This Week’s Highlights

Biden’s velleities are clearly to thaw the deep freeze that U.S.-Russia relations have been in over the past several years and to focus on confronting China, writes Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest. So far, his national security team, led by Jake Sullivan and Jonathan Finer, is successfully implementing this approach, he argues. The question is whether the Geneva summit will prove to be a one-off or a dress rehearsal for more sweeping agreements with Russia in coming years; for now, Geneva was a good start—and Biden has the wind at his back, writes Heilbrunn.

A takeaway from [the Geneva summit] is that Biden offered a version of a "restart" (not a reset!), writes Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. Because Russia retains a seat at the table for many of the global issues that matter most to this administration, one aftereffect of Geneva is the signaling that the importance of Ukraine as an issue in U.S.-Russia relations is diminishing, Gvosdev argues.

All in all, White House officials and the president should be pleased with the mini-summit in Switzerland and Biden’s press conference, writes the Brookings Institution’s Steven Pifer. The meeting accomplished what they said they wanted to do: lay out what egregious Russian behavior would cross red lines, triggering a punitive response, and identify areas, particularly related to strategic stability, on which the United States and Russia might cooperate, he asserts. The hard work of building on the presidents’ discussions will shortly begin; that will determine, likely months down the road, whether Geneva qualifies as a success for U.S. interests, according writes.

Although it has global interests, Russia cannot be everywhere—nor does it intend to be, according to a new report released by the Rand Corporation. At the same time, downplaying Russian activities when a firm response is warranted can encourage and embolden Moscow to act more aggressively, the authors write. To understand Russia’s global interests in today’s world, we must separate concrete Russian interests and actions from mere aspirations and avoid simply treating Russia like a smaller version of the Soviet Union, the report asserts.

The partnership with China is an incalculable force multiplier for Russia—more so than it is for China, write the authors of a new report released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Defense cooperation is an important element of the partnership but not the most important one, the report argues. The utility of defense cooperation with Russia will probably diminish for China as Russia is likely to have less to offer over time as a function of its modest technological capabilities; however, for the same reasons, the alignment with China is likely to remain important for Russia, according to the report.

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

Nuclear security:

“The New Age of Nuclear Diplomacy,” Peter Huessy, The National Interest. 06.20.21. The author, president of GeoStrategic Analysis and director of the Nuclear Deterrence Center at The Mitchell Institute, writes:

• “One idea proposed by a group of U.S. and European leaders is to unilaterally reduce by a symbolic 150 deployed warheads or 10 percent of the legal limit of 1550 warheads now deployed.”
  • “Better would be to gradually change the mix of mirved vs single re-entry vehicle missiles to favor the latter, not unlike the bomber counting rules.”
• “Another idea is to have better transparency and adopt some of the START I verification measures.”
  • “Supporters of the New START Treaty insist that verification measures now in place are perfectly adequate. At issue is a little understood but critical aspect of verification.”
  • “…such inspections can’t prove anything re the entire force. There are no rules that attribute the same number of warheads for each type of missile…each inspection may be able to tell you about the warheads on an individual missile but nothing about the other hundreds of the same missiles deployed elsewhere.”
• “There are a number of other ideas not suggested by any of the disarmament advocates that could be quite useful in improving strategic stability.”
  • “We could look at re-establishing portal monitoring of missile production facilities which tells a person something about the potential for breakout or hedge uploading or the dimensions of the force being deployed.”
  • “Another idea is to have better transparency of all nuclear powers, especially those on the UNSC, that would of course mean China.”
  • “Pakistan and India could also adopt Track-II-type discussions—with U.S. assistance—to better understand how they would deploy nukes in a crisis and to lessen inadvertently signaling the wrong message.”
• “The understanding that “a nuclear war must never be fought” sounds helpful but such a policy statement—now repeated by the U.S. and Russian leaders—is largely meaningless but also could be counterproductive.”
  • “Of course, no one on the U.S. side wants to see any use of nuclear weapons. But that is not exactly the case for Russia.”
  • “Something much more helpful might be a statement that any use of nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidation or coercion or blackmail in the service of armed aggression must never be policy.”
  • “Would the Russians and Chinese abide by such a statement? There would be no way of knowing but at least discussions in this area might yield interesting points about the strategy of both nations.”

