This Week’s Highlights

• CNA’s Michael Kofman and FPRI’s Rob Lee analyze what longer-term shortcomings have shaped the Russian military’s setbacks in Ukraine in a commentary for War on the Rocks. “The Russian campaign floundered not just because it pursued unrealistic political goals, but also because the plan for the invasion did not account for the choices made on force structure, and the limitations they imposed,” the two U.S. experts on the Russian military write. At the same time, Kofman and Lee note that “Russian forces do appear to enjoy a local-force advantage in the Donbas, and overall long-term challenges ... may not impede Russian progress in the short term.”
• Harvard’s Graham Allison warns in an interview with Der Spiegel that, if facing a defeat in Ukraine, Putin may choose to escalate hostilities by resorting to a limited nuclear strike. “Putin has shown no compunction about killing people, even in massive numbers. We saw that in Grozny, and we are seeing it in Mariupol today. If we present him with an unambiguous choice between losing everything and taking a chance, we’ll have to reckon with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon,” Allison says. Foreseeing such a possibility, U.S. President Joe Biden warns in his NYT commentary that “any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us ... and would entail severe consequences.”
• If Ukraine were to win in the ongoing conflict, the most likely scenario would be “winning small,” as in expelling Russia from the western side of the Dnieper River, according to Catholic University of America’s Michael Kimmage and Liana Fix of the Körber Foundation. “Aiming for that outcome is smarter than dreaming of Russian surrender—but also smarter than floating unformed ideas of a negotiated settlement that might leave Kherson and Mariupol under permanent Russian control,” they write in Foreign Affairs.
• Assessing alternative outcomes of the Russian-Ukrainian war, NYT columnist Ross Douthat concludes that “the more likely near-future scenario is one where Russian collapse remains a pleasant fancy, the conflict becomes stalemated and frozen, and we have to put our Ukrainian policy on a sustainable footing without removing Putin’s regime or dismantling the Russian empire.”
• In comments on the Russian-Ukrainian war made at Davos-2022, Henry Kissinger has called for “movement towards negotiations and negotiations on peace need to begin in the next two months.” In contrast, George Soros told the same forum that he doesn’t believe the Russian leader would agree to meaningful negotiations on ending the war because “it would be equivalent to [Putin] resigning.” Assessing Kissinger’s and Soros’ remarks for WSJ readers, the Hudson Institute’s Walter Russell Mead notes that the latter “sees the dominant issue in world politics as a struggle between democracy and totalitarianism” while the former sees America’s job as attaining “a balance of power that protects our freedom and that of our allies at the least possible risk and cost.”
• The Stone Center’s Branko Milanovic believes that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has made Russian elites realize “that the extreme centralization of power makes them powerless,” and that they would, therefore, advocate the establishment of the rule of law in their country. “I believe that people are smart and will be able to understand that—even if they don't get fabulously rich as they could, in the long run it's much safer for them to have those guarantees” against excessive centralization of power, Milanovic told The Bell.
• Both the FT’s editorial board and its columnist Gillian Tett caution against selling frozen Russian assets unless it is done in strict accordance with law. “The moral case for ensuring the ‘aggressor pays’ is powerful. To retain the moral high ground, however, the democracies backing Ukraine must follow due process and the rule of law,” the FT’s editorial board writes. “Freezing assets is quite a different matter from dispersing them. If either is done without a consistent and transparent framework, western governments will either face years of costly lawsuits or end up smashing apart the trust that underpins their political economies,” Tett warns.
• In a commentary for FP, Russian politician Leonid Gozman urges Western countries to avoid punishing Putin’s opponents within or outside Russia. “And in the West, Russian academic and scientific emigres should be involved in teaching and educating the young people forced to leave the country. This is an investment in the future of a Russia that will not be a threat to peace and in Europe, where today’s tragedies will not be repeated,” Gozman writes.

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:

• No significant developments.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Putin, Pretext, and the Dark Side of the “Responsibility to Protect,” John Reid, War on the Rocks, 05.27.22. The author, an active-duty Air Force officer assigned as the Staff Judge Advocate for Special Operations Command Europe, writes:

• “It is important to note any actor’s motives are rarely completely pure and can easily be questioned. Russia asserted NATO’s use of R2P as no more than an excuse for regime change in Libya, China charged the West’s use of R2P as a cover for intervention, and India complained of the West’s highly selective use of the theory. Indeed, the events in Libya appeared to galvanize Putin’s view of the West’s as treacherously utilizing the principle of R2P for “crusades” in the Middle East.”
• “While there can be no moral equivalence between Russia’s and the West’s use of R2P, it remains a theory uniquely grounded in the good intentions of international actors and reliant on the subjective eye of the beholder.”
• “Rather than blithely labeling Russian aggression as a misuse or misapplication of R2P, proponents of R2P should also consider R2P’s history as a tool of hostile expansion. It should be no surprise to find Putin twisting the intent of R2P in a challenge to the West.”

“It’s Time to End the Age of Impunity,” David Miliband, Foreign Policy, 06.03.22. The author, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee and a former foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, writes: 

• “Russia’s war represents the worst of our age of impunity—an era when militaries and the political leaders that control them have abandoned the basic laws that govern war and protect civilians. This age … will get worse unless those who believe in the rule of law tackle it now.”
• “In war zones today, nearly 90% of casualties are civilians. Attacks on health facilities have increased 90% in the past five years while attacks on aid workers have increased 85% in the past decade.”
• “The G-7 summit of the world’s leading industrialized democracies being held in Germany at the end of this month ... should focus on bringing them on board by using language and emphasizing priorities that address their concerns.” 
  • “First, it is important that the summit reframe what’s at stake in Ukraine as a fight between the rule of law and impunity.” 
  • “Second, it is critical to address Russian and global south claims of Western hypocrisy regarding conduct in conflicts—including ones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and the Sahel—as well as Western countries’ refugee policies.”
  • “Third, a united voice at the summit in favor of real systems of accountability within the international system would make an important statement to the world.”
  • “Finally, it is imperative that already-fragile communities in countries such as Somalia, which relies on Ukraine and the surrounding region for 92% of its wheat imports, do not bear the costs of the war in Ukraine.”  

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“Not Built for Purpose: The Russian Military’s Ill-Fated Force Design,” Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, War on the Rocks, 06.02.22. The authors, the director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, write:

• “The Russian military especially lacks sufficient light infantry forces for many of the situations it has faced in Ukraine. ... [E]ntire platoons or companies, including NCOs and officers, cannot dismount as cohesive units because they have to man the vehicles.”
• “Because the Russian Aerospace Forces, Navy and Strategic Missile Forces have a higher percentage of technical assignments, they receive a higher share of contract soldiers than the army. ... [M]otorized rifle battalions don’t have enough contract privates. ... It wasn’t just infantry soldiers. Russian maneuver units didn’t have enough contract privates to serve as drivers for logistics convoys and relied too heavily on conscripts.”
• “It is an open question as to whether Putin may have had an inflated sense of Russian military capability ... Sometimes the military is dishonest about what it can actually do, but often political leaders simply do not want to listen to military advice because it’s not what they wish to hear.”
• “The Russian campaign floundered not just because it pursued unrealistic political goals, but also because the plan for the invasion did not account for the choices made on force structure, and the limitations they imposed. ... Currently, Russia lacks the manpower to rotate current forces on the battlefield or to conduct further offensives beyond the current campaign in the Donbas. However, Russian forces do appear to enjoy a local-force advantage in the Donbas, and overall long-term challenges raised here may not impede Russian progress in the short term.”
• “Contemporary debates on force structure and military strategy would benefit greatly by looking at the choices the Russian military made and how they ended up in this position. There’s much to be said about the primacy of political assumptions, which is one of the most decisive factors in how the Russian armed forces were initially thrown into this war, but equally, it is structural choices that have limited its military’s ability to adjust and sustain combat operations.”

“Putin’s Hard Choices: Why the Russian Despot Can Neither Mobilize Nor Retreat,” Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman, FA, 05.31.22.  

“Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine,” David E. Johnson, War on the Rocks, 05.31.22. The author, a principal researcher at RAND, writes:

• “Currently, the prevailing narrative is that the Ukrainian edge is that they have evolved into a modern Western military, trained for over a decade in Western methods. They are professionals. Therefore, they will prevail. Just as we would. ... However, the actual evidence is unclear; the assessments of the prowess of Ukraine’s military may be wishful thinking and hubris. The title of a Wall Street Journal article epitomizes this view, saying it all came down to ‘years of NATO training.’”
• “An indication that there is some way to go beyond the NATO training is that there is little evidence that the Ukrainians are executing joint and combined arms offensive operations. This capability will be important if the transition from the defense and attempt offensive operations to restore territory lost to Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine also appears to be ceding ground in the Donbas to a slow, grinding Russian advance.”
• “As the United States plans for how it will compete and potentially fight China and Russia in the future, the approach should be characterized by humility and an intense desire to challenge existing assumptions, concepts, and capabilities, rather than to validate current approaches.”

“'We are barely raking out': Kyiv's statements about the situation in the Donbas are becoming more and more alarming. Perhaps a major defeat awaits Ukraine there,” Meduza, 05.26.22. The Russian-language news outlet reports:

• “The battle for the Donbas has been under way since mid-April ... for a long time it seemed that positional battles were taking place at this front without any significant advances by either side ... But over the past week, statements from officials in Kyiv have become increasingly alarming. They seem to be preparing the Ukrainians for a possible major defeat - the loss of Sievierodonetsk and the ‘new Mariupol.’”
• “President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is describing the situation in the Donbas extremely difficult ... Advisor to the head of the presidential office Oleksiy Arestovich speaks even more directly and gloomily about the prospects for confrontation in the Donbas: ‘They are trying to break through here, from Vrubovka, and cut the road. One of their main goals is to interrupt the supply lines between Bakhmut and Lisichansk. If you look at Seversk, then here it is, a small ‘cauldron’ [Russian for encirclement] that they are trying to create along the railway, from Seversk to Berestovoye. ... Once they do that Lisichansk and Sievierodonetsk will be surrounded. This is the main task they are currently solving. The task is to create a ‘new Mariupol.’”

“Biden must stop the promiscuous publicizing of U.S. intelligence,” John R. Bolton, WP, 05.25.22. The author, a former U.S. national security adviser to Donald Trump, writes:

• “Most damaging were articles on U.S. information-sharing with Ukraine, which by explaining what was impermissible, told Russia exactly what we were sharing with Kyiv..”
• “What was inexplicably underreported and under-analyzed by the pro-Biden media is why the United States was so mistaken in its pre-invasion intelligence assessment that Russia would gain swift victory in Ukraine, with Kyiv falling in days and the entire country in weeks. Fearing sudden Russian successes, the administration leaked that it would support guerrilla operations afterward, presumably to deter Moscow from invading. A U.S. offer to provide Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky safe passage from Kyiv showed little confidence in his government's survivability. You can be sure that China noted these intelligence failures carefully.”

Punitive measures related to Ukraine and their impact globally:

“Economist Branko Milanovic on the causes and consequences of the war: Russian elites will learn in the future they are better off without centralized power,” interview conducted by Vyacheslav Dvornikov for The Bell, 05.23.22. In this interview, Milanovic, a senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality, says:

• “I believe that [regardless of the timing of the end of the war] the lifting of sanctions will take a long time: it may take 20, 25 or 50 years, as I indicated earlier, but definitely not three to six months. A repeat of industrialization is extremely unlikely. … The problem is that it will be a very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to get the best technology in Russia now, so now the task is much more difficult.”
• “Right now Russia has a post-industrial workforce that is far too educated [compared to the current state of technology]. … [T]here is a large mismatch between the skill level of the labor force and the economic policies that will need to be pursued in the medium term. And that's also a big problem. In addition, many educated people have already left, and this will also make it difficult to achieve the task of technological breakthrough.”
• “The [Russian] economy, at least since the end of the 19th century, has indeed developed in cycles. … It is very difficult or even impossible for countries to achieve consistently high levels of income if such cyclical changes constantly occur.”
• “The original idea of ​​sanctions against them [the oligarchs] was based on the simple idea that the oligarchs would not want to lose their assets, which means they would oppose the war. But, as it turned out, counting on this [for the West] was wrong. ... It is not very clear to me what [the West] is trying to achieve with such [sanctions], because it is clear that [the oligarchs] are not able [to influence anything].”
• “I think the elites have realized that the extreme centralization of power makes them powerless. … I think the Russian elites will learn that in the future it is better for them not to have centralized power. In the 1950s, members of the Politburo realized that it was better to have 7-10 people deciding issues than it being one person. The reasonable position of the elites would be to advocate the establishment of the rule of law in Russia in order to have guarantees against the centralization of power. I believe that people are smart and will be able to understand—even if they don't get fabulously rich as they could, in the long run it's much safer for them to have those guarantees. This would be a positive outcome.”

“Using Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine won’t be easy,” Gillian Tett, FT, 05.26.22. The author, chair of FT’s editorial board, writes:

• “When Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the World Economic Forum via video link … he issued a heartfelt appeal to the west: use the assets seized from the Russian central bank and country’s oligarchs to fund the estimated $500 billion cost of rebuilding Ukraine. ... Many western leaders seem to agree. ... However, the dirty secret at this week’s WEF meeting is that these public appeals are causing private angst for many of the Davos corporate and financial elite, from the west and its allies.”
• “While most think there is an overwhelming moral case to help Ukraine—and punish Russia’s aggression—freezing assets is quite a different matter from dispersing them. If either is done without a consistent and transparent framework, western governments will either face years of costly lawsuits or end up smashing apart the trust that underpins their political economies.”

“Russian asset seizures must follow the law,” Editorial Board, FT, 06.05.22. The news outlet’s editorial board writes:

• “The moral case for ensuring the ‘aggressor pays’ is powerful. To retain the moral high ground, however, the democracies backing Ukraine must follow due process and the rule of law.”
• “There are several complications … Under international law, convicted war criminals’ assets can be seized to compensate victims. No such verdicts yet exist against senior Russians. … Despite all their support for Ukraine, moreover, western allies are not themselves at war with Russia.”
• “Two avenues are being explored: confiscating the already frozen accounts, yachts and mansions of Putin-linked oligarchs, and sequestering state property ... The moral case for confiscating public assets such as central bank reserves may be more clear-cut, and these represent a more lucrative target.”

“Now is the time to help Ukraine by stepping up sanctions on Russia,” Andriy Yermak, FT, 05.25.22. The author, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, writes:

• “First, the west must target the financing of the war with a complete embargo on Russian oil and gas, including EU trade with Russia and Belarus in petroleum products. Transport companies, especially sea operators, and insurance firms that support Russian energy exports must be sanctioned. Only a full energy embargo will have the necessary economic and psychological impact on the Kremlin’s decision-making.”
• “The democratic world also must impose new, and strengthen existing, financial sanctions. These must apply in full to all Russian banks — starting with Gazprombank — and their subsidiaries and shell companies in and outside Russia. Secondary sanctions must be imposed on entities that circumvent this regime or otherwise enable Russia’s aggression. We must expand export controls on strategically important high-tech products, especially those related to oil and gas production.”
• “The west must also target the Russian state structure that enables the Kremlin’s malign activities and the individuals complicit in the war effort.”
• “Finally, the west must look at ways to use seized Russian assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war. For instance, frozen Russian central bank reserve holdings, valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, will be critical to rebuilding Ukraine after this horrific war ends.”

“Sanctions Should Punish Putin, Not His Opponents,” Leonid Gozman, FP, 05.23.22. The author, a Russian commentator and politician, writes:

• “Among the new wave of Russian emigrants, there are wealthy people who are ready to help their compatriots get back on their feet rather than have them become dependent on welfare in European countries. However, there is constant talk of canceling their accounts or limiting them to relatively small amounts—though we are talking about people who are not involved in the crimes of the regime and have proved the legality of the origin of their funds.”
• “Wealthier emigres would like to create structures of mutual aid and charitable support for compatriots who find themselves in exile because of their opposition to the Putin regime, but legal practices in Europe are now such that it is almost impossible for them.”
• “Because of Putin’s policies and declarations of support for his actions from the heads of official Russian universities, cooperation programs with Russian scientists and students are being curtailed. Supporting crimes, of course, is a crime in itself, but most Russian scientists are innocent of this crime. Refusing to cooperate with them helps Putin isolate the Russian intelligentsia from the world and destroy the layer of intellectuals that is trying to preserve Russia as part of Europe and save its remaining islands of freedom. Without them, who can shape the early days of a better nation in Russia?”
• “Cooperation with Russian intellectuals should continue, and Russian students need teaching now more than ever. While the global internet is still available in Russia, not only should online courses be made available to Russian students but they should be made free, since many currently do not have the means to pay. And in the West, Russian academic and scientific emigres should be involved in teaching and educating the young people forced to leave the country. This is an investment in the future of a Russia that will not be a threat to peace and in Europe, where today’s tragedies will not be repeated.”

