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

Nuclear security:

• No significant commentary.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant commentary.

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• No significant commentary.

NATO-Russia relations:

• No significant commentary.

Missile defense:

• No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

“After the INF Treaty: An Objective Look at US and Russian Compliance, Plus a New Arms Control Regime,” Kevin Ryan, Russia Matters, 12.07.17: The author, an associate fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and former chief of staff, Army Space and Missile Defense Command, writes that “the achievement of the INF Treaty … has been gradually eroded by new technologies and changing threats. … These … plus the post-Cold War shift in Europe’s strategic balance toward NATO, have led Russia to pursue its own solutions. … Russia has moved dangerously close to scuttling the INF Treaty by developing, testing and deploying a new cruise missile system … with a range that violates the treaty. … Russia denies the allegations and makes its own allegations that the U.S. is violating the INF Treaty through its testing of rocket boosters and use of drones.” These and other factors “make it likely that one side or the other will suspend participation in the agreement and eventually withdraw. … It is perhaps hard for many people today to appreciate the crisis that will ensue from nuclear-tipped medium-range missiles in the European theater. … Instead of trying to roll back the deployment of delivery systems, a new agreement should focus on the nuclear warheads for these shorter- and intermediate-range systems. … Transitioning from the control of delivery systems to the control of warheads will allow the two sides to pursue conventional medium-range systems that serve their security interests. At the same time the two sides can begin the process of bringing under control non-strategic warheads, the missing jewel of nuclear arms control.”

“Are Arms Control Agreements Losing Their Value?” Nikolai Sokov, The National Interest, 12.06.17: The author, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, writes that the INF Treaty “is still in force, but is so feeble that it might not survive long. The saddest part is that it will not be replaced with a new treaty and the ban on U.S. and Russian land-based intermediate-range [missiles] … will disappear. … For the United States, the de facto ban on land-based cruise missiles is marginal … For Russia, with its huge landmass, limited access to seas and no bases abroad for strategic aircraft, preference for land-based systems has been a tradition. … Instead of allowing it to die quietly, we could negotiate a new agreement—one that addresses nuclear weapons rather than delivery vehicles and one that includes other nuclear states.”

“The Death of the INF Treaty Could Signal a US-Russia Missile Race,” Steven Pifer, The National Interest, 12.06.17: The author, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes that the INF Treaty’s 30^th anniversary “could be one of its last. … Russia has violated the treaty by deploying a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile. Congress has set the Department of Defense on a course to follow suit. … The end of the INF Treaty will make the world less safe. … Washington thus should try one more push to maintain the agreement and seek to influence Moscow to return to compliance. Pursuing a U.S. intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile, however, makes little sense. … Washington should instead consult with NATO and then deploy already-existing Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles to Europe and increase the tempo of operations by U.S. warships carrying sea-launched cruise missiles in northern European waters. These actions would give the Kremlin a military incentive to reconsider its course. … In parallel, Washington should press allies to put Russia’s treaty violation at the top of their agendas when engaging the Kremlin’s leadership. … Finally, in the event that Russia responds seriously … the Pentagon should address Moscow’s concerns about the possibility that land-based SM-3 missile interceptor launchers might hold cruise missiles.”

“Russian Compliance with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: Background and Issues for Congress,” Amy F. Woolf, Congressional Research Service, 12.06.17: The author, a specialist in nuclear weapons policy, examines the background of the INF Treaty and the latest developments threatening its survival. She details both U.S. and Russian concerns about compliance and options for addressing them. “The Trump Administration has not yet identified a path forward for the INF Treaty,” she writes. “Congress is likely to continue to conduct oversight hearings on this issue, and to receive briefings on the status of Russia’s cruise missile program. It may also consider legislation authorizing U.S. military responses and supporting alternative diplomatic approaches.”

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant commentary.

