This Week’s Highlights

• “What makes the use of tactical nuclear weapons plausible (although not likely) to me is their unequivocal messaging value,” argues Francesca Giovannini, executive director of the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. “The use of one or more tactical nuclear weapons would be an unmissable attempt by Putin to break the unity of the West, and to test the resolve of some NATO countries. It would also signal once and for all his willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve his political and strategic goals.”
• “Russia’s military advantages over Ukrainian forces will diminish as the enemy it fights changes from an organized army to a decentralized and mobile resistance. Occupation forces will be subject to harassing attacks designed to both inflict casualties and undermine military discipline,” writes Douglas London, a former CIA officer. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Col. Jerad I. Harper writes that “Russia is likely to find itself stretched to hold conquered territory and be drawn into the quagmire of insurgency. It’s tempting to think that this would be costly only to Russia, a bleeding wound that deters further adventurism. But such an insurgency is instead likely to lead to even further conflict with the West, whose safe havens and clear anti-Russian support of a Ukrainian resistance would likely lead Russian President Vladimir Putin to further intervention as he struggles to maintain domestic stability in the face of mounting casualties.”
• “For a long time, the Kremlin was able to strike a balance between Russia’s pragmatic strategic interests and its more ideologically loaded constructs inspired by different brands of conservative and/or nationalist thinking. This balance now seems to have been lost,” write Marlene Laruelle and Ivan Grek, a research professor and director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University and a post-doctoral fellow at IERES. “This week’s speeches have confirmed this dramatic turn, with the construction of a narrative legitimizing the military intervention in Ukraine along three key ideological lines: a historical one, an ethnic one and a political one.”
• “As of Friday Russia had about $630 billion of foreign currency reserves, a large cushion designed to allow it to withstand economic sanctions and prop up the value of the ruble,” the bulk of which “are held in the form of securities, deposits at other central banks and deposits at foreign commercial banks,” Bloomberg’s Matt Levine reports. “A ban on transactions with Russia’s central bank”—like those of the U.S., U.K. and EU on any transactions with the Russian central bank—"means that [the Russian central bank] can’t sell those securities or access those deposits. Its foreign currency reserves turned out to be mostly useless.”
• “The recently imposed U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia are not as comprehensive as those in place against Iran,” write Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an assistant professor at the Fletcher School. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that “While Moscow's version [of an alternative to the Western-established SWIFT] hasn't seen much take-up by banks, Mr. Prasad [Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University] said, China's Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System would allow the two neighboring powers to bypass the Swift system. It also reduces the need for dollars, because Russia and China's trade can be settled in yuan directly, Mr. Prasad said.”
• “[T]he militarization of Russian society and the remaking of the military under [Defense Minster Sergei] Shoigu provided Putin with an overwhelming temptation, one that could not be slowed by intelligence misgivings or diplomatic considerations,” write investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. “And now that the assault is violently under way, the full implications of the Kremlin’s new military strategy are becoming clear. Not only is the campaign being shaped by an army that has openly embraced war—the bigger, the better. It is also being led by Shoigu, a man who has so far experienced only successes and who lacks the proper military training to understand that a battlefield victory, no matter how impressive, can sometimes lead to an even larger political defeat.”
• We “don’t know if people [in Russia] are supporting this war,” said Alexandra Vacroux, executive director of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, in an interview. “What we can see are some pretty big street demonstrations in a country where it’s dangerous to go out on the street and demonstrate. That’s important. We also see that two oligarchs—Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska—have said that the war should be ended as fast as possible. That’s pretty significant. Usually authoritarian regimes don’t end through mass protest but through fragmentation of the elite and, until now, we’ve seen none of that … but the fact that these two oligarchs have come out against the party line is quite important. We’ll have to see if others follow and if that puts any kind of pressure on Putin.”

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.

Great Power rivalry/New Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

"The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency: Russia’s Invasion Could Unleash Forces the Kremlin Can’t Control," Douglas London, Foreign Affairs, 02.25.22.  

“Ukraine stands firm, but so does Putin’s inner circle,” Harvard Gazette, 02.27.22. Speaking in an interview, Alexandra Vacroux, executive director of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, says:  

• “The Russians have always taken into account their nuclear weapons in their military planning and in their strategy, much more so than the United States. … I was once in Moscow at a meeting and we were talking to someone who was involved in their missile program. He asked a retired American general, ‘How do you guys think about your nuclear weapons?’ And the American said, ‘Well, we really never think about them at all.’ And the Russian said, ‘That’s interesting, because we think about them every day.’ It’s not that they’re reckless about using them—they understand as well as we do how serious they are—but it’s part of the calculus.”
• “[T]he Russian soldiers … are kind of miserable, undersupplied and didn’t necessarily know where they were being sent. They have probably been sleeping in a tent for six weeks and the logistical side of the Russian maneuvers doesn’t seem to be going very well.”  
• “It’s terrible what they’re doing, but so far the Russians have, to a degree, been professionally restrained and have largely avoided indiscriminate civilian targets. They haven’t really put everything they could into taking … cities because doing so would require, basically, atrocities, and I don’t know if they’re willing to go there.”
• “[W]e don’t know if people [in Russia] are supporting this war… What we can see are some pretty big street demonstrations in a country where it’s dangerous to go out on the street and demonstrate. That’s important. We also see that two oligarchs—Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska—have said that the war should be ended as fast as possible. That’s pretty significant. Usually authoritarian regimes don’t end through mass protest but through fragmentation of the elite and, until now, we’ve seen none of that … but the fact that these two oligarchs have come out against the party line is quite important. We’ll have to see if others follow and if that puts any kind of pressure on Putin.”  

“A hurting stalemate? The risks of nuclear weapon use in the Ukraine crisis,” Francesca Giovannini, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 02.27.22. The author, executive director of the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom, writes:

• “Today, as I write this article, a scenario that leads Russia to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine seems improbable. Like many others, I make three assumptions: that Russia has a strong interest in not destroying Ukraine, because Putin wants to occupy it; that even though Putin is a thug, he is not a crazy enough thug to break a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons in war, … and that there are plenty of other options that the Russians can exercise in subduing Ukraine.”
• “But perhaps those assumptions should be questioned. First, the assumption that Putin wants to avoid destroying Ukraine hardly stands the test of reality. … As regards the second assumption: How much crazier would Putin need to be, to break the so-called ‘nuclear taboo’? … While I don’t think he will take the decision of using tactical nuclear weapons lightly, I also don’t believe that the fear of breaking a precedent (real or imaginary) is something that would constrain him. … Finally, we know the Russians still have plenty of conventional and non-nuclear strategic options. … Russia has enough fire power to destroy Ukrainian cities without having to resort to nuclear weapons.”
• “What makes the use of tactical nuclear weapons plausible (although not likely) to me is their unequivocal messaging value. The use of one or more tactical nuclear weapons would be an unmissable attempt by Putin to break the unity of the West, and to test the resolve of some NATO countries. It would also signal once and for all his willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve his political and strategic goals.”
• “The longer he [Zelensky] and the West resist, the more they might involuntarily push Putin to consider further escalations, including to the nuclear threshold. … This is an existential dilemma without a perfect solution, one that nobody should ever face. It’s a dilemma that could haunt us all soon, unless sanity is restored by renewed diplomacy.”

