Russia Analytical Report, March 30–April 6, 2026

3 Ideas to Explore

  1. In a wide-ranging interview that William Burns gave to FA in an April 4 podcast,1 the former CIA director discussed what his interviewer described as the “moment in the fall of 2022 when all the reporting suggests that people within the administration were pretty acutely concerned about nuclear use” by Russia. “I think our judgment at the time was that if a situation emerged in which the Ukrainian advance continued at a rapid rate and put at risk Putin's grip on Crimea, that would be a circumstance in which he'd [Putin] at least consider the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said. “We didn't believe that there was a high likelihood that his grip on Crimea was going to be put at risk then, just because the Ukrainians, thanks to their courage and innovativeness, had made huge progress. But also they needed to regroup as well. And the Russians had begun to… pull back across the Dnipro to more defensible positions. So I didn't think there was a high likelihood that that circumstance was going to emerge,” Burns recalled. Interestingly, WP columnist David Ignatius did not rule out in an April 6 Q&A that Donald Trump may emulate Putin’s 2022 threats when dealing with Iran. “I can imagine Trump threatening to use tactical nukes, as Putin did in Ukraine in late 2022. In that case, I think China would send a sharp message (as it did with Russia in 2022) that it strongly opposed any such action,” Ignatius said.
  2. Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan argue in FA that the 2026 U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s near‑closure of the Strait of Hormuz are causing the “largest disruption” of modern energy flows, proving the world has “never escaped the reality of oil geopolitics.” “Governments have been feeling a growing pull toward energy autarky,” but they should not, the authors argued. Rather governments should “manage interdependence more effectively, mitigating the most critical vulnerabilities in their energy systems without abandoning the efficiencies of global trade.” “In energy, as in so much else, complete control is impossible. As governments revise their energy strategies in the wake of the crisis, their goal should not be self-sufficiency at any cost. Rather, it should be to build systems strong enough to absorb shocks without breaking,” Bordoff and O’Sullivan write.
  3. In his WaPo column, Fareed Zakaria argues that Trump’s Iran war has “racked up so many costs for so few gains” that “the obvious winner is Russia.” Meanwhile, “Ukraine loses as weapons that it needs are diverted to the Middle East,” and Europe “faces crushing energy costs” while being berated and threatened with America’s NATO withdrawal, Zakaria writes. Sergey Radchenko, however, argues that the Iran war is “bad for Russia.”

 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

  • No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

  • No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:2

“Trump’s Iran own goal,” Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 04.04.26.

  • Fareed Zakaria argues that Trump’s Iran war has “racked up so many costs for so few gains” that “the obvious winner is Russia.” With Iran’s nuclear and missile programs already “set…back by years” before the war, he writes, the new campaign has not toppled the regime but has helped Moscow: “Russia…will make billions of extra dollars each month as the price of oil rises and the U.S. waives sanctions against it.” Meanwhile, “Ukraine loses as weapons that it needs are diverted to the Middle East,” and Europe “faces crushing energy costs” while being berated and threatened with NATO withdrawal.
  • Zakaria notes that Trump effectively conceded Iran wasn’t a direct threat, saying the U.S. doesn’t “have to be there…we’re there to help our allies,” yet Washington and Israel chose a regime‑change war that has left the Strait of Hormuz “open to Iranian oil…flowing freely, especially to China,” and earning Tehran “about twice as much” per day as before plus fees of “$2 million per passing tanker.” In this landscape, he writes, Russia and China gain strategically while America’s allies in Europe and Ukraine are weakened, asking whether “any U.S. military action” has ever produced so many benefits for U.S. adversaries with so little return.

“Putin’s Persian Problem: Don’t overthink it. The Iran war is bad for Russia,” Sergey Radchenko, Foreign Policy, 03.30.26.

  • Sergey Radchenko writes that while many argue the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran “benefits Russia,” with attention shifting and sanctions eased, “a close look reveals a more complex picture.” A “more assertive U.S. foreign policy has exposed Russia’s weakness and growing irrelevance,” he argues: Moscow “was unable to save its clients in Syria and, most recently, Venezuela,” and now “is also unable to help Iran,” reduced to “the role of an onlooker.” “For all of Putin’s huffing and puffing,” Radchenko notes, “Russia is really no more than a regional power, just as U.S. President Barack Obama once averred.”
  • Putin’s strategy, he says, is simply “to anxiously eye the war in the Middle East, hoping that the United States gets stuck there in some kind of a quagmire,” because “the longer such a conflict continues, the better for the Kremlin’s account books.” But Radchenko warns that if, after degrading Iran’s capabilities, “the United States reached a compromise with the Iranian regime, its standing in the Middle East would soar, while Russia and China would have been exposed as paper tigers that are much better at talking about a new world order than putting their ambitious visions into practice.”
  • A short, successful campaign against Iran would “stand in stark contrast to Russia’s own slog of a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine,” which has “notably failed to achieve any of its original objectives” despite “unleashing terrible destruction and wasting hundreds of thousands of lives,” Radchenko argues. In the end, “whether Russia benefits from this war or not all depends on how, and how quickly, it ends,” but for now “all Putin can do is impotently watch Washington’s war effort and hope for the worst.”

“Hormuz and Donbas: The blockade of the strait has pushed the Kremlin to continue the war and pursue a risky fiscal strategy,” Re:Russia Analytics, 03.27.26.

  • The authors argue that Russia’s abrupt budget U‑turn “reflects three interrelated factors: a sharp rise in oil prices driven by the war in Iran; the course of that war, which has proved unfavorable for the United States and Israel; and, apparently, Vladimir Putin’s decision … to renew the assault on northern Donbas for the third consecutive year.” After oil‑and‑gas revenues in Jan–Feb 2026 “were almost half the level of last year (826 billion rubles compared to 1.56 trillion)” and the deficit hit “3.45 trillion rubles, or 90% of the full-year target,” the finance ministry had planned 10% cuts in non‑protected spending and a lower cut‑off oil price, but on 24 March Deputy Minister Vladimir Kolychev announced “the cut-off price would not be changed this year,” effectively postponing consolidation.
  • Higher prices after the Hormuz blockade—Brent “above $100 per barrel… around 70% higher than at the start of the year,” Urals in Russian ports “exceeds $60 per barrel,” and Urals delivered to India “exceeded $100 per barrel” including freight—have “pushed Vladimir Putin towards a decision to continue the war and to attempt, at any cost, to capture northern Donbas,” the piece says. At a closed meeting, he reportedly told oligarchs he intended “to seize the part of Donetsk region not under Russian control” and proposed that business “chip in”; Suleiman Kerimov pledged “100 billion rubles,” setting a benchmark for an informal windfall tax.
  • Re:Russia concludes that this approach “implies a vital Russian interest in the capacity of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to continue resisting US and Israeli military efforts and to sustain pressure in the Strait of Hormuz,” turning the blockade into “a direct source of financing for a renewed offensive in Donbas.” They note reports that Russia is supplying Iran with upgraded Shahed/Geran‑2 drones and components and advising the IRGC on drone tactics, and warn that refusing to “economize on what is seen as a decisive new phase” is “highly risky” if the Middle East balance shifts or “the renewed offensive in Donbas fails for a third time.”

“The War Is Turning Iran Into a Major World Power,” Robert A. Pape, New York Times, 04.06.26.

  • Robert Pape argues the Iran war is creating “a fourth center of global power — Iran,” whose leverage comes not from GDP or armies but from control of “the most important energy choke point in the global economy, the Strait of Hormuz.” He notes that traffic through the strait “has dropped by over 90 percent since the war began,” not because Iran is sinking every ship but because “hitting a cargo ship every few days was more than enough to make the risk unacceptable,” driving insurers out. In this environment, “modern economies do not simply require oil” but oil “delivered on time, at scale and with predictable risk,” a standard Iran can now veto.
  • Pape stresses that this shift structurally benefits America’s adversaries: “China depends on Gulf energy to sustain growth. Russia benefits from higher and more volatile energy prices. Iran gains leverage from its position at the Hormuz choke point.” He warns that an Iran controlling “about 20 percent of the world’s oil,” plus “Russia with about 11 percent and China able to soak up much of that supply,” could form a de facto cartel denying the West 30 percent of global oil, leading to “precipitously declining power for the United States and Europe, and a global shift toward China, Russia and Iran.”

