Russia Analytical Report, July 11-18, 2022
This Week's Highlights
- Differences in Western countries’ military aid to Kyiv suggest divergent war aims: New data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy show that the U.S. has delivered €2.4 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine, compared to Germany’s €290 million and France’s €160 million. Taken as a whole, the West is providing Ukraine “just enough” weaponry “to survive, not enough to regain territory,” German foreign-policy analyst Ulrich Speck tells The New York Times. “The Kiel numbers are quite shocking, to be honest,” Guntram Wolff of the German Council on Foreign Relations told the paper. “On the one hand, it’s a lot of money, but it’s also quite small given what’s at stake.”
- Fiona Hill: Part of Putin’s team believes he should quit in 2024. The U.S. National Security Council’s former senior director for Europe and Russia believes Vladimir Putin has reason to worry about reelection in 2024, and public discontent on socioeconomic issues is but one reason. “There are people around Putin who believe he’s not justified in having this next set of two terms,” Hill told Foreign Policy, referring to 2024-2030 and 2030-2036. She did not say who these people might be. But Russian political consultant Abbas Gallyamov believes Putin has gone from being a stabilizing force for the political system “to a powerful destabilizing force,” making it “much easier to elect a successor in 2024 than to push Putin through for another term.” One person close to Putin who might be vying for his job, according to veteran Russia journalist Catherine Belton, is “hard-drinking, hard-talking silovik” Nikolai Patrushev.
- Andrei Kolesnikov: Kremlin imposes new choice on Russians—support war or get drafted. The new social contract the Kremlin is trying to impose on ordinary Russians amid the Ukraine war would have them support the “special operation as a campaign to protect Russian sovereignty in exchange for which Putin is not declaring a general military mobilization,” Kolesnikov writes in Foreign Affairs. “Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may have been an act of pure folly, but in terms of holding on to power, boosting his popularity and making him appear irreplaceable, it has turned out, at least for now, to have been the right decision for him personally,” according to this senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- Is Russia fascist now? Marlene Laruelle’s answer is “no, not yet.” As the George Washington University professor argues in her article for The Washington Quarterly, Russia is “still missing” three components of fascism: (1) the mobilization push; (2) a regenerative call, with some utopian futuristic plan to remake society from scratch; and (3) a genuine grassroots fascist dynamism.
- Ukraine war’s impact on global order will be like WWIII, retired Russian diplomat says. Alexander Kramarenko claims “what is happening in Ukraine [should be viewed] as a new Great Patriotic War, requiring sacrifices and the mobilization of all resources.” But “in terms of consequences for the world order,” it makes sense to see the Ukraine conflict as a Third World War, the retired ambassador argues, with the potential to escalate as far as the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.
- Full force of Western sanctions yet to be felt in Russia: Five Russian experts writing in The Bell consider which sanctions have worked, which haven’t and which will prove more dangerous for Russia than they may seem. Ultimately, the authors conclude that even though the sanctions have hardly crippled Russia’s economy as of now, their medium- and long-term effects may prove more damaging. And the sanctions that will hit the hardest are those on high-tech imports.
- Washington’s plan to cap Russian oil prices won’t work, former senior official says: “To significantly reduce Russian oil revenue, Western leaders have only two sets of policy options: to boost Western oil supply and/or to decrease Western oil demand. An oil price cap does neither,” according to Daniel Ahn, former chief economist at the State Department. The U.S. and its allies should opt for an import tariff instead, Ahn writes for Russia Matters. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called her recent discussions of the price cap with foreign counterparts “productive” and “encouraging.”
I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
Nuclear security and safety:
- No significant developments.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
- “If Western countries are serious about their international nuclear nonproliferation commitments, they must hold Russia and China accountable for failing to uphold theirs. Russia and China’s abrogation of responsibility should be met with secondary sanctions against their domestic institutions if they turn a blind eye to North Korea’s sanctions-evading and revenue-generating activities.”
- “As a start, the United States should impose secondary sanctions against the Chinese and Russian regional banks and state-owned enterprises that continue to support North Korea. There is precedent for such actions. In 2012, for example, the United States imposed secondary sanctions on China’s Bank of Kunlun for its role in providing financial services to Iran. The bank was ultimately cordoned off from the international financial system.”
- “The stark reality is that the lifeline China and Russia provide to North Korea sustains the country’s nuclear ambitions and prevents any peaceful resolution of the ongoing crisis sparked by its nuclear program.”
Iran and its nuclear program:
- No significant developments.
Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
- “We identify four types of harm and damage that the invasion has wrought on Ukrainian farms.
- “The first type is theft.”
- “The second type of damage was brought about by the disruption of spring sowing and the current growing season.”
- “A third type of damage inflicted by Russian troops concerns various types of agricultural infrastructure. This includes damage to agricultural land due to bombing and mines, as well as the destruction of machinery, irrigation systems and storage and transport infrastructure, among other damage.”
- “A fourth type of damage is related to Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.”
- “The strategic targeting of agricultural assets confirms that Russia under Putin is still very
much interested in the future of Ukrainian agriculture. Harming Ukrainian farms and imperiling Ukraine’s agricultural future not only yields increased returns on Russian grain, it is already giving the country significant leverage vis-à-vis trade partners dependent on Eurasian grain.”
- “High-level policy declarations that the European Union (EU) will ‘stand up with Ukraine for as long as it takes and will not rest until Kyiv prevails’ must be backed by action, which means quickly providing around $60 billion—excluding military and security assistance—by the end of 2022. Budget support has started trickling through, but the pace is too slow. Out of €12.3 billion committed by the EU, only €2 billion has been disbursed.”
- “The rapid provision of finance for rebuilding by the West is as urgent for a Ukrainian victory as supplies of military materiel. The post-war rebuilding process will be a new chapter in the story of Ukraine’s recovery and so a grand vision and long-term plan are both essential. But financial intervention now is required to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat and cushion the population from the shocks of war.”
- “The war in Ukraine has created one of the biggest refugee crises since World War II, with about 7 million people fleeing the country. While some have since returned, and some have settled elsewhere in Europe, there are still many in need of a permanent haven. Unfortunately, the American refugee system is proving to be of comparatively little help.”
- “Ukrainians wishing to enter must first get a U.S.-citizen sponsor, who has to prove that they can financially support the new arrival for two years; they must also pass certain health and security checks. The Ukrainians can seek permission to work but may stay for only two years. U.S. sponsors have filed applications on behalf of some 60,000 Ukrainians under this policy. The administration has pledged to help at least 100,000 Ukrainians relocate overall.”
- “The program is a decent start, but it could be improved by adapting a similar, better-run Canadian program. ... The Canadian program is superior to America's Uniting for Ukraine in part because it offers refugees a permanent solution.”
- “Private refugee resettlement would allow the United States to augment its damaged refugee system, thereby helping many more people, saving taxpayer money and advancing U.S. strategic and economic interests. The United States should learn from Canada's example—and improve on it.”
Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
“The Ukraine War Is About to Enter a Dangerous New Phase,” NYT’s Thomas L. Friedman, NYT, 07.12.22.
- “This war has already contributed to a huge spike in natural gas, gasoline and food prices in Europe—and if it drags into the winter, many families in the European Union may have to choose between heating and eating. As a result, I think the war’s new phase is what I call Vladimir Putin’s ‘winter strategy’ versus NATO’s ‘summer strategy.’”
- “It is obvious that Putin is ready to keep plowing forward in Ukraine, in the hopes that the soaring inflation in energy and food prices in Europe will eventually fracture the NATO alliance. ... It is not a crazy strategy.”
- “Meanwhile, NATO, U.S. and Ukrainian officials are surely saying to themselves: ‘Yes, winter is our enemy. But the summer and autumn can be our friend—IF we can inflict some real hurt on Putin’s tired army now, so, at a minimum, he will accept a cease-fire.’ This, too, is not a crazy strategy.”
- “U.S. officials tell me that Putin has nowhere near enough troops right now to try to break out of eastern Ukraine and seize the port of Odesa in order to leave Ukraine landlocked and strangle its economy.”
- “There is only one thing that I am certain of: This war in Ukraine will not end—really end—as long as Putin is in power in Moscow. That is not a call to overthrow him. That’s for Russians to decide. It’s simply an observation that this has always been Putin’s war. He personally conceived it, planned it, directed it and justified it. It is impossible for him to imagine Russia as a great power without Ukraine. So, while it may be possible to force Putin into a cease-fire, I doubt it will be more than temporary.”
- “Taken as a whole, the West is providing Ukraine ‘just enough’ weaponry ‘to survive, not enough to regain territory,’ said Ulrich Speck, a German foreign-policy analyst. The idea seems to be that Russia should not win, but also not lose. ‘What countries send and how slowly they send it tells us a lot about the war aims of Western countries,’ he added.”