Conflict in Syria:

“Trump Leads From Behind in Syria; John Kerry Trusted Russia. The President Should Ask Him How That Worked Out,” Dennis Ross, Wall Street Journal, 12.04.17: The author, a counselor at the Washington Institute, writes that “like President Obama, Mr. Trump's policy [in Syria] has been exclusively anti-Islamic State, giving Iran and Russia a free hand to dictate outcomes in the country. … Trump apparently sees cooperation with the Russians as the best solution. … In November 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry reached an agreement on Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. … Kerry would [later] negotiate a joint operational center with the Russians to coordinate attacks in Syria—but the Russian onslaught against Aleppo in 2016 precluded its implementation. The Russians fulfilled none of their obligations … There is little chance of the Russians implementing a peace agreement in good faith so long as they see no cost for noncompliance. The Trump administration could alter Mr. Putin's calculus … by conveying quietly that if the Russians will not stop the Assad-Shia expansion into the de-escalation zones, the U.S. will. … The U.S. already has air power in the region dwarfing what the Russians used to secure Assad … Mr. Putin knows that. He wants Russia, not the U.S., to be seen as the arbiter of Syria's future. … John Kerry eventually realized that words alone would not get Mr. Putin to respond in Syria.”

Cyber security:

• No significant commentary.

Elections interference:

“Whenever America Is in Crisis, Russia Is Its Whipping Boy,” Ivan Kurilla, The Washington Post, 12.05.17: The author, a professor of history and international relations at the European University at St. Petersburg, writes that “the steady flow of anti-Russian cant by the media and among opportunistic politicians is an old story that is repeating itself once again … Russian liberal critics of Putin’s regime … believe that the American media and political class have inflated Putin’s significance well beyond his actual capacity. … They also worry that the image of an American political system that is so easily vulnerable … promotes anti-democratic ideas and rhetoric in Russia. … Periods of increasing U.S.–Russian cooperation usually coincided with the liberalization of politics at home, while each wave of hostility has found victims among Russian liberals and set back their democratizing agenda. … Looking at the history … several cases … look similar to the present. … President Jimmy Carter … invoked America’s moral superiority to attack an old rival [Russia] at a moment when America’s luster in the world had been severely damaged by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. … [A] famous book in 1891 … on the Siberian exile system under the czars provided an opportunity for Americans troubled by their own recent history to condemn Russian despotism … . The Russian theme rears its head in American society only amid domestic crises.” This has “been central to maintaining American trust in its historical mission as the world leader of democracy. … There are several short-term results of this story that are obvious: public suspicion will not permit Trump to … better relations … or to negotiate any compromise on pressing issues … . The long-term consequences are more serious.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian relations in general: 

“How to Stand Up to the Kremlin. Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies,” Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and Michael Carpenter, Foreign Affairs, 12.05.17: The authors, a former vice president and deputy assistant secretary of defense, respectively, write that “the Russian government is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world” and outline “three distinct threats” posed, from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, by “the United States and its democratic allies.” These are: pursuit of regime change in Russia; “Western support for democratic reforms among Russia’s neighbors, particularly measures to boost transparency and fight corruption, [which Moscow fears] will undermine the patronage networks that allow Kremlin cronies to extract enormous rents in the ‘near abroad’”; and “democratic transformation in Russia’s neighborhood … as a powerful counterexample to Moscow’s kleptocratic and authoritarian rule.” While Russia has used military force in the former Soviet Union, it “has relied on subtler tools to subvert democracies in western Europe and the United States. Although Russian operatives have carried out at least one politically motivated assassination in the West (and possibly more), Moscow’s intelligence services are generally more cautious when operating on NATO territory, relying instead on information operations and cyberattacks. … Less well covered are the ways in which Russia has managed to effectively export the corruption that has warped its own politics and economy—weaponizing it, in a sense, and aiming it at vulnerable societies elsewhere.” The West must fight back to root out “the Kremlin’s networks of malign influence.”

“What Was Trump’s Russia Plan?” Andrew S. Weiss, Wall Street Journal, 12.08.17: The author, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, writes that while President Trump and his advisors had thought they could orchestrate a major strategic realignment with Moscow, none of his “rhetoric provides a strategic rationale” for why the administration would want do so. One of the few examples of rationale came from a 2016 interview with Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming and soon-to-be outgoing national security adviser: a shared in interest in fighting radical Islam. The author writes: “In Syria, rather than negotiating a Russian-American alliance to fight Islamic State, Trump’s team soon had to face up to the reality that Russian and Iranian military intervention had already transformed the war in favor of the Syrian regime, decimating U.S.-backed rebels in the process. … The notion that Mr. Trump could disrupt the Russia-Iran relationship also proved fanciful. Tehran and Moscow are firmly united in opposing actions by the administration that threaten not just the Iran nuclear deal but a balance of power in the Middle East that serves the interests of both countries. … As for plans to put distance between Russia and China, Mr. Trump’s apparent strategy fared no better. … His national security team seems to have persuaded him that the war in Ukraine must be ended in order to achieve his goal of normalizing relations with Moscow, but the U.S. has little in the way of diplomatic or military pressure to apply there. … Against this discouraging backdrop, it’s hard to imagine a major improvement in U.S.-Russian relations. … In dealing with the Kremlin, across so many divergent interests, there are no easy fixes or grand bargains, even for Mr. Putin’s self-declared friends.”