Remarks by Meghan O'Sullivan, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, at Anderson Cooper 360 degrees, 04.02.26.

  • Berman: “Meghan, you just heard David's assessment there. So if the war ends in two to three weeks, and Iran still has all those [missile launchers] left, albeit a diminished level from where it started, but how would the Gulf States, their U.S. allies in the region, how would they feel about that outcome?”
    • Meghan O'Sullivan: “Well, this new intelligence about how much missile launching capability Iran still has, and this conversation, I think, points to the fact that this conflict is likely to last longer. Two to three weeks, perhaps, but maybe even longer. Because Iran doesn't need to have any kind of dominance militarily to continue to eke out the conflict. It just has to have enough to create uncertainty.
    • “And having even a greatly diminished missile capacity will actually have two big strategic effects. One, it will allow Iran to continue to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. People need to simply wonder if, in fact, there's going to be a difficulty in crossing the strait. That will be enough to make it very hard to scale up tanker passage.”
    • “And secondly, it's going to really create pressure from Gulf States not to end the war and from the Israelis, but particularly the Gulf States. They do not want to have an angrier regime that still has capacity to use missiles to hit their facilities and their infrastructure. So I think all of this points to the fact it's going to be very hard to bring this conflict to a close in the timeframe that the President has suggested .

Graham Allison’s key takeaways from “‘Everything After This Will Be Harder’: Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Iran,” the retired general’s conversation with David French, published on 03.23.26 in New York Times, summarized by Professor Allison on 04.03.26 on his X account.

  • “To successfully meet the challenge the US currently faces in Iran, McChrystal recommends starting with ‘strategic empathy’: asking how the events occurring today look through the eyes of our adversary. (In the security studies canon, strategic empathy is an antidote to Americans’ natural “strategic narcissism” that understands events only through our own eyes, assumes others see the world as we do, and expects them to act only in response to our initiatives.)”
  • “Specifically, McChrystal advocates beginning by asking how Iranian leaders remember the history that has led to this juncture: ‘I try to remind people whenever we think of what’s happening now: If we don’t understand the journey to this point, we don’t understand the attitudes that are going to drive decisions people make.’ While Americans’ memory of Iran’s 1979 revolution and support for Shia militias leads US policymakers to view Iran as a ‘recalcitrant enemy,’ for Iranians, it really starts in 1953 with US covert action to overthrow Iran’s elected leader.”
  • “History also offers clues for answering headline questions like: will air power bring about regime change in Iran? McChrystal warns that the US has fallen for that illusion before. He calls the belief that air power, covert action, or Special Operations raids alone can permanently change facts on the ground ‘three great seductions’ that have repeatedly misled American leaders.”

“Leadership in Challenging Times: General CQ Brown, Jr., USAF (Ret.),” Interview by Eric Rosenbach, Director of the Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy Program for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, 04.02.26.

  • Partial transcript of Eric Rosenbach interview of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CQ Brown.
  • ER: “When you think about the Strait of Hormuz and options like island seizures, what should the United States be watching out for?”
    • CQB: “We’ve done a lot of planning for operating in the Gulf and the Strait. That includes island seizure operations—that’s what Marines do. The challenge is that the Iranians have coastal defense cruise missiles, drones, and fast attack craft—small swarms of boats that can harass forces. Taking islands might help deter or counter some of that, but it comes with risks.”
    • “Those Marines or airborne forces on the ground would be under threat from drones and missiles. Force protection becomes critical. You can’t fight if you’re spending all your time protecting yourself. It’s not going to be an easy mission. There are real risks involved.”
    • “As Chairman, you don’t walk in and say, ‘This is a bad idea.’ You lay out the risks, what it will take, the potential outcomes, and what leaders need to consider. There are others in the room too—intelligence, State Department, others—and then the President makes a decision. Once that happens, our job is to mitigate risk and execute the mission.”
  • ER: “Do you have thoughts on how many Americans could die in an operation like that?”
    • CQB: “When you lay out options, we do talk about those things. The challenge is we’ve been very successful over the past several decades with relatively low casualties, and we’ve gotten used to that.”
    • “If you get into a major conflict, the potential for losses is much higher. I’ve said before that if we don’t have the right capabilities, casualty numbers could look more like World War II or Vietnam. We can’t assume it won’t happen to us. We’ve already seen losses—13 service members killed, hundreds injured. That should bring us back to reality.”
    • “War is not something you take lightly. You’re putting lives at risk. Personally, every loss impacts me. Someone is going to knock on a family’s door and tell them their loved one is gone. That weighs heavily.”
  • ER: “What does technological disruption in warfare look like today?”
    • CQB: “I don’t know if there’s one specific technology. The bigger question is how technology is used. We may use it within certain norms, but others may not. That’s where disruption comes from—someone using technology in ways we wouldn’t. We can’t assume they won’t do it. We need to think ahead, deter it, and be prepared to respond. Technology is moving faster than policy, so we need policymakers who understand it and work closely with the tech sector.”

“The Iran war is a hostage crisis,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 04.05.26.

  • David Ignatius argues that Trump’s Iran war has become “what is essentially a hostage crisis”: Trump and Israel launched an assault that showed “masterful military tactics but poor strategic planning,” and Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz, “tak[ing] not just America but the entire global economy captive.” The United States is “winning and losing at the same time”: U.S. and Israeli forces have “near-total air supremacy,” yet “tactical dominance didn’t lead to a quick Iranian capitulation — but to a longer war that’s toxic for Trump, politically and economically.” Trump wants to “claim the victory (‘Obliterated!’) and ignore the defeat,” telling Europeans, in effect, to reopen the strait themselves — an approach Suzanne Maloney calls “unbelievably irresponsible,” and Richard Haass recasts as “We broke it, you own it.”
  • Ignatius says ending the crisis will require a mix of “calibrated military power” and diplomacy, likening a future Hormuz deal to the 2022 Black Sea Initiative that reopened grain shipping “despite the ongoing Ukraine war,” which required “the participation of all the key players: Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the United States, and countries around the world that needed the grain and fertilizer.” He proposes a “Strait of Hormuz Initiative” in which European and Asian states — “no country has a greater interest…than China” — help cajole or compel Tehran, noting that a China–Pakistan plan to reopen the strait while deferring issues like Iran’s missiles and nuclear program is only “a start toward global involvement” and may simply postpone “another round of war.”

“How Iran Should End the War: A Deal Tehran Could Take,” M. Javad Zarif, Foreign Affairs, 04.03.26. 

  • In his Foreign Affairs essay, M. Javad Zarif contends that after more than a month of fighting in a war Iran “did not start,” the Islamic Republic is nonetheless “clearly winning.” Despite intensive U.S.–Israeli airstrikes aimed at regime change, he argues, Tehran has maintained stability and defended its core interests. Zarif notes mass rallies where crowds chant against compromise with Washington, but cautions that open‑ended resistance—however emotionally gratifying—will only deepen civilian suffering, wreck infrastructure, and heighten the danger that a regional conflict could escalate into a global one. Instead, he urges Iran’s leaders to leverage their current advantage to “declare victory” and pivot toward diplomacy.
  • Zarif’s proposed bargain centers on Iran accepting constraints on its nuclear activities and fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in return for comprehensive sanctions relief. He calls for a U.S.–Iran mutual nonaggression pact and insists this could unlock a “brilliant future” for Iranians. While he portrays Washington as historically unreliable—pointing to back‑channel envoys with little expertise and the subsequent resort to force—he argues the United States now needs an exit from a failing strategy. In exchange for lifting all sanctions, unfreezing oil revenues, ending UN measures, and helping rebuild, Iran would permanently renounce nuclear weapons, reduce enriched stockpiles, ratify the IAEA Additional Protocol, and fold enrichment into a regional consortium—terms he claims the United States could never secure by military means. 

