New, drastic sanctions have been slapped on Russia and will hurt, especially in the long run. Plenty has been said about the effects on energy markets, so I’m going to skip that sector and say a few things about other, less discussed yet very important domains where these sanctions could reverberate, if they haven’t already.

This week, two Russian pollsters—VTsIOM and FOM—published surveys showing that approximately two-thirds of the Russian public support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. The independent Levada Center, which Western experts often cite as more reliable, has not yet released its data on the topic. However, its earlier research suggests that a large share of Russians may indeed be supportive of the “military operation,” as Moscow calls it—likely at least in part because of the state’s portrayal of the tensions leading up to the conflict.

For example, negative attitudes toward Ukraine and blame toward the U.S./NATO for the crisis there rose by about 10 percentage points in the week before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion as compared to mid-November—and President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating followed suit. According to a Feb. 17-21 Levada poll, 52% of Russians hold a negative view of Ukraine and only 35% hold a positive view, versus 43% and 45%, respectively, three months earlier. The portion of respondents holding “the U.S. and other NATO countries” responsible for heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine rose from 50% in November to 60% in the third week of February. Meanwhile, Putin’s approval rating grew by 8 percentage points, from 63% in November to 71% in the Feb. 17-21 survey.

At this point, it is unclear what Vladimir Putin's end game will be after launching a full-scale, combined-arms invasion of Ukraine. However, what we can be reasonably sure of is that Putin, who has, for the last two decades, been reasonably consistent in his vision for Russia's role in world affairs, came to the conclusion that his aims were no longer served by continuing with diplomacy, and has chosen to "let the cannon decide." In making that choice, however, he is also foreclosing on Western, especially European, assistance in pursuing his vision of Arctic development which he has stated is the basis for securing Russia's economic future—and is gambling that a closer partnership with China can safeguard his priorities without subordinating Russia to Beijing's preferences.

Putin believes that Russia has no choice but to remain as one of the agenda-setting powers of the world. His view of "sovereign democracy" is that a Russia that lacks the wherewithal to defend itself from outside pressure will find itself forced to adopt Western standards or a Chinese diktat. Russia's position as a great power is defined, in part, by being able to maintain an independent Eurasian pole of power—more or less coterminous with the old Soviet Union. Over the course of his career as prime minister and president, Putin has changed his tactics and approaches in pursuit of these aims. In his first years, he hoped that a post-9/11 partnership with the United States and collaboration with the European Union to create a wider European space from Lisbon to Vladivostok would lead to Western recognition of Russian pre-eminence in this region—essentially a division where the Euro-Atlantic world would voluntarily cease its eastward enlargement at the Vistula and Baltic littoral. When it became clear that, in pursuit of partnership with Russia, the West was not prepared to accede to any Russian sphere of influence, Putin's approach became more controversial—as reflected in his 2007 Munich speech and his 2008 tête-à-tête with George W. Bush in Bucharest—and culminated in the 2008 Russian incursion into Georgia.

In a Foreign Affairs essay published online in December 2017, Joe Biden—then a former vice president—accused Russia of weaponizing corruption, among other things. “Russia has invaded neighboring countries… More frequently and more insidiously, it has sought to weaken and subvert Western democracies from the inside by weaponizing information, cyberspace, energy and corruption,” he wrote together with his co-author, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter. Biden’s observation made us wonder what else Russia has been accused of weaponizing in recent years. Here’s the list we have come up with:

A Beluga whale (The Washington Post, 04.29.19)

Bigotry (The Daily Beast, 10.19.18)

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s gas dependence (RUSI, 04.29.21)

Corruption (Eurasianet, 07.12.21, Foreign Affairs, 06.09.20)

Cyber security products (The Washington Post, 12.16.20)

Charlie Sheen (Foreign Policy, 09.23.20)

Diplomatic expulsions (CNN, 06.10.21)

Disability (Euromaidan Press, 03.28.17)

Dolphins (AFP, 03.09.16)

In spite of escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine, the latest poll conducted by the Levada Center shows that two-thirds of Russians say they’re not too worried about Western sanctions. At the same time, the share of respondents who believe current sanctions are impacting a wide swath of the population, rather than just elites, has nearly doubled from what it was following Russia's takeover of Crimea in 2014.

The poll conducted by Levada, Russia’s leading independent pollster, in December 2021 shows that 66% of Russians are either “not worried at all” or “not very worried” about the West’s political and economic sanctions against Russia. This share is about 8% higher than it was in the months after Russia annexed Crimea and threw its support behind separatists in eastern Ukraine, triggering multiple waves of U.S. and European sanctions. Then, the share of non-worriers averaged 57.8% over five surveys conducted in April-December 2014. One explanation for the lower level of concern may be that Russia and the West are still pursuing diplomacy, and Western countries have threatened harsh sanctions—such as targeting Russia’s largest financial institutions and energy exports to Europe—only if Russia were to use force against Ukraine.

Near the end of this week’s marathon talks between Russia and the U.S., NATO and the OSCE on Russia’s three main security demands (and the West’s counter-demands), Russian negotiators said the talks had reached a “dead end” but simultaneously suggested that the American side has until Jan. 20 or so (one week from Jan. 13) to tell Moscow in writing what Western officials have already told their Russian counterparts face to face—namely, that the U.S. and its allies are rejecting the first two of the three main demands made by President Vladimir Putin.

From Russia's new national security strategy and its implications for Russia's relations with other global powers, to American and Russian takes on the prospects for a cyber rules of the road agreement, Russia Matters' most popular reads of 2021 address a variety of complicated geopolitical subjects.

The Dec. 30 phone conversation between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, the second in less than a month, produced no major breakthroughs, at least judging by the information publicly available in its immediate wake. But it did preserve hope that of three upcoming dialogues on Russia’s demands for security guarantees—U.S.-Russian, NATO-Russian and intra-OSCE, set to begin in mid-January—at least the U.S.-Russian talks may eventually produce enough compromises to ease the dangerously high tensions between the two nuclear superpowers.

Russia Matters won't resume publication of its weekly news and analytical digests until Jan. 3, 2022, due to Harvard’s winter recess. In the meantime, we will be posting summaries of notable commentaries in our blog section.