This Week's Highlights:

• Five years ago, Russia’s “little green men” began a not-so-covert military intervention in Ukraine, stoking a conflict that has killed 13,000. Considering whether Vladimir Putin’s gamble has paid off, Russia Matters founding director Simon Saradzhyan writes that the costs for Moscow have been manageable so far, but there is a chance they will eventually become prohibitive—not only due to the cumulative impact of expanding Western sanctions, but because of Russia’s lackluster economic growth model.
• New evidence shows not only that talk of NATO expansion to central Europe began among top policymakers early in 1990, but also how vocally and effectively the Czechs, Hungarians and above all Poles campaigned for accession (with an inadvertent assist from Mikhail Gorbachev), writes historian Mary Sarotte.
• Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili predicts that Russia’s next military intervention will take place in Finland or Sweden.
• The TurkStream pipeline—already a commercial and geopolitical coup for Russia—may strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand in the Balkans, while placing a financial and political burden on local governments, writes Dimitar Bechev of UNC at Chapel Hill. Washington, meanwhile, is preparing to enact sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, driving a wedge deeper into the transatlantic alliance, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has come from behind to become a front-runner in Ukraine’s March 31 presidential election because he is essentially the only noteworthy politician appealing to patriotic voters, journalist Konstantin Skorkin writes for the Carnegie Moscow Center.
• In what several sources called a clearly political project, Russia’s Rosneft oil giant has poured around $9 billion into Venezuelan projects since 2010 but has yet to break even, a Reuters investigation has found.
• Putin is poised to sign four bills into law allowing him to clamp down on the last vestiges of press freedom. Under the blatantly unconstitutional laws, the Kremlin wouldn’t need to look for pretexts to close a website or jail a blogger: Any piece of news could be declared fake and dangerous to public safety without the need for even the fig leaf of a court ruling, writes Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky; any criticism of the government could be interpreted as disrespect.

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant commentary.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“50+ Retired Generals and Diplomats Urge the United States to Reenter Iran Deal,” The American College of National Security Leaders, The National Interest, 03.11.19: In an open letter organized by the college, the signees argue that, “The United States should rejoin the Iran nuclear deal” because “[s]ubsequent to the United States’ withdrawal from the deal, Iran’s continued compliance is not ensured and the benefits from the agreement risk being lost.” Specific reasons for reentry include:

• “Iran is complying with the agreement.”
• “Under the JCPOA regulations, Iran’s enterprise lacks the nuclear weapons-development activity necessary to produce a nuclear device and is subject to unprecedented international monitoring.”
• “Our European allies are firmly committed to the agreement.”
• “Re-entry into the nuclear deal will contribute to establishing a broader U.S. national strategy for the Middle East.”
• “We must recall that the initial agreement was a strategic, long-term, high-stakes endeavor focused on one goal: preventing an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Reentering the agreement and lifting the sanctions will greatly enhance the United States’ ability to negotiate improvements and enable us to address our concerns with the existing agreement.”

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• No significant commentary.

NATO-Russia relations:

“The Convincing Call From Central Europe: Let Us Into NATO,” Mary Elise Sarotte, Foreign Affairs, 03.12.19.

“The Russian Missile that Could End the U.S.-Turkish Alliance,” Aaron Stein, War on the Rocks, 03.12.19: The author, director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes:

• “The Turkish government’s decision to purchase the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system has prompted serious backlash in the United States … the United States seems to be considering blocking the export of the F-35 to Turkey, whose air force is set to receive the first two jets in late 2019.”
• “Turkey has dismissed American concerns, telling the United States that it will not allow Russian technicians to service the S-400 in Turkey, that it will design the missile’s operating system to prevent built-in Russian backdoors, and that the system will not be “plugged in” to NATO networks.”
• “The Turkish decision to purchase the S-400 has baffled many in Washington. Though the Turkish government has long-pursued long-range air and missile defense, it has always prioritized the transfer of technology and work share arrangements to ensure robust local industrial participation. Russia has not reached any substantive agreement with the Turkish government on any of these criteria. … This has led to speculation that the purchase of the S-400 stems from a top-down political decision made between two men: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin.”
• “The United States has threatened sanctions, but also offered to replace the S-400 with the U.S.-made Patriot air and missile defense system. Turkey has, thus far, refused to budge, saying it will go ahead with the purchase of the S-400.”
• “In 2017, Erdogan and Putin met face-to-face eight times, leading to a mid-December announcement that an agreement had been reached on the S-400 and, eventually, the signing of a bilateral accord.”
• “Turkey has made clear that it will absorb the political costs and put its own jet at risk to take ownership of the S-400. This uncomfortable reality should force significant introspection: What is the future of the U.S.-Turkish alliance?”