“Russians’ Predictions of Iran Crisis Impact: One Month Later,” RM Staff, RM, 04.03.26.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Europe Looks Away From Troubling Signs in Ukraine,” Alexander Rodnyansky, Wall Street Journal, 04.06.26.

  • Alexander Rodnyansky writes that “if Europe wants to support Ukraine as a future member of the West rather than merely as a glacis against Russia, its policy has to change. That starts with honesty. Europe should admit that self-preservation is now a central motive of its support. It should also stop treating military endurance as the only measure that matters. Aid should be tied to battlefield needs and to institutional development: legislative function, transparency, anticorruption enforcement, competence rather than the blind celebration of supposed political savvy, limits on arbitrary power, and a clear understanding that wartime necessity cannot become a permanent political principle.”
  • That mindset, he warns, leads European governments to judge Kyiv almost exclusively by “its willingness and ability to keep fighting,” while overlooking “coercive mobilization, executive overreach, suspended accountability, corruption that remains endemic, incompetence and political dysfunction in Kyiv.” 
  • Rodnyansky cautions that war with Russia could leave Europe with “a heavily armed, deeply traumatized, politically brittle” Ukraine—“anti‑Russian, but not liberal... Europe risks creating the very outcome it claims to want to avoid: a source of instability on its frontier. A buffer can buy time. But if not handled carefully, it can also become the next problem,” the author warns.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject: 

Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“Conflict Resolution: Has Russia Won the War?” Olivier Kempf, Harper’s Magazine, April 2026.

  • Olivier Kempf notes that while some analysts argue “Russia’s territorial gains since 2022 have been minimal” and that Kyiv’s deep‑strike and naval drone capabilities suggest time “may favor Kyiv,” he insists this view “reveals little about the true state of the conflict.” He writes that after early Ukrainian successes, “the war then settled into a grinding pace, with Russia slowly regaining the upper hand,” as Moscow’s front‑line advances, a strengthened war economy under Andrei Belousov and new drones and jamming systems have “significantly reinvigorated its military‑industrial capacity,” whereas Ukraine’s technological edge “has gradually faded.”
  • Kempf stresses that Russia’s broader goals—territorial expansion, demilitarizing Ukraine, and blocking NATO membership—are being advanced by attrition. He highlights that Ukraine’s population has fallen “from more than 43 million in 2022 to around 36 million,” that “tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died,” and that “civilian casualties in Ukraine rose by around 31 percent” in 2025. Moscow, he argues, “sees no immediate advantage to a rapid end to the conflict,” believing victory will come from “exerting pressure on the ground” while stalling talks and “chipp[ing] away at Ukrainian territory.”
  • For Kyiv, Kempf writes, “there is no hope of total victory and the reinstatement of 2014 borders,” and Zelensky’s “best bet is to exchange territory for security guarantees from NATO,” even as Trump has “rejected the idea of Ukrainian admission into NATO” and Europe is unlikely to “defend Ukraine’s sovereignty if Russia were to invade after an agreement.” He concludes that “Ukraine is caught in a terrible dilemma,” and while “it may be too early to say that Russia has won the war,” “it is possible, at this point, to assert that Ukraine will not win.”

“Russia is unlikely to run out of soldiers anytime soon – here’s why,” Charlie Walker and Bettina Renz, The Independent, 03.30.26.

  • Charlie Walker and Bettina Renz argue that, despite staggering casualties in Ukraine, Russia is not on the verge of a manpower collapse. On the contrary, Moscow is planning to recruit more than 400,000 additional troops, drawing on a still-large pool of military‑age men and the political decision to prioritize the war effort over broader economic efficiency. The Kremlin has avoided politically risky mass mobilization for now by relying on a steady flow of contract soldiers, volunteers, and recruits from poorer regions, while using repression and administrative pressure to limit open resistance.
  • A key part of this strategy, they contend, is Putin’s deliberate reconstruction of “military citizenship” — the idea that serving in the armed forces is both a civic duty and a viable life path. The state has dramatically increased pay, benefits, and social status for soldiers: frontline wages far exceed average civilian salaries in many regions, and families are promised compensation, debt relief, and preferential access to housing or public-sector jobs. These measures do not erase the risks of service, but they help normalize war as a long-term reality and make military enlistment a rational choice for many.
  • Finally, Walker and Renz emphasize how Russia’s economic and political conditions help sustain this recruitment model. Limited civilian job prospects, especially outside major cities, make generous military contracts particularly attractive, while tight media control and repression of dissent keep public opposition fragmented and risky. Under these circumstances, the authors conclude, Western hopes that Russia will simply “run out of men” are misplaced: absent a major political shock in Moscow, the combination of financial incentives, coercive tools, and constrained alternatives is likely to keep Russia’s manpower pipeline functioning for the foreseeable future.

“Russia’s Drone Line Experiment,” Rob Lee and Dmytro Putiata, Foreign Policy Research Institute/Two Marines, 04.03.26.

  • Rob Lee and Dmytro Putiata describe how Russia’s 2nd Combined Arms Army in 2025 created a “Drone Line” to centralize strike‑UAS employment over a 32 km frontage, instead of each regiment running its own ad hoc drone effort. The first echelon, a “total clearance zone” from the front line to 5 km beyond it, was divided into ten sectors; the second echelon, targeting logistics 5–10 km deep, into eight. The grouping had some 458 personnel and was allocated up to 560 UAS per day (360 copter FPVs, 111 fiber‑optic FPVs, 89 fixed‑wing FPVs), with Rubicon detachments handling strikes beyond 10 km.
  • The concept was then scaled by the Center Group of Forces to roughly 60, later 54, sectors with three depth echelons, including “isolation” zones 10+ km deep assigned to spetsnaz brigades and multiple Rubicon detachments, plus a Rubicon‑DM unit for remote mining. By late summer, Center GOF capped usage at 4,000 FPVs per day and fielded about 1,700 UAS crews, giving it “the densest coverage of Russian UAS capabilities along the front line.” The Western GOF’s 6th Combined Arms Army and the Southern GOF’s 3rd CAA ran their own variants, with the 6th CAA assigning around 170 UAS crews across three depth bands out to 35 km, using a mix of FPVs, ISR drones (Orlan‑10, Zala‑16, Supercam, Merlin) and Lancet/Kub loitering munitions.
  • The authors conclude that Russia, like Ukraine, is “constantly revising its methods for employing UAS,” using task‑organized depth zones and better‑funded elite units such as Rubicon and GROM Kaskad to operate at greater range. They note that “throughout the war, Ukraine has typically innovated first…The Russian military learns from these developments and will often copy them and scale them more effectively,” and that in 2025 Moscow “narrowed the gap in UAS employment.” Yet, they stress, even this dense Drone Line “did not lead to a breakthrough” for the Center Group of Forces in fall 2025, underscoring that improved Russian drone doctrine has increased lethality and pressure on Ukrainian forces without delivering decisive operational success.

“On the front lines, Russian soldiers pay officers to stay alive: The war against Ukraine has created a corrupt economy of blood money,” The Economist, 04.01.26.

  • The Economist reports from Russian units in Luhansk and Donetsk that “the front lines are a marketplace where everything has a price: drones, medals, home leave and life itself.” One deserter, Maxim, says his commander told new recruits he had “buried 12 companies and they would be the 13th…only 5% of soldiers survive assaults,” then explained that survival depended on paying. Maxim and another soldier each paid “1m rubles to be transferred to the rear, plus another 100,000–150,000 rubles a month.”
  • Ordinary infantry, unlike elite units, “must buy their own” gear; of the 8m rubles Maxim earned, “6m went in equipment and bribes.” Commanders demand money for “the needs of the regiment,” requisition bank cards and PINs before assaults, declare the dead “missing,” then empty their accounts at ATMs in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. There is “a rich trade in medical documents declaring soldiers unfit for combat,” and even “leave after a wound” costs 100,000 rubles, one trooper says; “to get discharged they ask for a million.”
  • Those who refuse to pay face torture or execution. Soldiers describe “zeroing out” refuseniks—shooting them, “tying them to trees to freeze,” denying care, or having drone operators kill them. The article cites at least 100 commanders linked to such killings and quotes a bereaved mother asking, “Will these bastards ever be punished?” Her husband, who tried to expose extortion, was “tied to a tree and killed.” The picture is of a Russian war effort in Ukraine built on what the magazine calls “a corrupt economy of blood money.”

