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.
explainer

Clarifying Territorial Disputes in Ukraine

Graham T. Allison December 23, 2025 RM Exclusives
Ukraine has already lost 89% of Donbas and will very likely lose the rest next year.
article

From Army to Zelenskyy, Ukraine's Corruption Scandal Rocks Country

Ray Furlong, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 12, 2025 Recommended Reads
Ukraine faces a major corruption scandal involving high-level officials and $100 million in alleged kickbacks in the energy sector.
report

Will Latest U.S. Sanctions Force Putin to Moderate Aims in Ukraine?

RM Staff November 07, 2025 RM Exclusives
Analysis of what the U.S. government has declared as the aims behind its latest sanctions, what analysts think is achievable, as well as the context in which these punitive measures are being pursued.
article

How to Understand Donald Trump’s Nuclear Testing Remarks

Graham T. Allison November 07, 2025 Recommended Reads
President Trump’s statements about nuclear testing affirm his determination to ensure that the United States maintains the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world.
Competing Views on Russia

Are the U.S. and Russia Poised to Resume Nuclear Testing? Reactions to Trump’s Directive from Washington and Moscow

Jack Lennon, RM Staff November 06, 2025 RM Exclusives
Reactions to Trump’s Directive from Washington and Moscow.
Competing Views on Russia

2025 Nobel Prize Winners in Economics on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia

Jack Lennon, Angelina Flood October 23, 2025 RM Exclusives
This year's Nobel laureates in economics have commented on Russia's history with the economic concept of "creative destruction," the challenges for innovation posed by current global tensions and much more.
interview

Interview: Harvard’s Graham Allison on the second Trump administration and the international security order

John Mecklin September 04, 2025 Recommended Reads
In this interview with John Mecklin of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Harvard Professor Graham Allison reflects on three key 'unnatural' accomplishments of the post-WWII international order, Donald Trump's challenges to that order, and the possibility of Trump working with China to prevent a global catastrophe.
article

Mapping the Russia-Ukraine War Endgame

Graham T. Allison August 29, 2025 Recommended Reads
Ukraine faces a difficult choice: end the war and risk conceding territory or fight on and absorb more material, manpower, and territorial losses.
article

Russia's Demographic Vanishing Act: A Warning From History

Monica Duffy Toft August 06, 2025 RM Exclusives
Russia's decision to shroud its population figures in secrecy represents only the latest chapter in a long history of Soviet and Russian demographic denial—and it portends dangerous consequences for regional stability.
fact check

Claim in July 2025: “In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill.”

RM Staff August 01, 2025 RM Exclusives
Our analysis of ISW and DeepState data reveals that it was not accurate to portray the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian front in June 2025 as “increasingly at a standstill.”
interview

The Two Main Factors of the Future War Are Demography and Economy

Sonya Koshkina July 26, 2025 Recommended Reads
In this interview with LB.ua, ex-commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi issues an existential warning for NATO and discusses the future of the war in Ukraine.
article

Secondary Tariffs or Tighter Sanctions? Strategies to End Russia’s War in Ukraine

Robin Brooks, Ben Harris July 25, 2025 RM Exclusives
Unintended consequences may render secondary tariffs counterproductive. An alternative, and in the authors' views superior, approach is to focus on the existing set of economic measures against Russia, of which the G-7 oil price cap and sanctions on the shadow fleet are the core.
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