Missile defense:

• No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant commentary.

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant commentary.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant commentary.

Cyber security:

“Russian Trolls Can Be Surprisingly Subtle, and Often Fun to Read,” Darren L. Linvill and Patrick Warren, The Washington Post, 03.11.19: The authors, associate professors at Clemson University, write: 

• “On Sept. 10, 2018, @PoliteMelanie tweeted to her more than 20,000 followers: ‘Criticizing Trump in a book is just unfair. It's like criticizing the Amish on television.’ The next day, this tweet won the Chicago Tribune's ‘Tweet of the Week’ contest. What the Tribune's readers didn't know when casting their votes, however, was that ‘Melanie’ was a Russian troll.”
• “Before Twitter suspended PoliteMelanie's account, her winning tweet had more than 125,000 retweets and likes — and this wasn't even her most popular post.”
• “Tweets from other accounts that were part of the PoliteMelanie network had similar success: We found them cited by The Washington Post, CNN, BuzzFeed, Al Jazeera, the New York Post and Essence magazine, to name a few. One of these accounts, @Blk_Hermione, had a tweet with cross-platform success, gaining more than 40,000 ‘upvotes’ to make the front page of Reddit.”
• “An analysis of 2 million English-language IRA tweets released by Twitter last July shows that the trolls had at that point gained 30 million likes and 22 million retweets among 1,866 English-language accounts active between 2014 and 2017. And the data shows they have gotten better with each passing year.”
• “We've seen debates that they helped foment move quickly from Twitter to mainstream print media. On topics ranging from vaccines to Colin Kaepernick, they can speak vehemently to the extremes of both sides. … That's why IRA accounts have differing target audiences and differently tailored messages.”
• “Twitter continually shuts down accounts… [but the IRA] can afford to routinely lose accounts, given the low cost of replacement and the efficiency with which they can build followers.”
• “Other nations clearly view these asymmetrical tactics as fruitful, since new troll factories are spreading, to countries as diverse as Iran, Venezuela and Bangladesh.”

Elections interference:

“Releasing the Mueller Report,” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 03.17.19: The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The House voted 420-0 late last week on a resolution urging the public release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Attorney General William Barr. That sounds good to us, as long as the AG releases everything related to the Trump-Russia probe.”
• “Congress doesn’t know whether Mr. Mueller will disclose new information beyond what has been in his indictments and court filings. Mr. Mueller’s charges against former Trump associates have been for crimes unrelated to the Russian investigation or for lying to the FBI. But his indictments and sentencing memos have been littered with Russian names and extensive redactions, and Democrats hope he will provide a narrative that connects the disparate facts into a story that warrants impeachment. Justice Department rules require only that Mr. Mueller file a ‘confidential report explaining [his] prosecution or declination decisions.’”
• “Once Congress has the report, it is sure to leak, perhaps selectively without proper context. The better course is for Mr. Barr to release the report and everything else that is relevant to the Russia probe. That includes investigative materials that accompany the report, and all documents related to the FBI counterintelligence investigation that began in 2016.”
• “Once the Mueller probe is over, there is no excuse for not giving the public a full accounting of the Trump-Russia collusion story well before the 2020 campaign is at full speed.”

Energy exports from CIS:

“Russia’s Pipe Dreams Are Europe’s Nightmare,” Dimitar Bechev, Foreign Policy, 03.12.19: The author, a research fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of “Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe” (2017), writes:

• “In the ongoing showdown between Russia and the West, Russia has a trump card: natural gas exports. … [I]n 2018, gas shipments from Russia to Europe and Turkey hit an all-time high of 201.8 billion cubic meters (bcm).”
• “Now Russia may be using another major project—TurkStream—to deepen its influence in Europe’s backyard. … [T]he first shipments of gas are expected toward the end of this year. TurkStream is a commercial and geopolitical coup for the Russians … [and it] may strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand in the Balkans too. In its second phase, if Putin gets his way, the pipeline will transport 15.75 bcm of gas through Bulgaria and then on to Serbia, Hungary, and Austria.”
• “Because TurkStream will terminate in the EU, Gazprom needs to bring it into conformity with European anti-monopoly rules. These rules, largely crafted after Russia shut off gas shipments to Ukraine in 2009, are geared toward diversifying energy supplies to avoid dependence on Russia. One such rule—that energy companies can’t simultaneously own transit infrastructure and sell gas through it—presents a particular challenge for Moscow, which would otherwise allow Gazprom to both build the pipeline and then supply it. … That’s why Putin has been out courting partners for Gazprom in the Balkans.”
• “To smooth things over with Europe, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has suggested that TurkStream will be only one pipeline coming into a new Balkan Gas Hub that will also be fed by supplies from Azerbaijan and offshore fields in the Black Sea. … Unfortunately for him, Medvedev and Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller have nixed his idea. … In other words, it will be the Bulgarian taxpayer underwriting the venture.”

“Russian Gas Plan Divides US, Allies,” Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, 03.11.19: The author, Germany Correspondent for the news outlet, writes:

• “When the German chancellor took her seat at the Oval Office table [last spring], … President Trump left her nowhere to hide. ‘Angela,’ he said, according to people in the room, ‘you got to stop buying gas from Putin.’ A year later, work continues on [Nord Stream 2] the gas link under the Baltic Sea financed by several Western firms and PAO Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy company. The dispute is coming to a head, in a graphic example of how Russia's estrangement from the West … is driving a wedge between the closest of allies.”
• “Washington is preparing to enact sanctions against the pipeline. A U.S. security official who briefed Mr. Trump on the issue said the president saw Nord Stream 2 as incompatible with the military shield America maintains over Europe. The president's thinking, the official said: ‘If you want us to protect you from the beast, why are you feeding it?’ Berlin officials say Germany would perceive sanctions as aggression on a fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member."
• “Merkel sees the pipeline as in Germany's long-term interests because it is hooked on gas, said a Merkel aide. In 2011, following Japan's Fukushima-reactor meltdown, she accelerated Germany's phasing-out of nuclear power. Her government has also set a 2038 target to shut remaining coal-fired power plants. Germany's industry-heavy economy can't rely on renewables alone, so gas will play an increasingly central role in its energy mix. Germany is the world's biggest natural-gas importer, government figures show. BASF SE, the German chemicals group and co-investor in Nord Stream 2, consumes more gas than Denmark. … Russian gas offers a price advantage, currently around 20% lower than American liquefied natural gas, according to the German government.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Trump Is Winning, Putin's Losing in Global Arms Sales,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 03.12.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:

• “The world has grown significantly less violent since 1950, but there has been an marked uptick in the number of armed conflicts in recent years. … The number of fatalities has increased even more dramatically, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Between 2011 and 2017, the average annual death toll from conflict neared 97,000, three times more than in the previous seven-year period.”
• “That helps to explain the 7.8 percent increase in international arms transfers from 2014-2018 compared with the previous five-year period seen in the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the global authority on the weapons trade.”
• “Russia … was the only one of the world’s top five exporters, which together account for 75 percent of the business, to suffer a major loss in market share. It remains the world’s second-biggest arms exporter. SIPRI has its own, rather complicated, system for calculating transfer volumes based on the military value of the equipment traded rather than on its market price. But in dollar terms, too, Russia trails the U.S.”
• “Yury Borisov, Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry, said last month that Russia “steadily reaches” $15 billion in arms exports a year… By contrast, the U.S. closed $55.6 billion of arms deals in 2018, 33 percent more than in 2017, thanks to the Trump administration’s liberalization of weapons exports. According to the SIPRI figures, U.S. exports were 75 percent higher than Russia’s in 2014 through 2018 – a far wider gap than in the previous five-year period.”
• “Arms sales are perhaps the best reflection of a major military power’s international influence…. The growing gap between the U.S. and Russia in exports shows that Putin’s forays into areas such as the Middle East are failing to translate into Russian influence in the region.”