“Russian corruption fuels massive casualties in Ukraine,” Simon Ostrovsky and Katia Patin, PBS News Hour, 04.02.26.

  • Simon Ostrovsky: “In Russia's military, men learn quickly to fear their commanders more than their foe. This is the treatment awaiting those who refuse to hand over their pay. Hundreds of videos circulating on Russian social media reveal horrific punishments by superiors extorting money from their men. Soldiers report being locked in cages, electrocuted and sexually assaulted. Those wounded, but lucky enough to survive, must pay thousands more to be declared unfit for service, or they're forced to literally limp into battle.”
  • Seth Jones, Center for Strategic and International Studies: “They're being used as bait, so they draw fire. And when there's artillery that goes off, Russian artillery or Russian drones are able to, say, spot where Ukrainian locations are.”
  • Ostrovsky: “[In] leaked messages… obtained by the independent Russian outlet Radio Echo, nearly 12,000 complaints filed over six months last year accused commanders of corruption and violence towards their own men.”
  • Ostrovsky: “Alexandra Arkhipova (Wilson Center) is a Russian researcher who's spent weeks sifting through these letters to verify their authenticity and catalog the brutality that the Russian military is inflicting on its own men.”
  • Arkhipova: “In many cases, in many letters, the people are saying that “literally we paid everything to have our father, brother, husband not to be killed.”
  • Ostrovsky: “[Arkhipova] told PBS News the army shifts the cost of the war in Ukraine onto the soldiers themselves through extortion. Soldiers report handing over up to 80% of their salary just to stay alive. Price lists dictate new rules of engagement, $2,000 to be assigned to a post as a drone operator away from the front line, $6,000 to serve in the rear, a staggering $12,000 for a forged discharge on medical grounds… If the entire military is functioning like this, it couldn't really perpetuate the war for much longer.”

“Why Trees Are Key to Russia’s Spring Offensive in Ukraine,” Constant Méheut and Olha Konovalova, New York Times, 04.06.26.

  • The article says Russia is trying to “exploit the warmer weather to regain the momentum” it lost over winter by using “a critical springtime asset: foliage that helps conceal advancing troops from the omnipresent drones.” In eastern and southern Ukraine, where forests are scarce, “soldiers often move through the tree lines that border agricultural fields,” Soviet‑era windbreaks now turned into covered approach routes. “Leaves in tree lines…will significantly reduce visibility,” Maj. Vladyslav Vishtalyuk notes, making it harder to detect both sides.
  • Capt. Dmytro Filatov warns that once foliage appears “it will give more advantage to the enemy, because they have more manpower, more infantry,” allowing Russia to suffer fewer losses. A March assault near Lyman involving “more than 500 troops” was repelled after four hours, but Ukrainian officers expect renewed pushes like previous spring offensives that produced Moscow’s largest gains. Cities such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, roughly 10 miles from the front and still home to over 250,000 people, may remain under Kyiv’s control yet face intensified drone attacks.
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Military aid to Ukraine:

“A long Mideast war could take away from support for Ukraine, Zelenskyy says,” Associated Press/Politico, 04.05.26.

  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns that the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran is already eroding support for Ukraine and could further reduce deliveries of “critically needed Patriot air defense missiles.” “We have to recognize that we are not the priority for today,” he told the AP, adding, “That’s why I am afraid a long (Iran) war will give us less support.” Patriots, which he calls “essential for intercepting Russian ballistic missiles,” “were never delivered in sufficient quantities to begin with,” and if the Iran war continues, “the package — which is not very big for us — I think will be smaller and smaller day by day.”
  • Zelenskyy says the Mideast conflict is directly benefiting Moscow: “Russia gets additional money because of this, so yes, they have benefits,” he argues, citing higher oil prices and U.S. waivers on Russian crude. Russia, which already occupies “about 20% of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula,” can now draw extra revenue as “Asian nations are increasingly competing for Russian crude oil as an energy crisis mounts,” even as Ukrainian drones force shutdowns at refineries and export terminals in Nizhny Novgorod and Primorsk. To keep Ukraine on the agenda, he offers to share Kyiv’s battle‑tested methods for countering Iranian‑made Shahed drones and sea‑lane threats, telling Gulf states and Washington that in exchange for Ukrainian expertise and technology, “these countries could help Ukraine ‘with anti-ballistic missiles.’”

“Russia’s Sanctions-Busting Cryptocurrency Empire,” Agathe Demarais, Foreign Policy, 03.31.26.

  • Agathe Demarais reports that “over the past year, Moscow has developed a crypto-based sanctions-evading channel powered by the Russian fintech company A7 and the ruble-linked cryptocurrency A7A5,” with “part of these flows… routed through Kyrgyzstan.” A7 was set up in late 2024 with clear Kremlin backing.
  • Experts cited by Demarais estimate that in 2025 “A7A5 turnover stood at around $72 billion–$93 billion… as much as one-third of Russia’s entire imports bill,” while A7 “processed some $39 billion in transactions linked to sanctions evasion,” roughly equivalent to Russia’s prewar annual import bill for high‑tech and dual‑use goods. 
  •  Demarais concludes that A7A5 is “a proof of concept” for crypto‑enabled sanctions evasion and warns it is “only a matter of time before other sanctioned regimes follow in its footsteps” unless the U.S. and EU move to pressure stablecoin issuers and exploit A7A5’s reliance on Kyrgyzstan.
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • No significant developments.

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

“America in a World of Upheaval: A Conversation with William J. Burns,” Dan Kurtz-Phelan interviews former CIA Director William J. Burns, Foreign Affairs, 04.02.26. For more of this interview, see “Nuclear arms” below.  

  • Kurtz-Phelan: “How do you understand Putin's theory of success in Ukraine right now?”
    • Burns: “I think he thinks he has convinced the White House that it's only a matter of time before he wins. And therefore we should negotiate a solution sooner rather than later as well. I just have not believed that. So I think it's a mistake for us to accept the Putin argument that the Ukrainians are going to lose sooner or later, so we should just negotiate an end to this now.”

“Is the Iran War breaking NATO forever?” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 03.31.26.

  • Anatol Lieven argues that the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran has exposed rifts that “may prove fatal” for NATO, writing that “the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems to be wilting pretty fast.” He notes that Germany’s AfD leader Tino Chrupalla has openly called to “begin to put into practice what our party manifesto says: the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Germany,” insisting the country cannot be “truly sovereign” while hosting bases it doesn’t control. Lieven stresses that Spain’s decision to close U.S. bases and airspace, and Iran’s willingness to let “ships under the Spanish flag” pass Hormuz, highlight “the risks of hosting foreign military forces that you do not control,” as he puts it.
  • Lieven underscores that France and Italy have already restricted U.S. use of their territory, while Trump has warned Britain and France they must “learn how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has added that if NATO is just about the U.S. defending Europe while allies “deny us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement,” a setup he says “is a hard one to stay engaged in.” Unlike past crises over Vietnam or Iraq, Lieven contends, a united European move to close airspace “would critically undermine the U.S. campaign against Iran” and directly threaten European economies.
  • One “massive barrier” to Europe distancing itself from Washington has been “the Ukraine War,” Lieven writes, but he argues that the “alleged Russian threat is both completely hypothetical and grossly exaggerated,” whereas the Iran war’s danger to Europe is “all too real and imminent.” He warns that “the longer the Iran war goes on, the greater will be the pressure in Europe to cut a deal with Iran,” especially if elites conclude that “the NATO guarantee of U.S. military protection no longer holds.” In an extreme scenario where Trump might try to “seiz[e] Greenland,” Lieven concludes, “this would end NATO, for no alliance can survive an open attack by its leading member on another one”; if the U.S. “no longer defends and instead attacks Europe,” and Europe ceases to be “an airstrip for U.S. force projection,” then “the basic rationales for NATO’s existence will have vanished,” he argues.