- “New data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy … show that the major shortfall between promises and deliveries of weapons comes from the countries of Western Europe, especially Germany.”
- “The figures are current through July 1 and … show the United States has announced considerably more military aid—6.37 billion euros—than has been delivered so far. But even so, the amount Washington has delivered—2.4 billion euros—is more than any other country.”
- “By contrast, France ... promised and delivered only 160 million euros’ worth of equipment ... [while] Germany has delivered only 290 million euros of equipment while promising 620 million. It lags even Poland, which has promised and delivered 1.8 billion euros; and certainly Britain, which has delivered 1 billion euros’ worth of its promised 1.12 billion. … European support levels are below 0.2 or 0.3 percent of gross domestic product.”
- “The numbers underscore that Germany and France, in particular, have a different strategic aim than Washington, believing that a nuclear-armed Russia is too big and dangerous to be defeated in any significant way, and that its president … should not be cornered.”
- “Those countries closest to the battle have emptied their stocks to give to Ukraine, Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said, ‘and we, in Germany and France, who can do more, are reluctant to do so.’”
Punitive measures related to Ukraine and their impact globally:
- “At last month’s G-7 summit, President Joe Biden formally presented the idea of a price cap on Western purchases of Russian oil, something his counterparts agreed to consider. … Sadly, this price cap mechanism ignores the working realities of global oil markets and is likely doomed to futility. To significantly reduce Russian oil revenue, Western leaders have only two sets of policy options: to boost Western oil supply and/or to decrease Western oil demand. An oil price cap does neither. Worse still, it will not be difficult to bypass: Russian oil would likely continue being rerouted to Asia and could just as easily keep going to Europe and North America blended with other feedstock. Thus, Western leaders would be well-advised to shift their priorities to alternatives that actually work, such as an import tariff.”
- “At a stroke, this will drive a wedge between the after-tax price of oil in Western markets and the price received by Russian producers, incentivizing U.S. and European producers not subject to the tax to increase their supply while Russian suppliers would not see any benefit. It will also cause downward pressure on Western demand for oil in the medium term, by spurring more energy efficiency and investments in alternative energy.”
- “Of course, the one thing a tariff does not do is reduce immediate oil prices and relieve inflationary pressure in the West. Unfortunately, no one (except maybe Saudi Arabia, depending on its spare capacity) can deliver such an outcome and begging non-Western producers to produce more is not a geopolitically sound energy strategy. The iron laws of the market dictate that there's no free lunch and the United States (with its intolerance for higher hydrocarbon taxes) and particularly the European Union (with its blithe over-dependence on Russian hydrocarbons) are now paying the price for a generation of poor energy policy. We should not add to this disappointing legacy with a pointless price cap.”
In their recent analysis for The Bell, experts discuss which Western sanctions work and which don’t and how they impact the Russian economy. Here are the main takeaways:
- “Although sanctions rarely alter political decisions of a sanctioned country or lead to regime change, it is incorrect to assume that long-term sanctions carry a limited impact on the Russian economy. Despite the Russian Central Bank’s effort to sustain the illusion of normalcy by mitigating the first wave of an economic crisis, problems within an economic system are already becoming more apparent.”
- “Already, the rate of GDP contraction exceeds that of the 2015 crisis and the decrease in output of basic economic activities is more than 7% compared to the height of December 2021. Meanwhile, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Economic development estimate a decline of the economy by 13-15% in the fourth quarter of 2022.”
- “At the same time, there are three main arguments for why sanctions on Russia are not yet successful: surplus of profits despite the oil and gas embargo, Russia’s turn to the East, namely India and China that help mitigate the losses from the European market, and economic harm to Europe demonstrated by sped up inflation. This means that under the conditions of a globalized economy, sanctions cause a “spillover” of damage onto other countries and the global economy in general.”
- “Moreover, polling shows that the Russian population as well as the business community display a rather optimistic attitude regarding their economic well being. Because sanctions are perceived as external aggression and lead to further consolidation of authoritarian regimes, this phenomenon can be partially explained as the rally around the flag effect.”
- “Finally, while sanctions have proven themselves to be ineffective in the short-term, their medium- and long-term effect will become evident in the future. Specifically, trade sanctions should be evaluated several months after their implementation and even though sanctions on high-tech imports have not manifested themselves yet, they will be hardest felt.”