“Russians look to Iran for lessons on life under long-term sanctions,” Miriam Berger, WP, 05.26.22. The author, a staff writer for the news outlet, writes:

• “Iran has perfected the art [of dodging Western sactions on Iranian oil]: Oil tankers meet on the high seas, where other countries are loath to intervene, turn off their tracking radar, transfer Iranian oil and cover their tracks. In early May, Iran said it had doubled its oil exports since August.”
• “The model is in place, should Russia need it. An estimated 8 percent of the world's tankers carry illicit oil, mainly from Iran and Venezuela, said Cormac McGarry, a maritime analyst with the global risk consultancy Control Risks. ‘History tells us that [Russia] will likely bend and find ways around those sanctions and learn to live with them,’ he said. ‘Iran is a perfect example of that.’”
• “Adlan Margoev, a Russian expert on Iran, said that he fears Russia under sanctions will lose its ‘creative class’—just as Iran did in waves of emigration since 1979. ‘Then the domestic economy will suffer pretty strongly, which is what happened with Iran,’ he said.”

“The Russia sanctions will transform the global economy,” Creon Butler, Chatham House, 05.27.22. The author, a research director for Chatham House, writes:

• “The economic and financial sanctions imposed on Russia after its illegal invasion of Ukraine will fundamentally change the international economic system with [the following] lasting implications for the way the global economy operates.”
  • “Weaker global economic governance.”
  • “Pressure on the currency system.”
  • “Hard choices in development finance.”
  • “Increased global finance corruption risk.”
  • “Accelerated market fragmentation.”
  • “Impetus to stakeholder capitalism.”
• “[I]t is critical that western policymakers assess and, if necessary, act on them both to mitigate the downsides and benefit from any new opportunities created. This is true, even in circumstances where the immediate policy priority remains support for Ukraine.”

“‘Everything is gone’: Russian business hit hard by tech sanctions,” Anna Gross and Max Seddon, FT, 06.02.22. The authors, a correspondent and the Moscow bureau chief for the news outlet, write:

• “Russian companies have been plunged into a technological crisis by western sanctions that have created severe bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors, electrical equipment and the hardware needed to power the nation’s data centers.”
• “This has created a shortfall in the type of larger, low-end chips that go into the production of cars, household appliances and military equipment. Supplies of more advanced semiconductors … have also been severely curtailed. And the country’s ability to import foreign tech and equipment containing these chips … has been drastically stymied.”
• “Russia has historically been able to rely on unauthorized ‘grey market’ supply chains for the provision of some technological and military equipment, purchasing Western products from resellers in Asia and Africa via brokers. But a global dearth of chips and crucial IT hardware has meant that even these channels have dried up. … Russian officials have also explored moving production to foundries in China, but there is little evidence that Beijing is coming to the rescue.”

Ukraine-related negotiations:

“Ukraine’s Best Chance for Peace,” Samuel Charap, FA, 06.01.22. 

“When Will Russia’s War on Ukraine End? Religion and Security Strategies,” Lucian N. Leustean, NYU’s Jordan Center/ Religion Unplugged, 05.24.22. The author, a reader in politics and international relations at the U.K.’s Aston University, writes:

• “Russia’s war on Ukraine must end not only through the cessation of violence, but also with a reassessment of the part religion has to play in global geopolitics. To end this war and prevent future ones, it is vital to rethink European relations with an eye to the complex interface of religion and security.”

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

“What If Ukraine Wins? Victory in the War Would Not End the Conflict With Russia, Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage, FA, 06.06.22. 

"Dealing with Horrible Leaders Is Part of the History of International Relations", Graham Allison’s Interview to Der Spiegel, 05.20.22. In this interview, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University says:

• “Putin is a rational actor in the sense of a person who is purposive, who’s calculating and who believes what he is doing is attempting to achieve an objective. He’s made a very bad calculation because he thought that somehow Ukraine was not as much of a country as it has turned out to be. … Our people at the highest levels of the U.S. government … have been thinking about the question: Can Putin lose this war, and can he survive if it is an unambiguous loss? I don't know what their answer is. My answer is no.”
• “Putin has shown no compunction about killing people, even in massive numbers. We saw that in Grozny, and we are seeing it in Mariupol today. If we present him with an unambiguous choice between losing everything and taking a chance, we’ll have to reckon with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon.”
• “[W]e have four interrelated war aims. Point one: Ukraine survives. Point two: No third world war. Point three: a decisive strategic defeat for Putin's Russia. And point four: strengthening the international security order. … When this war is over, Russia and the world should realize that the cost of this invasion far outweighs its benefits and that Putin is critically weakened. Is NATO destroyed? No, it is stronger than ever. Are the U.S. and Europe divided, which is what Putin surely wanted? No, they are more united than before.”
• “Supplying arms that would allow Ukraine to launch attacks on Russian territory, for example, would greatly increase the risk of escalation. It is therefore very sensible to question oneself carefully and in detail when taking such steps.”
• “The biggest benefit from China's perspective is that Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its threat to Europe will become the focal threat that consumes all of America’s attention. ... I believe we are entering a confusing era in which China will be the most formidable threat … Russia will remain a spoiler and maybe even more so, especially for Europe. But precisely the unity of Europe could one day allow many Russians to see that Putin has led their country down a blind alley.”

“President Biden: What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine,” Joe Biden, NYT, 05.31.22. The U.S. President writes:

• “The invasion Vladimir Putin thought would last days is now in its fourth month. … As the war goes on, I want to be clear about the aims of the United States … America’s goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.”
• “Every negotiation reflects the facts on the ground. We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table. That’s why I’ve decided that we will provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions.”
• “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia. As much as I disagree with Mr. Putin, and find his actions an outrage, the United States will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow. So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces. We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.”
• “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government—in private or public—to make any territorial concessions. … The United States will continue to work to strengthen Ukraine and support its efforts to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict.”
• “If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries. It will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere.”
• “We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible. Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.”

“Biden hunkers down for a long, limited war in Ukraine,” David Ignatius, WP, 06.02.22. The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “Biden summarized his administration’s approach in an op-ed Wednesday in the New York Times. In place of loose talk about total military victory over Russian invaders, he said the United States’ goal was a negotiated peace.”
• “The war in Ukraine, with its vicious swings in momentum, might be moving from ebullient optimism about Ukraine’s defiance toward a phase that’s closer to the long, enervating grind of the Korean War. David Halberstam, in his 2007 history, ‘The Coldest Winter: America and The Korean War,’ described it as ‘a puzzling, gray, very distant conflict, a war that went on and on and on, seemingly without hope or resolution.’”
• “Biden rightly insists that only Ukrainians, who have fought and died so bravely, can decide how this war should end. But this week, he expanded what the strategist Schelling called ‘implicit bargaining’ with Russia by marking the contours of the war. At some point, after the butcher’s bill is paid, we’ll move into explicit negotiations to resolve this terrible conflict.”

Main propositions related to Russian-Ukrainian war made by Henry Kissinger at Davos-2022 on 05.23.22:

• “About eight years ago, when the idea of membership of Ukraine in NATO came up, I wrote an article in which I said that the ideal outcome would be if Ukraine could be constituted as a neutral kind of state, as a bridge between Russia and Europe. Rather than, it's the front line of groupings within Europe. I think that opportunity is now—does not now exist in the same manner, but it could still be conceived as an ultimate objective. In my view, movement towards negotiations and negotiations on peace need to begin in the next two months so that the outcome of the war should be outlined.”
• “Ideally, the dividing line should return the status quo ante. I believe to join the war beyond Poland would draw—turn it into a war and not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into against Russia itself and so, that seems to me to be the dividing line that it is just impossible to define.”
• “Russia has been, for 400 years, an essential part of Europe, and European policy over that period of time has been affected, fundamentally, by its European assessment of the role of Russia. … Current policy should keep in mind the restoration of this role is important to develop, so that Russia is not driven into a permanent alliance with China.”
• “As in the period directly affected by the Ukrainian issue, but affected by the balance that will emerge, the rise of countries like India and Brazil and other countries, will have to be integrated into an international system. They seem to me to be the key issues, together with the fact that the Ukraine conflict has produced a rupture in the economic arrangements that have been made in the period before, so that the definition and operation of a global system will have to be reconsidered.”