“Congress Has Chosen the Wrong Strategy to Deal with Russia,” Nicolai N. Petro, The National Interest, 12.10.17: The author, a professor of peace studies and nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island, warns that the U.S. lawmakers are wrongly falling back on an old Cold War policy of containment and deterrence toward the Soviet Union in their approach to post-Communist Russia. Such a strategy, the author notes, “is the playbook that Ronald Reagan used during his first two years in office, and then decisively rejected.” The author points to Reagan’s negotiation of “the first nuclear arms reduction agreements in U.S. history.”  The author continues: “What most people still do not realize … is the degree to which Reagan’s personal transformation was inspired by his exposure to Russian culture. … He began to think of the Russians (not the leaders, but the people) as religious and sentimental, a lot like Americans. … Without a profound reassessment of Russia, along the lines that Ronald Reagan had, it is doubtful we will be so lucky again.”

“Russia’s Ongoing Hostilities Toward the United States and Its Allies,” Max Bergmann and Carolyn Kenney, Center for American Progress, 12.05.17: The authors, respectively a senior fellow and a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, write: “Russia’s efforts to attack and undermine American democracy did not begin or end with the 2016 election. Russia’s vast espionage and cybercapabilities continue to target the United States government, its citizens, as well as America’s democratic allies around the world." As examples of this ongoing campaign, the authors write that Russia continues to: “aggressively target the United States in cyberspace, including its government, businesses, citizens, and interests”; “provide cybercriminals with a safe haven from which they can prey on Americans; “conduct aggressive espionage campaigns against the United States and its allies, including harassing U.S. diplomats and assassinating the Kremlin’s adversaries abroad”; and “probe ways to attack American infrastructure, especially in the energy, communications, and financial sectors.” The authors offer several recommendations to deal with these actions, including: “The White House and Congress must stop efforts to appease Moscow”; “Protect America’s elections from foreign cyberattacks”; “Bolster defense assets in Europe”; “Fight the information war by significantly expanding public diplomacy efforts”; and “Deter state-sponsored cyberattacks by sending clear message about U.S. cyber redlines.”

“The Kremlin's Latest Crackdown on Independent Media. Russia's New Foreign Agent Law in Context,” Alina Polyakova,  Foreign Affairs, 12.05.17: The author, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes that the Russian media law signed by President Vladimir Putin in response to U.S. requirement that RT America register as a foreign agent is “in no way a proportionate response.” While Russia’s Justice Ministry has already notified Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), both funded by the U.S. government, that they must register as foreign agents, the new law could be applied against any organization receiving foreign funding, including “The New York Times, CNN, and European outlets.” In addition, the “law also grants the Russian authorities an expansive mandate to block online content, including social media websites, whose activities are deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘extremist.’” The author continues: “The new law will certainly not make independent journalistic activities easier, but the reality for independent media outlets operating in Russia has long been depressing. … With the Russian presidential elections scheduled for March 2018, it is clear that the Kremlin will seek to use all the means at its disposal to censor dissent, repress independent voices, and stifle non-state media.”

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• No significant commentary.

China:

“How China and Russia are Teaming up to Degrade US Influence in South America,” Todd Royal, The National Interest, 12.04.17: The author, a consultant and author and specializing in energy and global threat assessment, writes that China and Russia have “laid the business and political foundation for China’s Arctic Route to link with its Belt and Road Initiative that includes a technological, strategic partnership with Russia in the Arctic; the partnership ultimately seeks to unite the two nations in the western hemisphere through Nicaragua’s ongoing construction of a replacement to the Panama Canal.” He continues: “Once China connects the two projects with Russia, then both countries will have the ability to influence the Arctic Council and Europe, thus diminishing the power of the United States and NATO … Through the massive infrastructure projects that the Nicaragua canal represents, China and Russia can connect different regions of South America and push out U.S. political influence through peaceful, economic ways.”

