This Week’s Highlights

• Prof. Judy Twigg identifies how Russia’s specifics, especially its geography, infrastructure, pre-existing health conditions and its population’s bad habits create unique advantages and vulnerabilities in the fight against the pandemic. Chris Weafer of Macro-Advisory finds Russia to be in a relatively good position to survive the economic crisis triggered by COVID-19, while Prof. Nikolas Gvosdev ponders whether the coronavirus could actually destabilize Russia. In her analysis of Putin’s response to the outbreak, Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Moscow Center asserts that the Putin system is closing in on itself and self-isolating from society.
• With markets collapsing, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to more than four times the reduction in oil output that he turned down in early March and more than what Saudi Arabia is obliged to cut from its output level last month, Bloomberg reports. Russia completely failed to anticipate the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world economy when it walked away from the March agreement with OPEC+, said a senior Russian official.   
• U.S. President Donald Trump would like to replace New START with a different deal, emulating, in part, his approach toward re-negotiating the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, write former U.S. Ambassador William Courtney and John Lauder, a retired senior intelligence officer. But his approach toward NAFTA only worked because America had predominant leverage and Canada and Mexico are friends. Neither holds true with Russia. Extending New START, which expires next February, could be prudent, argue Courtney and Lauder.
• By about 2035, Russia will begin experiencing the next significant contraction of the size of its working population, exacerbating the imbalance in social spending and economic potential, according to Stratfor Worldview. Around the same time, Russia’s hydrocarbon production is also expected to have dropped significantly. A succession in 2036 could devolve the centralized authority that Putin has commanded, as well as weaken the consensus and institutional cooperation needed to manage these challenges.

 

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Pandemics:

“The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than Reshape It. Not Every Crisis Is a Turning Point,” Richard Haass, Foreign Affairs, 04.07.20: The author, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

• “The world following the pandemic is unlikely to be radically different from the one that preceded it. COVID-19 will not so much change the basic direction of world history as accelerate it.”  
• “The world that will emerge from the crisis will be recognizable. Waning American leadership, faltering global cooperation, great-power discord: all of these characterized the international environment before the appearance of COVID-19, and the pandemic has brought them into sharper-than-ever relief. They are likely to be even more prominent features of the world that follows.”
• “The pandemic is likely to reinforce the democratic recession that has been evident for the past 15 years. There will be calls for a larger government role in society, be it to constrain movement of populations or provide economic help. Civil liberties will be treated by many as a casualty of war, a luxury that cannot be afforded in a crisis. Meanwhile, threats posed by illiberal countries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran will still exist once the pandemic does not; indeed, they may well have increased while attention was trained elsewhere.”
• “China is hardly suited to addressing the global challenges that shape today’s world. Meanwhile, appealing to the American people to put tackling those global problems at the heart of U.S. foreign policy will continue to be a tough sell.”  

“Russia’s Coronavirus Response Reveals Its Strengths and Weaknesses,” Judy Twigg, The National Interest, 04.11.20: The author, a professor of political science, writes:

• “Much of Russia’s current situation doesn’t differentiate it enormously from the rest of the world. … But some of Russia’s specifics, especially its geography, infrastructure, pre-existing health status and demographics, create unique advantages and vulnerabilities in the fight against the pandemic.”
• “Geography: Russia’s large number of spread-out urban areas and low population density ease the task of physical distancing. … Health care infrastructure and experience: Russia has always had a disproportionately high number of doctors, hospitals and hospital beds. Surge capacity isn’t a problem. Quality is. … Russians avoid long-term care institutions, as their reputations for quality and staffing are poor.”
• “Another source of hope: because of the low levels of technology available during the Soviet period not only for health care but across the entire economy, Russian scientists and engineers and physicians had to become ingeniously creative in producing results using whatever materials were at hand.”
• “Overall, Russia’s population age structure has been growing older over the last decade, with pensioners making up 22.3 percent of the population in 2010 but 25.9 percent now. … The existence of relatively fewer vulnerable older men could help suppress mortality among Russians overall. … Despite progress in bringing down the prevalence of [underlying] conditions over the last fifteen years, Russia still suffers a disproportionately high burden in these areas, especially among middle-aged men.”
• “Smoking prevalence in Russia is still among the highest in the world. … Russia also has large numbers of disadvantaged, marginalized populations whose situation with coronavirus is currently unknown. … So far, Russia appears to be faring relatively well in the face of this unprecedented global pandemic. The slope of the curve over the next several weeks will be critical.”