“Bomb Iran but Blow Up NATO?” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 04.02.26.

  • The Wall Street Journal editorial board warns that “the Iran war” now raises the question whether it could “do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance,” calling that prospect “the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history.”
  • On Russia and Ukraine, the editors insist a U.S. NATO exit “would nonetheless serve only Russia, Iran and China,” noting that “blowing up NATO has been the main goal of Russian strategy since the alliance formed in 1949,” and that it would come “at the very time Ukraine is showing new strength in resisting Russia’s invasion forces.” They describe a “larger reality” in which “Russia and Iran are working together as an axis against the West,” with both “shar[ing] weapons, especially drones and missiles,” and Russia “providing intelligence to Iran about American targets.” They conclude that if allies allow Iran to survive, “Russia to defeat Ukraine militarily and become the dominant power in Europe,” it “will be the height of folly and an historic tragedy,” the editorial board writes.

“NATO slides into Trump-induced coma,” Dave Lawler and Zachary Basu, Axios, 04.03.26.

  • Axios writes that “NATO is a promise, and now it’s broken,” arguing that Trump has effectively made Article 5 conditional: “if you won’t help me in my war, I might not show up for yours.” After several allies refused airspace and basing for strikes on Iran, Trump called them “cowards” and said he might withdraw from NATO, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned the administration would “have to reexamine the value of NATO.”
  • Ivo Daalder notes that even with higher European spending, it would take “several years to be able to ‘defend and thereby deter Russia,’ and perhaps a decade to fully replace the U.S.,” and asks, “let’s say there is an actual armed attack on NATO. Would there be a political decision [by Trump] to come to the aid of that ally?” For frontline states facing “an expansionist Russia,” Axios says, “that’s a very worrying prospect.”
  • Zooming in on Moscow, the piece stresses that the Iran war “is shaping up as a strategic windfall for” Russia, “boosting oil revenues and diverting Western attention—all while straining NATO.” Russian officials and state media are “openly reveling in Trump’s attacks on the alliance,” while surging prices and Trump’s “temporary” sanctions easing are “pumping billions into Russia’s war chest.” Axios notes a reported Trump threat to halt weapons to Ukraine via NATO if Europe didn’t help in Hormuz, and concludes that “without unyielding U.S. commitment to the Article 5 mutual defense clause, NATO has already been significantly undermined.”
  • Lara Jakes notes that Trump’s latest threat to quit NATO comes as the alliance “struggles to maintain unity against Russia’s aggression, and as the war in Iran upends the global economy.” She stresses that the U.S., with some 70,000 troops in Europe and its nuclear arsenal, is NATO’s core; without it, “you fundamentally change the deterrence and defense posture of the alliance,” NATO scholar Sten Rynning says.
  • Rynning warns that if the U.S. left, “Russia would be emboldened in its war against Ukraine, which NATO is helping to defend, and that it would antagonize former Soviet states in the Baltics,” likely trying “to drive a wedge between Western Europe and eastern members of the alliance, like Turkey and Hungary.” Yet he also argues Washington “has a fundamental interest” in Europe’s security: “I think he doesn’t fully grasp what the U.S. has to lose by turning its back on Europe. Europe has a lot to lose, without question, but so does the U.S.”

“Book review: Jens Stoltenberg Betrayed the Baltic States in 2021—and Appears Entirely Untroubled by It,” Meelis Oidsalu, Baltic Sentinel, 03.29.26.

  • Meelis Oidsalu argues that Stoltenberg’s memoir reveals “a Secretary General willing to discuss Europe’s security order over the heads of the allies most exposed to the Russian threat.” He writes that the book confirms Western leaders “assumed at the start of the war that Kyiv would fall quickly,” and that even after U.S. intelligence warned of a mid‑October 2021 invasion, “Paris and Berlin regarded the threat of invasion as exaggerated.” Stoltenberg, Oidsalu says, placed himself “more in the French and German camp when it came to fear of escalation,” emphasizing dialogue with Moscow even after Crimea.
  • The most alarming episode for Russia’s neighbors is Stoltenberg’s fall 2021 meeting with Sergei Lavrov, where he “nevertheless proposed… that the NATO-Russia Council discuss Russia’s idea of creating a buffer zone in the border areas and withdrawing allied troops to their pre‑1997 positions,” despite knowing “Poland’s and the Baltic states’ opposition.” For Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, Oidsalu contends, this was not “risk reduction but risk redistribution… done without any mandate whatsoever.”
  • Oidsalu concludes that for states on NATO’s eastern flank, Stoltenberg’s self‑portrait as a reasonable consensus‑engineer masks “an older hierarchy of security within the alliance.” Beneath talk of unity and dialogue, he writes, lies a system “in which some allies retain the privilege of defining prudence, while others are asked to accept exposure as the price of it” in the face of Russian power.

“‘We are a sovereign nation: we walk under no one and don’t let the world fall down’: New RIAC president Dmitry Trenin on Russia’s partners and opponents,” Kommersant, 04.02.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (RIAC is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Trump Raises NATO Withdrawal as Allies Push Back on Iran War,” Alexander Ward, Robbie Gramer and Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, 04.01.26.

  • Ward, Gramer and Pancevski report that Trump has privately discussed “leaving NATO or… ways to weaken the U.S. commitment” if allies don’t help “reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” though he has issued no formal order yet, U.S. officials said. The authors note that Trump has told advisers and the Telegraph he is “strongly considering” pulling out and that a 2023 law now bars a unilateral presidential withdrawal, requiring Senate or congressional approval instead.
  • European leaders, they write, are hardening their stance as the Iran war proves “deeply unpopular” with voters. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he “firmly rejected” Trump’s demand to help open the Strait and told him, “if you wanted our help, you should have asked earlier.” French President Emmanuel Macron underlined that France “was not consulted and is not part of this military offensive,” while Spain has closed its airspace to U.S. planes.
  • Despite Trump’s charge that “we spend hundreds of billions… on NATO” only to see allies fail him, the reporters stress that European bases and forces remain crucial to the Iran campaign: U.S. bombers and drones launch, refuel or rearm from multiple NATO countries, and the U.K. has enabled long‑range bombing runs and flown defensive patrols. NATO’s deterrent, one expert tells them, is like “a religion”—and faith on “both sides of the Atlantic” is now badly shaken.

“Trump’s Brusque Threat to Europe: Go It Alone,” Michael D. Shear, New York Times, 04.01.26.

Missile defense:

  • No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms:

“America in a World of Upheaval: A Conversation with William J. Burns,” Dan Kurtz-Phelan interviews former CIA Director William J. Burns, Foreign Affairs, 04.02.26. 

  • Dan Kurtz-Phelan: “I'm fascinated by… this moment in the fall of 2022 when all the reporting suggests that people within the administration were pretty acutely concerned about nuclear use...”
    • William Burns: “Well… I think our judgment at the time was that if a situation emerged in which the Ukrainian advance continued at a rapid rate and put at risk Putin's grip on Crimea, that would be a circumstance in which he'd at least consider the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons.”
    • “We didn't believe that there was a high likelihood that his grip on Crimea was going to be put at risk then, just because the Ukrainians, thanks to their courage and innovativeness, had made huge progress. But also they needed to regroup as well. And the Russians had begun to use their head and pull back across the Dnipro to more defensible positions. So I didn't think there was a high likelihood that that circumstance was going to emerge.”

“Can Trump end the war in Iran and save face? I’m answering your questions,” David Ignatius live chat, Washington Post, 04.06.26. Summarized while the Q&A was still underway, therefore incomplete by default.