"Putin’s invasion has opened Germany’s eyes. Let’s hope Biden sees the need for big changes, too," Henry Olsen, The Washington Post, 02.28.22. The author, a columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• “Germany shocked the world this weekend with its rapid repudiation of its core post-Cold War foreign policy principles. President Biden should take note. One can hardly overstate the significance of the developments in Berlin. The German government’s sudden decision to help to rapidly rearm and supply Ukraine with lethal military aid, including assisting the European Union in financing provision of fighter jets to the Ukrainian Air Force, leaves no doubt how seriously it views Russia’s invasion.”
• “This is welcome news and will likely be echoed by other European states in the coming months. But the place where I hope it reverberates most is in the United States.”
• “Biden can begin by injecting some of Scholz’s bold vision into Tuesday’s State of the Union message. Biden should also emulate Scholz’s other declarations. Increasing the regular defense budget by about one-third by 2024 would add $260 billion a year above the $778 billion authorized by Congress last year. A regular $1 trillion defense budget would exceed 4 percent of GDP, and with regular real increases thereafter should be a strong start to restoring the United States’ ability to fight two major wars simultaneously.”
• “Biden should also bite the bullet and expand American gas and oil production, in part to provide a secure source for Europe. Some will say this is overkill, but I don’t think so. The United States is the backbone of military alliances around the globe and needs to be prepared to meet its commitments as they arise. NATO allies will insist on permanent U.S. troop deployments in nations bordering Russia now that Putin’s malign intentions are manifest. Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has already called for the United States to eliminate its strategic ambiguity and unreservedly declare that it will defend Taiwan. A serious defense of Taiwan, however, would require dramatically greater military assets in the Western Pacific. That requires money and manpower; providing those takes presidential leadership.”

“How Do We Make Putin Fail?” Nicholas Kristof, Substack, 02.25.22. The author, a former New York Times columnist, writes that the world must “avoid escalating the war in Ukraine” and, simultaneously, “make Vladimir Putin fail” there. He offers the West five suggestions for the latter: 

• “First, the West can try to help … [the Ukrainian] resistance by sending in more lethal weaponry, probably via Poland. If Ukrainians are willing to die for their freedom, we should be willing to supply more guns, ammunition, RPGs and night vision goggles—but we’d better hurry.”
• “Second, the West can do more to counter Putin’s information warfare, although we’ve done well on that front so far. We should … do what we can so that ordinary Russians understand the situation.”
• “Third, we should continue to push for tougher international sanctions, especially the ouster of Russia from the SWIFT banking system. That would badly damage Russia’s economy.”
• “Fourth, we should push European countries, especially Britain, to seize assets of oligarchs who support Putin.”
• “Fifth, to the extent feasible, the intelligence community should deploy forensic accountants and try to uncover information about Putin’s own family wealth and luxurious lifestyle—and leak information about it. That undermines him at home.”

“Decoding Putin’s Speeches: The Three Ideological Lines of Russia’s Military Intervention in Ukraine,” Marlene Laruelle and Ivan Grek, Russia Matters, 02.25.22. The authors, a research professor and director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University and a post-doctoral fellow at IERES, write:

• “For a long time, the Kremlin was able to strike a balance between Russia’s pragmatic strategic interests and its more ideologically loaded constructs inspired by different brands of conservative and/or nationalist thinking. This balance now seems to have been lost … This week’s speeches have confirmed this dramatic turn, with the construction of a narrative legitimizing the military intervention in Ukraine along three key ideological lines: a historical one, an ethnic one and a political one.”
• “Ukraine is presented as part of Russia’s longue durée imperial history, with no history of its own as a fully independent state. Putin argued that the Bolsheviks created the Ukrainian state at the expense of the Russian heartland.”
• “Then Putin moved to a second line of argument: the genocide of Russians in Ukraine. The argument is not a new one. It was already well developed in the 1990s … The genocide narrative was revived in 2014 … The concept has since been regularly mentioned … by Putin himself or by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and has been revitalized in light of the current crisis.”
• “The third argument is a more political one: the ‘denazification’ argument, put forward mostly in Putin’s Feb. 24 speech justifying his military intervention in Ukraine. It, too, is far from a recent trend, as it has a long Soviet history and was revived in 2014. … [T]he obsession with presenting Russia as the antifascism power par excellence has now transformed from a nation-building tool to a literal weapon.”
• “It seems suddenly that the key issue for Putin is not so much NATO and European security architecture as the simple existence of Ukraine. … Such an ideological shift can do nothing but cripple Moscow’s desire to have its strategic concerns heard on the international scene.”

"Blame It on Lenin: What Putin Gets Wrong About Ukraine," Mark N. Katz, The National Interest, 02.24.22. The author, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, writes:

• “In his nearly hour-long televised address made on Feb. 21, Russian president Vladimir Putin vilified the Ukrainian government for being, in his view, completely illegitimate and incompetent. … Putin placed special blame on Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin for having unnecessarily created Ukraine in the first place.”
• “Despite his expressions of sorrow over the breakup of the USSR, Putin does not seem focused — at least for now — on reacquiring the non-Slavic parts of it. … Putin, however, sees the two Slavic non-Russian republics — Belarus and Ukraine — as truly artificial creations which rightfully belong to Russia. Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, was often at odds with the West, but sought to balance between it and Russia. He lost this ability, though, when he had to turn to Russia for support against the democratic opposition that rose up against him in 2020-2021 and became totally dependent on Putin.”
• “Since the breakup of the USSR, though, Ukraine has vacillated between first, two generally pro-Russian presidents, then a pro-Western one, then a pro-Russian one, and two pro-Western ones since 2014. And Putin has made clear that, for him, Ukraine is rightfully part of Russia, Ukrainians are really Russians, and Ukrainians who assert the contrary are utterly illegitimate.”
• “Putin, though, cannot escape the problem that Lenin himself had to deal with of how to reconcile non-Russians to being ruled by Russia. The forceful imposition of Russian rule in part — much less all — of Ukraine will not bring about such a reconciliation. For even if Ukrainians cannot resist the forceful imposition of Russian rule over part or all of Ukraine now, Putin’s success in imposing it is only likely to intensify feelings of Ukrainian nationalism and lead it to burst forth again whenever the opportunity arises.”
• “Like Putin, Lenin was no democrat. Like Putin, Lenin wanted to restore control over lost parts of the empire. Instead of blaming Lenin then, Putin would do well to draw lessons from Lenin’s realization that a more accommodative approach toward Ukrainian nationalism would better serve Russia’s long-term interests.”

