As President Donald Trump’s administration neared the 100 day mark, former U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, now inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), reflected on the defining challenges of his tenure under the Biden administration. In conversation with Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at HKS, Sullivan offered a candid account of the Biden administration’s foreign policy decisions, including navigating the fine line between aiding Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression and averting nuclear catastrophe.

Sullivan emphasized that national security decision-making is rarely black-and-white. A key dilemma throughout the Ukraine conflict was how to calibrate increased military support without triggering a wider war. “Policy formulation is inherently imperfect,” Sullivan acknowledged, describing the administration’s objective as navigating between two extremes: recklessness—ignoring the risks of nuclear escalation—and excessive caution—failing to act out of fear of triggering World War III. He argued that “if you look at the pattern of choices we made over time, and the results that we generated, that it was a robust and effective policy that has helped save Ukraine. The main reason Ukraine was saved was the bravery and courage of the Ukrainian people themselves, but the United States played a damn important role alongside many allies and partners in helping to ensure that Russia did not achieve its strategic purpose, which was effectively to wipe Ukraine off the map.”

Two weeks after the closely-watched bilateral talks between Russian and American delegations in Riyadh, Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council and member of Harvard University's Board of Overseers, joined experienced journalist Lucian Kim for an illuminating conversation with exiled editor-in-chief of the New Times Yevgenia Albats. Their discussion at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, titled "Unfair Triangle," confronted the reality that in negotiations intended to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has no incentive to seek a lasting peace. The title itself alludes to the unfair and asymmetrical nature of the evolving diplomatic dynamic in which talks are largely shaped by U.S.–Russia power politics, while Ukraine—whose fate hangs in the balance—is often sidelined.

Hill detailed the likely consequences of the Trump administration’s views of Putin’s long-term goals and American disengagement, while emphasizing Ukraine's military successes and diplomatic fortitude, which she sees as underrepresented in American media. She outlined the broader implications of U.S. withdrawal from the conflict, not only for European security architecture, but also for what U.S. analysts Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor have termed the "Axis of Upheaval”: Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. Hill dissected Putin's negotiating posture and the calculated tactics the Kremlin employed in its communications with the Trump administration. Both Hill and Kim advocated for stronger European defense collaboration through NATO frameworks, suggesting that the vision of a unified European military force, once dismissed as unrealistic, now appears increasingly viable and necessary.

The Levada Center’s latest poll shows that a majority of Russians continued to support the launch of peace negotiations to end the Russian-Ukrainian war in March (58%), though, as usual, one should keep in mind on what conditions these dovish respondents would agree to end the conflict. In contrast, only 33% favored continuing the war, according to Levada’s late March poll, the results of which were released April 1. These results are not very different from recent polling of Ukrainians, which showed that the share of those who favor direct negotiations with Russia climbed from 38% in January to 64% in February, according to Ukraine’s Reiting pollster.

Import tariffs, which U.S. President Donald Trump slapped on about 90 countries on April 2 and which some of America’s previously friendly neighbors described as attempts to make their economies “collapse,” had some surprise omissions. One of them has turned out be Russia, which made many wonder why. To hear U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explain it, Russia was spared because the sanctions imposed on the country after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 mean that U.S.-Russian trade had effectively stopped, according to NYT. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a similar explanation, telling Axios that Russia was left off the list because U.S. sanctions already "preclude any meaningful trade."

But low levels of trade didn’t prevent Trump from slapping tariffs on other countries.¹ For instance, the U.S. exported $526 million worth of goods and services to Russia last year, while importing $3,007 million, with America’s deficit in this bilateral trade totaling $2,481 million that year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In comparison, the volume of Angola’s trade with the U.S. ($2.6 billion in goods last year) was lower than America’s trade with Russia, as was the deficit ($1 billion), but this African country still found itself with a 32% import tariff.  

So, low levels of trade don’t quite explain why Russia was spared. Perhaps the structure of U.S. imports does? As NYT’s Anatoly Kurmanaev has reminded us, Russia is a Top 3 supplier of fertilizer to the United States. However, Russia’s share in U.S. imports of this commodity has not exactly been game-changing; Russia accounted for 16% of $9.97 billion worth of fertilizer that U.S. imported in 2023.  

Perhaps there has been another factor in the confluence of drivers of Trump’s decision to spare Russia from the tariffs. It could be that Trump still harbors hopes that, despite having stalled so far in the negotiations on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin may eventually agree to implement Trump’s vision of first embracing a temporary but full ceasefire, and then using that halt to negotiate a permanent cessation of hostilities. 

Whatever the reasons, Trump’s decision to spare Russia has not been lost on Russia’s ruling elite. Moreover, some top members of that elite, such as Dmitry Medvedev, could not help gloating over how some of America’s traditional allies were reeling from Trump’s tariffs, while Russia was untouched. Russian markets also, arguably, welcomed the omission of Russia from the trade war, with the Moscow Exchange and RTS indices rising by 1.1% after opening on April 3. 