Ukraine:

“President Petro Poroshenko Is Sacrificing Westernization to a Personal Political Agenda,”  Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 12.05.17: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, criticizes Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko and Western support for him, writing hat “Poroshenko’s moves to consolidate his power now include sidelining the anti-corruption institutions he was forced to set up by Ukraine's Western allies.” The author argues that Poroshenko “looked worldlier than his predecessor, the deposed Viktor Yanukovych, and spoke passable English,” but that he, in his previous role as foreign minister, and prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “knew what the U.S. State Department and Vice President Joe Biden, who acted as the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine, wanted to hear” … and were only “posing as Westernizers who would lead Ukraine into Europe. But their agendas turned out to be more self-serving.” The author argues that Western leaders should seek alternatives to Poroshenko. “It's not easy to find younger, more principled, genuinely European-oriented politicians in Ukraine, but they exist. Otherwise, Western politicians and analysts will have to keep acting shocked that another representative of the old elite is suddenly looking a lot like Yanukovych.”

“It’s Time for the West to Get Tough on Ukraine,” Maxim Eristavi, The Washington Post, 12.07.17: The author, a nonresident research fellow with the Atlantic Council and co-founder of Hromadske International, an independent news outlet based in Kiev, urges the West to take a hard line on Ukraine when it comes to corruption. He writes: “The most important domestic issue in our country is corruption. And for the first time in our modern history, we have the people and the institutions in place to fight it. But at the very moment when anti-corruption officials have really started to tackle the problem, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is moving to undermine them. … His followers in parliament have dismissed the head of a crucial anti-corruption committee, and now they’re preparing to neutralize the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), its only independent anti-graft body, which has made a name for itself with aggressive prosecutions of high-ranking politicians. … Western governments have channeled hundreds of millions in taxpayer money into Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms. The time to protect that investment has come. The United States and the European Union should be telling Poroshenko and his friends that they must hold the line on corruption.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Armenia’s 'Both/And' Policy for Europe and Eurasia,” Sergei Markedonov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12.07.17: The author, the director of the Department for Problems of Ethnic Relations at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, writes: “Four years ago, Armenia’s failure to sign the EU Association Agreement was an early indication of the impending Ukraine crisis. Now, an Association Agreement-lite has been signed with Brussels. While this doesn’t represent a normalization of relations between Russia and the EU in the post-Soviet space, it’s important symbolically. Rather than an ‘either/or’ approach to integration, the EU and Russia are gradually moving in the ‘both/and’ direction.”

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Russia Takes a Step Toward the Post-Putin Era. The President Has Made Russia a Geopolitical Disruptor Without a Coherent Domestic Policy. That's Not Sustainable,” Leonid Bershidsky, 12.07.17: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, takes stock of Russian President Vladimir Putin's long tenure—and finds much of it lacking, especially on the domestic front. He writes: “Putin claims his biggest successes outside of Russia.  He has held on to illegally annexed Crimea, and the Kremlin retained operational control over the mob-run, separatist ‘people's republics’ in eastern Ukraine, most recently through what looked like an engineered coup in one of them. Putin was held back from further territorial gains by cost considerations -- it appears important to him to keep regular military casualties low while making proxies shoulder most of the burden -- but his minimum goals, including instability in Ukraine, have been achieved.” And, the author notes: “Despite U.S. resistance, Putin helped his Syrian ally, President Bashar Al-Assad, win his civil war.” Russia’s foreign policy may have cost it a place in “a greater Europe,” but it hasn't “made Russia a pariah to the rest of the world, most notably to China, which has benignly allowed Putin to shake the foundations of the Western-led global order.” Domestically, however, the author observes that Putin was “an increasingly absent feudal lord.” He writes: “Indeed, if first- and second-term Putin was a competent micromanager, making all the important decisions and mediating every significant conflict, Putin now appears to have lost that ability. … Throughout the third term, Putin drifted on economic policy. Little was done to prepare Russia for an era of low oil prices. A modest agricultural boom which has turned the country into a top grain exporter is no substitute for the lost hydrocarbon revenues, and snail-paced economic growth based on a borrowing-fueled consumption surge isn't enough to generate economic optimism. … Putin has cast Russia in the role of the world's biggest geopolitical disruptor. But its current performance is unsustainable without coherent, successful domestic policies. Putin has presided over, indeed enabled, a corrupt, inefficiently run country where people—including those in the top echelons of business and power—just fend for themselves as best they can.”