- “The oil-price cap is intended to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin's ‘war on the U.S. economy,’ in Yellen's words. But the plan risks distracting the pro-Ukraine coalition from the hard work of squeezing Russia, in favor of chasing domestic U.S. priorities—thus endangering Washington's effort to defeat Moscow's unprovoked aggression in Ukraine. Treasury's idea is yet another sign it is institutionally incapable of robustly enforcing economic sanctions.”
- “The proposal, academic and untried, faces multiple practical obstacles and uncertainties. Widespread sanctions violations by Russian maritime cargoes already exist, with no reason to think the oil-price cap is more enforceable.”
- “President Biden's national security team should focus single-mindedly on repelling Russia's invasion, not pretending that Putin is causing inflation. … Reducing Moscow's economic capacity most effectively means pressuring exports downward to as close to zero as possible, at which point any purchase price is irrelevant.”
- “As for higher energy prices that would result from keeping Russian oil off the market, Biden should more robustly and urgently encourage production domestically and by our allies.”
- “China is intently watching how Western sanctions against Russia play out. Weakness, confusion and short attention spans will only strengthen Beijing's view that the West lacks the resolve to deter or effectively oppose military aggression. Treasury's price-cap idea is Exhibit A.”
Ukraine-related negotiations:
- No significant developments.
Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
- “[Putin] is fearful of a repetition [in 2024] of what happened when he last returned to the presidency in 2011 and 2012, where we had protests in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major [Russian] cities.”
- “Russia is often ripe for protests, particularly on socioeconomic issues. Putin’s going to worry about that as we get toward 2024 for another reason: There are people around Putin who believe he’s not justified in having this next set of two terms. He was supposed to end his term in 2024. He extended his ability to run again for another 12 years until 2036, which will put him into his 80s. But the more weakened he is [and] the less legitimate he appears, the less it appears that he’s popular and the more incentive there is for others to try to maneuver around him to push on succession. Putin wants to get this conflict over with. He wants to seem legitimate.”
- “The risk is that he declares an operational pause or a truce at the point to try to consolidate those gains, and it is really nothing more than a truce to punctuate what’s really an ongoing conflict.”
- “I think it’s evident to Russians behind the scenes that with all of their ties to Europe being cut, they’re left with the rest of the world—and that increases their dependency on China.”
- “Putin is pretty much betting that the [U.S.] midterm elections will undermine Biden and that by 2024, the United States will be in a great big mess ... it’s not just Jan. 6. It’s this idea that the United States is out of control. Putin feeds on this. When you see Putin trying to exploit all of these hot-button issues, part of it is obviously to put us against each other, but it’s also to make the United States look less of a leader and diminished in an international context.”
“Time to think about a successor,” Abbas Gallyamov, Russia Post, 07.18.22. (Clues from Russian Views)
- “The Russian elites are politically rather irresponsible. They’re accustomed to believing that maintaining the stability of the regime is not their responsibility but Putin’s, and that their job is just to carry out his orders. And not to forget about themselves. Now the situation has changed. Putin has gone from being a stabilizing to a powerful destabilizing force for the system. But it's not just the crazy decisions he’s making—it’s also about public sentiment. There are already many reasons to believe that it’ll be much easier to elect a successor in 2024 than to push Putin through for another term. The latter could turn into a crash test for the system that it can't handle.”
- “Overall, the Russian elites have every reason to believe that in 2024 the country will vote against Putin. Moreover, until recently there had been no serious, widespread rejection of the foundations of the regime’s ideology. True, support has very much been eroding, but if the regime stopped angering people, then the majority would very probably vote for a new bearer of these ideas. At least for now.”
- “The sooner the elites realize this, the sooner they tell Putin that resignation is inevitable, the sooner they launch a successor project, the sooner they announce ‘Putinism without Putin,’ the better their chances for survival. Of course, they won’t be able to fully preserve their status and privileges—they’ll have to be shared with representatives of new segments of the population that had previously been un- or underrepresented in the system—but at least they might not end their days as doormen in European hotels, as happened to their predecessors after the 1917 revolution.”
“How Putin Learned to Hold Deadly Grudges,” William Taubman of Amherst College, WP, 07.17.22.
- “Putin’s personal history reveals that his decision to go to war is entirely in character—and that he is very likely to continue it indefinitely ... [T]he roots of Putin’s recklessness go back to a tendency he has shown since childhood to lash out when he has felt wronged or betrayed. Later passages of his life are more than stages he has lived through; they are [the following] layers that have built on one another, turning a boy who brawled his way through adolescence into a man who has directed his wrath against a U.S.-led West that he once tried and failed to get along with and that he now blames for betraying him.