“Authoritarians' corruption is a weapon—and a weakness,” David Petraeus and Sheldon Whitehouse, The Washington Post, 03.08.19: The authors, the former director of the CIA and a U.S. senator, write about the clash between rule of law and corruption in government: 

• “Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the world is once again polarized between two competing visions for how to organize society.”
• “Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian rulers have worked assiduously to weaponize corruption as an instrument of foreign policy, using money in opaque and illicit ways to gain influence over other countries, subvert the rule of law and otherwise remake foreign governments in their own kleptocratic image. In this respect, the fight against corruption is more than a legal and moral issue; it has become a strategic one—and a battleground in a great-power competition.”
• “Yet corruption … is also, in many cases, what sustains these regimes in power and is their Achilles' heel. For figures such as Putin, the existence of the United States' rule-of-law world is intrinsically threatening.”
• “Ironically, one of the reasons 21st-century kleptocrats are so fixated on transferring their wealth to the United States and similar countries is the protections afforded by the rule of law. Having accumulated their fortunes illegally, they are cognizant that someone more connected to power could come along and rob them too, as long as their loot is stuck at home.”
• “Congress should tighten campaign-finance laws to improve transparency, given that U.S. elections are clearly being targeted for manipulation by great-power competitors. At the same time, the United States must become more aggressive and focused on identifying and rooting out corruption overseas. Just as the Treasury Department has developed sophisticated financial-intelligence capabilities in response to the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, it is time to expand this effort to track, disrupt and expose the corrupt activities of authoritarian competitors and those aligned with them.”

“Congress Makes a Move Against Russia’s Worst Human Rights Abuser,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post, 03.14.19: The author, vice chairman of the Open Russia movement and chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, writes:

• “[On March 12] the House of Representatives passed a resolution that aims to bring at least a measure of accountability for the organizers of Russia’s most high-profile political assassination, the February 2015 murder of opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov.”
• “The most hard-hitting measure … urges the secretary of state ‘to investigate the business activities of [Chechen leader] Ramzan Kadyrov and any entities controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov outside the Russian Federation.’ The congressman [who introduced the amendment] made clear which countries he wants to see scrutinized above all: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.”
• “Kadyrov’s Instagram feed is filled with reports of his frequent visits to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. These three countries are now reported to be the largest investors in Chechnya. UAE investments alone total more than $350 million, with funding for airports, hotels, shopping malls and skyscrapers. Kadyrov’s relationship with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, has been described as a ‘blossoming friendship.’ He has also met on several occasions with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.”
• “Close ties with Arab monarchies have benefited not only Kadyrov’s regime but also his own pocket. A recent report by Transparency International showed that the Chechen leader made nearly $1 million in winnings from his racehorses in the UAE (none of it reported on his government declarations).”
• “Kadyrov’s initial reaction to the passage of H. Res. 156 echoed his earlier swagger: He has written that he does ‘not care in the least about the decisions of the U.S. Congress.’ If the will of the House translates into executive action, however, the Chechen strongman could soon lose quite a lot of his customary brashness.”

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Russia’s Next Land Grab Won’t Be in an Ex-Soviet State. It Will Be in Europe,” Mikheil Saakashvili, Foreign Policy, 03.15.19: The author, a former president of Georgia, writes:

• “Not many observers would consider the world’s coldest shipping lane a geopolitical hotspot. But that may be about to change. Last week, reports emerged that a new Kremlin policy will require all international naval ships to give Russia 45 days’ notice before entering the Northern Sea Route, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic waters north of Siberia. Every vessel on the route, where Russia has invested heavily in sophisticated military infrastructure, will also be required to have a Russian maritime pilot on board. Ships found in violation of these restrictions may be forcibly halted, detained, or—in unspecified ‘extreme’ circumstances—‘eliminated.’”
• “Putin’s goal today is the same as when he invaded my country in 2008: to tighten his grip on the levers of power in Russia. Whenever Putin’s domestic popularity dips, he either escalates an ongoing conflict or launches a new offensive. … If we have learned anything from the past two decades, a new crisis is on the horizon. According to a March 7 poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, Russian voters’ trust in Putin has fallen to 32 percent—the lowest level since 2006.”
• “Russia’s most likely target in the near future is either Finland or Sweden; although both are members of the EU, they are not members of NATO. By attacking a non-NATO country, Putin does not risk a proportional response in accordance with Article 5. But by targeting a European country, he can expect to reap the rewards of public approval at home from voters who are desperate for a victory.”