  • On the risk of escalation, Ignatius says he “can imagine Trump threatening to use tactical nukes, as Putin did in Ukraine in late 2022,” but expects China would again “send a sharp message (as it did with Russia in 2022) that it strongly opposed any such action.” He notes that Trump “is obviously so stressed, his messaging is erratic, he seems rattled … and yet he is the person with his ‘finger on the button,’” leaving the system dependent on advisers “having the guts to be frank with him” and on a strong Joint Chiefs chair to resist illegal or reckless orders.
  • Responding to a reader who says “the war in Ukraine has largely taken a back seat,” Ignatius insists “the war rages on in Ukraine. Ukrainians, far from forgetting, fight on nobly. We’ll see what spring brings in terms of offensives from either side.” Later, when asked who should pay for reconstruction, he says “yes!” Russia can and should be made to contribute, and that this is “a chance for Europe to truly repay the vision and generosity of the Marshall Plan, with a similar reconstruction effort for Ukraine,” where “EU membership and the cleansing effect that would have on Ukraine’s too‑corrupt business culture” would be key.
  • Asked whether Trump can both end the Iran war and “credibly claim success,” Ignatius answers that “to resume as a global leader that can achieve a favorable outcome on Iran, Trump must recover badly damaged trust and credibility.” His “profanity-laden gangster talk has really begun to grate with global leaders,” he argues, and the only way to “save face” is to “act responsibly and patiently to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through a combination of diplomacy and military power.” Threats to “bomb Iran back into the stone age” would simply guarantee that “the strait will remain an unstable choke point indefinitely.”  

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

  • No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

“The Iran Shock. And the Dangerous Allure of Energy Autarky,” Jason Bordoff and Director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, 04.06.26.  

  • Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan argue in FA that the 2026 U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s near‑closure of the Strait of Hormuz is causing the “largest disruption” of modern energy flows, proving the world has “never escaped the reality of oil geopolitics.” “Governments have been feeling a growing pull toward energy autarky,” but they should not, striving instead to “achieve energy autonomy but to manage interdependence more effectively, mitigating the most critical vulnerabilities in their energy systems without abandoning the efficiencies of global trade,” according to the two. 
  • “In energy, as in so much else, complete control is impossible. As governments revise their energy strategies in the wake of the crisis, their goal should not be self-sufficiency at any cost. Rather, it should be to build systems strong enough to absorb shocks without breaking,” they write.

“Trump Gambled by Easing Oil Sanctions on Iran and Russia. Will It Pay Off?” Roxanna Vigil, Council on Foreign Relations, 04.03.26.

  •  Roxanna Vigil writes that by launching the Iran war, “the Trump administration has created a supply shock that has forced the United States to provide temporary sanctions relief to Iran … as well as a belligerent Russia.” The result is that sanctions relief “will likely result in increased revenue for Iran and could result in Russia receiving $3.3 to $5 billion in additional oil revenue in March.” She calls it a “paradox”: Washington “claims to be pressuring Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, but it has now handed Moscow a financial lifeline the Kremlin can use to prolong the war.”
  • She explains that OFAC’s General License 134A is “a waiver for the delivery and sale of Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels,” authorizing “all transactions necessary” for cargoes on or before March 12 and “effectively suspend[ing] the cap on Russian oil for covered cargoes for U.S. persons.” With the waiver and war “boosting the price of Urals crude,” Russia’s flagship blend, the Financial Times estimate she cites is stark: “Russia might have received an additional $150 million per day of oil revenue,” adding up to “$3.3 to $5 billion for Russia in the month of March alone.”
  • Vigil argues that, contrary to Trump officials’ claim this is a “narrowly tailored, short‑term measure” that “will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government,” the waivers “have turned Iran and Russia from price‑takers into price‑setters and left global prices higher than before.” What was meant to be “using ‘the Iranian barrels against the Iranians’” and freeing “about 260 million excess barrels of energy” has instead “failed to add supply to the market” and “directly undermine[d] U.S. national security interests,” leaving the White House “caught in a trap of its own making” when the waivers expire.

“Commodity Windfalls Are Rolling Into Russia From War in Iran,” Bloomberg News, 04.01.26.

  • Bloomberg reports that Tehran’s “stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz” has not only boosted Russia’s Urals crude but sent prices for aluminum up 12% and urea “by almost three-quarters since the start of the conflict,” turning the Iran war into a broad commodity windfall for Moscow. A week before the U.S.–Israeli strikes, officials were weighing cutting the budget oil price to “$45 to $50 a barrel,” but Urals was averaging $93.40 by late March; European government analysis suggests Russian oil exports could get a “$40 billion boost” if prices stay high. “Without the war in Iran, the situation in Russian economy would be much worse than it is now,” Alexander Gabuev said.
  • The article notes that some Russian commodities are “losing the pariah status” they acquired after the invasion of Ukraine. With Hormuz disruption and Iranian strikes on Gulf plants, Western buyers are again inquiring about Rusal’s aluminum, and fertilizer trader Taylor Eastman says “Russian supply has become increasingly important” as Gulf fertilizer flows are choked off. At the same time, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries, export terminals and fertilizer plants—such as Ust-Luga and Dorogobuzh PJSC—are limiting how fully Moscow can exploit the boom.
  • Wheat and gas still look “brighter:” SovEcon says Russia’s wheat export prospects are improving as Middle East risks bolster demand, while Russian gas is “another likely beneficiary” after Iranian strikes shut part of Qatar’s LNG capacity, tightening global markets even as the EU starts restricting Russian LNG. Consultant Vita Spivak concludes that “the longer the conflict lasts, the greater the potential upside for Russia,” since “higher-for-longer commodity prices and sustained demand through extended sanctions waivers could help offset” damage from Ukrainian strikes.

“Russia, Vladimir Putin Emerge as a Winner From Iran War,” Ellen Mitchell, The Hill, 04.01.26.

  • Ellen Mitchell writes that “it’s been a good month for Russian President Vladimir Putin” as Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the suspension of key U.S. sanctions have “put a choke hold on the movement of one-fifth of the world’s oil” and “further allowed the Kremlin to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars more than usual on oil sales.” Luke Coffey says “it’d be safe to say” Moscow is making billions more as Russian crude jumps from $57 to $115 a barrel, money that “benefit[s] Russia’s ability to continue paying contractors to fight in Ukraine,” with soldiers earning “between $2,000 to $2,500 a month.” Swedish armed forces chief Gen. Michael Claesson notes that Russia has “rearranged their economy to more effect a war economy” and that its defense industrial base is now “inflated financially.”
  • Politically and militarily, Mitchell stresses, “the list should start with the U.S. distraction from Ukraine,” as Daniel Fried argues. U.S.-mediated peace talks “came to a complete standstill” just as “the Ukraine war was not going well for Russia,” with Kyiv’s drone warfare success “becoming apparent,” yet Washington “could have brought home a big win” and didn’t. Maria Snegovaya says “Ukraine is not a priority” for the Trump administration, which sees it as “an annoyance” and pushed early for concessions on Donbas, while the “tremendous depletion of Patriot missiles” for Iran will shape future Russian strikes on Ukraine. Meanwhile, Putin can “sit back and watch a rupture in transatlantic relations,” as Trump trashes NATO; “the Kremlin probably couldn’t believe its luck,” Coffey remarks, and Fried calls this “a gift.”

“Ukraine’s drones dent Russia’s war-fueled oil windfall,” Anastasia Stognei, Max Seddon and Christopher Miller, Financial Times, 04.04.26.

  • Ukrainian long‑range drones have turned Russia’s Baltic export hub into a vulnerability just as the Iran war lifted Brent above $100. The FT reports that “five attacks on Primorsk and Ust-Luga since early last week have cost Russian energy exporters about $970mn in revenues,” with Primorsk and Ust‑Luga handling “more than 40% of Russia’s seaborne crude export capacity.” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov concedes Russia cannot “keep these facilities 100% secure,” prompting one pro‑war blogger to call that a “brazen lie.”
  • The strikes also hit global markets: Ust‑Luga supplies “around 8% of the world’s naphtha,” and its exports “dropped by about 70%” in late March, while Asian naphtha prices have “doubled since the beginning of the war.” Kyiv’s Unmanned Systems Forces say they aim to create “an oil build-up and a shortage of capacity” to “force the enemy to stop [oil] production,” and Zelenskyy vows Ukraine will only halt if Moscow stops attacking Ukraine.