- Early Life—The Brawler (1952-1975)
- KGB—Brawling Institutionalized (1975-1989)
- Adapting to Post-Communism (1990-2001)
- Disenchantment (2002-2007)
- Interregnum (2008-2012)
- Putin’s Gorge Rises; the U.S. Seems Irresolute (2012-2016)
- Pausing for Trump (2016-2020)
- Going to War (2021-2022)”
- “How will the Russia-Ukraine war end—if it ever does?”
- “One scenario assumes continuing Russian setbacks so severe as to lead Putin to be overthrown or to concede defeat before he can be ousted. … A second scenario imagines Russia defeating Ukraine. … A third scenario is the kind of compromise that … Kissinger has suggested and that Western European leaders … seem to favor—that is, a settlement based on the status quo ante with a return to front lines existing on Feb. 23. … A fourth scenario is that the war continues indefinitely.”
- “In a fifth scenario, Putin opts to break a stalemate, or ward off a seeming defeat, by going nuclear. In the past, few observers would have expected him to do so. But then again few (including this writer) expected him to invade Ukraine … The reason is that his decision to launch such a war seemed so out of character. But if, as I have argued, it was in fact so squarely in character, then who is to say that going nuclear would not be?”
- “Bloodying the point of attack, sabotaging supply lines, playing on Russia’s manpower shortages and raising the threat of an undesired national mobilisation—all this serves the purpose of introducing doubts in the minds of Putin and his commanders. Only then might there be the possibility of a ‘pause’ in the fighting that would allow Ukraine’s forces to regroup, the Ukrainian economy to recover and exports to resume from its currently blockaded ports. At this point, the door to diplomacy could open, with both Russia and Ukraine coming to the negotiating table with western sanctions still in force.”
- “Or so the thinking goes. The problem with the ‘pause’ scenario is that it may overestimate Putin’s reasonableness and underestimate Ukraine’s determination to fight to the last man and woman. Those who have spoken to Putin since the war began report a leader brimming with grievances against the west, but confident in his leverage over Europe in the coming energy crunch.”
- “On Ukraine, Biden’s team did a good job orchestrating the trans-Atlantic response to Russia’s invasion, beginning with the adroit and politically effective use of intelligence in the run-up to the war. … But Americans shouldn’t lose sight of the United States’ mishandling of the larger situation, a series of mistakes that began under former U.S. President Bill Clinton and continued under every subsequent leader. It’s become toxically controversial to raise this issue ... but it is hard not to see Putin’s invasion as a classic preventive war: an illegal invasion undertaken to derail the accelerating U.S. effort to arm Ukraine and bring it into the Western orbit.”
- “Ukraine’s heroic resistance and billions of dollars of Western military assistance have not prevented Russia from seizing a considerable portion of Ukrainian territory. Sanctions will weaken Russia over time but probably won’t dislodge Putin from the Kremlin or convince him to withdraw. The result will not be a decisive Western triumph but a protracted stalemate.”
- “If the worldview on which your strategy is based is flawed—for example, if you ignore the tendency for states to balance threats, believe that economic interdependence as well as robust institutions make conflict impossible, or ignore the power of nationalism—your priorities will be out of whack and any initiatives you do take are likely to backfire.”
- “Is there any reason for hope? Certainly. Americans may take some comfort in the fact that some of their principal adversaries are making big mistakes too: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t working out as he had hoped ... but counting on Moscow or Beijing to make more mistakes than Washington is hardly a promising long-term approach.”
China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
- “China’s efforts to position itself as a neutral broker and potential mediator in the conflict fell flat. ... China could not convincingly present itself as not aligned with Russia.’
- “Although Beijing seems to have rebuffed U.S.-reported Russian requests for material and military assistance, China’s less-than-fully-cooperative stance suggested that Beijing might encourage or allow lower-visibility back- filling practices to emerge gradually and to erode sanctions.”
- “China’s position provided political cover for India (which, like China, bought Russian oil at discounted prices), Brazil and others in the Global South that were reluctant to join the multilateral efforts.”
- “Beijing’s embrace and propagation of Russia’s claims and arguments may play effectively with right-wing populist elements in democracies and semi-democracies in the West and beyond—weakening the hands of some governments that have been moving toward tougher China policies. But such developments are relatively modest consolation for Beijing amid the Ukraine-enhanced deterioration of its relations with so many major powers and key economic partners.”
