This Week’s Highlights

The continued tendency to dismiss Russia as a “has been” or declining power whose bark will always be worse than its bite can lead to the United States overextending itself, making unrealistic commitments, and risking a dangerous escalation with the one country that is still its nuclear peer competitor, write Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia and Eurasia Program.

Treating Russia and China as pariah states incentivizes them to undermine rather than stabilize the international system, writes George Beebe of the Center for the National Interest. Neither Russia nor China is insisting on a world of universal authoritarianism, he asserts. Kennedy’s vision of a diverse but stable world order, one in which democracies can flourish but is not universally democratic, remains viable; as our foreign policy elites move to diversify the personnel within their ranks, they should also think about making room for greater diversity within the world order, according to Beebe.

The central feature Russia’s new, forty-four-page National Security Strategy is its focus on Russia itself, writes Dmitri Trenin, of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The Russian leadership has every reason right now to turn homeward to address the glaring weaknesses, imbalances, and inequalities of the country’s internal situation, Trenin writes.

Russia’s growing emphasis on covert capabilities in recent years has necessitated the development of more sophisticated and novel intrusion capabilities, particularly those focused on compromising third-party companies that could then be used as a platform for infiltrating other victims, writes Josephine Wolff of Tufts University’s Fletcher School. However, Russia’s development of more technically sophisticated intrusion tactics and malware has not yet been matched by similarly advanced detection and exploitation of novel vulnerabilities or the establishment of more robust underlying infrastructure for these compromises, she argues.

Although in this case [of the HMS Defender off the coast of Crimea] both sides took steps to prevent mistakes, the greatest risk for the political confrontation between Russia and NATO to result in armed conflict is through inadvertent escalation, writes Dmitry Gorenburg of CNA. In a future incident, one of the parties might be less careful, or might take on board the recommendations of some of the more hot-headed Russian commentators to fire directly at the target if a warning shot does not result in a change of course.

Instead of promoting safety measures and campaigning to get the public vaccinated, Russian state-owned media have spent an inordinate amount of time ridiculing other nations for their harsh lockdowns—which Russia never imposed—and trashing their vaccines, writes Alexey Kovalev of Meduza. Not all unvaccinated Russians subscribe to conspiracy theories or are influenced by the example of top government officials who don’t wear a mask in public, let alone get a jab on national television; sometimes there are simply not enough doses, especially in Russia’s far-flung regions, he writes.  In fact, less than one month after Argentina became the first foreign country to adopt Sputnik V in December 2020, it had more people vaccinated with the Russian vaccine than all of Russia outside of Moscow, according to Kovalev.

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

Nuclear security:

“Nuclear Forensics and Deterrence,” Jay A. Tilden and Dallas Boyd, National Interest, July-August 2021. The authors, respectively associate administrator and Chief of Staff of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation, write:

• “Over the past two decades, the strategic literature has increasingly speculated that Russia may use low-yield nuclear weapons in a conflict as part of its purported ‘escalate to deescalate’ doctrine. In this circumstance, one can imagine the Kremlin nonetheless claiming that a low-yield nuclear strike was in fact conventional, denying responsibility entirely, or perhaps instead blaming the United States or the United Kingdom. Profession of belief or disbelief in such a claim by Russia would break along predictable lines, potentially preventing a broad international coalition from forming to condemn the attack.”  
• “Notably, the premise of Article 5 of the [NATO Charter]—that an attack against one NATO member constitutes an attack on them all, requiring a collective response—presupposes that the agent of the attack would be known and agreed upon. What if Russia took pains to camouflage responsibility for a nuclear attack, or at least provided sufficient deniability for smaller, hesitant NATO members to absolve themselves of their collective duty? In such a scenario, the scientific ability … to remove doubt about Russia’s guilt may be a significant factor in maintaining NATO’s unity.”
• “The ability to resolve ambiguities about and assign responsibility for such events may thus encourage greater openness following an accident, as well as motivate investments in precautions to prevent mishaps from occurring to begin with.”