“Russia’s Leaders Are Self-Isolating From Their People,” Tatiana Stanovaya, Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.07.20: The author, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “One of the main subjects of discussion right now is why Putin is keeping such a low profile in the response to the coronavirus epidemic. … Putin’s absence in certain matters is often explained away as his reluctance to be associated with unpopular measures, and an attempt to shift responsibility onto subordinates. But there are two circumstances that undermine that explanation.”
• “First, Putin has not particularly shied away from unpopular decisions in the past, such as raising the retirement age in 2018. … Second, who is to say that Putin’s involvement in the battle against the coronavirus would damage his ratings?”
• “Putin simply doesn’t see the threat from the epidemic as part of the presidential agenda.”
• “There is no dialogue in Russia between society and the authorities, and the problem of the leadership deficit is not just managerial, but political. The state is becoming nothing more than a monitoring mechanism for coercion, and is losing its legitimacy.”
• “In its twentieth year, the Putin system is closing in on itself and self-isolating from society. The fight against the epidemic will continue, but its aim is not to protect people, but to be able to serve each individual managerial cog in the machine.”

“Could the Coronavirus Destabilize Russia?” Nikolas K. Gvosdev, The National Interest, 04.06.20: The author, the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair at the Naval War College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), writes:

• “Coronavirus has come to Russia. There is a very real fear that containment measures to hold it back will be overwhelmed and the virus will overwhelm a brittle and underfunded health system—and that, combined with an economic shock [chairman of the Audit Commission and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin estimates as much as an eight percent contraction in the Russian economy due to an oil price/coronavirus double punch], can destabilize the Russian political system.”
• “What we have seen is a clear effort to delegate responsibility. Putin may layout general objectives—as he did during his April 2 address—but operational responsibility for coping with the pandemic has been vested in the regional governors and leaders.”

“Putin’s Coronavirus Economic Strategy,” Vladislav Inozemtsev and Vitali Shkliarov, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), 04.10.20: The authors, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Harvard University fellow, write:

• “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two consequential addresses to the nation, delivered on March 25 and April 2, came weeks after the country’s economy was hit by the COVID-19 global pandemic and falling oil prices.”
• “Three major points are worth highlighting. First, the central idea of Putin’s addresses was to calm people. … Second, the Russian leadership still believes it should just fulfill its budget obligations and (maybe) disburse some additional subsidies to the needy while ignoring the appeals of ailing businesses. … Third, the Kremlin is betting that its reserves of 12.8 trillion rubles, roughly 11.4 percent of gross domestic product, can cure the economic emergency.”
• “There is little chance the measures that Putin announced would provide a significant boost to the Russian economy during the global pandemic. We believe that the Kremlin’s stance will change quite soon, given that a forecast by McKinsey indicates Russia’s economy may shrink by as much as 10 percent this year, but it might be too late to intervene.”

“Russia Is Well-Positioned to Weather COVID-19's Economic Fallout,” Chris Weafer, Russia Matters, 04.09.20: The author, a founding partner of independent macro consultancy Macro-Advisory, writes:

• “Russia is in a relatively good position to survive the COVID-19 crisis and several months of low oil revenues. This is because of the changes it was forced to make to its monetary and fiscal management as a result of the sanctions and the previous oil price collapse in 2014. While the economy does look set to contract by between 0.5 and 1 percent, instead of the expected growth of 2 percent, Russia will avoid a financial crisis and the government has enough financial resources to fund recovery programs when conditions improve.”
• “Longer term, investment flow is critical for the development of any economy. Russia can make progress during the remainder of Putin’s current term, and come very close to the ambitious economic and social targets he has set, if the oil price recovers and COVID-19 is dealt with in 2020.”
• “Trade with China, especially with expanding crude oil, petrochemicals and both piped gas and LNG, will compensate for a slow pick-up in other exports. The value of trade between the two countries, predominately hydrocarbons and agriculture produce from Russia, has doubled to over $100 billion in the past three years. It is expected to double again, mostly with higher volumes of gas and LNG exports, in the next three to four years. … It may not be enough, on its own, to transform the economy as Putin would wish, but it will underpin the country’s financial stability and ensure there is always enough money to buy political stability, with or without additional Western sanctions.”