“Russia’s future: a giant Iran of Eurasia,” Gideon Rachman interviews Alexander Gabuev, FT, 07.14.22. Gabuev tells Rachman:
- “I don’t see any meaningful cracks that will lead to regime’s collapse. Bottom-up pressure, like the largest demonstration in Moscow, was about 1,000 people in a city of 17 million. Where are the defectors? In Belarus in 2021, we had ambassadors resigning. We had a lot of societal pressure. Also from the very top, we have now Alexei Kudrin, who left the country without criticising the war. We have banker Oleg Tinkov who was critical about the war and got his bank taken away from him by a fraction of the price, and we have a kind of council-level Russian diplomat in Geneva stepping down. There are a lot of people I know who are quietly leaving the ranks and seeking jobs elsewhere, but that’s about it. So Russia is transitioning from the economy and country it has been to a giant Iran of Eurasia. That transition will be bumpy, but it will not create fissures that are sufficient for regime change.”
Missile defense:
- No significant developments.
Nuclear arms control:
- “Will the continuing war in Ukraine and resulting toxic relations between Russia and NATO push nuclear arms control into the dustbin of history? Hopefully, the war in Ukraine will soon end in a negotiated peace settlement, and something resembling normal U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations will return.”
- “One of the most critical issues requiring imminent future discussion and resolution is the challenge of nuclear arms control. Even before Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Russian–American nuclear arms control dialogue had reached a state of paralysis. But any post-war attempt to revive arms control will face four major challenges:
- the rise of China as a major nuclear power;
- new technology, including hypersonic missiles and drone swarms, that stresses strategic stability;
- U.S. military budgetary constraints;
- and the real possibility of increased nuclear proliferation.”
- “Progress in nuclear arms control between the Russians and the Americans is a necessary condition for other steps to reduce the risks of future nuclear war.”
- “Arms control is not optional. ... Resumption of Russia–American nuclear arms control talks is a necessary condition for maintaining peace in Europe and globally, for containing the nuclear arms race, and for discouraging additional nuclear weapons spread. It is also imperative, however daunting the process, that China be included as soon as favorable political winds permit.”
Counterterrorism:
- No significant developments.
Conflict in Syria:
- No significant developments.
Cyber security:
- “The era of the global internet is over. … U.S. policies promoting an open, global internet have failed, and Washington will be unable to stop or reverse the trend toward fragmentation. … Data is a source of geopolitical power and competition and is seen as central to economic and national security.”
- “The United States has taken itself out of the game on digital trade, and the continued failure to adopt comprehensive privacy and data protection rules at home undercuts Washington’s ability to lead abroad. … Increased digitization increases vulnerability, given that nearly every aspect of business and statecraft is exposed to disruption, theft or manipulation.”
- “Most cyberattacks that violate sovereignty remain below the threshold for the use of force or armed attack. These breaches are generally used for espionage, political advantage and international statecraft, with the most damaging attacks undermining trust and confidence in social, political and economic institutions.”
- “Cybercrime is a national security risk, and ransomware attacks on hospitals, schools, businesses, and local governments should be seen as such. … The United States can no longer treat cyber and information operations as two separate domains. … Artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies will increase strategic instability.”
- “The United States has failed to impose sufficient costs on attackers. … Norms are more useful in binding friends together than in constraining adversaries. … Indictments and sanctions have been ineffective in stopping state-backed hackers.”
Energy exports from CIS:
- “A gas crisis in the EU’s economic powerhouse will cause jitters across the continent ... Russia has fully or partially cut off gas supplies to almost a dozen EU countries. However, there is no European gas-sharing arrangement, only a handful of hastily concluded bilateral ‘solidarity’ agreements. Countries that receive large quantities of non-Russian gas—France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium—have not joined. What is needed now is an EU-wide energy security strategy. Putin is using the threat of a gas cut-off to break Germany’s societal resilience and political will. But he means all of Europe.”
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:
- “There are opponents of the war among close friends and acquaintances of Vladimir Putin … But none of them has tried to actively oppose the military invasion of Ukraine … It is not only that there are few liberals in the immediate presidential circle … It is that the liberals closest to Putin have long compromised themselves.”
- “Family businesses, foreign offshore companies, trusts and relatives residing comfortably outside Russia—all that was ‘business as usual’ for them … such baggage has rendered any serious disagreement with the current presidential course meaningless and dangerous … with the current degree of paranoia, the president most likely will not believe in the sincerity of the anti-war arguments even of his closest associates and may consider them ‘national traitors.’”