“Why Ukraine Is Key to Russia's Pursuit of Great Power Status,” Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Russia Matters, 02.25.22. The author, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a non-residential fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes:

• “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.’”
• “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 … Putin has changed his tactics and approaches in pursuit of these aims. … 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.”
• “Key to all of Putin's plans has been to ensure a friendly and pliable Ukrainian government. Ukraine's economy, resource base and population are critical for the success of any Russian-led Eurasian Union.”
• “Two successive Ukrainian presidential administrations—that of Petro Poroshenko and then Volodymyr Zelensky—refused to countenance constitutional changes that would have prevented Ukraine from continuing along a Euro-Atlantic path as a price for regaining control over the Donetsk and Luhansk republics. … Ukraine’s halting but real reform efforts, especially in the military sphere, and closer cooperation with NATO states, also raised the possibility that at some point in the future, the balance of forces might shift in Ukraine's favor, not only regarding the Donetsk and Luhansk entities, but perhaps even Crimea itself.”
• “The Kremlin worked throughout 2021 to get American and European assent to a series of propositions … Compromises offered by Western states, starting with the United States, fell short of what the Kremlin hoped to achieve … Putin is now gambling that he can achieve most of these objectives through a military campaign, endure the initial set of Western sanctions and then, as occurred in 2009 after the Georgia war, lay conditions for a new reset on the basis of a new status quo.”

"The war is not going Putin’s way. Congress must pass Ukraine aid swiftly," The Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 02.27.22. The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

• “Four days after Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine, it is apparent that things are not going the overconfident Russian president’s way. Russia has so far failed to take any of Ukraine’s major cities, disable its military communications or decapitate the government. The Russian Ministry of Defense’s own extended battle report on Sunday admitted for the first time to Russian dead and wounded — but claimed no major victories. In video of a meeting with Mr. Putin, Russia’s top two military chiefs looked stricken as he ordered them to place his nation’s nuclear forces into a ‘special mode of combat duty.’”
• “The main reason for this situation — that offers a sign of hope and yet is fraught with danger — is the resistance of Ukraine’s army, bolstered by civilian volunteers, and by the inspirational leadership of President Volodymyr Zelensky.”
• "Mr. Putin interprets the West’s firm response as evidence of hostility to Russia, not proof that he made a bad bet on democratic decline and disarray."
• "The next step for the United States is for Congress to move quickly on a bipartisan aid plan when it returns this week. The White House is requesting $6 billion, though independent estimates suggest Ukraine’s military and humanitarian needs call for around $10 billion. As they deliberate, lawmakers should consider these data from a new Washington Post-ABC News poll: Sixty-seven percent of American adults favor sanctions against Russia. More than half of adults said they would support sanctions even if it meant higher energy prices. Between the resistance of the Ukrainians and the unity of the West, Mr. Putin appears baffled. Congress should add to his troubles."

"Time to Turn the Tables on Vladimir Putin," Dov S. Zakheim, The National Interest, 02.22.22. The author, Vice Chairman of the Center for the National Interest, and former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense, writes:

• “Putin has consolidated Russia’s position in Europe, with the promise of doing even more. He has added the Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk to the list of so-called independent states — Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria — that only Russia recognizes. He has effectively absorbed Belarus into Russia’s orbit; it is now no more independent than Byelorussia was during the Cold War, its UN vote notwithstanding. Putin no doubt plans the same for Ukraine, which also had its own vote in the UN during the Soviet era.”
• “Putin’s ‘manifest destiny’ clearly is to restore Russia’s Czarist glory. To that end, not only Ukraine, but Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland have good cause for worry.”
• “The West is doing far too little to disrupt Putin’s playbook, however. His argument that he is merely seeking to protect the residents of the breakaway provinces from the predations of Kyiv echoes Adolf Hitler’s demand for Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, supposedly to protect the Sudeten Germans. And just as Britain’s Neville Chamberlain and France’s Eduard Daladier acquiesced to Hitler’s demand, in order to achieve ‘peace in our time,’ the West, led by the United States, is doing little more than to impose sanctions not on Russia itself, but only on Luhansk and Donetsk. For Putin, such sanctions are little more than a mosquito bite.”
• “The West and the United States should do more now. Washington fears that too deep involvement on the ground could bring on a war with Russia. Why should Putin not have the same fear? Biden should never have ruled out not sending forces to support Ukraine.”
• “For the past fourteen years, ever since Russia seized Abkhazia and North Ossetia, Putin has been playing a game of chicken with the West, and up to now has succeeded. It is time to turn the tables on him once and for all.”

"The West Is Sleepwalking Into War in Ukraine," Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 02.23.22. The author, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, writes:

• “Apart from a few hotheads, nobody in the U.S. foreign-policy establishment wants to fight a real war for Ukraine, a tacit acknowledgement that this is not, in fact, a truly vital interest. By contrast, Russia has made it clear it is willing to use force to achieve its core objective, which is to keep Ukraine from joining NATO.”
• “Here’s what puzzles me. Not only is there a significant imbalance in resolve — i.e., what Russia sees as a vital interest (and thus worth fighting for) is less than vital for the West (and thus not worth fighting for) — there is also an imbalance in directly relevant military capabilities. The United States and NATO may be far stronger than Russia overall, but Ukraine is right next door to Russia and therefore vulnerable to its air and ground forces.”
• “Yet despite this yawning gap in both capabilities and resolve, the U.S. negotiating position (and thus NATO’s position as a whole) hasn’t budged at all on the central issue dividing the two sides. That issue is Ukraine’s future geopolitical alignment.”
• “As I’ve argued previously, NATO’s reluctance to rescind its 2008 declaration that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance is partly due to the understandable desire not to make concessions to Moscow at gunpoint. But I do not understand how Western leaders think they can resolve this crisis without giving Russia some of what it wants on this core issue.”
• “If the United States and NATO do manage to get through this crisis without a war, it will reinforce the idea that Europe cannot handle its own security problems and doesn’t need to try because Uncle Sam will still rush to protect it when necessary. Efforts to strengthen European defense capabilities will lose steam, U.S. allies will eventually turn the gas taps from Russia back on, Ukraine and Georgia will keep knocking on NATO’s door, and the United States will continue to be committed to defend a set of wealthy democracies that have let their own military capabilities atrophy for decades.”

"In words and deeds, Putin shows he’s rejecting even Soviet-era borders," Daniel Treisman, The Washington Post, 02.25.22. The author, a professor of political science at UCLA, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, writes:

• “At heart, Putin has always been a conservative, with a horror of revolutions — who was unlucky enough to grow up in a society that was forged by one. …At least, so it seemed. But a competing idea has been building for some time. Already at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, which Putin attended as a guest of NATO, he called Ukraine a "very complicated state" that had been patched together, in part, from territories taken from Russia. At that point, he seemed to recognize Ukraine's borders as a fait accompli.”
• “But in subsequent years, this grievance came back in ever more elaborate forms. And now a new identity has burst through. Putin no longer accepts the compromises of the Soviet past. His recent words and actions suggest he has become a radical nationalist, out to reshape borders and forge a single people out of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, despite the human costs of war.”
• “Pre-1917 ‘historic Russia’ included a range of territories beyond just Ukraine, some of which — like Kazakhstan, the Baltic states and Moldova — have ethnic Russian minorities. If Putin stays true to the convictions he embraced in his speech on Monday, the door he has opened may prove hard for the world to close.”

"US banked on Putin blinking. He didn’t," Monica Attard, The Sydney Morning Herald, 02.24.22. The author, Academic and former foreign correspondent for the newspaper, writes:

• “How much of this could have been avoided if, after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics, the American Secretary of State had met the Russian Foreign Minister, as planned? How much could have been avoided had the U.S. taken Russia’s reasonable request for a security agreement seriously?”
• “How much could have been avoided had the Russian President had around him a circle of people willing to keep in check his worst impulses, his most deluded of thoughts and his wild analysis of what sovereignty means. Instead, he is surrounded by a cabinet and advisors too frightened to contradict him, to bring his worst impulses back to reality.”
• “The U.S. banked on Putin blinking. Putin doesn’t blink. Ukraine, entirely undeserving of the show of force Putin is now unleashing, is seeing what happens when its one-time Soviet neighbor can’t get its way. Diplomacy is over. The U.N. looks impotent.”