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“What U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Talks Reveal about the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Mark Katz, The National Interest. 06.11.21. The author, a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, writes:

• "Just as the United States has sought to wind down American-led interventions in the Middle East both before and after the signing of the JCPOA, the United States pursued strategic arms control with the Soviet Union beginning in the late 1960s when Washington first began attempting to extricate itself from Indochina."
• "As Raymond Garthoff described in Détente and Confrontation, his monumental 1,206-page account of these events, American and Soviet leaders had very different understandings of what the détente process would lead to."
• "The situation that Tehran now sees itself in vis-à-vis the United States, then, is more similar to the one that Brezhnev saw the USSR as being in during the 1970s: an America that is pulling out of unsuccessful military ventures wants not just a nuclear arms accord with its adversary, but for that adversary to refrain from pressing its advantages in the places that Washington does not want to be involved in. Like the Soviets in the 1970s, the Iranians now do not see the United States as being either willing or able to enforce such terms—and so Tehran sees no reason to accept them."
• "Maybe one day Iran will have a new leader, or even a new government, that—like Gorbachev…. The United States, though, is unlikely to be able to hasten that day through maintaining strict sanctions on Iran and trying to force others to abide by them too—especially since there are already so many willing to help Tehran evade them. Nor does Washington appear to be in a position either to force or persuade Tehran to change the regional policies that America and its allies do not like."
• "The United States and its allies are far better off with the JCPOA than without it—especially since reviving the JCPOA does not prevent the United States and its allies from acting to counter Iran’s regional policies that they find threatening. As others have done, the United States can also cooperate with an adversary in areas where it has an interest in doing so while competing with it in others where their interests are opposed."

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

“U.S.-Russia Summit: Why Biden and Putin Both Won,” Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest, 06.16.21. The author, who is the editor of the National Interest, writes:

• "Biden’s velleities are clearly to thaw the deep freeze that U.S.-Russia relations have been in over the past several years and to focus on confronting China. So far, his national security team, led by Jake Sullivan and Jonathan Finer, is successfully implementing this approach. 'I did what I came to do,' said Biden. The question is whether the Geneva summit will prove to be a one-off or a dress rehearsal for more sweeping agreements with Russia in coming years. For now, Geneva was a good start—and Biden has the wind at his back."

US-Russia Summit Offers New Framework: Restarted Dialogue, With Biden as ‘Russia Hand’,” Nikolas Gvosdev, Russia Matters, 06.18.21. The author, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior fellow for Eurasia at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes:

• "In my view, a takeaway from [the Geneva Summit] is that Biden offered a version of a 'restart' (not a reset!). By this I mean that the American president catalogued a list of Russian actions that the U.S. has found objectionable, and in many cases has already responded to (usually with sanctions), but seemed to indicate a willingness to start fresh, on a whole range of issues. …The Russian side also benefits from a restart….After years of Moscow’s attempts to get the United States to negotiate cyber arms control, the recent ransomware attacks seem to have provoked an interest in taking up this matter….Biden explicitly recognized that Russia remains one of the great powers, able to influence the global agenda—and that Moscow cannot be ignored. Because Russia retains a seat at the table for many of the global issues that matter most to this administration, one aftereffect of Geneva is the signaling that the importance of Ukraine as an issue in U.S.-Russia relations is diminishing."

“Did Biden succeed with Putin? Check back in six months,” Steven Pifer, The Brookings Institution, 06.17.21. The author, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, writes:

• "All in all, White House officials and the president should be pleased with the mini-summit in Switzerland and Biden’s press conference. The meeting accomplished what they said they wanted to do: lay out what egregious Russian behavior would cross red lines, triggering a punitive response, and identify areas, particularly related to strategic stability, on which the United States and Russia might cooperate. The hard work of building on the presidents’ discussions will shortly begin. That will determine, likely months down the road, whether Geneva qualifies as a success for U.S. interests."