- “Liberals from Putin's inner circle have always raised suspicion and dislike among the competing siloviki faction. The mutual antipathy had to do with divergent views on business, economics, politics and … conflicting business-interests.”
- “[The Chairman of the Accounts Chamber] Alexei Kudrin is the only one who dared to hint to the president that the decision to invade Ukraine was wrong. But he did so only after the start of the war and with great caution, focusing on the fact that the Russian economy could slide into the early 1990s. No response from the president followed. … [The Head of Sberbank] German Gref denied the possibility of a military invasion of Ukraine until the last minute, calling it a PR war instead. After the invasion happened, he has not uttered a single word.”
- “[The Former Presidential Envoy] Anatoly Chubais … resigned and left the country without making any vocal statements … [he] is now being checked by the security services on possible fraud in the Rosnano state corporation, which he ceased to lead more than a year ago.”
“The man who has Putin's ear — and may want his job,” WP’s Catherine Belton, WP, 07.13.22.
- “[The] lengthy interviews [of Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful Security Council secretary and close Putin ally]—and his recent trips—demonstrate that he ‘is the one allowed to explain and clarify Putin's thoughts,’ said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ‘Not everyone is allowed to do this. Not everyone knows this.’ Even when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks, it is not clear whether he speaks for Putin. ‘Diplomats often try to guess. They don't know what Putin wants, but Patrushev does,’ Kolesnikov said.”
- “According to a person once close to both men, Patrushev is a hard-drinking, hard-talking ‘silovik’ … who forged his view of the world in the Cold War and has changed little since the fall of the Soviet Union, especially in his hostility to the United States. ‘He is super Soviet KGB,’ the person said. ‘He understands everything as if the Soviet Union still existed, and he sees himself in these terms.’”
- “Even after the war’s shocking effects, the Russian regime is best described as personalistic, patrimonial, authoritarian, promoting revisionist positions on the international scene and possessing an illiberal and imperialist ideology. One can point to fascist-like aesthetics (the Z-sign), some fascist-like rhetoric (eliminationist language around Ukrainian ‘de-Nazification’ and an East-Slavic forced unification), and some religious sacralization. ... But applying the ‘fascism’ label to the entirety of Russian society, or even just the state, conveniently overlooks a more complex and differentiated picture.”
- “We are still missing three key components of fascism: (1) the mobilization push—we have no totalitarian party or youth organization aiming at full mobilization of the citizenry, and even a denial of military mobilization/conscription (2) a regenerative call, with some utopian futuristic plan to remake society from scratch and (3) a genuine grassroots fascist dynamism.”
- “It is easy to prove that Pushkin was an imperialist or Wagner was an antisemite, but it doesn’t explain their art, or explain this war and the Holocaust. Unlike a military command, national culture is a plurality of voices with all their contradictions. Even one and the same voice, e.g. Pushkin’s, constantly contradicted itself. Dozens of books and hundreds of dissertations have been written about these contradictions. But they are all irrelevant for understanding the current war.”
- “Trying to explain the inexplicable, critics are writing now about Russian imperial culture as the root of the current war. Did Russian poets share and shape the colonialist, aggressive, military worldview? And could reading these verses in one's youth lead to waging the all-out war in Ukraine? I respond yes to the former and no to the latter. Romantic poets such as Pushkin and Lermontov wrote imperialist classics that celebrated the glory of Russian troops ... But it should also be noted that the imperial government exiled both men to serve in these Russian colonies because they took part in protests in St. Petersburg, the capital. Both wrote anti-imperial verses and prose, passionate and sometimes violent, which severely criticized the Russian monarchy and its military accomplishments.”
- “It is not Russian poetry that shaped the dictator, his officials and his soldiers; I bet that they saw the same Hollywood films as you did. It is their greed, arrogance and coward[ice].”
- “Most of Russia’s independent media outlets have moved abroad or shut down, and access to social media has been severely restricted. Meanwhile, a recent poll found that nearly half of Russians have never heard of VPN clients, which would permit circumventing internet restrictions; even among 18- to 24-year-olds, less than a quarter regularly use them. Consequently, engaging in any critical reflection on the war in Ukraine—and past wars—requires a significant effort from Russians. The long-term implications of this are dire.”
- “First, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine has inculcated a siege mentality in society, fostering the perception that Russia is under perpetual attack and has always been on the right side of history.”
- “Second, the threat of domestic repression has increased markedly in recent months.”
- “Third, fear of the state is once again beginning to grip Russians, as indicated by the growing willingness to inform on those deemed disloyal.”