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:

“Grand Illusions: The Impact of Misperceptions About Russia on U.S. Policy,” Eugene Rumer,  Richard Sokolsky, Carnegie Endowement, 06.30.21. The authors, both of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia and Eurasia Program, write:

• “A critical examination of U.S. policy misfires in dealing with Russia and its intentions and capabilities over the past several decades is long overdue. Three factors largely account for this problem":
  • "The first factor is the lingering euphoria of the post–Cold War period."
  • "Second, American policymakers and experts have long paid too little attention to the drivers of Russia’s external behavior."
  • "Third, U.S. policymakers have not fully internalized the lessons of the two biggest crises of the Cold War—the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Euromissile crisis of the early 1980s."
• "Getting Russia right—assessing its capabilities and intentions, the long-term drivers of its policy and threat perceptions, as well as its accomplishments—is essential because the alternative of misreading them is a recipe for wasted resources, distorted national priorities, and increased risk of confrontation."
• "In responding to this challenge, it is important to set priorities and differentiate between primary and secondary interests."
  • "The continued tendency to dismiss Russia as a “has been” or declining power whose bark will always be worse than its bite can lead to the United States overextending itself, making unrealistic commitments, and risking a dangerous escalation with the one country that is still its nuclear peer competitor. The push to expand NATO without taking into account the possibility of Russia reemerging as a major military power was an example of such thinking, which is to be avoided in the future."
• "Underappreciation of the threat from Russia and misreading of its security requirements are also fraught with dangerous consequences. The tendency to dismiss Russia as a “has been” can lead to the United States overextending itself, making unrealistic commitments, and risking a dangerous escalation with the one country that is still its nuclear peer competitor."

“It’s a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy,” George Beebe, National Interest, July-August 2021. The author, Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for the National Interest, writes:

• “Expanding NATO failed to secure the liberal governance in Eastern Europe that it was meant to support and helped to spark alarm in Russia and foster wars in Georgia and Ukraine. … No Gorbachev equivalent has emerged in Moscow intent on liberalizing Russia’s government and partnering with the West. Rather, apprehension in Moscow and Beijing has prompted them increasingly to team up against what they see as coercive and destructive American universalism.”
• “Conventional wisdom holds that Washington is merely playing defense against authoritarianism—that Russia and China are intent on destroying democracy. Not exactly. Neither country is eager to launch liberal internal reforms, and both believe they can and should veto the encroachment of hostile military alliances in their neighboring regions.”
• “Treating Russia and China as pariah states incentivizes them to undermine rather than stabilize the international system. Lyn- don Johnson put it colorfully: it is better to have our rivals ‘inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.’”  
• “As the balance of power in the world marches toward multipolarity, the United States faces an important choice about the type of international order it will pursue. Biden is painting it as a stark choice between democracy and authoritarianism, a battle that America must win, or it will lose. Not so. Neither Russia nor China is insisting on a world of universal authoritarianism. Kennedy’s vision of a diverse but stable world order, one in which democracies can flourish but is not universally democratic, remains viable. As our foreign policy elites move to diversify the personnel within their ranks, they should also think about making room for greater diversity within the world order.”    

“The Law, the Rights and the Rules”, Sergey Lavrov, Kommersant, 06.28.21. The author, Foreign Minister of Russia, writes (original Russian version available here):

• “There were no objections during the [June 16 Putin-Biden] talks. However, in their immediate aftermath, U.S. officials, including those who participated in the Geneva meeting, started asserting what seemed to be foregone tenets, perorating that they had ‘made it clear’ to Moscow, ‘warned it, and stated their demands.’ Moreover, all these ‘warnings’ went hand in hand with threats [of] renewed pressure.”
• “The West deliberately shies away from spelling out the rules it purports to follow. … While proclaiming the ‘right’ to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries for the sake of promoting democracy as it understands it, the West instantly loses all interest when we raise the prospect of making international relations more democratic, including renouncing arrogant behavior and committing to abide by the universally recognized tenets of international law instead of ‘rules.’”
• “Make no mistake: there is nothing wrong with the rules per se. On the contrary, the UN Charter is a set of rules, but these rules were approved by all countries of the world, rather than by a closed group at a cozy get-together.”
• “An interesting detail: in Russian, the words ‘law’ and ‘rule’ share a single root. To us, a rule that is genuine and just is inseparable from the law. This is not the case for Western languages. For instance, in English, the words ‘law’ and ‘rule’ do not share any resemblance. See the difference? ‘Rule’ is not so much about the law, in the sense of generally accepted laws, as it is about the decisions taken by the one who rules or governs.”