“The Strange Death of Liberal Russophobia,” Ross Douthat, The New York Times, 06.19.21. The author, a columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• "Now comes Biden, making moves in Russia policy that are essentially conciliatory—freezing a military aid package to Ukraine, ending U.S. sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany to Russia, a return of ambassadors—and setting up a summit that can reasonably be regarded as a modest propaganda coup for Putin. … Some of those hysterias belong to the progressive left, and plenty has been written about Biden’s refusal to let woke Twitter set all his political priorities. But the Russia hysteria was a paranoia of the center, an establishment overreaction, so it’s notable to see Biden and his team steer away from it as well." 

“Can Joe Biden get real about Russia?” Anatol Lieven, Spectator, 06.16.21. The author, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC, writes:

• "Insofar as the West has committed itself to the expansion of NATO and the EU to these countries, a clash with Russia was therefore inevitable and that is not down to just Vladimir Putin. The same is true of the desire of the US establishment to bring down the Putin regime and thwart Russia’s attempts to influence the US political process. On these issues, all that can be done (as during the Cold War) is for the two sides to make clear the red lines beyond which they will respond with the harshest countermeasures: the US with greatly increased sanctions, Russia with intensified military intervention in its neighbors. The expression of these mutual red lines is the most important goal of the present summit. Elsewhere there should be room for cooperation."

“Biden politely reads riot act to Putin,” Edward Luce, Financial Times, 06.16.21. The author, US national editor and columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• "So how do we measure whether Biden is making progress with Putin? Mostly by things that do not happen, such as further Russian incursions into eastern Ukraine, support for international piracy, including last month’s Ryanair flight diversion to Minsk, and the longevity of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, whose name Putin still refuses to utter. The absence of big cyber attacks on the US, such as the SolarWinds incursion earlier this year, would be another benchmark. A more ambitious one would be the weakening of Russia-China ties."

“Biden's Red Lines for Russian Hackers,” Holman W. Jenkins Jr., The Wall Street Journal, 06.19.21. The author, a columnist for the newspaper, writes:

• "No outcome of the Geneva summit was more eye-opening than Joe Biden's claim to have presented Vladimir Putin with a list of 16 categories of U.S. cyber targets that must remain off-limits to attack."
  • "Asking Mr. Putin for anything may be useless but creating situations that cause him to sense risk to his own position, which depends on being welcome and influential on the world stage, can get him off the dime."
  • "A second notable development was Mr. Biden's highly unusual invocation of the U.S.'s own cyber capabilities."
  • "A third interesting moment was Mr. Putin's claim at his own press conference that the U.S. and Canada are the world's No. 1 and No. 2 source of cyberattacks. His comments were dismissed by the usual fact checkers, who assume he meant the kind of cybercrime Russia is associated with, but it's not at all clear what he was referring to. It might be interesting to know."

“Biden's Tests for Putin, and Vice Versa,” The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 06.16.21. The newspaper's editorial board writes:

• "President Biden struck a notable and welcome contrast with Mr. Trump on human rights in approaching the Russian dictator, condemning the imprisonment of dissident Alexei Navalny, and explaining that support for self-government is woven into America's foreign-policy tradition. But neither did he sound like a crusading idealist, saying he told Mr. Putin that a new Cold War with Russia is "not in anybody's interest, your country's or mine.".. Russia is not the existential rival the Soviet Union was in the Cold War. But its ambitions in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and cyberspace continue to collide with the U.S. Those threats must be answered firmly."