“Diversion, Diagnoses and Delays: Why Russia Seeks to Control the Coronavirus Narrative,” Emily Ferris, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 04.08.20: The author, a research fellow at RUSI, writes:

• “The Russian authorities are addressing the pandemic in three ways: by diverting public focus away from the threat, misdiagnosing coronavirus deaths as a result of other respiratory conditions to hide the number of infected people and delaying overly restrictive control over people’s daily lives for as long as possible.”
• “The Russian government’s approach has been to pretend that all is under control. … The Kremlin seems to be promoting the idea of ‘business as usual’ as much as it can.”
• “For Russia, control of the coronavirus narrative is designed to ensure President Vladimir Putin continues to be cast as the guarantor of security, as well as to prevent mass panic that could lead to political destabilization.”

“After This Pandemic Passes, America Needs a Reckoning With Its National Security,” Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post, 04.08.20: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “After this pandemic passes, there must be a profound reckoning. I'm not referring to President Trump's abysmal performance in the crisis; the election in November will render citizens' judgment on that. No, there must be a reckoning with the profound failure of the United States' domestic and foreign policies and priorities, a failure that was apparent even before COVID-19 revealed the catastrophic bankruptcy of our national security strategy.”
• “The Trump administration's 2017 National Security Strategy statement … announced [that the] primary threat facing the United States … was no longer terrorism. It was the ‘revisionist powers’ of China and Russia. A new Cold War excited the entrenched interests and experienced strategists: Here was justification for a new round in the arms buildup, new deployments to Asia and the Middle East, the extension of NATO to the very borders of Russia and more.”
• “What is needed is a fundamental debate about a security strategy for the 21st century. We need a global economic strategy that defends America's working people and that ensures that the United States remains a center of invention and manufacturing. We should not wake once more to discover that the United States no longer makes things essential to our health or our security. We need a security policy that focuses on the existential threats that are looming ever larger: catastrophic climate change, global pandemics, a nuclear and cyber arms race no longer limited by arms control agreements. We need greater investment in and attention to the capacity of our public institutions—and greater accountability for the private economic behemoths.”

“Why America Needs to Rethink Its National Security Priorities: Here's how to change the National Defense Authorization Act,” Joseph Cirincione and William D. Hartung, The National Interest, 04.06.20: The authors, the president of the Ploughshares Fund and the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, write:

• “Since the 9/11 attacks, Pentagon spending soared from $300 billion a year to the current $740 billion. We have spent over $11 trillion dollars on foreign wars, military equipment, pay and operations since that attack by nineteen Saudi and Egyptian terrorists that—by one estimate—cost them less than $1 million to carry out.”
• “The United States cannot continue this profligate spending. … Policymakers should pay more attention to those who warned America about this wasteful spending. Jessica Mathews, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in The New York Review of Books last year that the current Pentagon budget is ‘indefensible,’ and that ‘defense spending crowds out funds for everything else a prosperous economy and a healthy society need.’”
• “Those funds could be used to bolster and modernize the U.S. public health system with funds left over to begin to address challenges like climate change.”

“Xi Jinping Won the Coronavirus Crisis,” Yanzhong Huang, Foreign Affairs, 04.13.20: The author, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

• “Two months ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping looked like he would emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic with his legitimacy and his ambitions for Chinese global leadership in tatters.”
• “In a remarkable turn of events, Xi has not only muddled through the crisis but emerged as a stronger leader at home and abroad. Arguably, he has succeeded because he was able to impose harsh restrictive measures that would be impossible to carry out in Western democracies. And as the death toll increases worldwide, Xi may face more international criticism for his government’s role in setting the pandemic loose—and for likely understating the number of infections and deaths in China. But as COVID-19 ravages one country after another, few can deny that China is fast becoming the safest place on earth. As John Allen of the Brookings Institution reminds us, history will be written by the victors of the COVID-19 crisis. And Xi looks like a winner, at least for now.”