"Why Is Putin at War Again? Because He Keeps Winning," Chris Miller, The New York Times, 02.25.22. The author, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a co-director of the school’s Russia and Eurasia program, writes:

• “It may be that, in trying to swallow all of Ukraine, Mr. Putin has finally overstepped. A long occupation of Ukraine would stretch Russia’s capabilities, especially because its military advantages will be less significant if the conflict shifts into Ukraine’s populous cities. However, we should not simply assume that Ukraine will become Putin’s Afghanistan or his Iraq because other leaders have made their own errors. Mr. Putin could simply choose to destroy Ukraine and leave the West to pick up the pieces. Such a dismembered, dysfunctional Ukraine could well suit his interests. Russia’s recent wars have been carefully calculated and limited in cost. There’s no guarantee that this conflict won’t be, too.”
• “The U.S. strategy of making public intelligence about Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine was clever, but Mr. Putin has called our bluff. It was once popular to mock the Russian president for his 19th-century worldview, but his use of military power to bolster Russia’s influence has worked in the 21st century, too. The West’s assumption that the arc of history naturally bends in its direction is looking naïve. So, too, is the decision to let our military advantage slip. Soft power and economic influence are fine capabilities to have, but they cannot stop Russian armor as it rolls toward Kyiv.”

"We Are All Living in Vladimir Putin’s World Now," Ivan Krastev, The New York Times, 02.27.22. The author, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, writes:

• “We should all have that clarity today. Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine is one of those moments that impels us to reinterpret our own era: what we called the 30-year peace that followed the Cold War (tending to forget, consciously or unconsciously, the wars in the former Yugoslavia) has now ended. Future historians will look at these last decades, by and large, much like they look at the interwar period, as an opportunity squandered.”
• “How did we get here? First, we must understand that this is not Russia’s war. It is Mr. Putin’s. He comes from a particular generation of Russian security officials that never managed to reconcile themselves with Moscow’s Cold War defeat.”
• “There’s a distinction between revisionism and revanchism. Revisionists wish to build an international order of their liking. Revanchists are driven by the idea of payback. They do not dream of changing the world but of changing places with the victors of the last war. If Mr. Putin is succeeding today, the West can blame only itself. While Western public opinion was hypnotizing itself with the idea that Russia is in steep decline — ‘a gas station with nukes,’ some liked to call it — the Russian president began to realize his strategy.”
• “President Biden said on Thursday that in response to the invasion of Ukraine he intends to make Mr. Putin ‘a pariah on the international stage.’ That would be a fitting punishment for this violation of international law, but things may not work out that way. There is a real danger that instead it’s the West that could find itself more isolated.”
• “What does the end of peace mean to Europe? The consequences will be dire. War in Ukraine has the frightening potential to heat up frozen conflicts on the continent’s periphery, including elsewhere in the post-Soviet space and the Western Balkans. … The events of the past week will necessitate a radical rethinking of the European project. For the last 30 years, Europeans have convinced themselves that military strength was not worth the cost.. Now we know that sanctions can’t stop tanks.”

"The Dictator’s New Playbook: Why Democracy Is Losing the Fight," Moisés Naím, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2022. 

"Putin Is Making a Historic Mistake," Madeline Albright, The New York Times, 02.23.22. The author, who served as the U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, writes:

• “Even if the West is somehow able to deter Mr. Putin from all-out war -- which is far from assured right now -- it's important to remember that his competition of choice is not chess, as some assume, but rather judo. We can expect him to persist in looking for a chance to increase his leverage and strike in the future. It will be up to the United States and its friends to deny him that opportunity by sustaining forceful diplomatic pushback and increasing economic and military support for Ukraine.”
• “Although Mr. Putin will, in my experience, never admit to making a mistake, he has shown that he can be both patient and pragmatic. He also is surely conscious that the current confrontation has left him even more dependent on China; he knows that Russia cannot prosper without some ties to the West. ‘Sure, I like Chinese food. It's fun to use chopsticks,’ he told me in our first meeting. ‘But this is just trivial stuff. It's not our mentality, which is European. Russia has to be firmly part of the West.'’”
• “Mr. Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, like to claim that we now live in a multipolar world. While that is self-evident, it does not mean that the major powers have a right to chop the globe into spheres of influence as colonial empires did centuries ago. Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin. That is the message undergirding recent Western diplomacy. It defines the difference between a world governed by the rule of law and one answerable to no rules at all.”

"Insurgency in Ukraine Could Lead to Major War in Europe," Jerad I. Harper, Foreign Policy, 02.22.22. The author, an active-duty Army colonel and assistant professor at the U.S. Army War College, writes:

• “Rather than the end of conflict, many analysts … have suggested this could be just the beginning. Russia is likely to find itself stretched to hold conquered territory and be drawn into the quagmire of insurgency. It’s tempting to think that this would be costly only to Russia, a bleeding wound that deters further adventurism. But such an insurgency is instead likely to lead to even further conflict with the West, whose safe havens and clear anti-Russian support of a Ukrainian resistance would likely lead Russian President Vladimir Putin to further intervention as he struggles to maintain domestic stability in the face of mounting casualties.”
• “The key difference from previous insurgencies faced by great powers in the modern era [is that] — a Ukraine insurgency would almost certainly benefit from safe havens inside the opposing NATO alliance. That’s very different from safe havens in countries that could claim neutrality and are not likely future adversaries for the counterinsurgent power.”
• “Cross-border operations into these safe havens in such a case would not simply result in clashes with a minor power — they could instead result in major war. But while this might deter cross-border intervention for a great power whose vital or survival interests are not threatened, an ongoing Ukraine conflict would strike at the heart of Moscow’s perceived interests — both geopolitical and domestic. That might justify extreme risk if it keeps Putin in power.”
• “As time draws very short to prevent or otherwise restrain a full-blown invasion, these calculations may also provide another potential tool for the West. Putin has almost certainly done this same sort of analysis. He would not want a state-on-state conventional conflict with a united NATO whose military strength significantly outnumbers his own.”
• “Demonstrating resolve and showing Putin that a quick invasion of Ukraine is not only the path to a quagmire of insurgency but a major driver toward an even more damaging future war with NATO might offer another potential talking point to prevent or off-ramp a Ukraine conflict even after it has begun.”