“A new Franco-German narrative for Europe,” Constanze Stelzenmüller, Brookings Institution/Financial Times, 03.12.19: The author, the inaugural Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings writes:

• “[W[hat is stirring here is a new European narrative forged in the crucible of great power competition among Russia, China, and the United States—a competition that is global in scope, but in which Europe is a key strategic prize.”
• “February’s Munich Security Conference provided ample evidence of this new strategic landscape. American vice-president Mike Pence harangued Europeans and demanded that they abandon the Iran nuclear deal. A senior Chinese official offered flowery homages to multilateralism that were utterly at odds with Beijing’s attempts to pit EU member states against one another. And the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran sneered at the audience for being dupes of Donald Trump’s America.”
• “Now, the French president and [Annegret] Kramp-Karrenbauer are laying out what might be called a fourth narrative for a united Europe… about the protection of what Mr. Macron terms ‘civilization’ and Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer calls the “European way of life”: representative democracy, the rule of law, individual freedom and a social market economy. They are talking, in other words, about preserving the extraordinary achievements of three-quarters of a century on a continent previously riven by war.”
• “Hence their joint focus on Europe’s ability to act: improving its ability to innovate and compete, securing its borders, fending off predators, and creating a European security council that works with the U.K. Both affirm their commitment to the transatlantic alliance, Mr. Trump notwithstanding. No mention is made of either “strategic autonomy” or an “EU army.” There are detailed ideas here that most other EU member states could get behind.”

“A Foot in the Door? Russia’s International Investment Bank Moves to Hungary,” András Rácz, European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 03.18.19: The author, an associate professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, writes:

• “On 14 March 2019, a Hungarian law on moving the headquarters of the Moscow-based International Investment Bank (IIB) to Budapest came into force. In its current form, the law could create serious security problems for not only Hungary but every member of the European Union and NATO.”
• “The bank was founded in 1970 with the objective of fostering trade and other economic cooperation within the Soviet Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. … [A]s the bank had a wide-ranging and well-functioning international network, the KGB frequently used it as a cover organization.”
• “At present, the IIB has nine members: Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam. … The IIB is registered among the official state organs and governing bodies of the Russian Federation. This means that the bank is an integral part of the Russian state administration. Thus, pro-Orbán media outlets’ argument that the IIB is ‘partly Hungarian’—due to Budapest’s investment in it—are unfounded.”
• “Hungary’s draft law provides the IIB with a wide range of immunities and exemptions. Under the legislation, neither the bank nor its transactions or operations are subject to financial or regulatory oversight. … Under the law, people operating from the IIB headquarters building will be covered by diplomatic immunity. … [T]he Hungarian authorities will have no right to enter the building or perform any official duties there, unless the bank waives its immunity.”
• “Similarly, the bank’s governors will have diplomatic immunity, while its chairperson and directors will be eligible for numerous benefits, including full tax exemption. Many such perks are available to high-ranking personnel at other multilateral investment banks, but IIB staff will receive several exceptional forms of protection.”

“Special Report: How Russia sank billions of dollars into Venezuela quicksand,” Christian Lowe and Rinat Sagdiev, Reuters, 03.14.19: The authors, journalists with the news agency, write:

• “At the end of 2015, managers at Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil firm, sounded the alarm to their bosses about the company’s investments in Venezuela. Rosneft’s local partner, Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, owed it hundreds of millions of dollars, according to internal documents, and there seemed no prospect things would get better.”
• “‘It will be like this for eternity,’ a Rosneft internal auditor wrote in an email to a colleague in November 2015, complaining there was no progress in getting PDVSA to explain a $700 million hole in the balance sheet of a joint venture.”
• “The email was among scores of internal Rosneft communications - including presentations, copies of official letters, memos and spreadsheets – reviewed by Reuters. They cover the firm’s operations in Venezuela between 2012 and 2015.”
• “Rosneft has poured around $9 billion into Venezuelan projects since 2010 but has yet to break even, Reuters has calculated, based on Rosneft’s annual reports, its public disclosures and the internal documents.”
• “The Rosneft documents also reveal: … Oil output at the joint ventures [with PDVSA] was far lower than projected; [and] the Russians believed PDVSA spent millions of dollars from one joint venture on ‘social projects’ in a remote area where just a few hundred people lived.”
• “The reason Rosneft kept doubling down on its bet was political, according to two people close to the firm and two others with links to the Venezuela projects. State-owned Rosneft was expected to help prop up Moscow’s allies in Caracas, these sources said.”
• “‘From the very beginning it was a purely political project. We all had to contribute,’ said an executive at a Russian oil firm that partnered with Rosneft in Venezuela.”