“Why the Wealthy Fear Pandemics,” Walter Scheidel, New York Times, 04.09.20: The author, a professor of classics and history, writes:

• “In the fall of 1347, rat fleas carrying bubonic plague entered Italy on a few ships from the Black Sea. Over the next four years, a pandemic tore through Europe and the Middle East. Panic spread. … The plague returned a mere decade later and periodic flare-ups continued for a century and a half, thinning out several generations in a row.”
• “As a result of this shift in the balance between labor and capital, we now know, thanks to painstaking research by economic historians, that real incomes of unskilled workers doubled across much of Europe within a few decades.”
• “But these outcomes were not a given. … Looking at the historical record across Europe during the late Middle Ages, we see that elites did not readily cede ground, even under extreme pressure after a pandemic. … In late medieval Eastern Europe, from Prussia and Poland to Russia, nobles colluded to impose serfdom on their peasantries to lock down a depleted labor force. … But more often than not, repression failed.”
• “Today, America faces a fundamental choice between defending the status quo and embracing progressive change. The current crisis could prompt redistributive reforms akin to those triggered by the Great Depression and World War II, unless entrenched interests prove too powerful to overcome.”

New Cold War/saber rattling:

“The Cold War Roots of Putin’s Digital-Age Intelligence Strategy,” book review by Greg Myre, The Washington Post, 04.10.20: In this review of Gordon Corera’s “Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies,” the reviewer, a national security correspondent for NPR, writes:

• “‘Spies—the threat of foreign ones and the successes of Russia’s own—would be a defining theme for Vladimir Putin,’ Gordon Corera, the BBC’s intelligence correspondent since 2004, writes in his excellent new book … ‘Russia may not be an economic giant, but one area where it was still a first-class power was espionage, and Putin would double down on his intelligence services as a means to wield power and influence around the world,’ Corera adds.”
• “The big takeaway is that Putin’s Russia has moved away from traditional methods, such as ‘deep-cover illegals.’ … [N]ow the Russians tend to work with ‘co-optees,’ who may be Russian students or business executives in the United States, well-placed to cultivate contacts. They live openly under their own names, carry their real Russian passports, don’t possess spy gadgetry and may only come to the United States for relatively short visits. … A perfect example is Maria Butina.”
• “Corera doesn’t dwell on President Trump’s response to Russia. Rather, he indicts the United States and the West for a collective reaction that was underwhelming for two decades. And he neatly sums up what the 2016 interference means for 2020: ‘It would also create an image of a Russian intelligence operation that was actually more powerful and coordinated than the often messy reality. From being barely aware of Russian activity [in 2016], people would start to see its hidden hand everywhere. Russian ghosts would start to haunt the American body politic.’”

“Putin’s Long War Against American Science,” William J. Broad, New York Times, 04.13.20: The author, a senior writer at the news outlet, writes:

• “As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information—an ‘infodemic,’ according to the World Health Organization. Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.”
• “An investigation by The New York Times—involving scores of interviews as well as a review of scholarly papers, news reports and Russian documents, tweets and TV shows—found that Mr. Putin has spread misinformation on issues of personal health for more than a decade.”
• “His agents have repeatedly planted and spread the idea that viral epidemics—including flu outbreaks, Ebola and now the coronavirus—were sown by American scientists. The disinformers have also sought to undermine faith in the safety of vaccines, a triumph of public health that Mr. Putin himself promotes at home.”
• “Moscow’s aim, experts say, is to portray American officials as downplaying the health alarms and thus posing serious threats to public safety.”

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“Is It a Nuke?: Pre-Launch Ambiguity and Inadvertent Escalation,” James M. Acton, Carnegie Endowment, 04.09.20: The author, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes:

• “Ambiguity about whether a weapon is nuclear-armed prior to its launch is an underappreciated, serious and growing danger. Rising geopolitical tensions and the decay of arms control are exacerbating the risk that such pre-launch warhead ambiguity could lead to nuclear use in a crisis or conflict. Recent developments in technology—as well as potential future advances … further add to the danger.”
• “However desirable it might be for nuclear-armed states to reassess their reliance on ambiguous delivery systems, they are highly unlikely to do so for strategic, financial, psychological and organizational reasons. Less ambitious unilateral and cooperative risk-reduction measures may be more feasible. The following proposals are framed as actions for the United States to consider and adopt. But risk mitigation should be a shared responsibility, and Beijing and Moscow have an obligation to engage constructively with any good-faith proposals Washington offers and, in parallel, develop their own unilateral risk-reduction measures.”
• “Exercise Restraint in Acquisitions … The United States should propose to China and Russia that they jointly agree not to acquire ambiguous intercontinental ballistic, cruise, or hypersonic boost-glide missiles.”
• “Be Transparent About Capabilities … The United States should propose to China and Russia that they declare, publicly or privately, each type of missile and aircraft that they deploy as nuclear-armed, conventionally armed, or dual-use. … [And] that they privately discuss any observable differences in design or deployment patterns between their nuclear- and conventionally armed ambiguous weapons.”
• “Improve Operational Planning … The U.S. Department of Defense and relevant combatant commands should plan for crises and conflicts on the assumption that each participant might mischaracterize or be unable to characterize the other’s ambiguous weapons. … The United States should offer verbal assurances to reduce the likelihood of false positives resulting from operations involving conventionally armed ambiguous weapons.”