Main propositions related to Russian-Ukrainian war made by George Soros at Davos-2022 on 05.24.22: 

• “Russia invaded Ukraine. ... The invasion may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it. … The invasion of Ukraine didn’t come out of the blue. The world has been increasingly engaged in a struggle between two systems of governance that are diametrically opposed to each other.”
• “Today China and Russia present the greatest threat to open society. I have pondered long and hard why that should have happened. I found part of the answer in the rapid development of digital technology, especially artificial intelligence.”
• “Not only Ukraine but also Moldova and the Western Balkans should qualify for membership in the European Union. It will take a long time to work out the details, but Europe seems to be moving in the right direction.”
• “Putin seems to have recognized that he made a terrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine and he is now preparing the ground for negotiating a cease fire. But the cease fire is unattainable because he cannot be trusted. Putin would have to start peace negotiations which he will never do because it would be equivalent to resigning.”
• “While the war rages, the fight against climate change has to take second place. Yet the experts tell us that we have already fallen far behind, and climate change is on the verge of becoming irreversible. That could be the end of our civilization. I find this prospect particularly frightening. Most of us accept the idea that we must eventually die but we take it for granted that our civilization will survive. Therefore, we must mobilize all our resources to bring the war to an early end. The best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible. That’s the bottom line.”

“Kissinger vs. Soros on Russia,” Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 05.26.22. The author, the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, writes:

• “Two American immigrants, both survivors of life under Nazi rule still making waves in their nineties, set the terms of debate at the World Economic Forum. … Henry Kissinger, who celebrates his 99th birthday this week, made a virtual appearance to urge against attempts to defeat or marginalize Russia, calling on Ukraine to accept the territorial losses of 2014 to end the war. … A few hours later, George Soros, in person at the forum at age 91, warned that victory in the war against Vladimir Putin's Russia was necessary to ‘save civilization’ and urged the West to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to prevail.”
• “Where they disagree is on the nature of the order and civilization they seek to conserve. … Mr. Soros, much like the Biden administration, sees the dominant issue in world politics as a struggle between democracy and totalitarianism … The Kissinger position is less ideological. There always has been and always will be many types of government in the world. America's job is to create and defend a balance of power that protects our freedom and that of our allies at the least possible risk and cost.”
• “Looking at history, the one thing that seems clear is that neither approach yields an infallible guide to success.”
• “Ukraine cannot fight a long war without enormous help from the West, economic as well as military. What will happen to its currency as Ukraine spends everything it has on a war of survival? How many $40 billion aid packages is Congress prepared to pass? How much economic aid is the EU ready to provide at a time when many EU economies are struggling with inflation and high fuel prices? If the war causes food shortages and even famines around the world and political instability spreads into such countries as Egypt, will the West be able to coordinate a global response even as it continues to aid Ukraine?”

“Russia Is Down. But It’s Not Out,” Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman, NYT, 06.02.22. The authors, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security abd the director of Russian studies at the research institute CNA, write:

• “The war in Ukraine has undoubtedly tarnished Russia’s standing as a great power. … [M]any in America and Europe are eager to dismiss Russia as a Potemkin power whose exalted status is at an end. Militarily battered and saddled with sanctions that some in Washington suggest are designed to weaken Russia, the Kremlin seems to no longer warrant the worry previously expended on it. The threat Russia poses to the West, in this view, has foundered on Ukrainian soil.”
• “Yet such an assessment is premature. … Despite its failures in Ukraine, Russia retains the capacity and the will to continue to seriously challenge the United States and Europe.”
• “Internationally, too, Russia is not as isolated as we like to think.”
• “In Russia, there’s no reason to believe Mr. Putin’s regime is under immediate threat. … There is also a sizable segment of the population that supports the war, buttressed by a torrent of hypernationalist rhetoric.”
• “Russian power, it’s worth remembering, has gone through fitful cycles of stagnation, decline and resurgence; it would be wise to avoid triumphalism and complacency. … In other words: Russia is a problem for the West, and it’s not going anywhere.”

“Cold War Catastrophes the U.S. Can Avoid This Time,” Anatol Lieven, The Atlantic, 06.01.22. The author, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:

• “U.S. policy today is in danger of making some of the same mistakes of the early years of the Cold War. The stage is much smaller, but the danger is, in some ways, greater because the proxy war is being waged on territory that Russia considers absolutely vital to its national interest and that also borders NATO members’ land. If the U.S. were to stumble into adopting a new version of ‘rollback’—with Russia, standing in for the U.S.S.R., not just contained in eastern Ukraine but completely defeated, provoking unrest at home and possibly regime change—that would run a far greater risk of nuclear escalation.”
• “The memory of the Cold War should be a warning against the danger today of a neo-Nitze doctrine of seeing every dispute involving Russia as a zero-sum struggle against an existential foe, regardless of actual U.S. interests and local realities. Sometimes, in fact, it would behoove us to note that American and Russian interests can still coincide. However foul the Assad regime in Syria, for example, we should not forget that the U.S. and Russian forces in that country are, in effect, allied against the Islamic State.”
• “We should acknowledge, too, that Russia’s critiques of some of America’s policies—notably, of its military interventions in Iraq and Libya—have proved not merely correct but, in Lippmann’s sense, an accurate guide to what would have been in U.S. interests.”
• “Finally, a new Cold War runs the risk of finding enemies domestic as well as foreign. The specter of McCarthyism still stalks the land in a spirit of paranoia and hatred that haunts American political culture.”
• “None of these historical lessons argues against U.S. support for the defense of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion. They do argue strongly, though, against ruling out a compromise peace in favor of a complete victory for Ukraine. Worse still would be to turn the war in Ukraine into the beginning of another militarized global crusade.”

“The delusion of a global democratic rebirth through war,” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 05.23.22. The author, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:

• “Are our descendants a century from now really likely to think that in prioritizing the Donbas over climate change, our governments acted correctly to defend Western liberal democracy? This does not mean that the West should not support Ukraine. We should. But everyone who really values the health of Western democracy and desires essential reforms should also support every effort to bring about an early, just, and lasting peace — not seek to prolong this conflict in the name of a mythical struggle for global democracy.”

“Weaken, but don’t ruin, Russia,” Michael O’Hanlon and Melanie W. Sisson, The Hill, 05.18.22. The authors, the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings, write:

• “Whatever strategic mistakes the West may have made in seeking to expand NATO after the Cold War do not absolve Putin of the moral responsibility for this war. But the analogy with Versailles is still apt, not least because the Russian people seem to feel differently—at least so far. Polling done in April by an independent organization indicated that a majority of Russians believed Putin’s characterization of the war as a ‘special military operation,’ and that they supported it. If the Russian economy winds up flat on its back for years to come, and Putin and his state media machine continue to encourage the Russian people to blame the West for unfair punishment, stoke resentment and energize identity-based imperialist narratives, the seeds may be sown for another future war.”
• “It makes sense to keep restrictions on high-technology trade and investment with Russia even after a ceasefire or peace deal is eventually struck, but it is important that those are targeted to limit Russia’s ability to compete with us militarily and not just for purposes of prolonging national punishment.”
• “The West also should consider carefully the costs and benefits of permanently reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank, and of adding Sweden and Finland to the alliance. … Of course, for any peace to be possible, Russia must minimize whatever territorial ambitions it may have in this conflict and accept that Ukraine will reconstitute and reinforce its military after hostilities end, provided that it does not seek NATO membership.”
• “By clarifying our thinking now about what kind of post-war Europe we seek, we can reduce the risk of reliving the mistakes of Versailles—and perhaps accelerate negotiations to end this senseless violence. No one is in a mood now to be kind to Russia, but an overly harsh peace deal that leaves Russia ruined would not serve our own long-term interests.”