"Ukraine Leads the World: The brave resistance to Putin is an inspiration and lesson to the world," The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 02.27.22. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• "Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion isn’t going according to his script, and for that the world owes a great debt to the heroic people of that besieged country of 41 million. Their resistance against fearsome odds is an inspiration and has awakened the world to the menace of the Kremlin autocrat. Ukraine deserves more support to raise the costs of war for Mr. Putin with arms, the toughest sanctions, and global ostracism."
• “The state of the battlefield is confusing as always in war, but the main news so far is the success of the Ukrainian resistance. Russia still doesn’t appear to control a major city, and on Sunday Ukrainian forces repelled an attempt to take Kharkiv, the second-largest city. This operation was supposed to be a quick Russian march to Kyiv followed by a frightened surrender and the installation of a puppet government. Most Western analysts predicted the same.”
• “Despite the good news, Ukraine’s position remains perilous. Russian forces are still besieging several cities, including Kyiv. Mr. Putin is ruthless, as he showed in a Chechnya campaign that reduced cities to rubble. He could do the same in Ukraine if he feels defeat would jeopardize his political control inside Russia.”
• “On Sunday Mr. Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert in response to what he called threatening comments from NATO leaders. But no one is threatening Russia. It’s tempting to dismiss this as more of Mr. Putin’s intimidating talk, except the Russian’s public statements have been erratic and extreme. The threats shouldn’t stop the growing support for Ukrainian resistance. The stakes of this war are very high, including for American interests. Mr. Putin is trying to restore Greater Russia and make himself the dominant European state and a global power. He wants a new world disorder.”
• “If he succeeds in Ukraine, breaking NATO will be his next ambition. The people of Ukraine are showing a too complacent West what it means to fight for freedom.”

"Moscow Musings on Brinksmanship From Stalin to Putin," Sergey Radchenko, War on the Rocks, 02.22.22. The author, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, writes:

• “Brinksmanship is an art. Soviet and Russian leaders had all practiced it, with varying degrees of success. In this sense, at least, Putin is well-versed in a tradition established by his predecessors. Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin is willing to use overwhelming brute force in pursuit of clearly imperialistic goals. But he is an incremental imperialist, taking a bite at a time, feeling for weakness in the West’s resolve, ready to back off if he encounters too much resistance. Kennan would have recognized the type.”

"Biden delivers a calibrated response to a threatened cataclysm in Ukraine," The Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 02.22.22. The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

• “Judging by Mr. Putin's delusional, sneering remarks this week, he may not be deterred by these or any economic sanctions and has already factored the costs into his coercion against Ukraine. But he may have gambled that the United States and its allies would splinter.”
• “Instead, fortunately, they have acted in unison on the threshold of war. In the next step, when and if warranted by Russian aggression, sanctions must hit the large Russian banks, and the West should cast a wide net to punish Mr. Putin's friendly oligarchs and clans.”

"This Is a Moment for America to Believe in Itself Again," Bret Stephens, The New York Times, 02.22.22. The author, an opinion columnist with the newspaper, writes:

• “The United States used to have self-belief. Our civilization, multiple generations of Americans believed, represented human progress. Our political ideals — about the rule of law, human rights, individual liberties, democratic governance — were ideals for all people, including those beyond our borders. Our literature spoke to the universal human experience; our music to the universal soul. When we fought wars, it was for grand moral purposes, not avaricious aims. Even our worst blunders, as in Vietnam, stemmed from defensible principles. Our sins were real and numerous, but they were correctable flaws, not systemic features.”
• “It goes without saying that this self-belief — like all belief — was a mixture of truth and conceit, idealism and hubris, vision and blindness. It led us to make all sorts of errors, the acute awareness of which has become the dominant strain of our intellectual life. But it also led us to our great triumphs. These victories were not the result of asking, ‘Who are we?’ They came about by asking, ‘Who but us?’ In the crisis of Ukraine, which is really a crisis of the West, we might start asking the second question a little more often than the first.”

"Putin Is Repeating the USSR’s Mistakes: The Wrong Lessons of History," James Hershberg, Foreign Affairs, 02.24.22. 

"Putin’s Invasion Could Be a Strategic Opportunity," A. Wess Mitchell, Foreign Policy, 02.23.22. The author, a principal at The Marathon Initiative and a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, writes:

• “The impending Russian invasion of Ukraine offers an unexpected opportunity for the United States to deal decisively with Russia in a way that also advances U.S. strategic objectives in Asia.”
• “There are two basic ways for the United States to exploit this window.”
  • “One would be to cut a deal that grants Putin his wish for a sphere of influence over Ukraine. The temptation to make an accommodation along these lines — for example, by inducing the Ukrainians into a posture of neutrality or forswearing NATO membership — is likely to grow once Putin begins grabbing additional territory. The logic behind such a deal would be that satiating Putin in Europe would free up U.S. resources to deter China.”
  • “The other option for the United States is to engineer a signal defeat for Russia at the hands of the Ukrainians — a defeat so significant that it forces Putin not only to back down but also to rethink his entire foreign policy.”
• “For any of to work, however, Putin first needs to suffer a strategically significant defeat in Ukraine. A serious U.S. strategy would stiffen the obstacles to his advance in Europe while being willing to remove obstacles in Asia when conditions warrant.”
• “The United States is lucky that China is probably not yet in a position to exploit the West’s predicament and confront it with a two-front crisis beyond its ability to handle. Next time, the United States may not be so lucky.”

"Putin’s rationale for Ukraine invasion gets the history wrong," Timothy Snyder, The Washington Post, 02.25.22. The author, the Levin Professor of History at Yale, writes:

• “What we do know about Valdemar's life suggests a more elemental truth about politics. Ancient Rus was unstable because there was no principle of succession. This is a problem shared by today's Russia. … Ultimately, the succession from Valdemar to Yaroslav took 17 years, and was only complete when 10 of Valdemar's other sons were dead. For the next two centuries, with some brief intervals, it was more of the same. Usually the Mongols are blamed for the collapse of Rus, but the truth is that the realm was divided long before the Mongols dealt the final blow in 1241.”
• “That history is one that might trouble Russians today. One can speak of ‘the test of Valdemar’: Does your country have a succession principle? Volodymyr Zelensky's Ukraine passes this test; Vladimir Putin's Russia does not.”
• “Back in 2009, Shevkunov spoke of the two Vladimirs and of ‘God's will’ just after he and Putin had visited the grave of the 20th-century philosopher Ivan Ilyin. A few years earlier, Putin had overseen the reinterment of Ilyin's remains. Asked in 2014 to name the historian who had most influenced him, Putin cited Ilyin.”
• “Ilyin was no historian; he was a leading fascist thinker. He wished for a savior from beyond history, who would unite the nation with violence. In the Russia he imagined, elections would have no meaning, and leadership would depend upon charisma. Ilyin believed that Ukraine did not exist and that anyone who even mentioned its name was an enemy of Russia.”
• “In speeches Monday and Thursday, as he ordered Russian troops into Ukraine, Putin echoed fascist themes from the late 1930s, claiming that a neighboring state did not exist, that another people was artificial while his own was real, that violence was needed to protect a people ‘united by blood’ against another infected by ‘viruses.’ Putin's self-appointed role as political messiah refers to his namesake of a millennium ago, but its real sources appear to lie much nearer.”

"Putin thinks he can win a new Cold War. He may be right.," Matt Bai, The Washington Post, 02.25.22. The author, a contributing columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• “If we stand now on the brink of a second Cold War, as many analysts have argued, it's because the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, calculates that his odds of winning are better this time around.”
• “It would be reckless to think our political crises at home are somehow separate from the looming conflict abroad. No nation can lead the fight against tyranny abroad if it is busy stamping out democracy and assaulting truth at home.”
• “I don't know exactly how we find our way back to the broad agreement that no matter how much we may disagree politically, our underlying convictions are unshakable. I suspect it starts with leaders — Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is a pretty good example — who are willing to denounce un-American extremism. But if we forget everything else about the existential threat that dominated many of our childhoods, we should at least remember this: Weapons alone didn't win the first Cold War. And they won't win the next one, either.”