“As the Iran war continues, these ‘swing states’ will be pivotal,” Ken Moriyasu, Washington Post, 04.06.26.

  • Ken Moriyasu argues that Hormuz’s closure “has exposed the fragility of maritime choke points and dramatically boosted the strategic value of overland energy routes across Eurasia,” making it vital for the U.S. to “prevent any single power from dominating the Eurasian landmass.” He identifies eight “swing states” — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan — that “sit astride the major corridors linking Asia and Europe” and possess oil, gas or critical minerals, turning them into decisive terrain in the contest with Russia and China. Russia’s war in Ukraine has “weakened Moscow’s grip, opening space for China to expand its influence through the Belt and Road Initiative,” but most of these states “do not want to swap dependence on Russia for dependence on China,” creating an opening for U.S. engagement.
  • Moriyasu writes that Trump’s Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) already reflects this logic, by “brokering connectivity between Armenia and Azerbaijan” to create a U.S.-managed corridor linking Central Asia to Turkey and Europe “while bypassing Russia.” He urges Washington to go further — launching a regular “Eurasia 8+1” dialogue with these states, using the Miami G‑20 summit to elevate them, and enlisting partners like Japan to help balance both Moscow and Beijing. If the United States fails to engage them systematically, he warns, “Eurasia’s infrastructure, energy routes and trade networks” will “lock into a Sino‑centric order,” and the U.S. will “lose leverage for decades.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Propaganda Against U.S. Is Alarming Trump Team,” Steven Lee Myers and Edward Wong, New York Times, 04.01.26.

  • Steven Lee Myers and Edward Wong report that the Trump administration is “scrambling to respond to a global information war with adversaries like Russia, China and a battered but defiant Iranian government” as the Iran war fuels “anti‑American narratives” worldwide. After taking office in January 2025, Trump officials dismantled FBI, ODNI and State Department teams that had exposed “numerous covert disinformation efforts, including ones by Russia and China,” on the theory that they had colluded with social‑media platforms to “censor Americans.” Now, with foreign influence campaigns intensifying since Trump ordered attacks on Venezuela and Iran, the State Department has sent a cable to every embassy ordering them to push back against propaganda.
  • The cable, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, warns that foreign adversaries seek to “sow division in the United States and among its allies while promoting alternative worldviews,” and urges diplomats to work with Pentagon information operations and even use X’s Community Notes to challenge “anti-American propaganda operations.” Critics like Nina Jankowicz and former State official Orna Blum say the new steps are “very reactive” and that years of cuts, including shutting down Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts now being partially restored, have left the United States “not considered a reliable actor in the communication space,” opening room for Russian, Chinese and Iranian narratives to spread.

“If Congress wants dialogue with Russia, it’s talking to the wrong people,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, Washington Post, 04.03.26.

  • Vladimir Kara-Murza condemns last week’s visit to Washington by five members of Russia’s “rubber-stamp parliament,” led by Vyacheslav Nikonov of Putin’s United Russia and grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov. He stresses that all Duma members are under U.S. sanctions for “supporting—and formally authorizing—Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” yet Rep. Anna Paulina Luna secured a waiver and now plans a Russia Caucus to “institutionalize dialogue.” These “so-called parliamentarians,” he writes, “represent no one but themselves,” since “no national election in Russia since 2000 has been judged free and fair.”
  • Kara-Murza argues that if Congress “wants to foster dialogue with Russian society, there is a better way than socializing with Kremlin lapdogs.” He points to “many people in my home country who oppose his dictatorship and his brutal war in Ukraine,” citing Boris Nadezhdin’s brief antiwar presidential run, when “hundreds of thousands of Russians lined up…to sign his ballot petitions” before he was barred. That episode, he says, showed how quickly “Putin’s claim of universal support for his war collapsed.”
  • With Putin turning 74 and “personalistic dictatorships rarely outliv[ing] their dictators,” Kara-Murza urges Congress to prepare for a post-Putin Russia by creating a Free Russia Caucus “modeled on the existing Free Belarus Caucus” to work with “Russia’s pro-democracy movement and civil society.” Such a group, he argues, would “reaffirm the long-standing American principle—and national security interest—of supporting democracy” and “make the world a much safer place” than legitimizing Putin’s enablers while they wage war on Ukraine.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Autocracy 2025: Is there an end in sight to the third wave of de-democratization?” Re:Russia, 04.01.26.

  • Re:Russia notes that nearly half the world now lives in “electoral autocracies (57 countries), including Russia,” and another 2.3 billion in “closed autocracies,” arguing that the third wave of autocratization is “affecting an unprecedented number of countries.” Russia is emblematic: it sits in the vast bloc of “electoral autocracies” where formal elections persist but “democratic indicators” deteriorate and “autocracy consolidates,” the authors write, as war in Ukraine reinforces repression at home.
  • The briefing stresses that 2025 brought “the regression of democracy in the United States,” but also underlines how personalist leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump mutually reinforce the wave of de‑democratization. Citing research on “elected strongmen,” the authors argue that “the principal mechanism through which personalist regimes dismantle democracy lies not so much in the leaders themselves as in their success in transforming political parties into instruments of personal power,” a pattern visible both in Russia’s system and in Trump‑era America.
  • Looking ahead, Re:Russia warns that 2026 elections in Hungary, Israel, Brazil, and especially the U.S. will be a test of whether the reverse wave “wanes or resurges,” but stresses that Russia already anchors a global bloc of autocracies. With 3.8 billion people in electoral autocracies and Moscow actively exporting its model and its war to Ukraine, the authors conclude that “the case of the United States under Trump’s renewed presidency… risks becoming an additional driver of the third wave of de-democratization,” further normalizing Russia‑style rule.

“The Regime of Civilian Militarism: The Origins and Conditions of the Systemic Conflict Between Putin and the Army,” Re:Russia, 04.03.26.

  • Re:Russia argues that, despite its outward militarization, “the Putin regime can in many respects be described as militaristic” but is actually ruled by “civilian militarists,” not professional soldiers. They write that the system is “governed by civilian militarists, that is, individuals with a ‘force-oriented’ mindset who have adopted, in a neophyte fashion, the outward attributes of military culture but do not understand either the substance of military planning or the principles and mechanisms through which the military establishment operates.” The decision to invade Ukraine, they contend, “was not based on a calculation of actual forces and resources” but on Putin’s “understanding of national pride” and his sense that Ukraine’s Euro‑Atlantic aspirations “undermined Russia’s role as a ‘great’ or regional power.” This “contradiction between rational and metaphysical approaches to military affairs,” they argue, “inevitably led to serious conflicts between the Kremlin and the military establishment,” now expressed in the arrests of multiple deputy defense ministers and generals.
  • The authors say today’s “purges” are less about corruption than about “the Kremlin’s fear of a potential military opposition.” They note that after Prigozhin’s mutiny “the mutiny was not suppressed… it was halted by Prigozhin and the PMC leadership themselves,” showing that “there is no confirmation that civilian militarists are capable of resisting a military revolt if its leaders do not back down themselves.” They highlight the case of Major General Ivan Popov, who called his 58th Army troops “my gladiators” and was punished after clashing with Valery Gerasimov, as evidence that “the next Prigozhin may not be a former convict, but a general with genuine standing within the armed forces.” Inside the officer corps, they note, “there are established views as to who bears responsibility for the failures of the war,” and as a stagnant, positional conflict drags on, relations between Putin and the army “are far from harmonious and pose acute questions of political survival for both sides.”

“The Business Climate is in Crisis: Leading indicators of business sentiment point to a contraction of the Russian economy in early 2026,” Re:Russia, 03.31.26.

Defense and aerospace:

  •  No significant developments.
  • See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

“The Boomerang Effect: Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine Expands Crime Rate at Home,” Alexander Kupatadze and Erica Marat, Briefing Note 42, March 2026.