“Why any U.S. push for regime change in Moscow is a bad idea,” Anatol Lieven and Ted Snider, Responsible Statecraft, 05.25.22. The authors, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute and a contributor to Responsible Statecraft, write:

• “On March 26, President Joe Biden clearly called for regime change in Russia, saying that, ‘For God’s sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power.’ While Biden’s staff tried to walk back his statement, there seems little doubt that it reflects a widespread view in the Biden administration and the U.S., British, and Canadian establishments more generally.”
• “This view is very understandable given the evil of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Whether it is sensible to make this the goal of Western policy towards Russia is a very different matter. There are two essential conditions for Putin’s replacement.”
  • “First, it should be a Russian matter, not driven by the United States—because otherwise, the succeeding regime will be permanently burdened by a Weimar-style perception of treason and defeat.”
  • “Second, it should be a controlled, not a revolutionary process—because in present circumstances, a revolution in Russia is far more likely to lead to a government of the fascistic right than a liberal one.”
• “Those Western (and Russian liberal) commentators who believe in the possibility of a pro-Western successor to Putin are in some respects making the same mistake as those who demand that Russia become a ‘normal nation-state.’ They are ignoring the power of nationalism, which dominates throughout the former Soviet bloc.”
• “American advocates of regime change should remember both the unpredictable and sometimes terrible results of U.S.-inspired regime change elsewhere in the world; and America’s absolutely awful record of trying to manage Russian internal affairs in the 1990s. That effort helped to produce Putin’s regime; a repeat performance could produce something even worse.”

“We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever,” Ross Douthat, NYT, 06.06.22. The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “When I read the broader theories of hawkish commentators, their ideas about America’s strategic vision and what kind of endgame we should be seeking in the war, I still find myself baffled by their confidence and absolutism.”
• “These theories all seem to confuse what is desirable with what is likely, and what is morally ideal with what is strategically achievable. I have written previously about the risks of nuclear escalation in the event of a Russian military collapse, risks that hawkish theories understate. But given the state of the war right now, the more likely near-future scenario is one where Russian collapse remains a pleasant fancy, the conflict becomes stalemated and frozen, and we have to put our Ukrainian policy on a sustainable footing without removing Putin’s regime or dismantling the Russian empire.”
• “In that scenario, our plan cannot be to keep writing countless checks while tiptoeing modestly around the Ukrainians and letting them dictate the ends to which our guns and weaponry are used. The United States is an embattled global hegemon facing threats more significant than Russia. We are also an internally divided country led by an unpopular president whose majorities may be poised for political collapse.”
• “So if Kyiv and Moscow are headed for a multiyear or even multidecade frozen conflict, we will need to push Ukraine toward its most realistic rather than its most ambitious military strategy. And just as urgently, we will need to shift some of the burden of supporting Kyiv from our own budget to our European allies.”
• “The danger now is that the practical achievements of our hawkish policy encourage the opposite kind of theorizing, a hubris that squanders our still provisional success.”

“Will Teaching Aggressors a Lesson Deter Future Wars?” Steven Walt, FP, 06.02.22. The author, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, writes:

• “Westerners—such as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg—who favor ever-greater levels of support for Ukraine sometimes imply that inflicting a decisive defeat on Russia will prevent future wars in other places. … Some observers … go even further and suggest a decisive Russian defeat could end the malaise that Western liberalism has experienced in recent years and restore the waning ‘spirit of 1989.’”
• “[S]uch claims transform the outcome of a single conflict into a struggle for the fate of the entire planet. … According to this view, Ukraine must win big, or all is lost. Framing the issue in this way stacks the deck in favor of always doing more and rejecting any sort of compromise, but is the choice as stark as hard-liners make out? Does defeating an aggressor really teach others to behave better? It would be a more benign world if this were the case, but a quick glance at the past century or so suggests otherwise.”
• “The bottom line is that U.S. policymakers should not base their actions today on the belief that victory in Ukraine (or Yemen or Ethiopia or Libya) is going to tilt the arc of history decisively in the directions they favor. Nor will the outcome of today’s conflicts have much effect on how future leaders think about their own prospects when they are deciding whether to launch a war.”
• “There are good reasons to support Ukraine’s efforts to resist Russia … but the future of democracy does not hang in the balance. Instead of seeing this war as an opportunity to teach Russia a lesson, policymakers should concentrate on identifying the specific interests and issues at stake right now and try to devise a peace settlement that can give everyone enough of what they want to discourage another round of fighting.”

“The west is starting to feel Ukraine fatigue,” Edward Luce, FT, 06.02.22. The author, U.S. national editor for the news outlet, writes:

• “We knew this was coming. After the heady early weeks of Russia’s military humiliation, Ukraine’s heroic resistance buoyed by a remarkable popular western outpouring, tedium is beginning to creep in. Traditional wars usually go this way. The early mood swings from euphoria to despair are supplanted by ennui. Skilled leaders channel despair into fear, which can result in action. Boredom is a far more stubborn adversary.”
• “The war is being fought on two levels — on the ground in Ukraine, and in the information battle for control of the global narrative. Both have entered a period of attrition. … The information war will shape what happens on the ground. Here the west, and Ukraine, may be victims of their own success. Much of the western media has chosen to ignore everything the Russians say and draw heavily on Ukrainian data and stories. Given the darkness of Russian propaganda this is understandable. But such selectivity has two side effects. The first is complacency. The widespread sense of Russian haplessness has fueled the expectation of its defeat. It is just a matter of time.”
• “The second side effect is democracies’ reversion to the mean. As fear of Putin has abated, the west’s spirit has begun to fla. The late and controversial former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, differentiated between the response of “old Europe” and “new Europe” to the Iraq war. That division remains apparent with the public mood in Italy, France and Germany diverging from more gung-ho countries such as Poland. The UK, meanwhile, is causing irritation in Washington over its habit of boasting about things it has not delivered..”

“The west is divided over how the war in Ukraine must end,” Sylvie Kauffmann, FT 05.25.22. The author, a columnist at Le Monde, writes:

• “It suddenly became plausible that Ukraine, equipped with heavier weapons from the west, could actually win this war. This raises multiple questions for Ukraine’s backers. What does ‘winning’ mean? Is victory just pushing the Russians back to where they started on February 24? Or does it also mean taking back the territories occupied since 2014, namely Crimea and two regions of Donbas?”
• “Two schools of thought have emerged.”
  • “According to one, Russia must be punished for its aggression in such a way that it will not try again. Had we reacted more firmly when Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and seized Crimea in 2014, the argument goes, he would have been deterred from attacking Ukraine in 2022. Russia should now be ‘weakened’ by military means, U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin said on April 25, opening a new perspective on Washington’s aims, which remain unclear.”
  • “The second school also wants Ukraine to win the war and stresses that it is up to the Ukrainians to decide which territorial goal they want to fight for. But it takes a different view of the future with Russia. Even defeated, Russia, a nuclear power, will still be the largest country on the continent, and Moscow will have to be part of any new security order built in Europe. On May 9 in Strasbourg, President Emmanuel Macron of France used a word freighted with history to make this point. Russia, he said, should not be ‘humiliated.’”
• “As for Russia, it does not need the west to humiliate it. Putin has done a very good job of that himself.”

“The U.S. Can’t Force the Rest of the World to Support Ukraine. Here’s Why,” Daniel R. DePetris and Rajan Menon, Politico, 05.25.22. The authors, a fellow at Defense Priorities and a senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, write:

• “For many countries outside North America and Europe, picking sides in a confrontation between Russia and the West is a losing strategy whose costs significantly outweigh the benefits.”
• “The U.S. would be better served if it were to live in a world of reality—however frustrating that may be—rather than a world of make-believe, in which countries reliably follow the lead of American policymakers. Otherwise, the U.S. will set itself up for disappointment, frustration and potentially failure.”

“Ukraine and the start of a second cold war,” Gideon Rachman, FT, 06.06.22.  

“Putin Is Going to Lose His War,” Anders Åslund, FA, 05.26.22.  