“How Russia Views the Geneva Summit,” Mark Episkopos, The National Interest, 06.19.21. The author, a national security reporter for the publication, writes:

• "Putin… not only expressed satisfaction with the content of the meeting, but offered a gleaming personal appraisal of his American counterpart: 'the image of Biden, that is drawn by our, and even by the American press, has nothing to do with reality.' …Putin noted that Biden 'is completely engrossed in the subject matter,' adding that the President is 'a professional. You have to be very attentive when working with him so that you don’t miss anything. I can assure you he doesn’t skip a beat, that much was completely obvious to me.' He continued: 'I’ll repeat it again: he is assembled and knows what he wants to achieve. And he does it very skillfully. That can be felt immediately.' In an apparent reference to Biden’s domestic detractors, Putin added 'I very much hope that it won’t be like in previous years, and he [President Joe Biden] is allowed to work unobstructed.'"

“Putin’s New (Old) Russia Meets Biden’s New America,” Alexander Baunov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 06.17.21. The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of Carnegie.ru, writes:

• "What Moscow is proposing is a renewed format of Cold War–era relations, when the two sides operated in full recognition of their obvious differences, contained each other’s expansion, and together wrote the rules needed to avoid a fatal collision….Biden hasn’t forfeited the theoretical possibility of ending the active standoff with Russia and starting to replace chaos with a relationship built out of the ruins of Russia’s Western path, and a new contractual order with Russia. For Putin, it’s a chance to make clear that reaching an agreement with Russia is no guarantee of any future Western leanings, and that the West must accept Russia as it is, as it did during the previous era of bipolarity. And even if Russia’s current leader stays in power longer than was previously announced during the more Western-leaning years, that does not mean that the agreements reached during that time are now null and void."

“Moderate Progress within the Framework of Possibilities: The Geneva Summit and China,” Alexander Lukin, Russia in Global Affairs, 06.17.21. The author, a professor with the Higher School of Economics' Faculty of International Affairs.

• "Lukin notes that the Biden-Putin summit’s occurrence is, in and of itself, a success given the historically poor state of relations between the two countries. Lukin cautions that, while initial progress has been made, there are still several roadblocks to be overcome. For the US, the two major challenges will be domestic political reaction and relationships with European allies."
• "Russia, for its part, will have to contend with the reaction of China, which has historically seen US-Russian cooperation, as a potential gateway to US-Russian alliance against China’s interests. Lukin also notes that some Chinese experts fear that Russia is merely using its relationship with Beijing as leverage in negations with the United States and, consequently, will abandon efforts to deepen ties with China as soon as it receives favorable conditions from Washington."

“Sorry, Biden. Putin Honestly Could Not Care Less,” Elena Chernenko, The New York Times, 06.16.21. The author, a special correspondent for Kommersant, writes:

• "Secure internally and with little to lose, Vladimir Putin is ready for President Biden. As for his image in the United States and the rest of the West, it’s fair to assume—after years as their arch-villain and evil mastermind—that Mr. Putin couldn’t care less."

“Biden’s summit with Putin offers a chance to reaffirm US resolve,” Andrew Weiss, Financial Times, 06.16.21. The author, vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs on the US National Security Council staff, writes:

• "What the Kremlin will respond to is a US strategy that conveys resolve when our vital interests or personnel are at risk, that enhances US and allied military capabilities and that reinforces the credibility of deterrence. That is how we can best get the attention of the hard men in the Kremlin. In other realms, the most we can hope for probably is the re-establishment of a handful of channels of communication, along with decent risk management and efforts to avoid conflict in areas where we may bump into each other."

“How Biden Should Deal With Putin. Summits Are Good, but Containment Is Better,” Michael McFaul, Foreign Affairs, 06.14.21.  

“Biden lays a solid foundation,” Daniel W. Drezner, The Washington Post, 06.16.21. The author, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, writes:

• "As for the summit with Putin, it seems as if it went about as well as could be expected. The one thing that Putin and Biden agreed on in their post-summit news conferences was that the meetings were pragmatic, constructive, and free of personal acrimony. Given the current lows of the bilateral relationship, that outcome qualifies as a win. The return of the ambassadors to their embassies and the creation of a bilateral strategic stability dialogue offers some promise that the bilateral relationship will not deteriorate further."