“Yes, the Kremlin Is Worried—About Russia's Own Presidential Elections; Low Voter Turnout Would Be a Sign of Putin's Weakness,” Christopher Jarmas, The Washington Post, 12.06.17: The author, a master's candidate in Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian area studies at Harvard University, examines why the Kremlin is worried about voter turnout in Russia’s March 2018 presidential election, even though “it's a foregone conclusion that Vladimir Putin will win.” The author writes: “Putin's regime represents what Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way term ‘competitive authoritarianism.’ Elections in hybrid systems like Russia are not designed to determine who rules, but rather to signal the regime's power and resilience to potential challengers. Elections in these polities are often marred by abuses of state power, but they are nonetheless held and can be bitterly fought. … A crushing electoral victory signals to potential opponents that they can expect the regime to remain in power and that open opposition will be futile. But low turnout can communicate the regime's potential weakness.”  The author continues: “Last year, the Kremlin's top political technologists established a ‘70 at 70’ objective for Putin's reelection in March 2018 — 70 percent of the vote with 70 percent turnout.” But, a November poll is a bad sign for the president: “67 percent of likely voters would vote for Putin, with anticipated turnout between 53 and 55 percent — not the 70 percent figure the Kremlin hopes to see.”

“Two Lean Years: Russia’s Budget for 2018–2020,” Sergey Zhavoronkov, Russia File/Intercept, 12.08.17: The author, an economist and member of the board of Moscow’s Liberal Mission Foundation, writes: “A worrying few years lie ahead for Russia’s economy … the Russian government is cash-strapped at both national and regional levels, and it will be education, health, wages, and welfare that take the hit. High military spending is set to continue.” The author cites several problematic statistics: “People’s real income in the Russian Federation has been declining for four consecutive years: by 5.9 percent in 2016, by 3.2 percent in 2015, and by 0.7 percent in 2014. Two-thirds of the working population in Russia receive below-average wages. … In 2011, the average salary/wages in Russia amounted to 25.6 thousand rubles (the calculations take a 13 percent income tax into account). By November 2017, the average figure had risen to 38 thousand rubles. However, the inflation rate for the same period amounted to 53 percent. In other words, real salaries/wages did not increase by 70 percent but instead fell by more than 5 percent, and people’s real income dropped by more than 10 percent.” The author then pivots to what these numbers could mean for President Vladimir Putin as he seeks another term as president. “Voters should remember Putin’s promises made before the last presidential elections. At that time, Putin said that “the average real wages in Russia should increase by at least 60–70 percent by 2020, and the authorities should focus on creating highly efficient jobs.” The author concludes: “According to his new budget, the military-industrial complex will have money while the majority of the population will have none.”

“A National Reconciliation According To Putin,” Maxim Trudolyubov, Russia File, Kennan Institute, 12.04.17: The author, the editor of the blog, writes about the religious and historical complications involved in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts at national reconciliation. “It is widely believed, although not officially confirmed, that [Putin] would like to organize a symbolic ceremony that would bring closure to Russia’s divisive and bloody twentieth century. Such an event could involve a burial of the two members of the royal family, the czarevich Alexei and his sister Maria, who have never been put to rest, and a solemn church recognition of all other remains as belonging to the Romanovs, who were all inducted into sainthood but whose bodies, from the Russian Orthodox Church’s viewpoint, have never been recovered.” The paradox, the author notes, is that it is “the church, Putin’s main domestic political ally, that stands in the way of the kind of reconciliation that Putin envisions.” The author continues: “In an unprecedented move, President Putin on Friday attended and addressed the Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, which took place in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But according to reports of the event, the question of the royal remains, which was supposed to have been resolved by now, was not even mentioned. … Whatever their intent, the church officials who brought up the ‘ritual’ nature of the murder of Russia’s last czar were not helping a reconciliation cause championed by none other than Vladimir Putin. The Russian president may be many things, but he is not an anti-Semite.” The author concludes: “The idea of a ‘reconciliation according to Putin’ is complicated not just by the Russian Orthodox Church’s inexplicably ambiguous stance toward the remains of the royal family. A reconciliation understood only as a peace between the Reds and the Whites of old misses the point. The Reds and the Whites have long since been reduced to faint shadows from the past: modern Russians identify with neither. The chasm runs not between them but between the ordinary folks and the oppressive state that once wanted everyone to march into the future by shedding the shackles of religious belief and now wants everyone to stride back into the past by putting on the heavy garments of the old faith of the fathers.”