“New START is not NAFTA,” William Courtney And John Lauder, The Hill, 04.07.20: The authors, a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia and a retired senior intelligence officer, write:

• “President Trump seems to dislike the 2010 New START Treaty with Russia that reduces long-range nuclear arms. He may seek a different deal, as he did in renegotiating the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. But this succeeded because America had predominant leverage and Canada and Mexico are friends. Neither holds true with Russia. Extending New START, which expires next February, could be prudent.”
• “Every successful strategic arms accord was reached when relations between Washington and Moscow had eased or were improving—the 1972 SALT I accords fueled by détente, the 1994 START I Treaty negotiated under liberalizing Kremlin leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the 2002 SORT Treaty concluded in the early Putin era and the New START Treaty that benefited from a ‘reset’ of relations. These conditions do not exist today.”
• “Current relations are frigid. If New START were to lapse, hardliners in today's Kremlin may seek even to degrade the transparency provisions in New START. The U.S. would be heading in the opposite direction if it were to seek to constrain nonstrategic arms, whose smaller size could require more intrusive monitoring.”
• “The good in New START may be the enemy of the perfect in any new accord that would likely be out of reach anytime soon. Five more years of New START could provide time for development of new concepts or more accommodative politics that might bring about a further reduction of nuclear dangers.”

“Nuclear Arms Nightmare: Don't Let New START Die,” Colleen Moore and Ben Freeman, The National Interest, 04.08.20: The authors, the digital engagement manager at Beyond the Bomb and Global Zero and the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, write:

• “Congress should follow the lead of Rep. Eliot Engel … and Sen. Chris Van Hollen … who introduced H.R.2529 and S.2394, respectively, known as the Richard G. Lugar and Ellen O. Tauscher Act to Maintain Limits on Russian Nuclear Forces.”
• “This legislation requires the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of State to report to Congress on the intelligence implications of the New START treaty’s expiration and the possible reactions of U.S. allies to the expiration of the treaty. Furthermore, if the treaty expires without a replacement, the President is required to provide Congress a justification for the expiration and ‘certify that extending the treaty was not in U.S. national security interests.’”
• “If New START expires, or either party withdraws without a replacement treaty, America and Russia would be free to build up their nuclear arsenals. There would be nothing left to restrain the new nuclear arms race, and both countries would lose insight into the other’s nuclear arsenals. This move would reverse decades of bipartisan and international cooperation to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons.”
• “Moreover, the American public is strongly in favor of nuclear arms control, as evidenced by a study from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which found that 80 percent of engaged voters in the U.S. support extending New START in order to address the threat of nuclear weapons. Congress has a duty to listen to the American people and not allow other issues to distract from urging President Trump to extend New START and further discuss disarmament efforts.”

Counter-terrorism:

“What Jihadists Are Saying About the Coronavirus: A magazine describes the pathogen as 'one of Allah's soldiers.' Another passes along CDC hygiene tips,” Steven Stalinsky, Wall Street Journal, 04.05.20: The author, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, writes:

• “Jihadist groups are closely following the spread of the new coronavirus. In their publications and on social media their members post analyses, threats and even sanitary guidelines.   Many jihadists are cheering the virus on.”
• “In the March 19 issue of al Naba, ISIS warned that jihadists won't hesitate to take advantage of the chaos, and that the ‘financial losses of the Crusaders and tyrants’—Americans and their Arab allies—and ‘their preoccupation with protecting their countries from themselves and their other enemies’ will contribute greatly to ‘weakening their capabilities to fight the mujahedeen.’ Let's disappoint them.”

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

Elections interference:

• No significant developments.