China:

• No significant commentary.

Ukraine:

“5 Years Since Russia’s Intervention in Ukraine: Has Putin’s Gamble Paid Off?” Simon Saradzhyan, Russia Matters, 03.14.19: The author, founding director of the Harvard-based Russia Matters project, writes:

• “In February 2014 Russia’s ‘little green men’ began a not-so-covert military intervention in Ukraine, stoking a conflict that has killed 13,000. … Five years later it is worth asking: Has President Vladimir Putin’s gamble in Ukraine paid off and, if so, for whom? The answer is of paramount importance as it can illuminate Russian leaders’ decisions on future interventions—whether to pursue them, where and how.”
• “On balance … the intervention advanced one vital national interest for Russia, as seen from the Kremlin—preventing the growing proximity of a hostile military alliance—while doing damage to several others, primarily involving development of the economy and constructive relations with both post-Soviet neighbors and key Western countries. If Putin’s hope was that the costs imposed by the West on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine would be as fleeting as the costs imposed after Russia’s intervention in Georgia in 2008, then he clearly erred in his calculations. These costs have been manageable so far, but there is a chance they can eventually become prohibitive—not only due to the cumulative impact of ever-expanding Western sanctions in the longer term, but because of Russia’s lackluster economic growth model.”
• “Intervention advanced the Russian state’s interest, seen as vital by the country’s leadership, in keeping NATO at arm’s length, but also worked against the national interest in fostering trade and other ties with the West.”
• “Vladimir Putin remains in control, but he needs to eventually stop a further decline of popular trust.”
• “The fortunes of Russia’s ruling elite have hardly declined, if at all [sanctions notwithstanding].”
• “Sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine intervention did tangible damage to the Russian economy and that damage may increase with time, but the economy is far from imploding.”

“How Petro Poroshenko Became Ukraine’s Top Patriot,” Konstantin Skorkin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 03.12.19: The author, a journalist covering eastern Ukraine, writes:

• “Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has surged ahead [in the polls] and become one of the front-runners in Ukraine’s March 31 presidential election. … [This became possible because he] is essentially the only noteworthy politician appealing to patriotic voters. … That may win him a second term as president, a significant feat in the country that has reelected an incumbent president only once.”
• “Until recently, one of his top competitors for patriotic voters was Anatoliy Hrytsenko, leader of the center-right Civic Position party. … As of summer 2018, Hrytsenko held second place in the presidential polls—behind former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and ahead of the incumbent president. … It even appeared he could win.”
• “But that’s when the problems started. Ukraine’s protest electorate proved unreliable and easily changed its preference based upon the candidates’ personal charm. Hrytsenko—a morose introvert—simply could not compete with the populism of Tymoshenko or professional actor-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelenskiy.”
• “Finally, Poroshenko delivered a surprising but crushing blow to Hrytsenko’s popularity among patriotic voters: he focused his campaign on military and patriotic themes, beginning by declaring a month of martial law in November 2018 after a naval confrontation with Russia. … He created a national Orthodox Church independent from Moscow and enshrined Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic path in the constitution.”
• “By March, these steps had launched Poroshenko to third or even second place in the polls. Meanwhile, Hrytsenko fell to fifth place. Importantly, Poroshenko began leading in the country’s more nationalistic western region, a key source of legitimacy for a politician running on a patriotic platform.”
• “Meanwhile, the position of the far right appears even weaker: the nationalists’ unified candidate, Ruslan Koshulynsky of the Svoboda Party, finds himself at the bottom of the top ten presidential contenders.”

“Five Years Later, Putin Is Paying for Crimea,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 03.16.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:

• “Five years ago, on March 16, 2014, the Kremlin held a fake referendum in Crimea to justify after the fact the peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine. It changed the course of history, luring Russian President Vladimir Putin into a trap from which Russia may still break loose. But Putin himself can’t. The Crimea operation itself went well for Putin, considerations of international law and human decency aside.”
• “In exchange for the relatively small drain on Russia’s public finances and the contained Western outrage, Putin’s regime received a rare treasure: A genuine, emotional, vigorous jump in public support. … It was a blanket mandate to do anything he wanted domestically or internationally. … [T]he ‘Crimea Is Ours’ cause and the near-absence of economic, political or military cost to the annexation lulled Putin into a sense of invincibility familiar to any gambler on a remarkable roll.”
• “The annexation was a crime; what followed was, from a realpolitik point of view, an error of judgment. Putin, egged on by military and intelligence analysts who believed Ukraine was divided into politically incompatible Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking areas, decided to try splitting off eastern Ukraine.”
• “It was meant to be another low-cost operation … This time, though, the Ukrainian government put up a fight. … Russia sent troops to defeat the Ukrainian military at key junctions in 2014 and 2015—and, crucially, it also sent the missile launcher that accidentally downed a passenger plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, on July 17, 2014. The death of the 298 passengers and crew made sure Putin’s second Ukraine gamble would not be low cost.”

“How Russia Took Over Crimea, and Crimea Took Over Putin,” Tatyana Stanovaya, The Moscow Times, 03.15.19: The author, founder of the political analysis project R.Politik, writes:

• “Over the past five years, a new political leader has emerged — one who has little in common with the Putin the country had known and loved. Russia may have taken over Crimea, but Crimea, in turn, appears to have swallowed up Putin.”
• “[A]fter Crimea, he adopted an entirely new mission in no way linked with his country’s social and economic needs. Putin’s course and focus as president subsequently took on a life of its own, at direct odds with the wants of the people.”
• “With his continuing focus on foreign policy, the president moved away from his own political elite, resulting not just in an increasingly detached president, but also a power vacuum within the vertical. This has resulted in fierce infighting among the elite, as the high-profile arrests of former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and senator Rauf Arashukov demonstrated.”
• “Vladislav Surkov’s notorious open letter sums it up well: never before has anyone described the lack of ideas and cynicism of Putin’s new Russia with such candor.”

“He Played a President on Ukrainian TV. Now He Wants the Real Thing,” Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 03.16.19: The author, a reporter for the news outlet, writes:

• “If opinion polls in Ukraine are even close to accurate, Mr. [Volodymyr] Zelensky, a comedian and actor, has a strong chance of winning this month’s [presidential] election.”
• “If Mr. Poroshenko is unseated, a new leader in the capital, Kiev, could revive stalled negotiations to end Europe’s only current war, … Perhaps more important, the departure of the post-revolution leadership, which Russia has accused of coming to power on the back of a coup, could offer a face-saving means for Moscow to find a way out of the conflict with Ukraine—and relief from some Western economic sanctions.”
• “A free election and a possible democratic transition of power in Ukraine would also underscore the country’s credentials for closer trade and political integration with the European Union.”
• “Mr. Zelensky’s critics are not buying into his rags-to-riches tale, however, saying his success is indicative of the entrenched power of wealthy business interests in Ukraine. His shows were broadcast on the television channel of [oligarch] Ihor V. Kolomoisky … Mr. Kolomoisky is embroiled in a sprawling banking bailout scandal involving PrivatBank that cost Ukraine $5.6 billion — a staggering expense for a country whose government is propped up by loans from the International Monetary Fund.”
• “He has denied that he is a puppet for the scandal-hit mogul and has defended his qualifications as a comedian to lead a country involved both in a shooting war and the broader conflict between the West and Russia.”
• “Mr. Zelensky is all but openly running on the record of his fictional television character, the schoolteacher turned president. … Billboards have gone up in Kiev saying, ‘The President is the Servant of the People,’ referring to the name of the comedy show and promoting the candidate at the same time.”

“Is the Risk of Ethnic Conflict Growing in Ukraine? New Laws Could Create Dangerous Divisions,” Elise Giuliano, Foreign Affairs, 03.18.19.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant commentary.

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Can Putin Fix Russia’s Sputtering Economy? Why Stagnation Is the New Normal,” Chris Miller, Foreign Affairs, 03.13.19.

