Haddad March 14, 2018 Recommended Reads
Although voters worldwide have been giving voice to their dissatisfaction with political elites, those elites keep trying to explain away the explosion of populism as a product of Russian interference.
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From Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Delusion (and Back?)

Simon Saradzhyan March 12, 2018 Recommended Reads
If U.S. and Russian decision-makers do not just profess but also genuinely believe in the continuing decline and pending collapse of each other’s countries, then chances are they will act more assertively against each other.
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America Ignores Russia at Its Peril

David Ignatius March 06, 2018 Recommended Reads
Putin’s address to the Russian parliament was meant to intimidate Washington, but it was also a plea for attention.
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