"Mr. Putin Launches a Sequel to the Cold War," The Editorial Board, The New York Times, 02.24.22. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• “Mr. Biden and other Western leaders are justified in saying they did all they could to try to deter Mr. Putin, meeting with him many times and searching for ways to meet his demands in ways that would not clash with their obligations and principles. But this is just the beginning: In coming days and weeks as Ukrainians fight for their lives, the West will also be sorely tested, and its leaders will need the utmost flexibility and strength to persevere and to guide their publics.”
• “In his two televised addresses this week, Mr. Biden displayed the resolution and calm of a tested leader, and the Western alliance demonstrated a rare unity in the face of Russia’s attack. The West is strongest when it stands together for its shared values and against a common enemy. However difficult it may be, our pain will be nothing compared with the agonies of the Ukrainian people at the hands of an invading army.”

"Putin’s War at Home: How Conflict in Ukraine Complicates His Balancing Act," Timothy Frye, Foreign Affairs, 02.26.22. 

"Putin’s assault on Ukraine will shape a new world order," David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 02.24.22. The author, a columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• “When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, he effectively ended the post-Cold War era. A new architecture for global relations must be built, and its shape will depend on whether Putin's brutal campaign succeeds or fails.”
• “If Putin loses his battle to subjugate Ukraine, the new order will have a solid and promising foundation. If Putin wins, the new era will be very dangerous indeed.”

"Making Putin Pay: How the West Can Push Back Against Russia," David J. Kramer, John Herbst, William Taylor, Foreign Affairs, 02.26.22.

"Taking NATO’s Article V Seriously: After he swallows Ukraine, Putin will target the alliance," The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 02.25.22. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• “The alliance will survive this new threat only if its nations take their obligations seriously. Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor, on Friday condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ‘in the strongest terms’ and called it ‘a profound turning point in European history.’ Now she tells us. No one did more than Mrs. Merkel to make Europe and NATO vulnerable to Russia with her energy policies and failure to spend more on defense.”
• “European members in particular will have to rearm, and start immediately. Once Mr. Putin sets up his puppet state in Ukraine, and moves his forces to NATO’s borders, the Russian will look for the right moment to expose it as an alliance in name only. He’ll succeed unless NATO learns the lesson of Ukraine.”

"Putin’s Ukraine Slaughterhouse: It’s shameful the West did so little to help Kyiv defend itself," The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 02.25.22. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• “This is a war of imperial conquest by a stronger nation subjugating the weak. Westerners who have lived in peaceful comfort for decades should absorb the awful lesson.”

"The Crushing Loss of Hope in Ukraine," Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 02.23.22. The author, a staff writer at The New Yorker, writes:

• “Putin expects to succeed because he can overwhelm Ukraine with military force, and because he has known the threat of force to be effective against unarmed opposition.”
• “Putin’s main opponent, Alexey Navalny, is in prison; the leaders of his movement are all either behind bars or in exile. The number of independent journalists in Russia has dwindled to a handful, and many of them, too, are working from exile, addressing tiny audiences, because the state blocks access to many of their Web sites and has branded others ‘foreign agents.’”
• “Putin’s saber-rattling against Ukraine has drawn little protest — less even than the annexation of Crimea did eight years ago. On Sunday, six people were detained for staging a protest in Pushkin Square, in central Moscow. One of them held a poster that said ‘Hands Off Ukraine.’ Another was an eighty-year-old former Soviet dissident.”
• “What Putin does not imagine is the kind and scale of resistance that he would actually encounter in Ukraine. These are the people who stood to the death in Independence Square. In 2014, they took up arms to defend Ukraine against a Russian incursion. Underequipped and underprepared, these volunteers joined the war effort from all walks of life.”
• “Others organized in monumental numbers to collect equipment and supplies to support the fighters and those suffering from the occupation of the east, in an effort that lasted for several years. When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.”

“Big Tech caught in information war between west and Russia,” Hannah Murphy, Javier Espinoza and Max Seddon, Financial Times, 02.28.22. The authors, correspondents and the Moscow bureau chief for the news outlet, write:

• “The claims and counterclaims over the war in Ukraine has placed Silicon Valley companies in the middle of a geopolitical battle for influence, given their position as gatekeepers to information seen by billions of consumers.”
• “Both YouTube and Facebook have blocked access in Ukraine to RT and several other state-backed outlets, following a request from the Ukrainian government. The platforms have also paused the ability for Russian state media channels to run advertisements on their platforms or to make money from ads that run alongside the content that they themselves create. Facebook’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher told reporters on Sunday evening that the company had now received similar requests for Russian state media bans from ‘a number of different governments at this point,’ and was weighing its next steps. He declined to comment on whether the company would consider a blanket ban globally.”
• “RT is available to more than 120mn European viewers, according to its website, and has 6.3mn and 4.6mn followers on Facebook and YouTube pages respectively. Its Spanish language YouTube channel, which has nearly 6mn subscribers, is one of the most watched Spanish YouTube channels, according to researchers at data analysis company Omelas.”
• “Disinformation experts also warn that if the platforms crack down too hard, this too can play into narratives designed to further sow discord.”

Sanctions:

"They Do Business in Russia, and Now They May Pay a Price," Liz Alderman and Melissa Eddy, The New York Times, 02.26.22. The authors, correspondents for the newspaper, write:

• “As the United States and European Union apply sanctions to penalize Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, European companies are bracing for the possibility that the punishment intended for Moscow may hurt them, too.”
• “The European Union is Russia’s largest trading partner, accounting for 37 percent of Russia’s global trade in 2020. Much of that is energy: About 70 percent of Russian gas exports and half of its oil exports go to Europe. … Some European companies, especially in Germany, have had business ties to Russia for centuries.”
• “Russia’s attack on Ukraine could cause dizzying spikes in prices for energy and food and could spook investors.”
  • “Oil prices already are the highest since 2014, and they have risen as the conflict has escalated. Russia is the third-largest producer of oil, providing roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes.”
  • “Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Putin of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.”
  • “Russia is the world’s largest supplier of wheat and, together with Ukraine, accounts for nearly a quarter of total global exports. In countries like Egypt and Turkey, that flow of grain makes up more than 70 percent of wheat imports.”
  • “Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.”
  • “Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctions designed to restrict Russia’s access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.”

"U.S., Allies Roll Out Fresh Sanctions on Russia Amid Debate Over How Hard to Hit," Ian Talley and Max Colchester, The Wall Street Journal, 02.25.22. The authors, correspondents for the newspaper, write:

• “Russia and China have been trying to establish their own payment systems as an alternative to the Western-established Swift. While Moscow's version hasn't seen much take-up by banks, Mr. Prasad said, China's Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System would allow the two neighboring powers to bypass the Swift system.”
• “It also reduces the need for dollars, because Russia and China's trade can be settled in yuan directly, Mr. Prasad said.”
• “Another reason to avoid using Swift as part of its economic warfare is because there are other weapons that create similar pressure, but with far more flexibility for policy makers. The so-called blocking sanctions the U.S. and its allies are applying against Russia's largest banks cuts those institutions off from the global financial system. By selecting which banks to block, however, the West has much better control of the flow of international finance, raising or lowering the pressure as officials believe is merited.”
• “Additionally, there are legal constraints on using Swift, a Belgian-based cooperative owned and run by its member banks, as a diplomatic tool. Since Swift operates under European law, getting Russian banks disconnected would be something the bloc of 27 nations would impose, not the U.S.”