“Democracy Is Far From Dead,” Bruce Jones and Michael O'Hanlon, The Wall Street Journal, 12.11.17: The authors, respectively the vice president and director of research at the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Program, write that while the percentage of countries assessed as “not free” by Freedom House increased from 25 percent in 2016 from 23 percent in 2006, “the net setbacks have been modest.” They state: “If one adjusts for population, there has been no setback at all. India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil, with a combined population of two billion, have, for all their admitted troubles, been holding generally steady in recent years. The countries experiencing setbacks have generally been less populous. As a result, the fraction of people living in ‘not free’ countries has declined slightly over the past dozen years, from 37 percent to 36 percent, while the total living in ‘free’ countries rose gently, from 44 percent to 45 percent. The remainder were in countries deemed by Freedom House to be ‘partly free.’” But authors cite one major outlier in the trend: “Russia, with its 142 million people, where the early signs of liberalism in the mid-2000s have been decisively reversed.”

Defense and aerospace:

“Putin Wants to Win, But Not at All Costs,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 12.06.17: The author, a columnist for the news outlet, offers perspective on a recent report in the daily Vedomosti estimating that there were more than 3,000 Russian military deaths, based on insurance claims between 2012 and 2016. “These fall far short of earlier losses. In 2000, for example, the Russian military lost 1,310 people in Chechnya, according to official statistics,” the author writes. He takes notes of how this reflects changes that have taken place in the Russian military under Putin. “Yeltsin's losses in Chechnya gutted his public support and the Soviet Union's costly, failed Afghanistan adventure helped speed the end of an empire. Putin's position is far more secure, which makes his approach to war all the more difficult to explain.” The author continues: “The Russian military tradition — at least in the 20th-century wars — wasn't about keeping soldiers alive but about achieving goals at any price. The current numbers indicate a change — but perhaps not an entirely positive one. … As Putin increased and rearmed the Russian military, he has also embraced the concept of hybrid war, shifting much of the burden onto the shoulders of irregulars.  In part thanks to that shift, Russia's military losses in 2014, the worst of the last five years, only reached 68.8 per 100,000 — significantly less than the 88.1 service members per 100,000 the U.S. lost in 2010, the last year for which data are publicly available from the Defense Casualty Analysis System.” Still, the author concludes that the relatively small losses “won't justify Russia's participation in the destruction of Ukraine or the human, economic and diplomatic cost that disastrous Putin decision has imposed on Russia itself.”

“The Russian Way of Warfare. A Primer,” Scott Boston, Dara Massicot, RAND, December 2017: The authors, research analysts with RAND, write: “Russia hopes to defend its territory and avoid decisive engagement with a peer or near-peer competitor by fielding defensive systems and strike weapons with extended ranges. … Given Russia's conventional weaknesses in a protracted war with a peer or near-peer adversary, it will attempt to use indirect action strategies and asymmetric responses across multiple domains.” The authors further note that “Russia may threaten to employ or employ its nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that would undermine the regime's control of the state or threaten Russia's nuclear deterrent.” Examining recent Russian operations, the authors observe that they “have involved a rapid, coordinated coup de main attempting to achieve campaign objectives in a very short period of time; this emphasis is likely to remain, especially in pre-planned operations. … Recent reforms have made a substantially larger percentage of the land components of the Russian Armed Forces available at higher readiness for short-notice contingencies, while reducing the total number of units.” On the ground, Russian tactics “will likely reflect a heavy emphasis on massed indirect fires (particularly long-range fires), with the effects of these fires exploited by highly mobile vehicles with substantial direct fire capability.”

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant commentary.