- “Russia has not yet regressed into a political condition comparable to Stalinism, but today it is closer to it than at any other time since the USSR’s dissolution. Linking the Great Patriotic War to the conflict in Ukraine allows the Kremlin to tap into a reservoir of historical imagery that remains profoundly meaningful to Russians.”
- “The securitization of history, however, is a dangerous gambit. When the destruction that Moscow has wreaked on Ukraine is finally acknowledged, the moral and practical repercussions will affect Russia for generations to come.”
- “The Russian autocrat is both unique and banal.”
- “He is unique in that he established a regime in the 21st century that is more typical of the mid-20th century. In the post-heroic age, which knows no borders for the movement of people, capital and ideas, he staged a theater of the ‘heroic’ defense of a sovereignty that no one had ever attempted to destroy. And he orchestrated the triumph of the practical application of imperialism in an era when no empire exists.”
- “At the same time, he is as banal as the dictators and autocrats of the 20th century—they are all alike in many ways. They all fostered the cult of the leader, relied on the indifference and obedience of the masses, deified the state, maintained a cult of strength, militarism and heroic death, confused themselves with the state, built an autarkic economic model, often surviving by extracting rents from resource dependence. They also refused on principle to allow a rotation of power, fought against ‘national traitors,’ imprisoned their opponents, imposed censorship and sought to rule forever.”
Defense and aerospace:
- See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.
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:
“Post-American world, post-Ukrainian geopolitics. to Russian foreign policy narrative,” by ambassador Alexander Kramarenko, International Affairs/RIAC, 07.18.22. (Clues from Russian Views)
- “What could be our [Putin’s Russia’s] current foreign policy narrative until everything falls into place in the coming and already emerging world order?”
- “[The] West has made a completely conscious choice in favor of double expansion—NATO and the European Union … in the event of the resurgence of a strong Russia and its restoration of its status as a global power. … Historically, the current crisis completes the cycle of containment of Russia.”
- “The conflict between Russia and the West has a cultural and civilizational dimension, dating back to the split of the Universal Church in 1054, the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 and its fall in 1453 ... The conflict between the West and Russia throughout its entire length … cannot have a positive outcome other than peaceful coexistence, tested during the Cold War.”
- “The most important point is that it is liberalism ... and not traditional conservatism, that underlies totalitarianism, including fascism and Nazism. … Washington's anti-Russian course, which resulted in its Ukrainian project and the current aggravation, cannot be understood outside the context of the internal state of modern America.”
- “In the post-war period, an aggressive, essentially imperial foreign policy philosophy and tradition with its own ‘grand strategies’ emerged in the United States.”
- “History shows that it was in the confrontation with Western aggression … that the difference between our identity and the Western one was most fully manifested. Therefore, it is logical to consider what is happening in Ukraine as a new Great Patriotic War, requiring sacrifices and the mobilization of all resources. … At the same time, in terms of the consequences for the world order, we can talk about the Third World War, played out by our efforts in a limited space and mainly in a hybrid mode, although with the prospect of escalation up to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.”
“Staging as a method of Western politics,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Izvestiya, 07.18.22. (Clues from Russian Views)
- “It's time to play honestly, not according to cheating rules, but on the basis of international law. The sooner everyone realizes that there is no alternative to the objective historical processes of the formation of a multipolar world based on respect for the principle of the sovereign equality of states, fundamental to the U.N. Charter and the entire world order, the better. If members of the Western alliance do not know how to live according to this principle, if they are not ready to build a truly universal architecture of equal security and cooperation, then let them leave everyone else alone, let them stop forcibly driving into their camp with threats and blackmail those who want to live by their own mind.”
Ukraine:
- No significant developments.
Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:
- “The political and human catastrophe in Afghanistan is threatening to boost autocratic tendencies and further deepen political gaps in Central Asian societies.”
- “With the withdrawal of the U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan and the rapid takeover by the Taliban, most Central Asian governments recognized the Taliban in a pragmatic decision to peacefully coexist with the neighboring extremist regime that will likely remain in power for the foreseeable future. ... Tajikistan is, however, denying the Taliban recognition and indirectly supporting the resistance movement in Panjshir”
- “Central Asian countries chose a pragmatic approach to explore economic cooperation with Afghanistan without opening doors to refugees.”
- “The countries also leveraged the crisis to build stronger security ties with Russia and China.”
- “Domestically, however, the region’s leaders may use the threat of radicalization to expand suppression of political opponents.”
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