"Biden’s harsh new sanctions are aimed at crippling Putin’s defenses," Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, 02.28.22. The author, a columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• “Ever since the United States and its allies announced sanctions against Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine, the effort faced a big unknown. What if Vladimir Putin has already insulated himself from their effects — by building up reserves protecting the ruble and with repressive measures protecting himself politically — rendering any such onslaught moot?”
• “The Biden administration just announced another round of harsh sanctions targeting the Russian president that appear aimed at solving that problem. The stakes of success just got higher: If this effort can work — a big ‘if’ — it could show that multilateral action in defense of the liberal international order can produce results at a time when that order is looking rather bruised and battered.”
• “The latest sanctions, which senior administration officials outlined on a Monday call with reporters, target Russia’s central bank. In concert with other allied nations, the effort will cut off the central bank from the international system, to prevent it from using currency reserves to insulate the Russian economy from the broader sanctions onslaught.”
• “A big question is whether Putin has overestimated his ability to weather the economic havoc that the sanctions onslaught is unleashing. Putin’s confidence turns on both the existence of those reserves and on the idea that after his repressive autocratic reign, no amount of popular economic misery could cause him sufficient political discomfort to matter.”
• “It should go without saying that a potential halt to hostilities would most likely have been unthinkable without the extraordinary tenacity and bravery of the Ukrainian people. But the mere fact that such an aggressive multilateral sanctions effort has taken place is itself a surprising turn of events.”

"Russia’s Money Is Gone," Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion, 02.28.22. The author, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering finance, writes:

• “As of Friday Russia had about $630 billion of foreign currency reserves, a large cushion designed to allow it to withstand economic sanctions and prop up the value of the ruble. But “foreign currency reserves” are not an objective fact; they are mostly a series of entries on lists maintained by foreign-currency issuers and intermediaries (central banks, correspondent banks, sovereign bond issuers, brokerages).”
• “If those people cross you off the list, or put an asterisk next to your entry freezing your funds, then you can’t use those funds anymore. And so over the weekend the U.S., the European Union, the U.K., Switzerland, Singapore and other countries  announced harsh sanctions against Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
• “There are a lot of these sanctions — banning Russian flights through European airspace, limiting Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT interbank messaging system, etc. — but the most drastic might be U.S., U.K. and EU bans on any transactions with the Russian central bank. The bulk of Russia’s foreign reserves are held in the form of securities, deposits at other central banks and deposits at foreign commercial banks. A ban on transactions with Russia’s central bank means that it can’t sell those securities or access those deposits. Its foreign currency reserves turned out to be mostly useless.”

"Can Sanctions Be Smart? The Costs and Benefits of Economic Coercion," Justyna Gudzowska and John Prendergast, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2022. 

"Putin Insulated Russia’s Economy. Will Biden’s Sanctions Hold Him Back in Ukraine?" Edward Wong and Michael Crowley, The New York Times, 02.22.22. The authors, correspondents for the newspaper, write:

• “Some of the hard-line nationalist men around Mr. Putin were already on a Treasury Department sanctions list and accept that they and their families will no longer have substantial ties to the United States or Europe for the rest of their lives. … Furthermore, because of their roles in state-owned enterprises and their business ties, they are ‘the very guys who are directly benefiting from the economy becoming more insulated, more detached from the outside world,’ said Alexander Gabuev, the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow.”
• “The sanctions announced by the United States on Tuesday include penalties against three sons of senior officials close to Mr. Putin and two state-owned banks, as well as further restrictions on Russia's ability to raise revenue by issuing sovereign debt. The costs are not expected to be felt widely in Russia — the two banks are policy institutions and do not have retail operations — but American officials could eventually announce more painful steps.”
• “Some experts say that if the Biden administration follows through on the most severe options that officials have suggested are possible -- most notably severing the country's top banks, including Sberbank and VTB, from transactions with non-Russian entities -- Russia could suffer a financial panic that triggers a stock market crash and rapid inflation. The effects would most likely strike not only billionaire oligarchs but also middle-class and lower-income families. Russian enterprises would also be unable to receive payment for energy exports.”
• “Some important Russian state-owned enterprises and private companies have actually benefited from U.S. sanctions. Kremlin policies aimed at replacing Western imports with Russian and non-Western products wind up raising the profits of those businesses. And some of Mr. Putin's allies and their families have done well under the initiatives. One example is Dmitry Patrushev, the minister of agriculture, whose family has become wealthier from new agriculture industry policies, Mr. Gabuev said.”
• “Chinese leaders would probably be careful about having its large state-owned banks continue to do business overtly with any Russian banks that are under U.S. sanctions, but China has ways to keep some transactions hidden.”

"The New Russian Sanctions Playbook: Deterrence Is Out, and Economic Attrition Is In," Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, Foreign Affairs, 02.28.22.

"Dial up sanctions on Russia as it dials up its Ukraine war," The Editorial Board, The Boston Globe, 02.22.22. The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

• “The United States, its NATO allies, and the European Union have … tried diplomacy; they’ve attempted to deter Russian aggression by better arming Ukraine; they’ve exposed Russian plots to fabricate a pretext for an attack in order to stop them; and they’ve presented a united front on the kind of economic sanctions that will follow an invasion.”
• “But for Russia’s Vladimir Putin there is only the quest for territory, the rewriting of history to justify expanding his empire and reclaiming Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that rejected its former imperial master after the Cold War and moved closer to the West. Though Russia has tried to concoct various rationales for invasion, Putin made clear in a nearly unhinged address Monday that he simply couldn’t abide the independence of one of Russia’s former subjects.”
• “The question of whether this was an invasion now settled, the issue becomes one of attempting to halt an expansion. Is there still hope of deterring Putin from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, having amassed at least 150,000 troops on the border, virtually surrounding Ukraine.”
• “Because Ukraine is not a NATO member … neither the United States nor any other Western allies will actually join the country’s military defense, leaving sanctions as the last, best tool. The international consensus seems to be to hold back — for now — on the ‘mother of all sanctions’ … and to raise the ante incrementally, hoping to save Kyiv in the bargain. And that’s what President Biden did yesterday, announcing what he called the ‘first tranche’ of sanctions, aimed at Russia’s military bank, a second state bank, and several oligarchs.”
• “Let there be no mistake, lives are on the line — the lives of ordinary people who choose to look to the West for a democratic future rather than return to the days of being a satellite of Moscow. Today, barring a miracle of diplomacy or a sudden outbreak of rational thinking in the Kremlin, it is those ordinary people of Ukraine who will pay the price for those hopes and dreams.”