“How Would Brezhnev Have Assessed Putin’s Foreign Policy?” Mark N. Katz, National Interest, 06.28.21. The author, a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, writes:

• “Putin undoubtedly considers his military intervention in Syria beginning in 2015 to be a great success. Brezhnev might point out, though, that when he was in charge, the Soviet Union came to be the sole external power with influence in Syria, whereas Putin has to share influence there with Iran, Turkey, and even the United States.”
• “Similarly, Brezhnev could point out, while the Soviet Union came to be Libya’s predominant external ally after Muammar Qaddafi came to power there in 1969, Russia now has to share influence in eastern Libya with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt while Turkey and Qatar have greater influence with the easterners’ rivals in western Libya.”
• “Wresting South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 and Crimea and the Donbass region … in 2014 are clearly accomplishments that Putin is extremely proud of. From Brezhnev’s viewpoint, though, they may look puny. While it was clearly not Putin’s fault that the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Brezhnev might have pointed out that regathering all of Ukraine and Georgia (as well as the other non-Russian republics that became independent) under Moscow’s rule would have been preferable to getting small bits of them and thereby ensuring Ukrainian and Georgian animosity toward Russia and reliance on the West which might not have occurred otherwise.”
• “Putin undoubtedly considers one of his greatest accomplishments to be the close partnership that he has developed with Chinese President Xi Jinping, thus ending what remained of the Sino-American partnership that developed in the early 1970s on Brezhnev’s watch. … Indeed, even if Putin has restored Russia’s image as a great power in Europe and the Middle East, Brezhnev could point out that under Putin, Russia has become a junior partner to China in Asia.”

“The Emerging Biden Doctrine,” Hal Brands, Foreign Affairs, 06.29.21. 

“The HMS Defender Incident: What happened and What Are the Political Ramifications?” Dmitry Gorenburg, Russia Matters, 07.01.21. The author, a senior research scientist at CNA and an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, writes:

• “On June 23, the HMS Defender—a British Type 45 destroyer—was involved in a confrontation with the Russian military while sailing near the Crimean Peninsula. The ship was in the Black Sea to participate in NATO’s Sea Breeze exercise. … As it passed through territorial waters claimed by Russia, the ship was closely shadowed by Russian forces. Furthermore, the Russian military claimed that it fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the ship, forcing it to move into international waters.”
• “So why did the Royal Navy decide to sail its ship so close to Crimean shores? Crimean territorial waters have been claimed by Russia since its annexation of the peninsula in 2014. However, Western countries including the United Kingdom do not recognize the annexation and therefore consider these waters to belong to Ukraine. Furthermore, the Law of the Sea states that ships have the right to pass through another country’s territorial waters using the right of innocent passage. … Russian Navy ships commonly go through British waters in the English Channel using the right of innocent passage.”
• “Russian officials and military experts have rejected this argument, stating that innocent passage was not allowed because Russia had in April announced the closure of its territorial waters through October.”
• “Western leaders understand the need to act cautiously even as they challenge Russian sovereignty claims in Crimea. After all, since the United Kingdom considers all of Crimea and its maritime zone to be Ukrainian territory, the HMS Defender could have entered Crimean waters at any location and without claiming the right of innocent passage, as long as it had Ukrainian permission.”

“Arctic Militarization and Russian Military Theory,” Michael B. Petersen and Rebecca Pincus, Orbis, May 2021. The authors, both professors at the U.S. Naval War College, write:

• “What explains the Russian Federation’s Arctic military buildup? Scholarly assessments have pondered this question many times, providing descriptive analyses of its buildup or finding Russia’s motivation in high-level policy.  This article … shows that Russian writers view Arctic military investments as defensive in nature, designed to protect critical economic and security infrastructure from attack by the United States, an adversary that, in their view, seeks to destroy such critical infrastructure as part of a war-winning strategy.”
• “American officials have misinterpreted Russia’s Arctic militarization as aimed at achieving overall regional dominance and control. They have responded by advocating for conducting Freedom of Navigation operations in the Arctic by the U.S. Navy and several unannounced strategic bomber patrols. Moscow interprets these options, made with the good intentions of enforcing international law and providing a strategic deterrent, as evidence of aggressive U.S. intentions with some of the military platforms that Moscow fears most. Thus, both sides have misread each other, and spiraling escalation is the result.”
• “To overcome this dynamic, the United States and NATO should respond with actions and statements that are firm, predictable, consistent, and clear.”
  • “U.S. policy has neither clearly nor consistently communicated what Washington is and is not willing to tolerate, nor the realistic conditions under which the United States would respond with firm, practical measures.”
• “Improving regular military-to-military contacts between the United States and Russia will provide avenues for firm, predictable, consistent, and clear responses.  Currently, the U.S. Congress prohibits military-to-military cooperation, but not contact.  Expanded regular contacts can help to avoid strategic surprise and initiate the long process of trust between militaries. Further, if conditions warrant, the congressional prohibition against military cooperation could be lifted in certain circumstances."

“Competition Among Russia, China, and United States Heats Up in Antarctic,” Natalia Azarova, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.02.21. The author, a China scholar, writes:

• “The Antarctic Treaty is sixty years old this year. While there may not be such heated international disputes over the South Pole as there are over the North Pole, the competition between the world powers is still in evidence there. The situation today of each country trying to expand its influence in the Antarctic is reminiscent of the state of play in the Arctic a decade ago. Once again, China has been the most dynamic power in recent years, and is developing its partnership with Russia in the Antarctic to strengthen its position in its growing confrontation with the United States.”
• “The Antarctic, which as well as the continent of Antarctica includes the waters of three adjoining oceans and the islands located there, has always attracted the attention of the world powers. Australia, Argentina, the UK, New Zealand, Norway, France, and Chile have all laid claim to individual parts of the Antarctic, with territorial disputes over this vast area threatening to erupt into a major international conflict last century. The tension was reduced in 1959, when twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty. The treaty declared that Antarctica should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes, and that all disputes over territorial sovereignty should be set aside. The treaty has now been signed by fifty-four countries.”
• “For now, there is no public discussion of exploiting Antarctic mineral deposits, but in 2048, the Madrid protocol is due to be reviewed, and it’s unlikely the status quo will remain in place.”
• “When pushing for the establishment of a marine park in the Ross Sea, the United States went to some lengths to secure the support of China and Russia. One of those involved in the negotiations was then secretary of state John Kerry, who has now been appointed a special presidential envoy for climate.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Arms control:

“Let’s Discuss Strategic Stability,” Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk, 07.06.21. The author, co-founder of the Stimson Center, writes:

• “There is space for measures to avoid unintended escalation as well as to stabilize aspects of the competition—so long as the contestants wish to avoid war. If, however, a major competitor is so unhappy with the status quo that it is willing to run significant risks, the status quo and strategic stability will be endangered.”
• “Is Putin’s annexation of Crimea a harbinger of the future? Or will he resort to shadowy measures to try to claw back influence and ground lost after the Soviet Union imploded? My guess is the latter, which would require rejoinders but would not rise to the level of a threat to strategic stability. The post-Cold War order in Europe remains vastly in Washington’s favor. Because the Biden administration can walk and chew gum at the same time, it can address Putin’s methods while still seeking measures to reduce nuclear danger.”
• “One thing that hasn’t changed since the Cold War is that guardrails are needed because rivals habitually compete. These guardrails provide the elements of strategic stability.”
  • “One guardrail is not to play with fire in the most sensitive locales.”
  • “Another is refraining from dangerous military practices.”
  • “A third is respect for borders. When a rival jumps over guardrails, the ambit of diplomacy shrinks while defense preparedness grows.”
  • “A fourth element of strategic stability is arms control, including reductions in weapons that are terribly powerful, prone to escalatory use, and yet militarily ineffective.”
• “Where, then, can progress toward strategic stability be made? At the outset, these talks might make headway in trying to reach common understandings of what constitutes strategic stability.”