  • Alexander Kupatadze and Erica Marat argue that Russia’s full‑scale invasion has produced “a ‘boomerang effect’, whereby armed conflict abroad has destabilized Russia’s own security environment more severely than that of Ukraine.” They write that “the war has made Russia both more criminalized and more repressive,” stressing that Russia has seen “the steepest rise in serious crime among all of Ukraine’s neighbors.” Using GDELT and POLECAT data, they find that “non‑state criminal activity surged sharply in 2022, particularly in arms trafficking, the drug trade and human trafficking,” and that in 2024 Russia “recorded 617,301 serious offences, the highest number since 2010.”
  • The authors say several “conflict‑driven forces underpin these trends”: “weakened policing capacity as officers are redeployed to the front line; social normalization of violence; the return of combat veterans suffering from trauma and with access to weapons; sanctions‑induced economic disruption; and new wartime opportunities for profiteering in arms, drugs and other contraband.” They emphasize that while “Ukraine and Poland also experienced increases,” Russia’s spike was “far larger in scale and duration.”

  • Looking ahead, Kupatadze and Marat conclude that “post‑war Russia will remain highly criminalized and increasingly reliant on coercion,” warning that this has “long‑term implications for domestic stability and Western policy planning.”

     

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s external policies, including relations with “far abroad” countries:

“In Hungarian election, Trump and Putin are backing Viktor Orban,” Catherine Belton, Washington Post, 04.06.26.

  • Catherine Belton reports that JD Vance’s pre‑election visit to Budapest is a “last‑ditch bid to rescue” Viktor Orbán, a “pro‑Kremlin Hungarian” leader now “trailing in the polls” behind conservative challenger Péter Magyar. Orbán’s government has been rocked by revelations that it “colludes with Moscow,” including a Russian foreign‑intelligence report that even floated staging a fake assassination attempt on Orbán to boost his sagging popularity. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has admitted he “coordinates about decisions” in EU meetings with “foreign leaders, including Russians,” and a leaked 2024 call captures him telling Sergei Lavrov, “I am always at your disposal,” while lobbying to ease sanctions on Kremlin‑linked elites.
  • Belton describes how cheap Russian energy and shared illiberal ideology have turned Hungary into a “magnet for American conservatives” and a “means of funneling” Kremlin narratives into the U.S. right. Think tanks like Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the Danube Institute, bankrolled in part via state‑transferred stakes in MOL, have hosted MAGA figures and “launder” pro‑Moscow talking points that many U.S. conservatives “would never accept directly from Russians.” With Trump’s Iran war unpopular in Hungary and Orbán’s record on the economy and corruption under attack, analysts say the ruling Fidesz party “has its back to the wall” and is running a fear‑based campaign that leans heavily on the Ukraine war and on visible backing from both Trump and Putin.

“Is Peter the Great’s Project Finished? No,” Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club, 04.06.2026. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Ivan Timofeev argues that today’s rupture with the West doesn’t mean Russia is abandoning Peter the Great’s “project.” For Peter, the “window to Europe” was “a means, not a goal”; the real aim was “overcoming backwardness and strengthening the Russian state, above all given external dangers and threats.” In brief, Peter’s policy was “comprehensive modernization of the load‑bearing structures of Russian statehood”—the military, administration, industry and infrastructure—using more advanced Western forms as models and sources of expertise.
  • He contends that this Petrine model has proved “remarkably resilient.” Even after palace coups and industrial setbacks, its logic reasserted itself, and Soviet modernization “preserved many of its key features: a focus on military, industrial and technological modernization, building the cultural and social foundations for it, and active interaction with Western countries, in both peaceful and military forms.” Yet imperial, Soviet and post‑Soviet Russia all remained “peripheral” in the global division of labor, locked into the role of raw‑materials supplier and market for industrial goods.
  • The current crisis with the West, Timofeev writes, “paradoxically brings us back to the Petrine paradigm”: “without technical, scientific and industrial modernization it will be difficult, if not impossible, to withstand competition.” Symbolically “bricking up” the European window “does not change the underlying logic”; Russia simply turns to “other sources of modernization” outside the West, “above all China,” while interaction with the West “is not excluded.” However one defines Russia—“civilization‑state, nation‑state, empire or any other form”—“without modernization it is doomed to perish,” so “Peter I’s legacy is more in demand than ever under current international conditions.”

“False Promises: Russian Military Trafficking in Africa,” Sarahelena Marrapodi, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 04.03.26.

  • Sarahelena Marrapodi reports that “an estimated 1,800 African men…have reportedly signed contracts to work in Russia as drivers, security guards, and other civilian jobs only to find themselves shipped off to the frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” She notes that Decree No. 821 forces foreigners to choose between conscription and leaving Russia, “mandating at least one year of military service to apply for permanent residency,” while Moscow simultaneously ramps up online recruitment and labels coerced Africans “volunteers,” providing cover for its “war against Ukraine,” she writes.
  • The author argues that Russia’s system “provides grounds to be labeled as a human trafficking case,” quoting the UN definition and stressing that “the lack of transparency for what role the reported African men are signing up for, the language barrier in their contracts… and the false promises of high-paying employment and university opportunities all align directly” with it. With Russian casualties already at “1.2 million” and Moscow aiming to add “over 400,000 personnel in 2026,” she contends that these men are “being exploited as disposable soldiers on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.”
  • Marrapodi notes that governments in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are scrambling to respond even as they “have all acted to maintain positive relations with Russia.” She highlights that Afrobarometer data already shows Russia “consistently rates lowest in popularity” among foreign actors in Africa, and concludes that “the time to provide support in dismantling ‘recruitment’ networks is now,” warning that Russia is turning African youth unemployment into a pipeline of cannon fodder for its war on Ukraine.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

“Ukraine Is Having a Surprisingly Good Iran War,” Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 04.01.26.

  • Marc Champion writes that Trump’s Iran war “dealt a huge blow to Ukraine”: it “rescued Russia from a budget crisis,” “ripped through stocks of critical U.S. weapons that Ukraine’s now less likely to receive” and led the White House to “yet again” press Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept Russia’s demand for a “fortress belt of cities.” Yet “we have passed peak Trump,” analyst Mykola Bielieskov tells him: “To threaten something, it has to be there to take away—but we already had a deficit of interceptors, and after this conflict in Iran, U.S. leverage has become even more limited.” With Congress appropriating “no new funds for Ukraine” and sanctions on Russian crude eased, Champion argues that lifting sanctions or cutting aid are far weaker threats than before.
  • At the same time, Champion notes, Ukraine has made itself “more attractive as a security partner,” using drone warfare to force “the Russian navy from parts of the Black Sea,” turn the forward “kill zone” deadlier, and hit Russian infrastructure “as distant as 2,000 km,” at one point taking “a claimed 40% of oil export capacity off-line.” Russia’s spring offensive is “incurring record casualties for almost no territorial gain,” nationalist bloggers lament, blaming Moscow’s “failure to keep pace” with Ukrainian innovation. Zelenskiy has rushed “some 200 trainers in drone interception to the Gulf states,” signed “10-year deals worth billions of dollars” with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and even offered to help build Hormuz defenses, leading Champion to conclude that “the U.S. loss of leverage in Kyiv is clear” and to urge Washington to see Ukraine not just as a burden but as “a resource—even for the mighty U.S. military.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

Endnotes

  1. Burns item is preliminary; transcription by Foreign Affairs is not yet available.
  2. After RM’s deadline for digest materials on April 6, FT reported that the U.S. and Iran had rejected each other’s proposals to end the war. Meanwhile, Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up 1.81% at $111 per barrel shortly after 2:00 p.m. on April 6 in New York after Donald Trump threatened to take out the “entire country” of Iran, according to FT. Additionally, Trump set a deadline of 8:00 p.m. on April 7 for Iran to report the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks against critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart on April 5 that the United States should abandon "the language of ultimatums" and return to negotiations with Tehran, AFP reported.

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 10:00 am Eastern time on the day this digest was distributed. Unless otherwise indicated, all summaries above are direct quotations. 

AI was used in production of this digest.

*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.

Slider photo by Kremlin.ru.

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