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.
article

SolarWinds Hack: Why We Need Defense, Not Retaliation

William Akoto January 31, 2021 Recommended Reads
There may be no way to prevent systems from being breached, but the right cyber defenses could limit the damage and speed the recovery when they are broken into.
article

Should U.S. Missile Defenses Be a Part of Arms Control Negotiations With Russia?

Steven Pifer January 26, 2021 Recommended Reads
The Biden administration should consider whether the benefits to United States and allied security of limiting all nuclear weapons, including non-strategic nuclear arms, would justify accepting some constraints on missile defense.
article

The U.S. Failed to Execute Its Cyberstrategy—and Russia Pounced

Rob Knake January 06, 2021 Recommended Reads
To address U.S. cyber vulnerabilities now requires not a new grand cyberstrategy but the discipline and resources to implement the current one.
article

With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim

Paul Kolbe December 23, 2020 Recommended Reads
Instead of acting surprised after a cyberattack, the United States must better defend its digital homeland and learn how to better operate in a state of constant cyberconflict.
article

How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis

Abrahm Lustgarten December 16, 2020 Recommended Reads
While the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic for much of the world, for Russia, they could be just the opposite.
article

3 lessons from Russia's cyberhack into U.S. agencies

Erica Borghard and Jacquelyn Schneider December 16, 2020 Recommended Reads
The cyber-intrusion that breached the IT systems of several U.S. government organizations contains a number of important lessons for analysts and policymakers.
article

Trump and Putin's Pandemic Duet: Trump's America Is Far More out of Tune

Judyth Twigg and J. Stephen Morrison August 21, 2020 Partner Posts
Russian president Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump share a playbook that has led each country into deep turmoil. But Trump's policies have led America's coronavirus outbreak to far outstrip Russia’s.
article

Unplugging the Baltic States: Why Russia’s Economic Approach May Be Shifting

Emily Ferris July 01, 2020 RM Exclusives
The probability of Russia resorting to a Crimea-style intervention in the Baltics remains low. As a key energy supplier and major trading partner for the region, Russia has more to gain by using economic levers as opposed to military ones to retain influence.
article

The State Department’s Compliance Report Plays the Blame Game, Despite Offering Little Evidence

Matt Korda and Hans M. Kristensen June 24, 2020 Recommended Reads
The report’s publication comes at a critical time, as the Trump administration has spent the past few years—and the past three months in particular—dismantling the last vestiges of U.S. commitments to the international arms control regime.
article

Decoding Russia’s Official Nuclear Deterrence Paper

Dmitri Trenin June 05, 2020 Recommended Reads
Russia's recently released Nuclear Deterrence Policy Guidelines suggest that the Kremlin may be preparing for a world without arms control.
article

Khodorkovsky Marks the Spot: Russia’s Turning Point From Economic Freedom to State Control

Sergei Guriev May 28, 2020 RM Exclusives
Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s sentencing 15 years ago this month signaled the end of Russia's market reforms and the beginning of ever-increasing state control.
article

Kto-Kogo: Putin vs. COVID-19

Thomas Graham May 07, 2020 RM Exclusives
Some believe the pandemic and the oil price collapse will erode the Russian president's power or end his presidency. But with the skill he has shown, and the luck that has favored him for 20 years, he could emerge from this crisis even stronger.
Refine & Filter

By Section

By Topic

By Country

By Regions

By Groups

By Genre