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

“Understanding Russia’s Cyber Strategy,” Josephine Wolff, Foreign Policy Research Institute, July 2021. The author, an assistant professor at The Fletcher School of Tufts University, writes:

• “While the technical tactics and sophistication of Russian cyber operations have evolved, many of these exploits continue to rely on shared infrastructure and malware families that enable attribution of new attacks and suggest that Russia relies on a limited circle of suppliers and software developers in this domain.”
• “Russia’s growing emphasis on covert capabilities in recent years has necessitated the development of more sophisticated and novel intrusion capabilities, particularly those focused on compromising third-party companies that could then be used as a platform for infiltrating other victims. However, Russia’s development of more technically sophisticated intrusion tactics and malware has not yet been matched by similarly advanced detection and exploitation of novel vulnerabilities or the establishment of more robust underlying infrastructure for these compromises. This has enabled continued attribution of cybersecurity incidents to Russia and has provided an unusually detailed picture of where exactly Russia has chosen to invest its resources in developing cyber capabilities and which elements of its online tactics and techniques are most—and least—advanced.”
• “Moving forward, it will be interesting to watch whether the Russian government continues to avoid directly targeting critical infrastructure in favor of operating covert cyberespionage campaigns. If this trend does continue, then it will also be important to track whether Russia continues to allow criminal organizations based within its borders to launch destructive attacks on overseas critical infrastructure targets, as happened in May 2021 when the DarkSide cybercrime group hit Colonial Pipeline with a ransomware attack, causing a shutdown of thousands of miles of a pipeline, and when the REvil group hit meatpacking company JBS with a similarly disruptive ransomware attack.”

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:

“Repression and Autocracy as Russia Heads into State Duma Elections,” Sabine Fischer, Stifrung Wissenschaft und Politik, 06.30.21. The author, a senior fellow in the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Research Division at SWP, writes:

• “Russia is experiencing a wave of state repression ahead of parliamentary elections on 19 September 2021. The crackdown is unusually harsh and broad, extending into previously unaffected areas and increasingly penetrating the private sphere of Russian citizens. For years the Russian state had largely relied on the so-called “power vertical” and on controlling the information space through propaganda and marginalisation of independent media. The political leadership, so it would appear, no longer regards such measures as sufficient to secure its power and is increasingly resorting to repression.”
• “The EU’s five guiding principles for relations with Russia are designed to deter Russian transgressions at all levels, in the shared neighborhood and towards the EU and its member states. They also seek to encourage and develop people to people contacts with Russian society. But the negative dynamic at the political level of the relationship severely narrows the possibilities, especially where Moscow is doing everything to isolate Russian society. This undercuts the EU’s fifth principle, people-to-people contacts and support for civil society. The banning of German NGOs and suppression of the Petersburg Dialogue demonstrate this very clearly.”
• “Germany and the EU have already had to adapt their cooperation with Russian civil society to increasingly restrictive conditions and operate with extreme sensitivity to the difficult context. The need now is to continue … along that path and at same time to signal to the Russian people that the EU remains genuinely interested in engaging with them.”
• “People-to-people contacts with Russia were abruptly interrupted by the pandemic, and will remain difficult even after it is overcome. The question of visa-free travel for Russian citizens has long been a bone of contention within the EU. It now becomes crucial in order to maintain at least minimal direct contact with Russian society.”

“The Kremlin has a new toolkit for shutting down independent news media,” Tom Paskhalis, Bryn Rosenfeld, Katerina Tertytchnaya, The Washington Post, 06.29.21. The authors, respectively a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, an assistant professor of government at Cornell University, and an assistant professor of comparative politics at University College London, write:

• "As September's parliamentary elections approach, Russia has made it increasingly difficult for independent media — outlets that are neither owned nor directly controlled by the Kremlin — to continue operating. And it's doing so whether or not the outlets criticize the Kremlin."
• "VTimes, an online Russian news site, shut down on June 12, Russia's Independence Day, a month after the Kremlin designated its domain administrator a "foreign agent—which exposed VTimes editors and journalists to criminal prosecution and possible imprisonment."
• "In the VTimes case, Russia relied on its "foreign agent" law to pressure the outlet's editors to shut down. ….The VTimes closure comes not long after the Kremlin also added Meduza, a Riga-based online newspaper and news aggregator, to the same register — although Meduza managed to survive. The register now lists 20 entities, including such Cold War veterans as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe alongside newcomers like VTimes. Even outlets not on the register face political pressure. For example, the online news aggregator NEWSru had not been designated a foreign agent, but also announced its closure on May 31, citing commercial and political reasons."
• "Why do independent media close after such legal and regulatory attacks? For several reasons."
  • "First, the attacks can reduce the size of an outlet's audience and dampen its credibility among the wider public. Advertisers who fear being perceived as hostile to the government may withdraw support. Attacks can also hinder access to government sources and figures. In this case, fearing that the "foreign agent" label would deprive VTimes of both advertisers and access to sources, its editors opted to close."
• "The World Association of News Publishers recently issued a report emphasizing that keeping independent new sites alive in repressive countries may require diversifying revenue models and seeking income that won't dry up under political pressure.”