Energy exports:

“Putin Makes Painful Climbdown as He Sues for Peace in Oil War,” Evgenia Pismennaya, Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer, Bloomberg, 04.13.20: The authors, reporters for the news outlet, write:

• “With markets collapsing, Putin agreed to cut more than 2.5 million barrels a day of crude from the 11 million of combined crude and condensate Russia pumps each day, more than four times the reduction that he turned down in early March and more than what Saudi Arabia is obliged to cut from its output level last month. Meanwhile, hopes that the U.S. would formally commit to its own curbs have evaporated, even as Trump takes credit for bringing about the new deal.”
• “The ill-fated decision to face off against Saudi Arabia in early March was ‘a strategic mistake and now we’re paying the price, a much higher price than we could have paid,’ said Andrey Kortunov, director of the Kremlin-founded Russian International Affairs Council. ‘This looks like a victory for the U.S., and Russia ends up a bigger loser than Saudi Arabia.’”
• “If the cuts are achieved, Russia’s output for the next two months will drop to the annual average last seen in 2003, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from the Russian Energy Ministry and BP Plc’s Statistical Review. Russia agreed to continue smaller cuts until May 2022, though it did manage to hold onto one concession by keeping condensate, a light fuel of which it is a major producer, out of the quotas.”
• “But Russia completely failed to anticipate the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world economy when it walked away from the agreement with … OPEC+, said a senior Russian official. Holding that alliance together would have prevented the collapse in prices to an almost two-decade low that followed. Now, the Kremlin has had to negotiate a new arrangement under highly unfavorable terms, he said.”
• “‘This is Russia’s biggest defeat since the start of the 2000s,’ said Dmitry Perevalov, an independent oil trader and former industry executive. ‘We’ve lost our markets and it won’t be easy to get them back.’”

“Oil Accord Highlights the New World Disorder,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 04.13.20: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The response to the largest oil supply cut agreement in history shows the depth of the hole into which the global economy has sunk. Oil prices fell sharply after the deal between the OPEC cartel and Russia was outlined late on [April 9]. After G20 countries endorsed it and it was finalized over the weekend, prices bounced a little but fell back. The accord is too little to prompt a rally but—if it can hold—may be just enough to put a floor under prices As the first significant coordinated international response through the G20 to the COVID-19 pandemic, the agreement must be welcomed.”
• “No one knows if the accord can hold. Given the magnitude of cuts individual OPEC members and Russia must swallow, cheating is likely.”
• “As so often in this health emergency, however, this was a necessary compromise to limit the economic devastation.”

“5 Reasons Why a Global Agreement to Prop Up Oil Prices Won’t Work”, Jason Bordoff, Foreign Policy, 04.08.20: The author, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, writes:

• “There are five reasons why any such global oil cartel, or any lasting agreement to raise prices, is unlikely.”
• “First, there is no effective mechanism for so many nations to come together to cut output. … Second, even if a forum for all major producers to negotiate production levels existed, the United States has little to bring to the table, because the federal government does not directly control how much oil the country produces. … Third, markets work. The U.S. oil sector will be cutting production whether or not the government requires it. … Fourth, diplomacy remains an effective tool to encourage Saudi Arabia and Russia to lead other countries in cutting output. … Fifth, better tools exist to manage the collateral damage of low oil prices. The next round of economic stimulus should include additional relief for workers, U.S. states and municipalities hit by the downturn.”
• “Right now, Washington’s best option remains to phone Riyadh (and Moscow) while letting market forces do the work of downsizing the industry at home.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant developments.

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Here's What Will Happen If Putin Rules Russia for 12 More Years,” Stratfor Worldview, Stratfor/The National Interest, 04.12.20: The authors write:

• “Shifting Russia’s next presidential transition to 2036 risks weakening Kremlin leadership at a time when the country is already expected to face significant economic and demographic crises.”
• “By about 2035, Russia will begin experiencing the next significant contraction of the size of its working population, exacerbating the imbalance in social spending and economic potential.”
• “Around the same time, Russia’s hydrocarbon production is also expected to have dropped significantly. Russia’s Ministry of Energy is projecting as much as a 40 percent drop in production by 2035, which will severely impact Russia’s government revenue and industrial strength.”
• “A succession in 2036 could devolve the centralized authority that Putin has commanded, as well as weaken the consensus and institutional cooperation needed to manage these challenges, by unleashing competition between the country’s different commercial-industrial factions, security organizations and political factions.”