Nikolai Patrushev’s Interview: “Truth is on our side,” Argumenty i Fakty, 05.24.22. In this interview, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, says:

• “We are not chasing deadlines [in Ukraine]. Nazism must either be eradicated by 100%, or it will raise its head in a few years, and in an even uglier form. … All the goals set by the President of Russia will be fulfilled. … The fate of Ukraine will be determined by the people living on its territory.”
• “If the military infrastructure of the NATO alliance expands to the territory of Finland and Sweden, Russia will perceive this as a direct threat to its own security and will be obliged to respond.”
• “Teachers occupy a special place in the life of every citizen, therefore, arbitrary interpretation of world and national history by individual teachers, undermining the authority of our country and programming the minds of children on the basis of false facts and myths, is unacceptable. … Heads of educational institutions, whose graduates did not hold books on the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, or who have a vague idea of ​​the deeds of those who fought for the Motherland, bear personal responsibility.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Russia’s National Security Narrative: All Quiet on the Eastern Front,” Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 05.23.22. The authors, the director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program and a nonresident senior fellow in the program, write:

• “The two defining features of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy have been an increasingly adversarial relationship with the West and an increasingly close partnership with China. These drivers have been the salient feature of official Russian national security documents for the past three decades.”
• “Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. national security community has viewed Russian strategic thinking as misguided because it failed to see China as the real threat to Russia. This view ignores the Kremlin’s preoccupation with Europe as the most important strategic theater where its interests are at stake, and where they are threatened by the West’s superior capabilities and ambitions. This view also ignores how unimportant—relative to Europe—the Asia-Pacific is for Russia.”
• “Russia’s partnership with China is secured, however, by a set of coherent and complementary strategic rationales, which supersede frequent concerns in the Russian strategic community at large about China and its growing capabilities and intentions vis-à-vis Russia. Those concerns appear to have little impact on Russian policy. Notwithstanding those concerns in Russia’s unofficial national security discourse, China’s footprint on its foundational national security and foreign policy documents is invisible—and China, as a source of military threat to Russia, does not appear to be part of the Kremlin’s calculus. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has long been the pacing challenge of Russian military modernization, and the main contingency for which it has been preparing has been future conflict in the European theater.”
• “For the Putin regime, there is no alternative to Russia’s ‘no limits’ partnership with China. Moreover, even if Putin were no longer on the scene, a successor regime would have powerful economic, geopolitical, demographic, and military-strategic incentives to maintain this partnership. An adversarial relationship with China would pit Russia against two superior powers in two widely separated geographic theaters. The war in Ukraine has cemented the Russian-Chinese partnership for the foreseeable future.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“The Russia-Ukraine War: A Setback for Arms Control,” Steven Pifer, CISAC, 05.23.22. The author, William J. Perry Research Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, writes:

• “Persuading Moscow to negotiate limits on non-strategic nuclear weapons, which would bring in a host of complex questions, would have been difficult in any case. Now, however, the sides would have little time to conclude a treaty, let alone for the Senate to discuss ratification, before the U.S. political season cranks up in 2024.”
• “Given the abysmal performance by its military against a smaller and out-gunned foe, the Russian General Staff is likely to regard its non-strategic nuclear arsenal as more necessary than ever.”
• “Of particular note, the Russian military has devoted significant efforts in recent years to adding to its arsenal precision-guided conventional weapons, including long-range strike systems such as the Kalibr cruise missile. However, the war against Ukraine has revealed significant shortcomings.”
• “New START’s terms, however, do not permit extension beyond 2026. If U.S. and Russian negotiators concluded a new treaty merely extending New START’s constraints, securing the two-thirds vote needed in the Senate for consent to ratification could prove difficult.”
• “Arms control offers a useful national security tool that can put guardrails on the adversarial aspects of the U.S.-Russian relationship.  As Washington and Moscow find themselves at the most contentious point in their relations since the early 1980s and perhaps since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, keeping such guardrails in place is more important than ever.  Unfortunately, the Russia-Ukraine war will make doing that more difficult than ever.”

"Why Putin’s betrayal of Ukraine could trigger nuclear proliferation," Steven Pifer, BAS 06.01.22. The author, William J. Perry Research Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, writes:

• “Non-proliferation efforts may turn out to be [an] important casualty of the war. Russia’s blatant disregard for its 1994 commitments to Ukraine has discredited security assurances in the toolkit of non-proliferation efforts. What Russia (which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal) has done to Ukraine (a country that gave up its arsenal) likely will rank high in the mind of those in future countries who consider whether to acquire, or to give up, nuclear weapons.”

“What we got wrong about nuclear risk reduction,” Heather Williams, The Hill, 05.23.22. The author, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes:

• “Deterrence is a means of crisis management and convincing Putin that further escalation—including any use of a weapon of mass destruction or attack on a NATO ally—will be met with a swift and painful response should be a priority. NATO’s nuclear status is one of the best means of preventing an attack on a member and reassures understandably anxious nations in the region. A strong U.S. nuclear deterrent is the foundation of the alliance and should be reinforced in the implementation of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review and in forthcoming NATO strategic documents.”
• “The United States should also engage with international risk reduction efforts, such as the Stockholm Initiative. The invasion of Ukraine is a reckoning about the practicality and utility of existing risk reduction forums and recommendations. Rather than abandon these efforts altogether, however, Washington can play a leadership role in shaping them to reflect the geopolitical landscape and developing a richer risk reduction toolkit. Ideally, other NATO allies would also prioritize such efforts. Risk reduction, arms control and security cooperation are not mutually exclusive from a strong deterrent. An integrated arms control strategy, to reflect integrated deterrence, can offer a new approach to risk reduction and identify a broader, more agile set of tools.”

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

“Can the World Avoid a Cyber-Nuclear Catastrophe?” Ariel E. Levite, NI, 06.05.22. The author, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment’s Technology and International Affairs Program, writes:

• “A natural point of departure for addressing the risks inherent in the cyber-nuclear nexus is to acknowledge their existence and reflect on their likely consequences. However, this is much easier said than done, as such an acknowledgment would likely encounter serious resistance on the grounds that it would draw much negative attention to problems that are both better handled in secret and do not lend themselves to quick fixes. Furthermore, some of the options for tackling these risks would not only be costly and time-consuming but would also involve painful operational and political tradeoffs. These range from unilateral steps that pose risks to or undermine cyber operations—such as diminishing compartmentation between cyber and nuclear operators or expanding policy scrutiny of sensitive cyber operations, as well as declaratory policy formulations—to unpalatable bilateral or multilateral understandings.”
• “In short, while all these options are worthy of serious consideration, none readily presents itself as suitable for immediate, straightforward implementation. Realistically, then, the world might have to wait for a true close call to shake the relevant parties into action and motivate them to overcome institutional and political reticence to seriously contemplate steps to dealing with these perils in ways that would seem inconceivable beforehand.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant developments.

Climate change:

“Once Unthinkable: Subsidies for American Oil Drillers,” Matt Phillips, Axios, 06.01.22. The author, who writes the Axios Markets newsletter, reports: 

• “The bottom line: With the green energy transition still off in the hazy future and a growing list of giant oil producers like Russia, Iran and Venezuela whose supplies are off-limits, politicians throughout the West need credible plans to address energy costs over the next few years—and fast—if they want to stay in power.” 

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

“U.S. Technology, a Longtime Tool for Russia, Becomes a Vulnerability,” Ana Swanson, John Ismay and Edward Wong, NYT, 06.02.22. The news outlet reports:

• “When asked if a chip shortage was crippling the Russian military, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who oversees export controls, said the answer was ‘an unqualified yes.’ ‘U.S. exports to Russia in the categories where we have export controls, including semiconductors, are down by over 90 percent since Feb. 24,’ she said. ‘So that is crippling.’”
• “But some experts have sounded notes of caution. Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CAN … voiced skepticism about some claims that the export controls were forcing some tank factories and other defense companies in Russia to shutter. … Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University … said the lack of critical technologies and maintenance was likely to start being felt widely across Russian industry in the fall, as companies run out of parts and supplies or need upkeep on equipment. She and other analysts said even the production of daily goods such as printer paper would be affected.”

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• No significant developments.