“How Vladimir Putin Runs Russia Without Intermediaries or Institutes,” Kirill Martynov, The Moscow Times/ Novaya Gazeta, 07.06.21. The author, the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, writes:

• “Another ‘Direct Line with Vladimir Putin’ has come and gone, with one questioner wondering why governors are not required to make use of such a convenient way to connect with the people. Putin liked the idea: why not take up a grass-roots suggestion and organize not only federal, but also regional direct lines?”
• “Picture it: Every governor will field calls from individual citizens, who will wave their golden tickets and rattle off complaints about their particular leaky roofs or problems with the gas. Then officials (and photographers) will materialize on site, the roofs will be fixed and gas will flow. Citizens living in Russia’s regions may also enjoy learning some fun facts about their leadership.”
• “‘Direct Line 2021 has thus outlined the new contours of Russian political life. The president now has neither public opponents nor partners for debate, not counting the metaphysical construct of the Russian public, summoned into existence by a television show to become one with its national leader. Beyond that, Putin offers neither promises nor plans. To him, it seems, we already live in the best of all possible worlds.”

“The Shocking Enormity of Russia’s Botched Pandemic Response,” Alexey Kovalev, Foreign Policy, 07.05.21. The author, an investigative editor at Meduza, writes:

• “Russia is firmly in the grip of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day, there are about 22,000 reported new infections—twice as many as during the peak of the first wave in May 2020—and more than 600 deaths. The new Delta variant of the virus, which Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin says is responsible for 90 per cent of new infections in the Russian capital, has caught Russia almost completely unawares. Despite having access to the brain power and resources of one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, Russian authorities have repeatedly squandered almost every chance to beat the pandemic. Their massive, bloated propaganda apparatus failed to do the one job it was designed for: Get the message out. Instead, the pandemic has exacerbated the crisis of trust between the Russian government and citizens. Now, the campaign for parliamentary elections in September could make fighting the pandemic even harder, since the ruling United Russia party may be even more reluctant to impose unpopular measures such as lockdowns.”
• “None of this should come as a surprise. Instead of promoting safety measures and campaigning to get the public vaccinated, Russian state-owned media have spent an inordinate amount of time ridiculing other nations for their harsh lockdowns—which Russia never imposed—and trashing their vaccines.”
• “Not all unvaccinated Russians subscribe to conspiracy theories or are influenced by the example of top government officials who don’t wear a mask in public, let alone get a jab on national television. Sometimes there are simply not enough doses, especially in Russia’s far-flung regions.”
• “In December 2020, Argentina had more people vaccinated with the Russian vaccine than all of Russia outside of Moscow, according to Russian independent news site Mediazona.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant developments. 

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

“Russia’s National Security Strategy: A Manifesto for a New Era,” Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 07.06.21. The author, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “Russia’s new, forty-four-page National Security Strategy signed by President Vladimir Putin on July 2 is a remarkable document. It is much more than an update of the previous paper, adopted in 2015. Back then, relations with the West had already sharply deteriorated as a result of the Ukraine crisis, but were still considered salvageable… The current version of arguably the most important Kremlin strategy statement…is a manifesto for a different era: one defined by the increasingly intense confrontation with the United States and its allies; a return to traditional Russian values; and the critical importance for Russia’s future of such issues as technology and climate.”
• “The strategy lays out a view of a world undergoing transformation and turmoil. The hegemony of the West, it concludes, is on the way out, but that is leading to more conflicts, and more serious ones at that. This combination of historical optimism (the imminent end of Western hegemony) and deep concern (as it is losing, the West will fight back with even more ferocity) is vaguely reminiscent of Stalin’s famous dictum of the sharpening of the class struggle along the road to socialism.”
• “Against this sobering background, the central feature of the strategy is its focus on Russia itself: its demographics, its political stability and sovereignty, national accord and harmony, economic development on the basis of new technologies, protection of the environment and adaptation to climate change, and—last but not least—the nation’s spiritual and moral climate.”
• “The paper outlines a lengthy series of measures for dealing with a host of domestic issues, from rising poverty and continued critical dependence on imported technology to the advent of green energy and the loss of the Soviet-era technological and educational edge.”

