What could happen from here?
In the Thick of It
A blog on the U.S.-Russia relationshipWhat could happen from here?
The spike in anti-U.S. feelings among Russians came after a gradual improvement in the second half of 2021, according to the Feb. 17-21 Levada poll. In the week before the war, only 31% of respondents held positive views of the U.S., compared to 45% in November; negative views had climbed by 13 percentage points from 42% in November to 55% last month.
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.
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.
Most Russians Aren’t Worried by West’s Sanctions, But Many More See Them Hitting Ordinary People
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.
4 Points to Consider as Blinken and Lavrov Talk Ukraine and European Security
Antony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov, the top U.S. and Russian diplomats, are set to meet in Geneva on Jan. 21 to see whether they can move beyond the impasse of the previous week’s intense talks on European security. As this round of negotiations progresses, here are four points to consider from a recent talk by Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff:
1. In the U.S., people think of Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine as “the Ukraine crisis”; Russia, on the contrary, sees it as a means of amending the European security order, damaged, in its view, by 20+ years of NATO expansion that has eroded Moscow’s “strategic depth.”
2. Russia is looking for a negotiated solution to the crisis. Although Moscow is keeping open multiple military options, the least likely of these is a large-scale invasion.
3. Russia is in a fairly strong position, in part because of disarray in the West.
4. The U.S. is in an unsustainable position in terms of both process and substance. Washington must accept that (a) bilateral deal-making with Russia will play a decisive role in resolving the crisis and (b) the talks will have to cover a much broader array of issues than just Ukraine—chief among these, NATO expansion, military activity along the Russian-NATO frontier and conflicts current and frozen.
To read Graham’s recommendations for breaking the impasse between Russia and the West over European security, click here.
Photo courtesy of Russia's Foreign Ministry.