“Are Russians Finally Sick of Putin?” Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.07.20: The author, a senior fellow and the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “The average approval rating of regional heads in March (according to the independent Levada Center pollster) was 65 percent: higher than that of Putin, who saw his approval rating fall from 69 percent in February to 63 percent in March. This is important.”
• “Firstly, Putin’s approval rating had long hovered around the plateau of 68 to 70 percent, and a six-point drop is a lot. … Secondly, Putin’s approval rating was last at 63 percent in March 2013, exactly seven years ago and before Russia’s annexation of Crimea. His lowest score ever was 61 percent in 2011. For comparison, in March 2014, following the events in Crimea, Putin’s rating soared to 80 percent.”
• “It’s hard to say how much of the recent fall in his ratings was due to the coronavirus, and how much of it is due to the slump in oil prices and, subsequently, the ruble. In any case, public opinion doesn’t rate Putin’s crisis management skills very highly.”
• “What people are fed up with, however, is that lack of an alternative. This is attested to by another March poll by the Levada Center, which showed that 62 percent of respondents think there should be an age limit on the office of the president … Fifty percent of people said they would like to see alternation in power and the appearance of new politicians.”
• “Together with the president’s approval rating, there was also a drop from February to March in positive responses to the statement ‘things are going in the right direction’ … Paradoxically, moving to extend his presidential authority beyond its expected end in 2024 has worked against Putin. Meanwhile, the coronavirus and falling ruble have proved more effective than any action by the opposition aimed at damaging Putin’s ratings.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant developments.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

“Russia’s Strategy in Libya,” Samuel Ramani, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 04.07.20: The author, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford, writes:

• “A return to confrontation between Russia and Turkey over Idlib remains the most serious impediment to bilateral cooperation in Libya.”
• “Although Russia continues to deploy PMCs on Haftar’s behalf, Moscow’s economic interests in Libya and long-term geostrategic ambitions in the Middle East are best furthered by a swift de-escalation of Libya’s protracted conflict. While Libya’s internal factions and their primary external sponsors will ultimately decide the country’s future, Russia’s hopes for de-escalation in Libya are closely intertwined with the state of its bilateral relationship with Turkey.”
• “Continued cooperation with Ankara would advance Russia’s strategy in Libya, but renewed confrontation with Turkey over Syria could reluctantly drag Russia into a prolonged military intervention in Libya.”

“Gaps and Omissions in Europe’s New Memory Wars,” Alexei Miller, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung/Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.13.20: The author, head of the Center for the Study of Cultural Memory and Symbolic Politics at the European University at St. Petersburg, writes:

• “In Russia, the proposed revision of the constitution has become a fight over history. One of the amendments on which Russians will vote at some point this year declares the right and obligation of the state to ‘protect historical truth.’ It seems the establishment of a Russian equivalent of the ‘institutes of national remembrance’ found in Eastern Europe will not be far behind.”
• “All of this is part of the so-called ‘memory wars’ that have made it increasingly difficult for Europe to have a proper conversation about the past, in particular World War II. Russians now feel as if they are being unfairly targeted in these memory wars.”
• “Much about the history of World War II and our engagement deserves a new critical look. Far from righting wrongs, today’s memory wars do not bring us any closer to a complete truth, which will account both for events we should be proud of and episodes we should be ashamed of.  Like real wars, memory wars divide us into ‘us’ and ‘them,’ reducing ‘us’ to victims and ‘them’ to criminals. They discourage nuance and balance, making it impossible to confront omissions and distortions and giving rise to new ones. No one can win these wars. As a result we Europeans have lost each other’s trust, and a chance to examine the past self-critically.”

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

• No significant developments.

Ukraine:

“IMF Bailout Costs Ukraine’s President Dear,” Konstantin Skorkin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.09.20: The author, an independent journalist based in Ukraine, writes:

• “Last week, the country’s parliament took just a few hours to pass laws that had been fiercely debated for many months and sometimes years. The most significant was a law ending the moratorium on selling agricultural land that had been in place since 2001.”
• “This explosion in legislative activity was largely forced: the president had no other option. Opening up the country’s land market was one of the main conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose support is the last hope for the Ukrainian economy as it teeters on the brink of default.”
• “In the end, both the land reform and banking laws were only passed with support from parties that were until recently Zelenskiy’s fiercest critics: Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, and the Voice party founded by rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk.”
• “Struggling to hold on to his party’s majority, Zelenskiy is increasingly forced to take heed of the influential national-patriotic minority in parliament. Zelenskiy finds himself held hostage by the old elite, from whom he is buying the last chances for reform at the cost of his own political future.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.