“New National Security Strategy Is a Paranoid’s Charter,” Mark Galeotti, The Moscow Times, 07.05.21. The author, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, writes:

• “Russia’s new National Security Strategy is not a revolutionary document, to a considerable extent simply building on its predecessor document from 2015. However, it does mark the progressive shift in the Kremlin’s priorities towards paranoia and a worldview that regards not just foreign countries as a threat, but the very processes reshaping the modern world.”
• “The final document certainly looks as though it bears the fingerprints of Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful Secretary of the Security Council and in effect the closest thing the Russian system has to a National Security Adviser. One of the more hawkish figures within Putin’s inner circle, Patrushev has made no secret of his belief that Russia is in effect already in an undeclared struggle with a West.”
• “The truth of the matter is that the increasing securitization of everything, and the association of everything the Kremlin fears or dislikes with foreign subversion simply makes this a paranoid’s charter. It does not so much permit as demand that political opposition, minority opinions, even alternative lifestyles, be treated as a threat to the state.”

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Russia’s African Toolkit: Digital Influence and Entrepreneurs of Influence,” Kevin Limonier and Marlene Laruelle, Orbis, July 2021. The authors, respectively an associate professor in Geography and Slavic Studies at the French Institute of Geopolitics, and a research professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, write:

• “Thanks to both a new media dynamic and an opaque ecosystem of entrepreneurs of influence, Russia has restored its image as a genuine power in some parts of the African continent. Yet Russia’s media success relies more on its content being appropriated by African actors who use it to advance their own political agendas than on Moscow convincing African audiences of its foreign policy or political model. Most websites we identified target an African audience and share Russian content in an often-undifferentiated way. This fact confirms the normalization of RT and Sputnik, which primarily are considered peers of any other media in French-speaking Africa.”
• “Russia’s second tool, entrepreneurs of influence, has yielded less consistent results, with some successes but also resounding failures. The first generation of entrepreneurs of influence, which arrived in Africa a decade ago, was comprised of second-class adventurers who lacked direct ties with Russian official circles. That generation of pioneers has been overtaken recently by more seasoned actors with close links to the Kremlin, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin.”
• “At the confluence of the two tools discussed here—Russian media and entrepreneurs of influence—can now be found the International Agency for Sovereign Development (IASD), officially launched during the November 2019 Russia-Africa Summit.  The agency declares that it raises funds outside of European markets to aid in the economic decolonization of Africa. So far, it has secured consulting agreements with three countries and raised $2.5 billion for an oil pipeline in Niger and the development of transport infrastructure in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
• “These activities confirm both the innovative capacity of Russian paradiplomacy and Africa’s peripheral status therein.”

Ukraine:

“All Change: Donbas Republics Get New Russian Business Boss,” Konstantin  Skorkin, Moscow Carnegie Endowement, 06.29.21. The author, an independent journalist based in Moscow, writes:

• “Diplomacy in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas may be at a standstill, but momentous changes are taking place in the region’s economy. Key enterprises in the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics had for the last four years been under the de facto control of Sergei Kurchenko, once an oligarch from the inner circle of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Now he has been forced to cede that role to Russian businessman Yevgeny Yurchenko with no prior ties to the Donbas. The Kremlin understands that the breakaway regions are set to remain on its balance sheet for a long time, so it is looking for the most efficient ways to manage the region, ousting odious figures engendered by the 2014 Ukraine crisis.”
• “Kurchenko’s departure from the Donbas is a signal that the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are moving on from the wild days of economic piracy to more orderly exploitation schemes. The prospects of reintegrating the region under the Minsk accords are growing more illusory. Donetsk and Luhansk are becoming another protectorate of Moscow, and the status quo may be preserved for decades to come. The Kremlin now needs to optimize its control over the territories, and it is hoping to do so using Russian-appointed executives who could become intermediaries between the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities, the Kremlin, and big business in order to create a paternalist showcase of the ‘Russian Donbas.’”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.