“The Strongmen Strike Back,” Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 03.14.19: The author, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes:

• “Authoritarianism has now returned as a geopolitical force, with strong nations such as China and Russia championing anti-liberalism as an alternative to a teetering liberal hegemony.”
• “Metternich’s Austria and Alexander I’s Russia were the early prototypes of the modern police state. They engaged in extensive censorship, closed universities, maintained networks of spies to keep an eye on ordinary people, and jailed, tortured and killed those suspected of fomenting liberal revolution.”
• “In Russia … we believed that communism had been defeated by liberalism, … [but the] liberal experiment of the Boris Yeltsin years proved too flawed and fragile, giving way almost immediately to two types of anti-liberal forces: one, the remnants of the Soviet (and czarist) police state, which the former KGB operative Vladimir Putin reestablished and controlled; the other, a Russian nationalism and traditionalism that … was resurrected by Putin to provide a veneer of legitimacy to his autocratic rule.”
• “As Putin dismantled the weak liberal institutions of the 1990s, he restored the czarist-era role of the Orthodox Church, promised strong leadership of a traditional Russian kind, fought for ‘traditional’ values against LGBTQ rights and other gender-related issues, and exalted Russia’s special ‘Asiatic’ character over its Western orientation. So far, this has proved a durable formula — Putin has already ruled longer than many of the czars, and while a sharp economic downturn could shake his hold on power, as it would any regime’s, he has been in power so long that many Russians can imagine no other leader.”
• “The examples of autocracies such as Russia and China successfully resisting liberal pressures gave hope to others that the liberal storm could be weathered. By the end of the 2000s … [a]n authoritarian ‘backlash’ spread globally.”

“Disrespect Putin and You'll Pay a $23,000 Fine,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 03.14.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:

• “Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to sign four bills into law allowing him to clamp down on the last vestiges of press freedom.”
• “Two of the bills will make it illegal to publish material ‘expressing in an indecent form a clear disrespect’ for the Russian state, introducing fines of up to 300,000 rubles ($4,600) or 15 days in jail for the offense. The other two will ban the spread of fake news deemed to endanger public safety on pain of fines of as much as 1.5 million rubles.”
• “Who decides whether an offense has been committed? Not a court, but Roskomnadzor, the government agency charged with overseeing media and the internet. It will be able to demand that offending information be taken down immediately. Failing that, it will be able to block access to the resource that published it.”
• “The bills are blatantly anti-constitutional; Article 29 of Russia’s constitution expressly bans censorship. The disrespect laws also violate the European Convention on Human rights, which the country has ratified. Putin’s own Civil Society and Human Rights Council, which includes several judges and defense lawyers, has warned the legislation opens the door to arbitrary persecutions. Even government ministries and the prosecutor general’s office have argued against the bills, saying the definitions in them are too vague.”
• “Under the new laws, the Kremlin wouldn’t need to look for pretexts like “justifying terrorism” or receiving foreign funds to close a website or jail a blogger. Any piece of news could be declared fake and dangerous to public safety without the need for even the fig leaf of a court ruling. Any criticism of the government could be interpreted as disrespect.”
• “The new bills are meant to send self-censorship into overdrive. Judging by experience, the effort should work after the initial indignation dies down.”

“Why Russia Is Making Stalin Great Again,” Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center/OZY, 03.13.19: The author, a senior fellow and the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “For Russian youngsters these days, Stalin is a figure from the distant past. … One of the paradoxes of Putin’s Russia is that the harsher the stance of the current regime, the higher the level of Stalin’s popularity within Putin’s electoral base and the more likely these Russians are to make excuses for the Soviet dictator.
• “This pattern became more noticeable following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. According to data from the Levada Center, an independent pollster, 17 to 20 percent of respondents in 2014 had a negative view of Stalin. This figure dipped to 12 percent in 2018.”
• “[T]hanks to the Kremlin’s well-crafted propaganda efforts, the dictator is once again becoming a symbol of Russian pride and military and industrial glory. For average Russians, Stalin is seen as an “effective manager” (as one history teachers’ handbook described him) or as a symbol of a glorious Soviet past whose image is routinely burnished in pop culture thanks to things like the popular television serials that present positive and romantic images of Stalin’s feared secret police, the NKVD.”
• “In the absence of any national agreement on Stalin’s crimes, there is still plenty of room for the mythology of the Russian state to be framed around an official policy of simplifying the past and whitewashing the darkest pages of Russian history. Increasingly, this war over memory is spilling over into a war over monuments. A new wave of ‘people’s initiatives’ to commemorate Stalin has appeared in recent years.”
• “Another ambitious project, titled ‘Last Address,’ encourages people to remember Stalin’s victims by erecting memorial plaques on apartment buildings to which arrested victims never returned. … Recently in St. Petersburg, local authorities supported a denunciation [of the project]. It had been stated that the Last Address violates … the law on advertisements.”

Defense and aerospace:

• No significant commentary.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant commentary.