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Almost no one is satisfied,” Meduza, 05.24.22. The Russian-language media outlet reports:

• “There is probably almost no one who is satisfied with Putin. Business and many members of the government are unhappy that the president started the war without thinking about the scale of the sanctions—one cannot live normally with such sanctions. ‘Hawks’ are not satisfied with the pace of the ‘special operation.’”
• “At the same time, the Kremlin still does not see a realistic scenario in which the authorities could end hostilities in Ukraine and maintain their ratings ... According to Meduza's interlocutors, the Kremlin is not ready for mobilization. Back in April, Meduza’s sources close to the presidential administration, referring to the results of closed sociological surveys, said that even Russians who support the ‘special operation’ are not ready to fight on their own or send their relatives to the front.”
• “Putin simply does not want to think about the economic difficulties that are obvious to most officials, and even more so does not want to associate them with the war, emphasize two Meduza sources close to the presidential administration.”
• “Meduza's interlocutors … note that against such a backdrop, the topic of ‘the future after Putin’ is being increasingly discussed by authorities. … ‘[T]here is an understanding, or a wish, that in a fairly foreseeable future he will not govern the state,’ explains one of the sources. … According to him [one source], even the figures of the President's successors are being discussed behind the scenes in the Kremlin. Among them are Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev and First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko.”
• “At the same time, Meduza's interlocutors emphasize that even when discussing … hypothetical successors, everyone in power understands that Putin can leave the presidency only if his health condition seriously deteriorates. As a result, the dissatisfaction of high-ranking officials is not manifested in anything—except for talking to each other.”

“Putin Against History,” Andrei Kolesnikov, FA, 05.26.22. 

“An autocracy tightening the screws,” Alexander Kynev, Russia.Post, 06.01.22. The author, a Russian political scientist, writes:

• “As the invasion of Ukraine began with the Russian leadership officially accusing the Ukrainian government of “Nazism,” one persistent feature of the Ukraine war has been squabbling between the sides about who is ‘fascist.’ This has turned into a finger-pointing exercise, and the participation of scholars in this cycle of back-and-forth insults, acting as campaigners and propagandists for one side, looks inappropriate.”
• “Some signs of ‘fascism’ are sometimes dug up on the internet and chosen to fit a target. The fact that almost any dictatorship has these features usually does not bother anyone.”
• “Besides the obvious ideological differences versus Nazi Germany, the Russian political regime has radically different features than that of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy: There is no totalitarian party implementing revolutionary ideas and monitoring conformity. Instead, officially there is a multi-party system, while United Russia is a rather faceless and amorphous organization without a clear ideology, more like a union of civil servants. Most bureaucrats, including members of the government, do not belong to a party.”
• “What is there then? ... Overall, we see an autocracy constantly tightening the screws, but not any fascist or Nazi state. Foreign military adventures for such regimes are often a way to strengthen themselves internally and pave the way for internal political mobilization (for example, Argentina in the 1980s and Serbia in the 1990s)—this merely indicates that the regimes are experiencing major internal problems and have been forced to resort to extreme measures to preserve their power, even at the cost of an obvious adventure.”

“Erroneous predictions: Political scientist Kirill Rogov on why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t just ‘Putin’s war,’” Kirill Rogov, Meduza, 05.31.22. The author, a Russian political scientist, writes:

• “Of course, Russia today is an authoritarian country where citizens have very little leverage over the state. But why did the national elites—those who managed to concentrate wealth and power in their own hands, and should be more interested in preserving the status quo, and therefore play a stabilizing role—fail to develop mechanisms to restrict the possibility of such odious and destructive decisions [to invade Ukraine]?”
• “The history of post-Soviet elites and their relationship with the state is divided into several stages. In the second half of the 1990s, a system of competitive oligarchy took shape in Russia … At the same time, the existence of several oligarchic ‘pyramids’ ensured a relative pluralism in political life. This did not, however, translate into the institutional pluralism of a mature democracy.”
• “In the early 2000s, the popular new President Vladimir Putin … announced a policy of countering oligarchs and building a ‘power vertical.’ In reality, this policy turned into the creation of a ‘monocentric patronal pyramid’ … From the point of view of political institutions, such a system looks like classic, personalist authoritarianism. And yet, this single patronal pyramid—with the figure of Putin as the supreme arbiter at the top—included several groups of elites, both old and new. Part of the old oligarchy … made their money in Russia, but securitized and invested their capital in the West.”
• “Having no incentive to fight for safeguards for their own capital inside Russia, the old elites surrendered the political domain to Putin’s security-minded elites without a fight — and eventually their radicalism manifested itself in real politics.”
• “From the moment they took place, the annexation of Crimea and the start of the large-scale confrontation with the West looked like a small, internal coup that radically changed the balance of power; weakening pro-Western elites and strengthening the hawks. In the years that followed, an anti-Western bent increasingly became not just a hallmark for the latter, but a platform for strategic consolidation.”

“Russia’s fraying economy: consumers start to feel the pinch of sanctions,” Polina Ivanova, FT, 06.01.22. The author, Moscow correspondent for the news outlet, writes:

• “In a country where a large proportion of workers are employed by the state, and with recently approved pension and minimum wage hikes, most Russians have not experienced dramatic changes to daily life. Buoyant revenues from oil and gas exports have also given the Kremlin the means to offer incentives to the private sector to furlough, rather than lay off, workers. Unemployment has remained at about 4 per cent, avoiding the spikes seen during the pandemic. And inflation, which reached a two-decade high of 17.8% in April, has begun to slow.”
• “Still, a succession of indicators provide a barometer of the changes that are starting to appear. Vacancies are one. … [O]nline recruitment platform HeadHunter found that the number of jobs advertised has fallen 28% in April compared with the prewar month of February. Job ads in marketing, PR, human resources, management and banking have fallen between 40 and 55%. … The number of people on furlough rose from 44,000 in early March to 138,000 as of mid-May, according to officials, and the number of workers put on part-time hours has also gone up.”
• “In Moscow, stores selling foreign brands make up about 40% of retail space in large malls, according to commercial real estate consulting firm ILM. Many of those shops are closed after those brands cut ties with Russia. About 15-20% of shops in Moscow’s malls are now closed, according to Knight Frank Russia.”
• “By the end of the year up to 20% of all of Moscow’s office space may also be vacated, ILM said, mainly due to the departure of western firms. … Exactly how far imports have dropped is hard to say, as Russian authorities have stopped publishing figures. But using data from 20 of Russia’s biggest trading partners instead, economists at the Institute of International Finance have estimated that imports in April fell 50 per cent compared with the same month the previous year. Data on VAT collections on domestic goods show the degree to which consumption is beginning to fall and economic activity decline. According to the finance ministry, VAT revenues fell 54 per cent in April compared with the previous year.”

“My husband is in a Russian jail for speaking the truth,” Evgenia Kara-Murza, WP, 06.01.22. The author, project manager of the Free Russia Foundation and wife of Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, writes:

• “Vladimir knows the risks, but he knew that he needed to be there with these people. He wants to remind us of a simple fact: You cannot trust opinion polls conducted in a totalitarian state where there is no free speech, where there is no free independent media, no access to independent, objective information. The many Russians who rely on television as their main source of information have not had access to objective information for years. They have become thoroughly brainwashed. They hear the exact same message on every channel: The West wants Russia’s demise, wants to see Russia on its knees. Russians hear this message on state-controlled channels over and over, and there are no alternate messages available. Putin knew what he was doing. His propaganda machine has been working tirelessly over two decades to create this warped image of reality for the Russians. We are now seeing the effects of this decades-long propaganda.”
• “Vladimir wanted to be where people are fighting this evil regime. He wanted to show that you should not be afraid. Never be afraid, because fear is what makes us back down. Fear is what makes us keep silent in the face of something monstrous. When you keep quiet in the face of something monstrous, you become complicit. Vladimir could never do that.”

“Russian Public Opinion And Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine,” Henry Hale, BEAR Network-PONARS Eurasia Conference, April 2022. The author, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, writes:

• “How might what we know about public opinion (both comparatively and in pre-2022 Russia) help us understand the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on domestic support for Putin? The answer is important. Perhaps the most positive actually-conceivable outcome of the war for Ukraine and the West would be a collapse in Putin’s support that could trigger his regime’s demise.”
• “Vladimir Vladimirovich certainly has the resources to sustain the current rally for longer than the few weeks typical of rallies in democracies. But the social science would also lead us to notice certain differences from Russia’s last major rally, the Crimea effect … Arguably the most crucial difference is that the Crimea rally involved the dominance of positive affect, even euphoria and joy, whereas the current rally grows out of negative affect, especially anxiety, fear, and anger.”
• “While the Kremlin will try to stoke up the fire selectively as needed in the future, the general sense of negativity is likely to continue so long as the Kremlin is denied a clean and clear victory of some kind. And while Western sanctions can be blamed on the U.S. and can be used as a convenient excuse for poor post-war economic performance, weak economies also tend to be general affective downers.”
• “In the longer run, the generalized negative affect that the war is raining upon Russia is likely to take its toll on Putin’s support much like shark attacks hurt incumbent mayors. Exactly how soon this will occur will likely depend heavily on how the war plays out, including how many Russian soldiers fail to return home. Whether this will translate into the regime’s demise is another question, though there is good reason to think that it could well do.”