Not everyone was celebrating though. Dmitry Drize, political commentator at Russia’s Kommersant FM radio station, expressed faint hope that Trump’s Liberation Day is a nightmare the world will wake from. See what other influential and not-so-influential Russians said in response to Trump’s tariffs in the list below, with entries arranged in alphabetical order. They are followed by reactions from other post-Soviet republics (also in alphabetical order) and by a table of which of these republics were slapped with what tariffs, if at all (in addition to Russia, Belarus was spared, while Moldova was subjected to the highest tariffs among these states at 31%, and a 10% tariff was imposed on Ukraine).

“When the nation’s intelligence chiefs go before Congress ... to provide their first public ‘Worldwide Threat Assessment’ of President Trump’s second term, ... do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and ‘undermine the United States and the West?’ Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?” That was the central question that NYT’s David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes asked in their March 24 preview of WTA-2025, entitled “Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner?” 

The release of WTA-2025 on March 25 answered their question. “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—individually and collectively—are challenging U.S. interests in the world by attacking or threatening others in their regions ... Growing cooperation between and among these adversaries is increasing their fortitude against the United States, the potential for hostilities with any one of them to draw in another and pressure on other global actors to choose sides,” according to the assessment. The document, presented by director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe to the Senate’s intelligence committee, also had a section entitled “Adversarial Cooperation,” which opened with the proposition that “cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea has been ... reinforcing threats from each of them individually while also posing new challenges to U.S. strength and power globally,” and which described Russia as a “catalyst for the evolving ties” between this quartet. 

In his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which lasted two-and-a-half hours on March 18, U.S. President Donald Trump failed to secure the Russian leader’s consent for a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, with Putin agreeing instead to suspend attacks on energy infrastructure.¹ The U.S. and Russian readouts of the call revealed substantive differences between the two sides’ interpretations of the content and outcomes of the March 18 conversation. While the White House version claims that the leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with a 30-day energy and infrastructure ceasefire, the Kremlin version refers to an energy infrastructure ceasefire only. Likewise, the Kremlin readout includes items not mentioned in the White House readout, including a claim that the two leaders discussed “a complete cessation of providing Kyiv with foreign military aid.” The Kremlin's version, more than double the length of the White House readout, provides considerably more detail about the topics discussed, signaling Putin's greater interest in unfreezing the bilateral relationship now that the U.S. no longer treats him as a pariah, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict notwithstanding.² In a clear effort to encourage Trump to move with Putin toward further normalizing the U.S.-Russian relationship, the Kremlin's readout says the Russian leader praised his U.S. counterpart during the call for “striving to achieve the noble goal of ending the hostilities,” a panegyric not reciprocated in the White House readout.

Some divergence also appears regarding the description of future engagements between the two countries’ governments. For instance, the Kremlin version notes the formation of Russian and American expert task forces to continue bilateral efforts toward a Ukrainian settlement, which is absent from the White House summary. These and other points of divergence are summarized in the table below:

On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, former Ukrainian foreign minister and senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Dmytro Kuleba delivered the Center’s 2025 Lamont Lecture, “A View from Ukraine.” In conversation with Belfer Center director Meghan O’Sullivan, Kuleba outlined his views on Ukraine’s ongoing talks with the Trump administration, the potential for a ceasefire and the future of Ukraine itself. Arguing that the Trump administration’s aim for a ceasefire was inherently misguided, Kuleba criticized what he saw as the West’s continuous misreading of Russia’s intentions and the lack of a coherent strategy to deal with Russia’s expansionist tendencies. Kuleba called on European countries to unite behind support for Ukraine and touched on his country’s dogged resilience throughout its conflict with Russia.

Kuleba accused Western nations of consistently misinterpreting Russia’s actions toward Ukraine. He recalled the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine surrendered its remaining nuclear stocks for vaguely worded “security assurances” from Russia, the U.S. and U.K. In Kuleba’s eyes, Western countries misread Russian intentions. “While they saw the Budapest Memorandum as an act of denuclearization, Russia saw it entirely as an act of disarmament of Ukraine,” Kuleba said. “Russia always knew what it wanted to do to Ukraine,” he continued. “To achieve that, it first and foremost had to disarm it. Second, to shatter the unity of the Ukrainian nation. And third, to undermine the relationships Ukraine had with its neighbors.” An apparent victory for non-proliferation was instead the first act in Russia’s plan of neutralizing Ukraine. 