“We’ve Come a Long Way Since Trump. Putin Is Still Winning,” Alexander Vindman, The New York Times, 06.16.21. The author, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, writes:

• "The Biden administration’s approach has to be a combination of sustained engagement, including strategic stability talks with senior national security leaders from both countries, along with calibrated steady pressure to end Russian aggression. Getting that right, without tipping into a full-blown confrontation, is the Biden administration’s Gordian knot."

“Russia's Global Interests and Actions. Growing Reach to Match Rejuvenated Capabilities,” Bruce McClintock, Jeffrey W. Hornung, Katherine Costello, RAND Corporation, June 2021. The authors, respectively a political analyst, political scientist, and former analyst with the RAND Corporation, write:

• "The observations … how Russia pursues its interests, objectives, and actions in those regions uncovered five major insights."
  • "First, Moscow views the current international order as a system based on U.S. dominance and actively seeks to undermine that paradigm."
  • "Second, while Russia still prioritizes its near abroad, it is now taking a calculated and selective global approach to rebuilding its great power status."
  • "Third, Russia flexibly uses a variety of geopolitical levers to seek out conditions favorable to its objectives based on historical relationships, resources, and tactical opportunities."
  • "Fourth, Russia acts less on ideological motivations based on a specific political philosophy, such as the advancement of Communism pursued during the Cold War."
  • "Finally, despite limitations, Russia’s capability to act globally is potent, even if there are limits to how much it can do."
• "Although it has global interests, Russia cannot be everywhere—nor does it intend to be. At the same time, downplaying Russian activities when a firm response is warranted can encourage and embolden Moscow to act more aggressively. To understand Russia’s global interests in today’s world, we must separate concrete Russian interests and actions from mere aspirations and avoid simply treating Russia like a smaller version of the Soviet Union."

“The west’s awe of Russian spycraft is misplaced,” Simon Kuper’s review of Owen Matthews’ biography of Soviet agent Richard Sorge, An Impeccable Spy, Financial Times, 06.17.21. The author, the newspaper’s life and arts columnist, writes:

• “Stalin used the atomic intelligence, but only because he wanted to believe it. As the British KGB double agent George Blake (subject of my recent biography, The Happy Traitor) discovered after fleeing to Moscow in 1966, ‘if the intelligence service gave information that didn’t match the boss’s view, then either that information wasn’t passed on, or it was changed so that it did match the boss’s view. So he was never correctly informed.’ The whole Soviet system worked that way, said Blake.”
• “Then there is the tendency of spy agencies to go off the rails, especially in countries without democratic checks… [A]uthoritarian spies are rarely subtle analysts of democratic countries. In 2014, the GRU seems to have swallowed the ludicrous proposition that NATO would accept Ukraine as a member and use the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol as a naval base… which may have encouraged Russia’s invasion of the Crimea.”
• “Even when Russian spies seemed to hit the bullseye, helping Donald Trump get elected US president in 2016, there was probably an element of fluke… I was told that the GRU’s involvement in election-meddling was run by underlings, who merely hoped to weaken the inevitable next president, Hillary Clinton. Trump’s victory stunned the GRU.”
• “In Europe, nuisance-making by Russian spies often subverts Russia’s own interests. A canny Russia would lean on historically friendly EU member states, such as Greece or the Czech Republic, to push its agenda in Brussels. Instead, Russian spies excel at alienating allies.”
• “The west’s inferiority complex vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes probably peaked in 2020. While Trump was mishandling the pandemic, China kept deaths down and Russia pretended to. Today things look different: democracies have outdone their rivals in producing and administering vaccines; there are plausible suggestions that Covid-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab; and Russia’s own continued mishandling of the virus has become clear — its excess death rate during this pandemic is about 50 per cent higher than the US’s. Our awe of these poor, corrupt dictatorships is misplaced.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Chinese-Russian Defense Cooperation Is More Flash Than Bang,” Eugene Rumer,  Richard Sokolsky, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 06.17.21. The authors, respectively the director and a non-resident senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Russia and Eurasia Program, write:

• "Russia’s and China’s adversarial relations with the United States could prompt them to undertake closer geopolitical coordination in different theaters. But their partnership has its limits. China has not recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Russia is highly unlikely to risk an outright conflict with the United States in the event of a major crisis between Washington and Beijing in the Asia-Pacific. But Russia could engage in provocative posturing in Europe or the Middle East, or even in the Pacific, as a demonstration of its geopolitical stature."
• "The partnership with China is an incalculable force multiplier for Russia—more so than it is for China. Defense cooperation is an important element of the partnership but not the most important one. This is not an alliance, Chinese diplomats routinely stress in conversations about relations with Russia, and Chinese academics openly question the value of the partnership. The utility of defense cooperation with Russia will probably diminish for China as Russia is likely to have less to offer over time as a function of its modest technological capabilities. However, for the same reasons, the alignment with China is likely to remain important for Russia as Moscow seeks to retain its position as a global actor and to modernize its military and domestic security apparatus."

“What does the Arab Street think of China and Russia? The answers may surprise you,” Li-Chen Sim and Lucille Greer, Atlantic Council/Emirates Policy Center/ Institute for National Security Studies, 06.15.21. The authors,  respectively an assistant professor at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates, and a Schwarzman fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, write:

• "Prior to 2018, the public in MENA had a lower level of confidence in President Putin’s leadership in world affairs than the global median, according to Pew Research surveys. However, in 2018 and 2019... they expressed significantly greater confidence in Putin compared to previous years and the global median. With 38 percent of MENA respondents expressing confidence in Putin in 2019, this put the Russian president on par with China’s President Xi at 37 percent. At the same time, a much higher share (47 percent) of the MENA public admits to little confidence in Putin compared to Xi (34.5 percent)."
• "The different perceptions of China and Russia in MENA are partly rooted in history. Whereas opinion about the Soviet Union (USSR) was divided during the Cold War—the Gulf states viewed the USSR as an adversary, whereas the secular and revolutionary states saw it as an ally against the US—China’s lower international profile elicited little negative reaction."
• "China and Russia’s current policies in MENA also explain local perceptions. For instance, Russia has involved itself in local conflicts in part to underline its reach and relevance as a global power. By contrast, China has exercised strategic restraint to avoid entanglement in the region’s politics and has, consequently, minimized the number of detractors."
• "While President Xi’s leadership style relies less on personality than his Russian counterpart, Middle Eastern dignitaries have nothing but warm words for the composed Chinese head of state. President Sisi has visited China six times since taking office in 2014. By comparison, his predecessor Hosni Mubarak visited China six times over his thirty-year rule."
• "These elite-level relations, however, do not always appear to be reciprocated by the public. A Zogby poll in 2018 found that 81 percent of Egyptians, 80 percent of Emiratis, and 46 percent of Saudis expressed unfavorable attitudes towards Russia. That at least 85 percent of respondents in these countries object to restoring full relations with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria—a policy backed by Russia—may explain the public mood regarding Russia."

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:

• 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:

“The Hill to Die On: Russians Intent on Resisting Mandatory Vaccination,” Ilya Klishin, The Moscow Times, 06.18.21. The author, the former digital director of the New York-based Russian-language RTVI channel, writes:

• “Moscow is in the grip of the third major wave of the pandemic. This time, a new and more contagious strain of the virus that originated in India is spreading rapidly among Muscovites who had grown lackadaisical after several months of relative calm.”
• “This is a good time to sum up the interim results of Russia’s battle against Covid-19. After crowing last year that it was the first country in the world to create a vaccine, frankly, Russia has failed on the vaccination front. Not only does it lag far behind small countries like Israel, that seems to have beaten the virus, but it also compares extremely poorly to large countries such as the U.S., Britain and Germany.”
• “Both senior medical officials and President Vladimir Putin himself have publicly stated that 60 percent of the population must acquire Covid-19 antibodies to achieve herd immunity. However, only 10 percent -15 percent of Russians have them. It is possible that an additional 5 percent or so have immunity if they suffered only light cases of the virus that they hid from the authorities. This is especially likely in Russia’s regions.”
• “But even then, only 20 percent of Russians would have immunity, a monstrously small figure and three times less than is necessary. This means Russia will suffer hundreds of thousands more deaths and many more years of the pandemic.”

“New ‘Undesirables’ Law Expands Activists’ Danger Zone,” Damelya Aitkhozina, The Moscow Times, 06.17.21. The author, a Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch, writes:

• “With most eyes on Geneva, the Duma … amended the criminal code to open the floodgates to criminal prosecutions of activists allegedly linked to blacklisted 'undesirable' foreign organizations.”
• “Once blacklisted, any such organization must cease all activities in Russia. Other organizations and individuals that engage in 'continued involvement' with these organizations may be subject to administrative and criminal sanctions. The Duma recently adopted another bill that, among other things, would expand this ban beyond Russia’s borders. So far 34 organizations have been blacklisted as 'undesirable,' without any prior warning or explanation.”
• “The new amendments make it easier to open criminal cases for alleged affiliation with undesirable organizations. Previously criminal proceedings could only be initiated if the targeted person already had two administrative sentences within the previous year.” 
• “Under the new law, the authorities could open criminal cases alleging that a person has a leadership or management role in an undesirable organization without any prior offenses. This offense carries a punishment of up to six years in prison … Also, the authorities will be able to press criminal 'participation' charges if a person had only one prior administrative sentence on the same charge … carrying a punishment of up to four years in prison. Under another amendment, anyone making donations, or organizing crowdfunding or providing unspecified 'financial services' to the blacklisted organizations can immediately face criminal charges and up to five years in prison.”
• “These amendments, that are highly likely to become the law soon, expose a wide range of activists to a high risk of criminal prosecution.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant developments.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• No significant developments.

Ukraine:

“Ukraine wants to join NATO. Letting it in would just provoke Russia,” Michael O'Hanlon, The Washington Post, 06.16.21. The author, a senior fellow and director of research at the Brookings Institution's foreign policy program, writes:

• "Inviting Ukraine to join NATO would be a significant strategic mistake. Bringing that nation… into the alliance would not improve European security. Quite the contrary."
• "As the Greek historian Thucydides told us, human beings often go to war over pride. And few things could wound Russian pride more than this proposal for NATO expansion into the heart of the former Soviet space. Russia would surely respond with hostility…"
• "We need a new vision for Eastern European security. Our goal should be permanent nonalignment for Ukraine and Georgia, as well as Belarus and other countries that are not within NATO, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, provided that Moscow make verifiable promises to end its aggression against its neighbors and allow them to join other organizations such as the European Union if they someday qualify. Regions such as the Donbas in Ukraine, where Russia has supported separatist violence since 2014, should gain a certain autonomy but remain within their current national borders. (Crimea, which Russia took from Ukraine in 2014, may need to be finessed; it is not clear there is a workable solution on this matter.) If Russia supports these ideas and implements them consistently, it should then benefit from a lifting of most Western sanctions."
• "NATO, an organization originally created by 12 countries bordering the North Atlantic region that grew to 16 by the Cold War's end, is large enough already. It has nearly doubled in membership since the Berlin Wall fell. It is often mistakenly viewed at least as much as a tool of democracy promotion globally rather than one intended to preserve core Western security interests. Rather than enlarge it even more, with predictable and indeed inevitable consequences for the U.S.-Russia relationship, we need a new vision for this part of Eurasia. An alternative geopolitical solution would place real demands on Russia's behavior yet also seek to avoid the exacerbation of tensions in an already very fraught relationship."

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.