Vladimir Putin’s hosting of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in Moscow and Sergei Lavrov's trip to Africa this week are the latest in a flurry of recent initiatives aimed at advancing Russian interests vis-à-vis the continent. In the short term, these diplomatic efforts aim to foil the ongoing campaign by Western powers to isolate Russia over its war against Ukraine. In the medium to long term, they may enable Russia to position itself to benefit from the continent’s rapid growth forecast.

Lavrov’s trip — his third to Africa this year alone,— has included stops in Kenya, Burundi, Mozambique and South Africa, where he is participating in a gathering of BRICS foreign ministers June 1-2. And Russia’s veteran foreign minister will likely be back on the continent at least once more this summer, provided that Putin attends the Aug. 22-24 BRICS summit in Johannesburg in person. (South African authorities have floated the possibility that they would grant the Russian leader immunity from an arrest warrant issued recently by the International Criminal Court — whose jurisdiction Johannesburg recognizes — though they may alternatively end up asking either China or Mozambique to host the summit in their stead.) Regardless of whether or where the BRICS summit takes place, both Putin and Lavrov can also be expected to meet their African counterparts again when they host the second Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg on July 26-29.

CIA director William Burns discusses four areas of long-term strategic importance for the CIA — and, by extension, for the United States: 1. The war in Ukraine, 2. U.S. strategic competition with China, 3. Climate change, energy security and other transnational threats, and 4. the intelligence community’s adaptability to the changing environment.

Though many Russian officials and pundits wonder whether the latest Pentagon leak was the product of a Western-Ukranian disinformation campaign, many others have kept mum on the issue, despite the fact that the contents of the leaks fall within their remit.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has just released the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Unsurprisingly, one of the most notable changes in ATA-2023 compared to ATA-2022 is the addition of sections on various aspects of Russia’s war in Ukraine and its impact. In addition to Russia, the new assessment also details threats emanating from China, Iran, North Korea, climate change, environmental degradation and other transnational issues.  

This year’s Munich Security Conference focused heavily on the Russia-Ukraine war, which dominated both the public and private sessions. No Russian officials were invited, but several Russian opposition figures attended, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Milov, Zhanna Nemtsova, Yulia Navalnaya and 2022 Nobel Prize laureate Irina Shcherbakova. By contrast, Ukrainian officialdom and civil society were well represented. President Zelensky opened the conference virtually, thanking the United States, Europe and their Asian allies for their assistance, stressing the importance of the difficult next few months on the battlefield  and asking for more weapons, particularly fighter jets. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and speaker of the Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk spoke on panels with their U.S. and European counterparts, in Stefanchuk’s case with former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There were other Rada members and veterans in attendance. Viktor Pinchuk’s harrowing photographic exhibit of Russian war crimes, which he had shown at the World Economic Forum in Davos, was on display in the conference hotel.

Of expressions used to signal the West’s resolve to help Ukraine in its war effort, two seem to have become particularly popular. Not a fortnight seems to go by without a Western official publicly promising that they and their colleagues will do “whatever it takes” and for “as long as it takes” in their continued support for embattled Ukraine. But what condition (or conditions) need to arise for these officials to declare that their vows have been fulfilled? To try to answer this question, we have searched news aggregators and other resources to see if any of these officials specify the goals they are seeking to accomplish by doing “whatever it takes” for “as long as it takes.” Of the 27 instances of these expressions that we caught in our linguistic dragnet, only a few were accompanied by specifics. One was by then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who vowed the following less than 24 hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin formally announced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022: “We have our allies at our side ... together we will do whatever it takes to preserve Ukraine's sovereignty, Europe's security and the integrity of the international order based on the rules and values we all share.”

As the world nears the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the majority of Ukrainians remain resolved, in spite of the enormous casualties and destruction that the war has caused, to fight until victory. A January 2023 poll by the Kyiv-based Institute of Sociology found that more than 95% of respondents are confident that their country will win the war, with only 2.5% saying they are unsure Ukraine will prevail. Polls of Ukrainians by international research organizations have also revealed a high level of determination. For instance, a Gallup poll from September found that 70% of Ukrainians believed in continuing the war until victory,1 while only 26% wanted their government to “seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible.”2 In contrast, in Russia, the share of people who prefer peace talks over continued fighting increased from 48% in September to 53% in November, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center.

But what of people in Western countries, whose support has been crucial to the Ukrainians’ effort to repel the Russian invasion? Does their support of continued assistance for Ukraine’s efforts on the battlefield persist? And are they as likely as Ukrainians to favor fighting until victory over a negotiated end to the conflict? Our review of available polling data suggests that, if current trends continue, the share of Westerners who oppose continuing the supply of arms to Ukraine may exceed the share of those in favor some time in the war’s second year. Meanwhile, the relative proportions of those who support compromise in the name of peace vary more greatly and trends have been harder to discern.

Despite Russia’s sizeable budget deficit and other impacts of Western sanctions, Moscow will likely have enough money to keep its war against Ukraine going for a few years at least, according to several recent economic analyses. This does not mean the sanctions are useless, only that it would be “naïve to think that sanctions alone could end the war,” in the words of Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum via Zoom on Jan. 17, Henry Kissinger said the U.S. should continue and, if necessary, even intensify its military support for Ukraine “until the ceasefire lines are reached or accepted.” The 99-year-old American statesman believes “an end of fighting” can occur “when the pre-war line is reached,” implying a status quo ante, in which Russia abandons all its land grabs since re-invading Ukraine, but not Crimea or parts of the Donbas controlled by separatists prior to the launch of the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

In this 30-minute conversation with his former student, Harvard Professor Graham Allison, Kissinger also said that Western sanctions would have to remain in place for the entirety of peace negotiations that should follow the ceasefire. Kissinger—who called for peace talks “within two months” at the previous WEF, held in May 2022—also said he has abandoned his pre-war belief that Ukraine should be kept out of NATO. (He first signaled his position on Ukraine’s affiliation with NATO was shifting in July, when he told an interviewer that he sees post-war Ukraine “closely connected to NATO, if not part of it .”)

Russia's war in Ukraine has dominated news around the world in 2022. From John J. Mearsheimer's analysis of the war's roots and Joe Cirincione's response, to predictions of Russian forces exhausting their capabilities, to the place of nuclear weapons in Russian strategy, our top 10 reads of 2022 provide insight and analysis on the many facets of Russia's war in Ukraine.