Introduction

Is Vladimir Putin a rational actor who weighs costs and benefits before making a momentous decision, such as whether to invade another country? Multiple scholars of Putin and his country think he is. If so, the third anniversary of his decision to order a full-scale invasion of Ukraine provides an appropriate opportunity to take stock of the costs and benefits of that invasion for Russia’s dictator and the country he rules. Before we do so, however, we must note that providing quantitative estimates of these costs and benefits is, predictably, very challenging, as it is difficult to find rigorous research that separates the impacts of the aggression on aspects such as, for instance, Russia’s economic output, from other factors that impact its GDP.¹ It is also difficult to estimate the duration of these costs, given Russian authorities’ efforts to reduce them through measures such as the evasion of sanctions. While trying to estimate the “pros” and “cons” of Russia’s invasion for Russia, we, of course, acknowledge the horrendous costs which have been endured by Ukraine and Ukrainians, including hundreds of thousands in military casualties and thousands of civilian fatalities.²

U.S.-European tensions and the future of Ukraine dominated the discussions at this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC). An equally important aspect of Europe’s security equation, however, was the alignment of its adversaries: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. On Feb. 15, director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Meghan O’Sullivan convened an MSC panel to discuss “Adversarial Alignment” and its future ramifications for European and global security, delivering the opening remarks. O’Sullivan was joined in conversation by Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group and Belfer senior fellow; Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council and member of Harvard University's Board of Overseers; Dmytro Kuleba, former Ukrainian foreign minister and Belfer senior fellow; and David Sanger, White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times and former Belfer senior fellow. The speakers concurred that the West’s adversaries were not monolithic: while China seeks to preserve global stability and multilateral institutions to displace the U.S. on the world stage, Russia, Iran and North Korea aim to destroy the status quo. In his drive to dismantle the U.S.’s international commitments, Kuleba and Bremmer concluded, U.S. President Donald Trump is giving Chinese President Xi Jinping exactly what he wants.

The speakers agreed that adversarial alignment between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is based much more on quid pro quos related to the war in Ukraine than deep ideological convergence. Hill argued that Russia did not embark upon its invasion with intentions of forging closer relationships with China, Iran or North Korea. “A quid pro quo is emerging,” she said, as Russia needs resources to fuel its war effort: namely, North Korean Soviet-era arms and ammunition, Iranian drones and Chinese chips, energy markets, and capital reserves. Before the war, Russia opposed expanding North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs. It now supports the expansion of these programs due to assistance it received from those countries during the conflict. According to Hill, “all the dynamics have changed.”

The past few months have seen a number of Russia watchers echo each other’s proclamations that the Russian economy is either already collapsing or close to crumbling. 

Will these predictions materialize?

Gloom and Doom: The Russian Economy as Seen From the West 

Mark Temnycky of the Atlantic Council contributed a Jan. 8, 2025 commentary to this U.S. think-tank, in which he asks “Is 2025 the year that Russia’s economy finally freezes up under sanctions?” and answers in the affirmative. Olga Chyzh of the University of Toronto also took a dim view of the Russian economy in her recent commentary for The Guardian, entitled “A string of assassinations, a faltering economy, a shortage of workers: the pressure on Putin is ratcheting up.” In this Dec. 19. 2024, commentary, Chyzh writes that Russia’s “economy is faltering under the combined strain of the war and Western sanctions.” “War-driven salary increases … have triggered a vicious cycle of inflation and subsequent interest-rate hikes. The country also has a chronic shortage of workers, thanks to its ageing population and the exodus of some 700,000 working-age individuals at the start of the war,” she writes.

More recently, FT commentator Martin Sandbu proclaimed in his Jan. 12, 2025, column that, due to ballooning corporate debt, "Russia’s war economy is a house of cards,” while Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University-Newark sees that house of cards crumbling in 2025. Writing in The Hill in October 2024, he predicts that a “Russian economic meltdown is coming next year.” “Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union should have taught Putin a lesson,” warns Motyl, who has repeatedly predicted Russia’s collapse. “The decrepit Soviet economy couldn’t support Brezhnev’s military expenditure. If Russia’s economy collapses, so too will the military and the war,” Motyl predicts.

Motyl is not the only Russia watcher who believes it is not just the Russian economy that is in deep trouble. The entire regime is crumbling, in the view of Roger Boyes of the Times of London. His Jan. 3, 2025, column, entitled "Putin's empire is crumbling: will 2025 prove to be his 1989?,” states that “the shift to a war economy has aggravated labor shortages and inflation, bankruptcies are on the increase.” “The pressing issue is: who is next on the redundancy list after Assad, and how quickly will Putin's protective layers be peeled away?” Boyes asks in his column. 

Post-Soviet Eurasia watchers based in Ukraine see the Russian economy, perhaps predictably, in an even bleaker state than their Western counterparts. Kyiv-based journalists Yelyzaveta Yefimenko, Mariana Lastovyria and Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova published a post on Dec. 5, 2024, entitled “The collapse of the Russian economy,” on American journalist Tim Mak’s Substack, “Counteroffensive.” The Kyiv-based Euromaidan Press outlet then published a commentary by Yurii Bohdanov on Jan. 17, 2025, in which he claims that “even ‘freezing’ the war in Ukraine will not solve Russia’s economic problems… and a freeze only delays the inevitable collapse.”