"The Oligarchs Start to Squeal," The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 02.27.22. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• “After a weak initial effort last week, the U.S. and Europe are getting more serious about pursuing the wealth of Vladimir Putin’s billionaire coterie. The countries said Saturday they’re creating a trans-Atlantic task force to find and seize their ill-gotten assets.”
• “The task force will ‘identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs,’ said a senior Biden administration official. ‘We’ll go after their yachts, their luxury apartments, their money, and their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the West.’”
• “That’s progress, assuming they follow through and expand the sanctions list to all the right people. Dissident Alexei Navalny’s outfit has named 35, and there are more. They can’t stop Mr. Putin’s marauding, but their squealing might get his attention. “
• “Roman Abramovich handed control of his Chelsea soccer club to a foundation, perhaps for fear it might be seized if he controls it. The pro-Putin Russian television personality, Vladimir Soloviev, complained Friday about sanctions that might block access to his property near Italy’s Lake Como. ‘Is this the Iron Curtain?’ he said.”
• “Ask your Kremlin keepers, sir. If you benefit from a regime that invades and murders free people, you shouldn’t be able to enjoy the fruits of that freedom."

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

"The Eurasian Nightmare: Chinese-Russian Convergence and the Future of American Order," Hal Brands, Foreign Affairs, 02.25.22. 

"How Would China Respond to a Russian Invasion of Ukraine?," Kris Osborn, The National Interest, 02.22.22. The author, Defense Editor for the National Interest, writes:

• “Could China feel emboldened by a successful Russian invasion of Ukraine and seize the opportunity to invade and annex Taiwan? China may see an opportunity to move if the United States is distracted as it attempts to secure sensitive border regions in Eastern Europe. Moreover, depending on the United States’ response to any Russian aggression, China may estimate that U.S. forces would not directly confront China to defend Taiwan.”
• "Pentagon officials have routinely emphasized that U.S. forces will not fight in Ukraine, and Russian forces are expected to attack at any moment. Could China gamble on the possibility that the United States might take a similar stance regarding Taiwan? This could be made more likely if U.S. Navy forces were not forward operating in close enough proximity to intervene against a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan."
• “Regardless of how the United States would respond, Morrison’s point that China might seize an opportunity to invade rings true in light of China’s massive uptick in drills, war preparations, and fighter jet patrols near Taiwan.”
• “Response capabilities would be crucial in any effort to defend Taiwan. This is because, unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is surrounded by water, which would make it difficult to quickly deploy mechanized land forces to defend Taiwan.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

“The West’s Delusion of Energy Independence,” Dennis C. Blair and Joseph F. Dunford Jr., The New York Times, 02.22.22. The authors, respectively the former director of national intelligence under the Obama administration and former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Obama and Trump administrations, write:

• “In the United States, gasoline prices have reached levels not seen since 2014. America is still bound to international oil markets that have grown increasingly nervous at the unpredictability of Russia, a key global oil producer.”
• “Are the United States and its allies adequately focused on the risks of today’s energy reality? Have they positioned themselves for a future in which they have ready access to the raw materials essential to emerging technologies? The answer is no — they are at risk of being usurped by adversaries. And perhaps the biggest threat ahead is China.”
• “The danger of the electric vehicle transition especially is that it will convert America’s current vulnerability to oil and gas markets to dependence on a supply chain for critical minerals for advanced batteries that is now controlled by and flows through China.”
• “The bottom line is that the United States now depends heavily on supply chains from nations that do not share our interests and values. Policymakers must heed this risk or risk being held hostage by these nations.”
• “The situation facing Ukraine has demonstrated how quickly the dynamics of energy dependency can be turned against Western interests. To set the United States and its allies on a path of long-term national security, America must focus on supplying the energy it needs today while rapidly building out a renewables supply chain that is beholden to no single nation.”

"The Kremlin’s Gas Wars: How Europe Can Protect Itself From Russian Blackmail," Niclas Poitiers, Simone Tagliapietra, Guntram B. Wolff and Georg Zachmann, Foreign Affairs, 02.27.22.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

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:

• No significant developments.

Defense and aerospace:

"The Man Behind Putin’s Military: How Sergey Shoigu Paved the Way for Russia’s Ukraine Assault," Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Foreign Affairs, 02.26.22. 

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:

"Should Iran Bet Its Future on Russia?" Mohammad Javad Mousavizadeh, The National Interest, 02.23.22. The author, a journalist and analyst in international affairs and foreign policy, writes:

• “After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Iran and Russia’s relationship has had its ups and downs. During the Iran-Iraq war, for example, Russia armed the Iraqis against Iran, but, over time, their relations improved, and, today, the two are strategically aligned in opposition to the United States.”
• “Presently, most Iranian officials think that the West block is diminishing in power, and that the East is rising in influence. Thus, despite previously adhering to its mantra of ‘Neither the East nor the West’ that was born from its 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic today is increasingly seeking economic, political, and military collaborations with the major eastern powers. Iran has always depended on Russia and China to circumvent U.S. sanctions, and the three countries have agreed to use their national currencies rather than the dollar in trilateral trade.”
• “Iranian officials see Russia as one of their closest allies against U.S. pressures. In recent years, Russia has used its veto powers to protect Iran at the UN Security Council, including over its missile program and the illegal use of Iranian-made missiles by the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. Russia has also cooperated with Iran in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s beleaguered government.”
• “Contrarily, some Iranians view Russians pessimistically. … Although Russia’s overly negative image relates more to tsarist and then Soviet expansionist policies, pessimism towards Russia is an issue that transcends history.”
• “While the Iranian government’s opponents and reformists see Russia as an enemy, Iranian officials believe that Moscow is sympathetic to Iran. Iran’s over-dependence on Russia is dangerous for Tehran, but the Islamic Republic needs both Russia and China to help balance its poor relations with the United States. Both are seizing this opportunity to gain influence while benefitting from sanctions against Tehran. Based on experience, Russia and China will not support Iran at the expense of their interests with the United States. Thus, it may be time for Iranian officials to ask how much they have gained in return for their concessions to Russia.”

Ukraine:

"Putin’s denial of Ukrainian statehood carries dark historical echoes," Timothy Snyder, Financial Times, 02.23.22. The author, Levin Professor of History at Yale University, writes:

• “Putin thinks that everyone who speaks Russian must be a Russian, and needs his protection. Pretty much everyone in Ukraine does speak Russian.”
• “There is a deeper issue here. Whatever language we speak, it is what we say that matters. Our identity is not to be decided by distant tyrants, whatever language they might speak.”
• “Nations are built by people who take risks now in the name of a better future for the people they choose.”
• “History cannot stop a war. But it can help us, at least, to understand how one begins, which is with arrogance and lies.”

"Putin’s distortion of Ukraine’s history lays ground for further operations," Tony Barber, Financial Times, 02.22.22. The author, the newspaper's Europe Editor, writes:

• “If, as Putin suggests, modern Ukrainians are unworthy of a state of their own, one may ask why more than 90 percent of them voted for independence in a referendum of December 1991. Every province of Ukraine backed independence, including Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014. Despite having an ethnic Russian majority population, Crimea voted in 1991 by 54 percent in favor of Ukrainian independence.”
• “Putin’s speech amounted to a flat denial of Ukraine’s identity and right to sovereignty. The question now is whether he plans more steps to dismantle the Ukrainian state.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.