“Ready to Protest? Calculating Protest Potential in Russian Regional Capitals,” Irina Busygina and Ekaterina Paustyan, PONARS Eurasia, 06.05.22. The authors, a professor at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg and a postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Bremen, write: 

• “The political geography of urban political protests in Russia has changed dramatically over the last decade. The 2011-2012 protests ‘For Fair Elections’ … were mainly concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg… This situation changed by 2017 when anti-corruption protests spread across the country in March and June after Team Navalny’s release of its … investigation into the affairs of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev … [reaching] 154 cities… A new wave of political protests in [almost 130] Russian cities followed the return of Navalny to Russia and his arrest in January 2021.” 
• “We define protest potential as an immediate readiness to participate in protest events. We concentrate on the readiness for political protests… To assess protest potential accumulated in [53] Russian regional capitals in January-April 2021, we collected data about the number of registrations (as of April 20, 2021) for the protest march in support of Navalny announced for April 21, 2021. … Social and political factors tend to play a major role in protest rallies in authoritarian contexts … [while] economic factors [have] played only a minor role.“
• “Overall, we find that protest accumulates within two groups of urban strata in Russia, intersecting with each other. Young and educated people fuel the protest ambiance through their energy. Civil society organizations, via developed communication channels, transmit this energy through their networks.”
• The authors touch on several specific examples: 
  • “Yekaterinburg represents the most typical case.” 
  • “Stavropol exhibits a high share of young and educated people and has a quite organized civil society but lacks protest potential. This can be explained by … [its] peculiar administrative structure.”
  • “Tyumen displays protest potential and as expected also has an organized civil society, but it lacks a high share of young and educated people. This case indicates that it is not only young and educated people who are ready to protest… [I]n Tyumen … the communists cooperated with Navalny’s supporters during the 2011-2012 protests.”
  • “The case of Tomsk, on the contrary, suggests that protest potential can also accumulate in the absence of organized civil society.” 
• “Urban political protests in Russia thus appear to go in waves. This year, we saw a rapid upturn and a downturn of protest activity in Russia as detentions of anti-war dissenters intensified. However, the protest potential is still there.” 

Defense and aerospace:

“‘They break the rules of war’: Ukraine conflict fuels Russian military brutality,” John Paul Rathbone, FT, 06.03.22. The author, defense and security correspondent for the news outlet, writes

• “‘A line has been crossed . . . and the Russian military’s culture now derives from a broader authoritarian culture where nobody trusts anybody. Instead, there is a culture of irresponsibility,’ said Pavel Luzin, a Russian-based military analyst. … ‘The lack of [the army’s] concern for the lives of its soldiers is shocking . . . and directly contributes to the poor morale and lack of discipline which have blighted Russian military performance,’ a western defense adviser said.”
• “[RAND’s Dana] Massicot believes the Russian military will have to change its culture again, but reform will come too late for Moscow to achieve its aims in Ukraine or to save the thousands of lives lost in its campaign.”

“The Future of Western-Russian Civil-Space Cooperation,” Jeremy Grunert, War on the Rocks, 05.26.22. The author, an assistant professor in the department of law at the United States Air Force Academy, writes:

• “There remain significant international security and policy reasons to engage Russia and its space program. Russia’s status as a nuclear power requires consideration in this regard, as does the possibility of reducing the likelihood of wide-ranging competition between Western-aligned and Russian- and Chinese-aligned blocs. Outer-space cooperation has served as a method of reducing terrestrial tensions in the past and has been a welcome conduit for positive partnership and engagement in the modern day. Future civil-space partnerships may continue these positive trends, providing a largely apolitical area of collaboration that can serve as a springboard to addressing more politically charged, terrestrial affairs. Whether a renewal of civil-space cooperation between the West and Russia is possible may, however, depend on the length and extent of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The longer and more brutal the war becomes, the more difficult reengagement with Russia after the war — in space or in other spheres — is likely to be.”

See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

“Russia’s War Against Ukraine And Ukraine’s Challenge To Europe,” Milada Anna Vachudova, BEAR Network-PONARS Eurasia Conference, April 2022. The author, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes:

• “[Russia’s actions since invading Ukraine have] certainly created a turning point for Western governments and institutions … Russia’s war has been made possible by complacence on the part of many European governments—and it bears repeating that this wake-up call comes at a horrendous cost to Ukraine.”
• “For the EU, the war may create a window of opportunity to affirm that it is an international institution that is anchored in liberal democracy, building its geopolitical power on this founding principle. … For NATO, the war is bringing a sense of purpose that it has not enjoyed for decades. The United States has strongly committed to the defense of NATO countries and has moved U.S. troops to NATO’s eastern flank.”
• “What is most important and where the most critical positioning and contestation is playing out is at the level of national governments. It is here that crucial decisions about sanctions against Russia and about military aid to Ukraine are taking place. Germany has perhaps changed the most. It is strategizing how to end its dependence on Russian gas and asking itself how it justified, for so long, enmeshing itself economically with the Putin regime. … Austria, Switzerland and Italy face similar domestic political debates.”
• “In Poland, the ruling ethnopopulist Law and Justice Party (PiS) has re-invented itself by offering very strong support for Ukraine's government and welcoming over two million refugees. … But there are no indications that PiS has suddenly adopted liberal democratic and pluralist values at home. … The ruling ethnopopulist party in Slovenia also tried to remake itself by performing solidarity with Ukraine, but last weekend the voters threw them out.”

Ukraine:

“Measuring the impact of partisanship on attitudes toward the U.S. response to the Russia-Ukraine war,” Shibley Telhami and Stella M. Rouse, Brookings, 05.22.22. The authors, a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and a professor in the department of government and politics at the University of Maryland, write:

• “If there was hope that the Ukraine war would reduce the sharp partisan divide in American politics, the evidence from our recent poll is discouraging. As noted in earlier analysis of our March poll, more Republicans identified Biden than identified Russian President Vladimir Putin as the world or national leader they disliked most. Since then, views of Biden have dropped further among Republicans, as the partisan divide has become more pronounced in public attitudes about the war. In our new poll, most respondents stated that their views of Biden had not been affected positively by the Russia-Ukraine war — despite high approval of specific policies.”
• “Even worse for Biden, there was a slight drop in this regard from the March poll, when respondents were last asked if the Russian invasion of Ukraine and America’s response made their views of Biden more or less positive—33% in May said they had a ‘more positive’ view of Biden versus 36% who said the same in March. This was true even among Democrats, with 62% of respondents expressing a ‘more positive’ view of Biden in May versus 67% in March.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Nagorno-Karabakh in the Shadow of Ukraine,” Thomas de Waal, FA, 05.30.22. 

“Kazakhstan Takes a Step Toward Democracy,” Kamran Bokhari, WSJ, 06.05.22. The author, director of analytical development at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, writes:

• “On Sunday the country held a referendum—its first in 27 years—on potential amendments to the constitution. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the changes, which are projected to pass, according to exit polls, would bring an end to the “super presidential” system and ultimately usher in a ‘Second Republic.’ His predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, held office for almost 30 years.”
• “Given today’s global authoritarian renaissance, the U.S. should welcome and encourage this trajectory. … The U.S. and Europe must do all they can to ensure that this transition to democratization, which will continue beyond the referendum, succeeds. If it doesn’t, then the heart of Eurasia, which suffered a body blow with the Taliban’s victory, will be further in jeopardy.”
• “If Kazakhstan delivers on its reforms, it can become an American partner capable of ensuring that Eurasia can weather the many storms threatening it.”

IV. Quotable and notable

• No significant developments.